Crucial Superconducting Theory Confirmed

photo credit: Magnetic levitation is only one of the many properties of superconducting materials. ktsdesign/shutterstock

Superconductivity promises to revolutionize our world with efficient transport, cheaper electricity, and even hoverboards. Although it’s still a long road to that technology, a crucial theory has just been confirmed that could help.

The superconducting state happens suddenly when electrons in the material join in pairs. This formation is due to internal electrical currents that form the state when the right conditions arise. The theory was first proposed in 1989 by Professor Chandra Varma, and now he and colleagues from China and Korea have successfully proved it.

When some materials are cooled below a certain critical temperature, they become superconducting. They suddenly transmit electricity with zero resistance, thanks to the fact that electrons form pairs and move through the material effortlessly without repelling each other.

“I suggested that this behavior was happening because there was an unusual phase transition due to loops of currents flowing within the material. It was a very bold hypothesis because no such behavior had ever been observed,” said Professor Varma, now a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at theUniversity of California Riverside

The experiment conducted at the National Laboratory for Superconductivity in Beijing used a laser to precisely measure the energies of the coupling electrons. The values were so accurate that it allowed them to prove that Varma had the right idea all along. The findings are published in the latest issue of Science Advances.

The critical temperature for all the superconducting materials is still significantly below zero, with thehottest superconductor still needing to be cooled to a temperature of -70ºC (-94ºF). But the scientists think their research could help develop room-temperature superconductors, which would allow for more efficient technology that doesn’t overheat, faster transportation, and more advanced scientific and medical instruments.

“I can in my theory predict precisely the parameters that a material must have in order to get higher temperature superconductors,” said Varma. “How can chemists and experimentalists (who make those materials) achieve those parameters? I can’t directly say, but the theory points to a certain direction.”

10 Things We Need To Colonize Mars

Technology advances by leaps and bounds, and it had better keep doing that if we’re going to send people to live on Mars within the next few decades. In fact, NASA plans to send their first manned mission to Mars as early as the 2030s. But there are a few key pieces of technology humanity will have to improve on before we can hope to reach the red planet safely.

1. WATER EXTRACTORS

Despite the recent discovery of some liquid water on Mars, future colonizers are going to be dependent on frozen water trapped in the Martian soil. Extracting that water might involve physically digging it up, or it might mean using microwaves to vaporize the water and bring it to the surface as a gas. Unfortunately, while machines to do both have been tested on Earth, no large-scale water extractors have yet been tested on Mars itself.

And it’s definitely important to make sure that machinery works before we consider establishing a permanent base on Mars. That’s not just so that the colonizers don’t die of dehydration. Some experts have suggested using the water to supply oxygen by separating the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that make up water molecules. If that plan is used and the water-gathering machinery breaks down, the colonizers would be in danger of dying from lack of oxygen. But even if an alternate system of supplying oxygen is used (such as breaking down carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere) water would be needed for making fuel as well as drinking. Such vital equipment should be tested in the environment of Mars, allowing flaws to be identified before people’s lives rely on it.

2. MARS SUITS

The environment of Mars presents some interesting challenges, with plenty of dangers that might not kill the colonizers right away, but could cause severe health problems down the road. As such, exploring Mars would require special suits even more advanced than current spacesuits.

For starters, Mars is frequently bathed in deadly space radiation. On Earth, we’re protected from these cosmic rays by the atmosphere and a magnetic field known as the magnetosphere. Orbiting spacecraft like the International Space Station (ISS) are inside the magnetosphere, so only a few astronauts have risked full exposure to space radiation on brief missions beyond low-Earth orbit. A trip to Mars would take much longer, making radiation shielding vital.

That’s particularly tricky for Mars suits, which have to be light enough to wear while also providing adequate protection. One candidate might be hydrogenated boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs). Originally developed to shield spacecraft, researchers have actually made BNNTs into yarn, which could be mixed with the fabric of spacesuits to provide protection from radiation.

