Theory of Relativity and Spacewarps

Since its discovery, Einstein’s theory of Relativity has fascinated both scientists and common man alike. It is due to this fascination that the ideas like curved space, singularities are popular among the general public.

The concepts of Relativity are not of everyday experience and thus, somewhat hard to visualize. Same applies to the concept of spacewarps. By the theory, the presence of masses in space curves its geometry. Gravity, which Newton suggested as a force, is the curvature of space as per the relativistic perspective. When it comes to spacewarps, Euclidean Geometry, which is based on flat space-time does not hold good. Bodies following straight paths (as appears to them) in this curved world actually move in circular or elliptical paths. Even light, when moves through this space of high curvature (like the vicinity of a massive star), appears to be deflected by the star. But though spacewarps are discovered through relativity theory, it is these spacewarps that possibly are the limitations to this theory.

Relativity, in one of its postulates, suggests that laws of nature are same everywhere. But this theory is based on nearly flat and not extremely curved space-time. The theory predicts the breakdown of itself when subjected to very intensely curved space, as in singularity, or space-time boundary. The problem of singularities can be solved with the help of the Quantum Theory.

Some facts based on Science

Mercury is a metal in liquid at room temperature. But now we can convert it to solid state even when there is no reaction in the chemistry to do so. A Shivling is made by solidifying mercury. Even the famous Paras stone is made of mercury. It is an ayurvedic element. There is one more property of mercury, i.e. it absorbs poison. This is the reason why Rajas used to drink in mercury glasses, so that any poison in their drinks is completely absorbed by the mercury. The glass used to turn blue on absorbing poison. Mercury absorbs Gold also; it literally eats it because there is no increase in the weight of mercury after absorbing gold.

When a metallic rod is hit by lightening, it glows in the dark. If we cover it with rubber and stand holding it in front of any running engine, the engine will cease immediately. This is used in missiles and rockets these days. It was also used in Mahabharata and Ramayana to destroy the powerful weapons of their enemies. If this rod is kept in front of a bag full of rice, it will convert the rice into powder within seconds.

Lord Krishna always used to wear a peacock’s feather on his head which had eyes on both its sides. This kind of feather has very powerful magnetism. If this feather is kept between two incense sticks (agarbatti), it attracts the smoke in its direction and as a result all the smoke rises up from the feather only. This characteristic is said to be used by lord Krishna in the great battle of Mahabharata.

Why do people worship the Peepal tree? It gives out Oxygen day and night while always consuming Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere.

Real Lightsabers???

Is it possible that a real lightsaber could be made within the relatively near future? I heard that to actually make one, there would be several violations of the laws of physics regarding light or energy; could a real lightsaber ever be made? The closest thing that I’ve ever heard to a real lightsaber is the neon light replica that reinactors often have at Wal-Mart or some other place selling photo-ops in costume; but obviously, they are nowhere near a real lightsaber that could cut anything. Has a working lightsaber ever been constructed? The answer is NO.

Obviously the lightsaber violates every law of physics known to man. A real lightsaber could not be constructed because reality follows these laws, which we call physics. For starters, lasers extend for very long distances, until there light is absorbed. So that rules out laser for a lightsaber. I have heard people say that a cylinder is rotated at near c (i.e. the speed of light) and at those speeds, virtual photons are emitted. But that violates the conservation of energy. To move even electrons at this velocity requires a good deal of energy, and to rotate a cylinder at that speed would require ridiculous amount of energy. Since infinite power supplies don’t exist which would violate physics in so many ways, this is impossible. If the lightsaber were to be converted into pure energy (using antimatter) it still wouldn’t have enough energy to function for any amount of time. Also, if two objects moving at near c touched, the torques would be infinitely large.

Actually, yes, some say that lightsabers (or lightsaber-like weapons) can be made in the future, just not now. I saw a program on the History Channel about Star Wars Tech, and it said that it’s possible, but it cannot use light. Since light beams go no infinitely until they are blocked (or something like that), it couldn’t stop after like 4 feet. But, plasma (such as neon) can be held in a tube and put at an extremely hot temperature and have the same effect as a lightsaber. It just couldn’t shoot out when you press a button.