Another problem is that the human body tends to break down without the pressure of Earth’s gravity. Astronauts on the ISS suffer from muscle atrophy and can lose up to 2 percent of their bone mass per month. On the ISS this is manageable through exercise, but for long-term missions to Mars, researchers at MIT have developed the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit, which mimics the effects of Earth’s gravity by gently squeezing the body. The suit is skintight, allowing it to be worn under larger spacesuits while outside a spacecraft or on the surface of Mars.

3. SPACESHIPS

It goes without saying that putting a person on Mars will be significantly more challenging than landing an unmanned rover like Curiosity. So far, we’ve only managed a handful of brief manned missions to the Moon, which is around 200 times closer to the Earth than Mars is.

But NASA is dreaming big with the Orion space capsule. Designed with a mission to Mars in mind, Orion will hopefully be capable of long-term space travel, carrying up to four astronauts on a six- to nine-month journey to Mars.

However, Orion’s mission to Mars won’t happen until at least the 2030s. First, NASA plans to test it with missions to the Moon and at least one asteroid. The agency is also developing a huge new rocket called the Space Launch System to propel Orion. The first manned tests are tentatively scheduled for 2021, although it now seems likely they will be delayed until 2023 at least.

In the meantime, Orion made its first unmanned flight in December 2014. The mission was designed to test the capsule and gather information on the effects of radiation. At the moment, radiation fromgalactic cosmic rayswould prevent humans from spending longer than 150 days outside low-Earth orbit. A mission to Mars and back would take a lot longer than that, so developing effective radiation shields for Orion will be key.

4. FUEL

At the moment, Orion is a relatively small spacecraft, but keeping astronauts alive and sane on the months-long journey to Mars will require the addition of a much larger “habitat module.” Propelling such a large spacecraft all the way to Mars would require a huge amount of fuel. That fuel would itself add to the weight of the shuttle, limiting room for instruments and requiring even more effort to get out of the Earth’s atmosphere.

One solution would be to find a more efficient type of fuel. At the moment, most spacecraft are powered by a chemical propulsion system. However, NASA is working on a type of propulsion system known assolar electric propulsion (SEP). This harnesses energy from the Sun and uses it to accelerate xenon atoms into an exhaust plume that propels the spacecraft forward. This system would be far lighter than any chemical propulsion engine.

However, there is a problem. At the moment, solar arrays just can’t harvest enough power for SEP engines to provide the same thrust as chemical engines, meaning that an SEP-powered craft would takelonger to reach Mars. This is a major problem for a manned mission, since we’re already struggling to keep the astronauts alive and sane for the minimum six months it would take to reach Mars.

As a result, some experts have suggested that fuel-efficient SEP engines should be used to transport supplies and equipment to Mars. Once the heavy supplies have safely landed, the astronauts could make a faster trip on a stripped-down, chemically propelled spacecraft designed to just get them there safely and quickly.

5. LANDING EQUIPMENT

Even if we had a ship that could carry humans and supplies to Mars, there’s still an intractable problem: We just don’t have the technology to land it safely. We can land spacecraft on the Moon, where there’s essentially no atmosphere. And we can easily land on Earth, which has a much thicker atmosphere than Mars. But the red planet’s thin atmosphere presents unique challenges that make landing even light robotic probes a huge struggle. There is presently no method to safely land a ship large enough to carry humans.

NASA is hard at work on the problem and is currently testing a combination of a huge supersonic parachute and a doughnut-shaped air brake. A test in 2015 was not a success, with the parachute being ripped apart after failing to inflate. However, the test provided valuable data, which NASA plans to use toimprove the design. Since NASA’s mission to Mars is tentatively planned for the 2030s, they have plenty of time to work on the problem.