I think engineering a real lightsaber would be possible using nanotechnology (nano-generators) as a power source. The lightsaber runs of a di-atium power cell. This is not an infinite power supply, just several megawatt-hours of stored energy. This power supply is focused through a crystal that sends the energy out in a tight ark that only has light as a by-product of the blade and not the blade itself.

Can that be cited or proved? In reality, that should be physically impossible. Unless there is some kind of restraining field preventing energy/the laser beam from diffusing further than four feet or in any direction. Not to mention, I’m inclined to think that energy of this kind (not laser beam, more like plasma or something) would be incredibly radioactive.

Thus, a real lightsaber construction seems a distant dream in the present. But, a few decades later, who knows…………

Universal Facts

Did you know?

• That the Sun makes up of 99.86% of the Solar System’s mass. This means that all the planets put together make up just 0.14% of the Solar System’s mass.
• That Jupiter’s magnetic field is so massive that it pours billions of watts into the Earth’s magnetic field everyday.
• That a massive body that was 100km wide travelling at over 512,000 km/h crashed into the Mercury to form the Caloris Basin. The impact was so great that it sent shockwaves around the Mercury and this resulted in the creation of its hilly terrain.
• That just a pinhead of the Sun’s raw material has the ability to kill someone who is 160km away.
• That the duration of the plutonian year is 248 Earth years. This means that it takes Pluto about one quarter of a millennium to go around the Sun once.
• That Olympus Mons (on Mars) is the largest volcanic mountain in the Solar System. It is 600km wide and 27km high.
• That a supernova explosion produces more energy in its first few weeks or months than the Sun during the whole of its 10 billion years lifetime and for that brief period it creates more energy than the rest of the galaxy put together.
• That the comet with longest ever recorded trail is that of the great comet of 1843. Its trail stretched over 800 million km. this is about the distance between the Earth and the Jupiter.
• That the energy that we see today in the sunlight started out in the Sun’s core about 30,000 years ago – it spent most of its time passing through the dense atoms that make the Sun. But, it takes only 8 minutes to reach the Earth from there.
• The heavier elements in your body like Calcium, Iron etc. were formed somewhere in supernova explosions.
• Some rocks on Earth are actually pieces of rocks from Mars.
• Some volcanoes on Jupiter eject matter at speeds of 1km/sec.

 

There are no extra pieces in this universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle

Nanotechnology: a mini world

INTRODUCTION

Nanotechnology refers to science and technology whose unifying theme is the control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale, normally 1 to 100 nanometres, and the fabrication of devices with critical dimensions that lie within that size range. A basic definition of nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular state. This covers both current work and concepts that are more advanced. In its original sense, ‘nanotechnology’ refers to the projected ability to construct items from the bottom up, using techniques and tools being developed today to make complete, high performance products. Nanotechnology is the science of building machines at a subatomic level.

Manufactured products are made from atoms. The properties of those products depend on how those atoms are arranged. If we rearrange the atoms in coal, we get diamonds. If we rearrange the atoms in sand (and add a pinch of impurities) we get computer chips. If we rearrange the atoms in dirt, water and air, we get grass. Since we first made stone tools and flint knives we have been arranging atoms in thundering statistical heards by casting, milling, grinding, chipping and the like. We’ve gotten even better at it: we can make more things at lower cost and greater precision than ever before. But at the molecular scale we’re still making great ungainly heaps and untidy piles of atoms.

Thus one of the basic principles of nanotechnology is positional control. The ability of chemists to synthesize what they want by stirring things together is truly remarkable. Imagine building a radio by putting all the parts in a bag, shaking, and pulling out a radio – fully assembled and ready to work! Self assembly – the art and science of arranging conditions so that the parts themselves spontaneously assemble into the desired structure is a well established and powerful method of synthesizing complex molecular structures. A basic principle in self-assembly is selective stickiness: if two molecular parts have complementary shapes and charge patterns – one part has a hollow where the other part has a bump, and one part has a positive charge where the other part has a negative charge. Then they will tend to stick together in one particular way. By shaking these parts around, something which thermal noise does for us quite naturally if the parts are floating in a solution, the parts will eventually be, purely by chance, brought together in just the right way and combine together into a bigger part. This bigger part can combine in the same way with other parts, letting us gradually build a complex whole from molecular pieces by stirring them together and shaking.

General-Purpose Technology

Nanotechnology is sometimes referred to as general-purpose technology. That’s because, in its advanced form it will have significant impact on almost all industries and all areas of society. It will offer better built, longer lasting, cleaner, safer and smarter products for the home, for communications, for medicine, for transportation, for agriculture, and for industry in general.

Dual-Use Technology

Like electricity or computers before it, nanotechnology will offer greatly improved efficiency in almost every facet of life. But as general-purpose technology, it will be dual-use, meaning it will have many commercial uses and it will also have many military uses – making far more powerful weapons and tools of surveillance. Thus, it represents not only wonderful benefits for humanity, but also grave risks.

Products with Nanotechnology

When light hits the glass, nanoparticles become energized and begin to break down and loosen organic molecules on the glass (in other words, dirt). Hydrophilic substance means that when water makes contact with the substance’s surface, it spreads on it, like glass. You might be surprised to find out how many products in the market are already benefiting from nanotechnology.

• Sunscreen – Many sunscreens contain nanoparticles of zinc oxide or titanium oxide. Older sunscreen formulae used larger particles, which is what gives most sunscreens their whitish colour. Smaller particles are less visible, meaning that when you rub the sunscreen into your skin, it doesn’t give you a whitish tinge.
• Self-Cleaning Glass – A company called Pilkington offers a product they call Activ Glass, which uses nanoparticles to make the glass photo-catalytic and hydrophilic. The photo-catalytic effect means that when UV radiation crosses the glass evenly, which helps wash the glass clean.
• Clothing – Scientists are using nanoparticles to enhance your clothing. By coating fabrics with a thin layer of Zinc Oxide nanoparticles, manufacturers can create clothes that give better protection from UV radiation. Some clothes have nanoparticles in the form of little hairs or whiskers that help repel water and other materials, making the cloth stain-resistant.
• Scratch-Resistant – Engineers discovered that adding Aluminium Silicate nanoparticles to scratch-resistant polymer coatings made the coating more effective, increasing resistance to chipping and scratching. Scratch-resistant coatings are common on everything from cars to eye-glass lenses.
• Anti-microbial Bandages – Scientist Robert Burrell created a process to manufacture antibacterial bandages using nanoparticles of Silver. Silver ions block microbes’ cellular respiration. In other words, Silver smothers harmful cells, killing them.
• Swimming pool cleaners / Disinfectants – EnviroSystems, Inc. developed a mixture (called Nano-emulsion) of nano-sized oil drops mixed with a bactericide. The oil particles adhere to bacteria, making the delivery of the bactericide more efficient and effective.

Conclusion

Here’s an unprecedented multidisciplinary convergence of scientists dedicated to the study of a world so small, we can’t see it – even with a light microscope. That world is the field of nanotechnology, the realm of atoms and nanostructures. Is nanotechnology the impetus for the next Industrial Revolution?

 

I want to build a billion tiny factories, models of each other, which are manufacturing simultaneously… The principles of Physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of manoeuvring things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done, but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big. – Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in Physics

Imagine a medical device that travels through the human body to seek out and destroy small clusters of cancerous cells before they can spread; or a box no larger than a sugar cube that contains the entire contents of The Library of Congress; or a material much lighter than steel that possess ten times as much the strength. – U.S. National Science Foundation

Anti-Matter

In particle physics and quantum chemistry, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, whereby anti-matter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example, an anti-electron (a positron, an electron with a positive charge) and an anti-proton (a proton with a negative charge) could form an anti-hydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal hydrogen atom. Furthermore, mixing of matter and antimatter would lead to the annihilation of both in the same way as mixing of antiparticle and particle does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle-antiparticle pairs.