Meanwhile, the controversial Mars One project, which hopes to establish a private colony on Mars, plans to use a spacecraft that slows itself using rockets and without a parachute. This has never been done before, and experts have described the Mars One project in general as “insane.”

6. GREEN THUMBS

In the recent movie adaptation of The Martian, Matt Damon’s character Mark Watney is portrayed as a genius botanist, able to grow potatoes in the red soil of Mars. In real life, Watney’s nearest equivalent isBruce Bugbee, the Utah State University scientist behind the lettuce NASA recently grew on the ISS. According to Bugbee, The Martian‘s basic concepts were correct, but the movie underestimated the difficulty of growing plants on Mars.

For starters, Mars only gets 60 percent of the Earth’s sunlight. And Watney’s radiation-shielded habitat would have blocked out even more of the light. In real life, Bugbee says, a farm on Mars would need an artificial light source or a system of mirrors and fiber optics to concentrate the sunlight Mars does get.

Bugbee also says it would be extremely difficult to grow plants in the Martian soil. Appropriately, the red planet is actually quite rusty, insofar as the soil is full of iron oxides. This oxidized soil is not ideal for plant life, so Martian colonizers would need to grow their crops in a system of hydroponics, or else treat the soil to remove the iron oxides and increase fertility.

But thanks to the work of Bugbee and others, future Martians should be equipped with everything they need to grow edible plants on the journey to Mars and on the planet itself. Just a few months ago, astronaut Scott Kelly became the first person to taste lettuce grown in space. Apparently, it was delicious.

7. BUILDER-BOTS

We can’t just dump people on Mars with no infrastructure in place and expect them to build everything they need themselves. All realistic colonization plans envision first sending unmanned ships loaded with supplies, along with robots to do the prep work before humans can arrive. For example, robots could construct livable habitats and begin extracting water from the soil long before the first human sets foot on the red Martian soil. The problem is that we haven’t yet built these builder bots, and the robots that we can currently build are fairly limited in what they can achieve on Mars.

At present, NASA is working in conjunction with two universities on a humanoid robot dubbed the R5. However, some have questioned whether a bipedal robot is the best way to go, arguing that four legs or preferably tire treads would be sturdier. Robot skeptics have also argued against putting too much pressure on our mechanical workers. Instead, they argue that we should simply do as much of the work as possible on Earth. For example, prebuilt inflatable shelters could be set up, saving us the trouble of creating a robot to construct the shelter from raw materials. That would leave the bots free to focus on simple tasks that wouldn’t need problem-solving skills or fine motor control.

8. HOMES

Clearly, a key step to colonizing Mars will be designing specialized habitats for the colonists. These habitats will need to be pressurized to near-Earth levels. They will also need to protect against dust storms, radiation, and frigid weather conditions. And they’ll need to be homey, since future Martian colonists are probably going to be spending a lot of time indoors.

And life on Mars would pose even more unexpected challenges. For example, it seems intuitive that Martian colonists would grow edible plants in their habitats. The problem is that plants produce oxygen, which would build up in a sealed environment until the air became toxic to humans or everything burst into flames. And it’s difficult to vent excess oxygen without also losing precious nitrogen, a vital atmosphere component. So before any space farms are possible, engineers will have to develop a robust system for removing excess oxygen under Martian conditions.

Ultimately, it’s too early to say what a house on Mars might look like. But some of the possibilities are breathtaking. In 2015, NASA held a competition to design a Martian habitat. The winning entry was one of the few to ignore the planet’s red soil. Instead, the designers used an equally plentiful resource, proposing a towering triangular structure built entirely out ofMartian ice.

9. MATERNITY WARDS

Generally, astronauts are forbidden from having sexual relations while on a mission. But if you’re sending groups of people to Mars for the rest of their lives, it’s hard to imagine them all staying permanently celibate. And with sex on Mars comes the possibility of pregnancy on Mars. That’s completely uncharted territory and it’s likely that special precautions would have to be taken to ensure the safety of the mother and child.