The particles resulting from matter-antimatter annihilation are endowed with energy equal to the difference between the rest mass of the products of the annihilation and the rest mass of the original matter-antimatter pair, which is often quite large.

There is considerable speculation both in science and science fiction as to why the observable universe is apparently almost entirely matter, whether other places are almost entirely antimatter instead, and what might be possible if antimatter could be harnessed, but at this time the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics.

In December 1927, Paul Dirac developed a relativistic equation for the electron, now known as the Dirac Equation. Shockingly, the equation was found to have negative-energy solutions in addition to the normal positive ones. This presented a problem, as electrons tend toward the lowest possible energy level; energies of negative infinity are nonsensical. As a way of getting around this, Dirac proposed that the vacuum is filled with a “sea” of negative-energy electrons, the Dirac Sea. Any real electrons would therefore have to sit on top of the sea, having positive energy. Thinking further, Dirac found that a “hole” in the sea would have a positive charge.

At first he thought this was the proton, but Hermann Weyl pointed out that the hole should have the same mass as the electron. The existence of this particle, the positron, was confirmed experimentally in 1932 by Carl D. Anderson. During this period, antimatter was sometimes also known as “contraterrene matter”.

Today’s Standard Model shows that every particle has an antiparticle, for which each additive quantum number has the negative of the value it has for the normal matter particle. The sign reversal applies only to quantum numbers (properties) which are additive, such as charge, but not to mass, for example. The positron has the opposite charge but the same mass as the electron. For particles whose additive quantum numbers are all zero, the particle may be its own antiparticle; such particles include the photon and the neutral pion.

Antimatter cannot be stored in a container made of ordinary matter because antimatter reacts with any matter it touches, annihilating itself and the container. Antimatter that is composed of charged particle can be contained by a combination of an electric field and a magnetic field in a device known as the Penning trap. This device cannot, however, contain antimatter that consists of uncharged particles.

The one most important question that arises in a young mind such as you and me is that if antimatter reacts with any matter it touches, then it must react with the light which is composed of photons, imposing a challenge to its visibility.

If you knew a little bit more physics, you’d know that antiparticles don’t differ from particles by anything, except electric charge. They have the same mass, the same spin, the same energy. Since mass is equivalent to energy, then pure energy (the 2 gamma photons) can be converted to mass (the particle and its antiparticle) and vice-versa, mass (particles with rest mass) go into pure energy (gamma photons).

Actually, the problem is a bit more tricky or subtle. The two photons should be one photon and one anti-photon, but since photons are charge-less (by their nature), the photon and the anti-photon are identical and thus no reaction takes place.

 

”When there is darkness, there is light…When there is heaven, there is hell…And when there is matter, there is antimatter…”
-Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Physical Terms

Don't Know these terms? Read On...

ANTIPARTICLE: For every type of particle, there exists an antiparticle with opposite properties, such as the sign of its electric charge (for example, the electron has a negative charge; the anti-electron, or the positron, has a positive electric charge).
Note: The antiparticles of photons and gravitons are the same as particles.

BIG BANG THEORY: The theory that says that the universe began in a state of enormous density and pressure and exploded outward and expanded until it was as we see it today.

BLACK HOLE: A region of space-time, shaped like a sphere (or a slightly bulged out sphere, in the case of rotating black hole) which cannot be seen by distant observers because gravity there is so strong that no light (or anything else) can escape from it. Black holes may form from the collapse of massive stars. This was the classical definition of black hole. Hawking showed that the black hole does not radiate energy and may not be entirely black.

PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLE: Tiny black hole created not by the collapse of a star but the pressing together of matter in the early universe. Some of the most interesting ones are about the size of the nucleus of the atom, with the mass of about a billion tons.

BOSONS: Particle with spin expressed in whole numbers. The messenger particles of the forces (gluons, W+, W-, Z°, photons and gravitons) are bosons.

BOUNDARY CONDITIONS: What the universe was like at the instant of beginning, before any time had passed. Also what it is like at any other edge of the universe – the end of the universe, for example, or the centre of a black hole.

COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT: Albert Einstein introduced a “cosmological constant”, to counteract gravity, into his theory of relativity. Without it, the theory predicted the universe ought to be either expanding or collapsing, neither of which Einstein believed to be true. He later called it “the greatest blunder of my life”. We now use the term to mean energy density of vacuum.

EINSTEIN’S GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: The theory of gravity in which gravity is explained as a curvature in four-dimensional space-time caused by the presence of mass or energy. It provides a set of equations that determines how much curvature is generated by any distribution of mass or energy. It is a theory we use to describe gravity at the level of very large.

EINSTEIN’S SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: Einstein’s new view of space and time. This theory is based on the idea that the laws of science should be same for all freely moving observers, no matter what their speed. The speed of light remains same, no matter what the velocity of the observer measuring it is.

ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE: One of the four fundamental forces of nature. It causes the electron to orbit the nucleus of atoms. It shows up as light and all other electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves, microwaves, X-rays and gamma rays. The messenger particle (boson) of the electromagnetic force is photon.

ELECTROMAGNETIC INTERACTION: The interaction in which an electron emits a photon and another electron absorbs it.

ELECTROWEAK THEORY: A theory developed in the 1960s by Abdus Salam at Imperial College, London, and Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow at Harvard, which unified the electromagnetic force and the weak force.

EVENT HORIZON: The boundary of a black hole; the radius where the escape velocity becomes greater than the speed of light. It is marked by hovering photons, which (moving at the speed of light) cannot escape and also cannot be drawn into the black hole. Light emitted inside it is drawn back into the black hole. To calculate the radius at which the event horizon forms, multiply the solar mass of the black hole (the same as that for the star that collapsed to form it, unless that star lost mass earlier in the collapse) by 2 for miles or 3 for kilometres. Thus a 10-solar mass black hole has its event horizon at a radius of 20 miles or 30 kilometres.

FERMION: Particles of ordinary matter (electrons, neutrons, protons) belong to class of particles called fermions. A more technical definition of a fermion is a particle with half integer spin which obeys the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

GLUON: The messenger particle which carries the strong force from one quark to another and causes the quarks to hold together in protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom. Gluons also interact with one another.

GRAVITON: The messenger particle which carries the gravitational force among all the particles in the universe, including gravitons themselves. None has ever been directly observed.

PHOTON: The messenger particle of the electromagnetic force. Photons have zero mass and move at the speed of light.

POSITRON: Antiparticle of the electron. It has positive electric charge.

PULSAR: A neutron star that rotates very rapidly and sends our regular pulse of radio waves, sometimes several hundred to thousand times a second.

QUANTUM MECHANICS OR QUANTUM THEORY: The theory developed in the 1920s that we use to describe the very small, generally things the size of atom and smaller. According to the theory, light, X-rays and any other wave can only be emitted and absorbed in certain “packages” called quanta. For instance, light occurs in quanta known as photons, and it can’t be divided up into smaller packages than one photon. You can’t have half a photon or three quarter photons. In quantum theory, energy is said to be “quantized”. The theory includes the uncertainty principle.

QUANTUM WORMHOLE: A wormhole of an unimaginable small size.

QUARKS: The fundamental particles, which, banded together in groups of three, make up photons and neutrons. Quarks also band in groups of two (one quark and one anti-quark) to form particles called mesons.

SPACETIME: The combination of the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.

SUPERNOVA: an enormous explosion of a star in which all but the inner core is blown off into space. The material blown off in the supernova forms the raw material for new stars and planets.