The big problem, as usual, is radiation. The DNA that controls embryo development is extremely susceptible to radiation damage. As a result, a child conceived on the journey to Mars would almost certainly be sterile and would run a high risk of mental retardation or birth defects. On Mars itself, the situation would be more manageable, but extra precautions would certainly have to be taken to shield expectant mothers from radiation. It has even been suggested that colonists should establish a habitat in a crater on the Martian moon Phobos, where some crater walls block 90 percent of cosmic radiation.

It’s also clear that a child raised on Mars might develop in different ways from one raised on Earth. In one of the few experiments on the subject, pregnant rats were sent into space and then returned to Earth to give birth. The new baby rats didn’t have a proper sense of up and down due to their development in zero gravity. But the effect vanished after a few days, showing that space babies can adjust themselves to normal gravity.

With all that said, space pregnancy might not be such a pressing issue after all. Researcher Joe Tash has suggested that lengthy periods spent in low gravity could badly damage both male and female reproductive systems. If this is the case, a lengthy trip to Mars would render the first Martians “reproductively compromised.”

10. A WAY HOME

The Mars One project proposes to send colonists on a one-way trip to Mars, with no plans for a return to Earth. Which is probably for the best, since a report from MIT predicts that the Mars One colonists willdie almost immediately. And while buying a one-way ticket to Mars might sound romantic, trapping people in space probably isn’t the best way to go about colonizing the solar system.

Fortunately, NASA does plan for its Mars mission to include a return trip. Of course, this presents a huge technical challenge. Unexpectedly, the journey back to Earth is the comparatively easy part—a spaceship called the Earth Return Vehicle will stay in orbit around Mars until it’s time to transport the astronauts home. The difficulty is getting the astronauts to the Earth Return Vehicle. Pushing through the Martian atmosphere and into orbit requires a huge amount of propellant, which would take years to produce.

NASA’s solution is a spaceship known as the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which will be sent to Mars years before the astronauts. Once it lands, the MAV will automatically begin extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it into fuel. It’ll probably take about two years for the MAV to fill its fuel tanks, and the astronauts won’t leave Earth until NASA receives confirmation that enough fuel has been produced to get them home again. As a result, the MAV needs to be tough enough to survive the inhospitable Martian landscape for up to four years. NASA expects it to be the heaviest object they will need to land on Mars for the mission to be a success. But it’ll be worth it to make sure the first Martians have a way home.

Incredible New Map Of The Milky Way Released

One of the largest studies of our galaxy has just been completed. The ATLASGAL survey has mapped a huge swathe of cold dust and gas distribution in the Milky Way in order to understand how and where stars form.

The survey has so far produced 70 scientific papers, and in the latest publication, astronomers combined the survey data with observations from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite. The paper, which appeared in Astronomy & Astrophysics, detailed the location of dense star-forming regions and established a precise star-formation rate for our galaxy: The Milky Way forms 13 stars the mass of the Sun every 10 years.

The project was possible thanks to APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment telescope, in Chile, a precursor to the advanced Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which is studying the universe at wavelengths between infrared and radio.

Dr. Carlos De Breuck, ESO APEX project scientist, told IFLScience: “We can have detailed observations of our galaxy because we are inside it. So we can zoom in the regions where stars are born.

“When we look at the sky with our own eyes, we see these dark lanes in the Milky Way. These dust lanes are the place where stars are forming.”

This comparison shows the central regions of the Milky Way observed at different wavelengths. ESO/ATLASGAL consortium/NASA/GLIMPSE consortium/VVV Survey/ESA/Planck/D. Minniti/S. Guisard

To understand how our galaxy has changed and is changing is very important in order to get a complete census of these star-forming regions. The final catalog covered a 420-square-degree area of sky, more than four times larger than the first ATLASGAL survey.

“It’s a huge amount of data,” added De Breuck, “and its legacy will go well beyond the end of this survey. The entire ATLASGAL data was made available to other astronomers. Everybody from the public can now download the data. It is both beautiful and scientifically useful.”

Although the ATLASGAL survey is now complete, this is not an end but a beginning. “There are many things we can do now. It is a very versatile survey. We found many small compact regions that we could follow up with ALMA,” said De Breuck.

“ATLASGAS told us where to look, where the interesting regions in our galaxy are. And we can study in detail how these regions collapse and form stars. We can get the kinematic of the gas, how it moves around.”

The follow-up observations will not be just in the submillimeter but also in other wavelengths, which will deliver a better understanding of these important regions.

“[The different types of observations] directly illustrate how powerful it is to look at the complementary data between these different observations. What you see in one wavelength is not directly what you see in another wavelength,” added De Breuck.

Gravitational Waves: Everything You Need to Know

At 5:51 a.m. EDT (9:51 a.m. GMT) on September 14, 2015, history was made. At that exact moment, the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors in Louisiana and Washington state independently saw evidence for gravitational waves, originating from two merging black holes 1.3 billion light-years away. It was pretty big news. You might have heard about it.

The discovery is undoubtedly one of the biggest moments in astronomy, not only confirming Einstein’s theory of general relativity from 100 years ago, but also providing us with a new way to observe the universe. But you’ve no doubt still got many questions about gravitational waves. What are they, exactly? Why did the detection have to be made at that moment? How do we know it was two black holes merging?

Well, wonder no more. Below, we run through some of the outstanding questions you might have about the biggest discovery of the century.

What is a gravitational wave? 

A gravitational wave is essentially a ripple in the fabric of space-time caused by a massive object, or objects in this case, moving or merging. For this pair of black holes, their moment of becoming one caused them to lose mass equal to three times our Sun. This release of energy caused a ripple in space-time, a gravitational wave. Then 1.3 billion years later, this ripple arrived at Earth – and we detected it.

“The space-time continuum is often explained with the analogy of steel balls on a rubber sheet,” Justin Greenhalgh from Harwell Campus’ Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, a contributor to LIGO, told IFLScience. “To extend this, gravitational waves can be viewed as ripples in this rubber sheet.”

How did we get so much information from a single “blip”?

As the gravitational wave passed over Earth, it produced a noticeable signal at both LIGO detectors, which had only recently been upgraded as part of the Advanced LIGO project. It is the nature of the blip here that is key.

Essentially, scientists have an idea of what sort of events will produce different kinds of blips. Once the signal had been received, they simply needed to plug the various values – frequency and time, for instance – into equations, which told them that it must have been two merging black holes, one 36 times the mass of our Sun and one 29, about 1.3 billion years ago.

“The analysis of this signal is consistent with two black holes merging – different sources have different characteristics,” CERN physicist Jon Butterworth told The Guardian. “Apparently they have a ‘library’ of expected spectral characteristics from different sources.”

How big was the wave?

Prepare to have your mind mildly blown. When the black holes merged, the release of energy sent out a wave in all directions as a sphere expanding at the speed of light. This means that, by the time the wave reached us, it was the edge of a sphere that spanned 1.3 billion light-years in radius, extending from Earth to the same distance on the other side of the black holes. Yeah.

Do gravitational waves travel forever?

Like light, gravitational waves are thought to propagate seemingly forever, but they do also get weaker over time, albeit at a slower rate than light.

How fast do they move?

At the speed of light, based on the difference in time of blips between the two detectors – 7 milliseconds apart. This has the further consequence of telling us that the “graviton,” the hypothetical particle of gravity, must be massless, since particles with mass cannot reach the speed of light. However, this could be verified further with more measurements.

“The theory suggests that these waves travel at the speed of light, so if we were to identify an event that produces light and gravitational waves simultaneously, we could confirm this,” said Greenhalgh. “It is possible that a supernova would provide the right amount of light and gravitational waves to do so, but we are not yet able to confirm this.”