At the Party with the Physicists

One day, all of the world’s famous physicists decided to get together for a party (there were some non-physicists too who crashed the party). Fortunately, the doorman was a grad student, and was able to observe some of the guests…

• Everyone gravitated towards Newton, but he just kept moving around with a constant velocity and showed no reaction.
• Einstein thought it was a relatively good time.
• Coulomb got a real charge out of the whole thing.
• Cauchy, being a mathematician, still managed to integrate well with everyone.
• Thompson enjoyed the plum pudding.
• Pauli came late, but was excluded from most things, so he split.
• Pascal was under too much pressure to have fun.
• Ohm spent most of the time resisting Ampere’s opinions on current events.
• Volta thought that the gathering had a lot of potential.
• Heisenberg might or might not have been there.
• Feynman got from the door to the buffet table by taking every possible path.
• The Curies were there and just glowed the whole time.
• Van der Waal forced himself to mingle.
• Milikan dropped his Italian oil dressing.
• deBroglie mostly just stood in the corner and waved.
• Stefan and Boltzman got into some hot debates.
• Everyone was attracted towards Tesla’s magnetic personality.
• Compton was a little scatter-brained at times.
• Bohr ate too much and got atomic ache.
• Watt turned out to be a powerful speaker.
• Hertz went back to the buffet table several times a minute.
• Faraday had quite a capacity for food.
• Oppenheimer got bombed.
• The microwave started radiating in the background when Penzias and Wilson showed up.
• After one bite Chandrasekhar reached his limit.
• Gamow left the party early with a big bang while Hoyle stayed late in a steady state.
• For Schrödinger, this was more a wave function rather than a social function.
• Erdos was said no epsilons were invited.
• Born thought the probability of enjoying himself was pretty high.
• Instead of coming through the front door, Josephson tunnelled through.
• Pauling wanted to bond with everyone.
• Shakespeare could not decide whether to be or not to be at the party.
• Pavlov brought his dog; which promptly chased Schrödinger’s cat.
• Bill Gates came to install windows.
• Mendeleyev beautifully laid out the food on the periodic table.
• Riemann hypothesised about who would arrive next; to which Newton retorted, “Hypothesis non fingo.”
• Chadwick was handing out neutrons free of charge.
• Everyone was amazed at Bell’s inequality.
• Watson and Crick danced the double helix.
• While Fermat sang, “Save the Last Theorem for Me.”

The Solved Mystery of Einstein’s Brain

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is a world renowned scientist whose concepts on the behaviour of electrons and protons (quantum theory) changed the way the world saw the universe. He also gave theories on time, space and relativity.

Due to Einstein’s work, lasers, space travel and televisions, computers have been developed. Without them, our lives would not have been so comfortable. Though this science was used for making atomic bombs, he remained a prominent campaigner for world peace. When he heard rumours of his theory paper leaking to Nazi scientists who were trying to split Uranium atom to make the atomic bomb, Einstein sent a letter to the U.S. President i.e. Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking him to tell the scientists of the U.S.A. to make a similar bomb. But before the Nazis could test their bomb, they were out of the war. So the U.S. took the opportunity and tested their bomb by dropping them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They killed at least 180,000 people and injured around 300,000 more.

It was Einstein’s last wish that after his death, his brain should be examined thoroughly so as to find out why he was such a genius. In the 1950s tests conducted on his brain showed no significant difference and therefore, the case of Einstein’s brain disappeared in the mist. It was however revived when a journalist for a London based newspaper wanted to see it and examine it in one piece.

So he called upon Dr. J. Howard, the person who has cut Einstein’s brain into 240 pieces. Since it was a mighty task finding all the 240 pieces, the journalist asked for photographs of the brain from all angles before it was cut. He then took these photos and converted them to a 3-D model so that it was easier to study the brain. He sent the 3-D image to the Florida Research Centre where they made astonishing discoveries. Firstly, it was discovered that the brain weighed only 1.35 kg, which was about 150 gm lesser than the weight of an average brain. Secondly, an area of the brain, responsible for concentration, was partly connected to other parts in the average brain, but it was fully connected to the other parts in Einstein’s brain. This meant that Einstein's brain had a defect which triggered the genius in him. This discovery brought up the issue whether one can become a genius by temporarily stopping a part of the brain from functioning. Many top scientists are currently working on the issue.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -Albert Einstein

Infinite Joy

Physics is that faculty of reason that helps us to comprehend the physical reality around us even as the demarcation between physics and philosophy becomes more blurred than ever before. John Galt, the protagonist of “Atlas Shrugged” majored in both the aforementioned disciplines and found solace in both. The subject is as changeable as the factuality it describes – vast, mercurial and intriguing. For instance, quantum mechanics assigns duality to the cosmos. It presents a world in which matter can simultaneously and of its own accord, possess particle as well as wave nature. The reality of the conservative laws of mass and energy was rendered implausible by Einstein's equation E=mc². His theory of relativity was veritable joke at Newtonian classical physics. And yet, perturbed by the theory of quantum mechanics, he was forced to declare, “God did not play dice with the universe.” Niels Bohr’s famous rejoinder was, “Will you stop telling God what to do.” Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty further ascribed indeterminacy to the universe.