Each LIGO detector uses tunnels 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) long. LIGO Laboratory

Why was it important the detector was turned on at a specific time to find this signal? 

Everything in the universe is producing gravitational waves, but only the most massive events warp space-time to any noticeable degree. Thus, we must rely on massive events producing powerful waves for us to measure, and that’s what happened here.

The moment the two black holes merged produced a sudden, measurable burst of gravitational waves, with 50 times the power of all the stars in the universe combined. This wave traveled over 1.3 billion light-years to Earth and, thanks to LIGO being switched on, it was able to catch the incredibly brief moment this wave passed over our planet.

“Like a camera, or telescope, you have to have LIGO on at the right time to witness the wave,” Greenhalgh said. “While waves are always being produced, most are not of a scale that would allow them to be measured.”

Now that Advanced LIGO is up and running, there could be many more of these events for us to discover.

Is it possible an alien race in another galaxy could have used this same event to discover gravitational waves?

There’s no reason why not. “They do propagate evenly in all directions, so it is entirely possible that an alien race could discover gravitational waves from the same event,” said Greenhalgh. “Indeed, it is possible that one already has, or will in a hundred years time.”

What could we use gravitational waves for?

Like radio waves, gravitational waves are a form of information, and by detecting them we could get information from previously unobservable parts of the universe.

Take these two black holes, for instance. Both are less than 150 kilometers (93 miles) across, but located 1.3 billion light-years away. We have no other instruments in existence that could detect information from objects so small and far away. In visible light, for instance, we could barely see an entire galaxy at this distance.

Perhaps most interestingly, finding more of these merging black holes could allow us to see into the history of the universe – possibly closer to the Big Bang than ever before. “A cosmic distance ladder using these black holes would be extremely accurate and compliment existing distance ladders based, for example, on supernovas,” Stephen Hawking told the BBC. “We may even see relics of the very early universe during the Big Bang, at the most extreme energies possible.”

How will future missions improve on LIGO?

The key thing we’re missing at the moment is location. As we only had two detectors, we were only able to tell the direction of the signal – somewhere in the southern sky. A third detector will help us to triangulate where future signals are coming from – something that could be achieved with Italy’s upcoming VIRGO detector.

Black Holes; A New Source of Energy

Quick, what’s the best way to provide an alternative source of energy for the Earth? If you answered, “Get a mini black hole to orbit Earth,” then you and physicist Stephen Hawking may be thinking on the same wavelength. In a lecture on Feb. 2, the famed scientist said tiny black holes, about as massive as the average mountain, could power all of the world’s energy needs.

The trick? Proving they exist, finding them and then figuring out how to harness all of that energy safely. “There is nothing technically wrong with this idea, but it is not very practical, at least within the next 10,000 years,” said Sabine Hossenfelder, a physicist at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, who blogs at backreaction.blogspot.com.

LEAKY BLACK HOLES

Originally, scientists believed black holes were regions of collapsed matter so dense that nothing, not even light, could escape from their gravitational pull. Then, in 1974, Hawking put forward the idea that black holes leak quantum particles, a process now known as Hawking radiation.

The biggest black holes, which are billions of times more massive than the sun, live at the hearts of galaxies, while black holes about 10 times the size of the sun are peppered throughout the universe, Hossenfelder said. Such massive black holes are very cold, and so emit Hawking radiation. But researchers have also proposed the existence of relatively tiny black holes that would be hotter, and so emit more particles via Hawking radiation.

“A mountain-sized black hole would give off X-rays and gamma-rays at a rate of about 10 million megawatts, enough to power the world’s electricity supply,” Hawking said in the lecture. “It wouldn’t be easy, however, to harness a mini black hole. You couldn’t keep it in a power station, because it would drop through the floor and end up at the center of the Earth.”

ELUSIVE SPACE OBJECTS

But there’s another problem: No one has ever found evidence of these mini black holes, and there are good reasons to doubt they exist, Hossenfelder said.

In theory, these black holes formed early in the universe’s history, when matter existed in a hot soupy plasma. As this primordial soup got squished together and flung apart, causing fluctuations in density, the theory held, occasionally some regions got so dense that the matter collapsed in on itself, forming mini black holes, Hossenfelder said.

But to form these primeval black holes, most models assume a high level of density fluctuations, which also tend to produce many more black holes than are present in the universe. “You don’t want everything to end up in black holes,” Hossenfelder told Live Science.

MAJOR TOWING PROBLEM

Then, presuming these miniature black holes are real and that people could detect the objects’ existence, the problem becomes how to reach the monstrous powerhouses. That could take tens of thousands or even 100,000 years, Hossenfelder noted.

Next comes the monumental task of harnessing the black holes’ power for energy.

“You cannot land on it and put some booster on it and move it, because it does not have a surface,” Hossenfelder said. By using the gravity of a much larger object, people could theoretically tow a mini black hole, eventually coaxing it to sit in Earth’s orbit, she said. Scientists would also have to harness the black hole’s energy while simultaneously shielding humans from the black holes’ harmful radiation (a relatively simple matter compared to all of the other tasks involved in the setup, she said).

DIY BLACK HOLES

Of course, if venturing deep into outer space is unrealistic, there are other ways to harness mini black holes, Hawking said in the lecture.

“We might be able to create micro black holes in the extra dimensions of space-time,” Hawking said.

But these extra dimensions may or may not exist: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has so far seen no trace of them, Hossenfelder said. And if there are extra dimensions, that doesn’t mean that lab-made mini black holes could power anything. If particle colliders such as the LHC did produce these tiny black holes, the objects would stick around for just 10 raised to the minus 23 seconds, she said.

“These tiny black holes would decay immediately. There is no way you could harness their energy,” she said.

SO? WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHARE YOUR PRECIOUS OPINION AND DISCUSS.

Did you know? (Issue 1)

This topic will shed light on some of the recently discovered facts and information from many parts of the world. Some of them is really impressing and worth knowing and memorizing.
1. JELLYFISH KILL MORE PEOPLE EACH YEAR THAN SHARKS DO.

Jellyfish is reportedly 15 – 30 times deadlier than sharks. Some species of stinging jellyfish are almost invisible in the water and the first warning anyone may get is large numbers of people leaving the water with painful, itching stings. Even after it is dead, the jellyfish can still continue stinging. The stingers activate upon touch and work whether the tentacle is still attached to a living jellyfish or not. Talk about a zombie ha?!!
2. DOGS UNDERSTAND HUMAN PERSPECTIVE.

A recent study revealed that dogs are much likely to steal food in the dark when humans cannot see them which indicates that they somehow understand that what they are doing is not right from a human’s point of view.
3. CHILDREN’S DAY!


India actually celebrates Children’s Day on November 14th which is exactly 9 months after Valentine’s Day. I guess protection is off the table during that day!!

5. FACEBOOK LANGUAGE.



You can actually change Facebook language to upside down or pirate if you want to. Jack Sparrow would be happy. Hey, how come there is no Klingon option?!!

6. MILLIONAIRES.



Half of all millionaires are self-employed or own a business. Around 80% of them are college graduates. Only 18% of millionaires have a Master’s Degree. 8% have law degrees, 6% have medical degrees and 6% have a PhD. I mean, if they can do it, why can’t we?

7. ST. VALENTINE.

In addition to love, St. Valentine is the patron saint of plague. How is that for a contradiction?!!

8. OH JAPAN!!

In Japan, women give chocolates on Valentine’s day. Men are supposed to return the favor a month later on White Day, March 14th.

9. HOW MANY PEOPLE SHARE YOUR BIRTHDAY?

You share your birthday with approximately 9 million other people in the world. Let’s put that to the test shall we? Mine is September 13th; who has the same birthday?