Physics is an elegant arabesque of arithmetical calibration, utilitarian calculus, creativity and plain common sense. It is a world apart from a world. It is an alternative universe that can stretch upto infinity and further. It is a subject that persistently forces one to introspect.

“If it was so, it might be,
And, if it were so, it would be,
But as it isn’t, it ain’t,
That’s logic.”

The above verse from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s adventures in the wonderland” describes this very nature of introspection. Physics is a subject of dreams. It forces us to conquer them. It forces us to reach out to the stars, and yes, we have. They have ceased to be astrological abstractions. They are no longer elusive. They are an immediate and tangible reality.

“How many miles to Babylon?
Three-score-mile-and-ten
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes-and back again!”

Little did Mother Goose know that she was defining the indefinably equivocal discipline of physics!

A little about neutron stars

Our galaxy is littered with the corpses of dead stars. At the end of their useful lives, the vast majority of the stars in the Milky Way shed their outer layers and shrink to white dwarfs, dense spheres about the size of Earth. But very massive stars explode in supernovae and leave behind even denser relics, called neutron stars, which are only 20 to 40 kilometres across but weigh more than the Sun. (The most massive stars of all become Black Holes.) Since the 1960’s astronomers have observed a wide variety of neutron stars, including madly rotating pulsars that sweep radio beams across the galaxy and X-ray binaries that devour material pulled from their companion stars.

Perpetual Motion Machine

Many inventors dream of perpetual motion machines, but they are an impossible dream according to the laws of Thermodynamics.

Imagine a device that uses an electric motor to turn a wheel. This wheel in turn runs an electric generator to generate the electricity. The electricity can be used to power a house as well as the electric motor turning the wheel. Once this device is set in motion, it will continue to run forever because it supplies its own electricity as well as creates enough electricity to run a house. No more electric bills! Because this device once set in motion, would never stop. Such a device is called a perpetual motion machine. Many would-be inventors have dreamed of building a perpetual motion machine, but none have succeeded. Enough of these devices could run a city or the entire world. The inventor of such a device could solve the whole world’s energy crisis. Selling this device would make its inventor rich enough to laugh at Warren Buffet, Ambani and Bill Gates’ poverty.

Sounds too good to be true? It is!

 

First Law of Thermodynamics The first law of thermodynamics is the law of conservation of energy applied to heat engines. It states that the work output from an engine cannot exceed the energy input. The perpetual motion machine described above violates the first law of thermodynamics. The generator portion generates enough electricity to run other devices as well as power the generator. Hence once this perpetual motion machine is set in motion, it produces useful work without any energy input. Energy is being created from nothing. Free work output with no energy input violates the first law of thermodynamics. Perpetual machines described above are the Perpetual Motion Machines of the First Kind. Perpetual Motion Machines of the Second Kind The first law forbids perpetual motion machine that creates extra energy, but imagine disconnecting the portion of the machine that powers the house. The motor powers a generator which supplies the electricity needed to run the motor. Such a machine would not supply free energy, but once set in motion it would still continue to run forever. The inventor of such a machine would not make untold riches by solving the world’s energy problems. It might, however, be possible to make a living selling them as novelty devices. This second kind of perpetual motion machine does not violate the first law of thermodynamics. Is it possible? Second Law of Thermodynamics The second law of thermodynamics says that an engine or process of any type must always have an efficiency of less than 100%. A perpetual motion machine that uses a generator to power the motor that runs the generator requires both the generator and the motor to operate with 100% efficiency. This type of perpetual motion machine does not violate the first law of thermodynamics, but violates the second law of thermodynamics. It is a perpetual motion machine of the second kind because it violates the second law of thermodynamics. Not even the cleverest engineer or inventor can build a perpetual motion machine because it would violate either the first or the second law of thermodynamics, which are the fundamental laws of physics. (In other words you cannot add on to something by breaking its very base!) But who knows if we can invent metal rubber, vulcanized rubbers, powerful supercomputers, iPods®, mobiles and preventions and cures to numerous diseases, maybe, just maybe, we can invent a perpetual motion machine too.