STAY TUNED FOR MORE AWESOME TOPICS EVERYDAY.

Some scientific facts that will leave you speechless

It is really sad that only few people are into science nowadays. I think this is mainly due to the way science is portrayed and taught to kids at schools all around the world. Why can’t we learn science and still make if fun and interesting at the same time? Is it a bad idea to ask comedians, for instance, to include some science facts in their jokes? It is an idea worth mentioning and discussing I think.

With that being said, here are some amazing science facts that will literally blow your mind. These kind of facts just continue to amaze me and keeps me hungry for more. It just proves that with all the things we have learned in the world still have an ocean of facts to dive into.

IT CAN TAKE A PHOTON 40,000 YEARS TO TRAVEL FROM THE CORE OF THE SUN TO ITS SURFACE, BUT ONLY 8 MINUTES TO TRAVEL THE REST OF THE WAY TO EARTH

A photon travels, on average, a particular distance, d, before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction.From the core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) where it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps. The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes between many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, the light that reaches us today is energy produced maybe millions of years ago. Isn’t that just amazing! (image source)

THERE ARE 8 TIMES AS MANY ATOMS IN A TEASPOONFUL OF WATER AS THERE ARE TEASPOONFULS OF WATER IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

A teaspoon of water (about 5 ml) contains 2×1023 water molecules, but each water molecule is comprised of 3 atoms: two hydrogen and one oxygen. Moreover, if you’d laid down end to end each water molecule from a teaspoon full you’d end up with a length of 50 billion km or 10 times the width of our solar system. (image source)

IF BETELGEUSE WOULD EXPLODE TRANSITING FROM THE RED SUPER GIANT STAGE TO SUPERNOVA THEN OUR SKY WOULD LIGHT CONTINUOUSLY FOR TWO MONTHS. IT CAN HAPPEN ANYTIME, WITHIN A COUPLE OF THOUSAND YEARS, TOMORROW OR EVEN NOW!!

Betelgeuse lies some 430 light-years from Earth. Yet it’s already one of the brightest stars in Earth’s sky. The reason is that Betelgeuse is a super-giant star – the largest kind of stars in the Universe. Betelgeuse has a luminosity about 10,000 times that of the Sun and its radius is calculated to be about 370 times that of the sun. If it were positioned at the center of our sun, its radius would extend out past the radius of Mars. Because it’s near the end of its lifetime, Betelgeuse is likely to explode into a supernova. (image source)

THERE IS ENOUGH DNA IN AN AVERAGE PERSON’S BODY TO STRETCH FROM THE SUN TO PLUTO AND BACK. 17 TIMES

The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body and if you’d uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and put them end to end, then these would sum to a total length of 2×1014 meters or enough for 17 Pluto round trips (1.2×1013 meters/Pluto round trip). (image source)

HOW BIG IS THE UNIVERSE?!!

The known universe is made up of 50,000,000,000 galaxies. There are between 100,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars in a normal galaxy. In the Milky Way alone there might be as many 100,000,000 planets. Do you still think you are alone?!! (image source)

THE AVERAGE HUMAN BODY CARRIES TEN TIMES MORE BACTERIAL CELLS THAN HUMAN CELLS

It’s funny how we compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops and grimace when someone sneezes near us—in fact, we do everything we can to avoid unnecessary encounters with the germ world. The truth of the matter is that each and every one of us is a walking petri dish! All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug or 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho. Don’t worry, though. Most of these bacteria are helpful; in fact, we couldn’t survive without them.

For one thing, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food. Germ-free rodents have to consume nearly a third more calories than normal rodents to maintain their body weight, and when the same animals were later given a dose of bacteria, their body fat levels spiked, even if they didn’t eat any more than they had before. The gut bacteria is also very important to maintaining immunity. (image source)

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