 

You may now say that “Impossible is nothing” is not always valid!!

Particle Physics

Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary constituents of matter and radiation, and the interactions between them. It is also called “high energy physics”, because, many elementary particles do not occur under normal circumstances in nature, but can be created and detected during energetic collisions of other particles, as is done in particle accelerators. Modern particle physics research is focused on sub-atomic particles, which have less structure than atoms. These include atomic constituents such as electrons, protons and neutrons (protons and neutrons are actually composite particles made up of quarks), particles produced by radioactive and scattering processes, such as photons, neutrinos as muons, as well as a wide range of exotic particles. Strictly speaking, the term particle is a misnomer because the dynamics of particle physics are governed by quantum mechanics. As such, they exhibit wave-particle duality, displaying particle-like behaviour under certain experimental conditions and wave-like behaviour in others (they are described more technically by state vectors in Hilbert space). All the particles and their interactions observed to date can be described by a quantum field theory called the Standard Model. The Standard Model has 40 species 0f elementary particles (24 fermions, 12 vector bosons and 4 scalars), which can combine to form composite particles, accounting for the hundreds of other species of particles discovered since the 1960’s.

Particle Accelerators

A particle accelerator is a device, which is used to project sub-atomic particles at very high speeds. High energy (of many GeV or more) beams of particles are useful for applied researches in sciences. Scientific investigations often involve collisions of heavy nuclei – of atoms like iron or gold – at several GeV.

The main principle behind particle accelerators is that they are designed to impart kinetic energy on charged particles by means of an applied electric field. When a charged particle is subjected to an electric field it experiences a force proportional to the magnitude of the field, and therefore, acceleration. Once the particles have gained a sufficient amount of energy they are collided with other particles (either matter or anti-matter) and the particles resulting from the collision are observed by a detector array. Another necessity of accelerator is that the region where particles are accelerated is kept at high vacuum to prevent them from being scattered out of beam and getting lost through collisions with gas atoms or molecules.

There are mainly two types of accelerators. Linear high-energy accelerators called Linac and circular accelerators.

The Linac uses a linear array of plates which are supplied with alternating current. Just as the particles are accelerated towards the oppositely charged plate the polarity of the plates is changed and the particles are attracted by the next plate. Due to this specially monitored AC current, a group of particles are accelerated through many plates. This is known as Resonance Acceleration. Generally there is a circular accelerator attached to Linac.

The largest Linac is at Stanford, it has a 3km long underground linear accelerator which is also claimed to be the world’s straightest object. It is an electron-positron collider.

DC accelerators, which are the simplest type of accelerators, can sufficiently speed up neutrons for nuclear reactions, Cockcroft-Walton voltage multiplier and Van De Graff generator.

In a circular accelerator particles are accelerated in spirals or curves which are almost circles (using very strong electromagnets). Cyclotrons have a single pair of hollow ‘D’-shaped plates to accelerate the particles and a single large dipole magnet to bend their path into a circular orbit. It is a characteristic property of charged particles in a uniform and constant magnetic field that they orbit with a constant period, at a frequency called the cyclotron frequency, so long as their speed is small as compared to the speed of light. Circular accelerators are preferred over Linacs because of its relatively small size and its ring topology which allows continuous accelerations.

In India, we have the IUAC in New Delhi. Doctorate students from all across the India come to perform their experiments with accelerated particles. DRDO has developed many versions of accelerators under the name of KALI. The latest accelerator was started in June 2004.