The amount of radiation emitted by cell phones varies from model to model, but all fall under the FCC-mandated maximum absorption rate of 1.6 watts per kilogram of body tissue. Here's a look at some of the highest and lowest emitters
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Moon
Searching for the Lunar Jackpot — Ice
It may not sound like precision science, but researchers are hopeful that plowing a spacecraft into the moon's surface may reveal a hidden layer of frozen water beneath the surface. On Oct. 9, a NASA satellite will hurl a spent rocket into a dark and frigid lunar crater at 5,600 m.p.h.; the impact will equal the force of 1.5 tons of TNT and kick up a massive, six-mile-high plume of dirt and debris. The satellite — the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS — will then photograph and study the plume for evidence of water or ice from colliding comets. After a few minutes of observation, the space vehicle will plunge into the moon's surface as well. Images taken by an Indian satellite earlier this year suggested there was indeed water on the moon; confirming the discovery would be a major boon for scientists who dream of humans inhabiting the moon, Mars and other planets someday.
How do scientists know? The moon's distance is measured by bouncing laser beams off reflectors on the moon's surface that astronauts from the Apollo missions left behind. Scientists can measure the time it takes for the laser beams to travel there and back and calculate the distance with a high degree of accuracy. Eventually, the moon's distance will substantially weaken the oceans' tides and total eclipses of the sun won't be possible for observers on Earth, since the moon will have moved too far away. But that could still take another billion years.
What was the first sport played on the moon? That would be golf. In 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard swung a makeshift 6-iron on the moon's surface — and missed the ball. His second swing, however, connected, and the golf ball went flying "miles and miles and miles," as Shepard put it after his swing. In reality, the ball traveled only a few hundred yards — not bad for a 6-iron. That's not Shepard's fault; while the moon's gravity is only one-sixth Earth's, his space suit was so stiff that he could swing the club with only one hand.
Lunar Souvenirs
The astronauts of NASA's Apollo missions collected some 840 lb. of lunar rocks and debris during the 340 hours they spent tooling around on the moon. Since they were brought to Earth, however, the samples have ended up in some unusual places. During the Nixon Administration, nearly 270 moon rocks were presented as gifts to foreign nations. But when a fake turned up in the Netherlands' national museum in September, the Associated Press launched an independent investigation to track the whereabouts of the rest — only to find that many had disappeared. "NASA turned over the samples to the State Department to distribute," one NASA historian told the AP. "We don't have any records about when and to whom the rocks were given." Apollo astronauts were allowed to keep a few rocks as lunar souvenirs, under the condition that they would never be sold but instead passed down from generation to generation. Today, NASA's remaining samples are kept in Teflon bags and stored in nitrogen-filled steel cabinets at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Any researcher who wishes to handle them must wear three pairs of gloves to prevent contamination.
Slow and Steady Wins the (Space) Race
The first creature to orbit the moon was neither man nor monkey, but a pair of Soviet turtles. The tortoises — along with a passenger list of mealworms, wine flies, seeds and bacteria — were part of a biological payload launched by the Soviet Union in September 1968.After the Zond 5 spacecraft returned to Earth, the animal comrades were retrieved from the Indian Ocean and found not to have a scratch on them; the shells probably helped. They had, however, lost 10% of their weight, although researchers didn't observe a permanent decrease in appetite.
Seas on the Moon?
The massive lava plains on the lunar service, dubbed seas by Earth-bound observers, were created by the violent impacts of meteors. Interestingly, most of these lava seas are on the side facing Earth; the force of Earth's gravity pulls the moon's molten interior closer to the surface, making it more susceptible to seeping out during a meteor strike.Easier Than Peace on Earth
The U.S. joined with the Soviet Union in 1967 to create the Outer Space Treaty, declaring the moon subject to a similar set of rules as those used to govern international waters on Earth. The treaty, which 97 other countries are now party to, makes the moon off-limits for military purposes, keeping countries from ever constructing bases or weaponry on the lunar surface.
Weather in MoonTalk about extreme weather changes. The moon's surface temperature varies by nearly 500°F, from -240°F when it is dark to 220°F in the sun. And once those extreme temps set in, they stick around for a while — a spot on the moon spends about 13 days in frigid darkness, followed by 13 days in water-boiling sunlight. The lack of atmosphere, which on Earth helps trap heat so it doesn't all dissipate at night, accounts for the wild temperature swings. However, if you dig a meter below the moon's surface, the temperature evens out to a nearly constant -31°F.
The moon doesn't have a dark side, although there's always part of it in the dark — just as there's always a part of Earth that's experiencing night. There is a far side of the moon that we can't see from Earth: because of the way the moon orbits, it always keeps the same side facing us. But the far side is light just as often as it is dark.
Everlasting Footprints
No atmosphere on the moon means no wind or weather — and that, luckily, means no erosion of mankind's historic tracks and prints that still dot the lunar surface. To prove it, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) sent back photos in July of the still visible tracks from five of the six Apollo landing sites. While on the moon in 1971, Apollo 14 astronauts Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard left behind an Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, or ALSEP, along with sampling equipment and a small cart. The LRO photos were able to clearly show the footpath the astronauts had worn between the two artifacts, and future images are expected to have two to three times the resolution. "The images are fantastic, and so is the focus," says LRO principal investigator Mark Robinson. "It's great to see the hardware on the surface, waiting for us to return."
Thursday, April 15, 2010
"Definition of Love" by Swami Vivekananda
I once had a friend who grew to be very close to me. Once when we were sitting at the edge of a swimming pool, she filled the palm of her hand with some water and held it before me, and said this: "You see this water carefully contained on my hand? It symbolizes Love."
This was how I saw it: As long as you keep your hand caringly open and allow it to remain there, it will always be there. However, if you attempt to close your fingers round it and try to possess it, it will spill through the first cracks it finds.This is the greatest mistake that people do when they meet love...they try to possess it, they demand, they expect... and just like the latter spilling out of your hand, love will retrace from you .
For love is meant to be free, you cannot change its nature. If there are people you love, allow them to be free beings.
1. Give and don't expect.
2. Advise, but don't order.
3. Ask, but never demand.
It might sound simple, but it is a lesson that may take a lifetime to truly practice. It is the secret to true love. To truly practice it, you must sincerely feel no expectations from those who you love, and yet an unconditional caring."
Passing thought... Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take; but by the moments that take our breath away....
Saturday, April 10, 2010
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Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Tata Motors to introduce Air Car - Is it the next big thing?
Tata Motors is taking giant strides and making history for itself. First the Landrover-Jaguar deal, then the world's cheapest car and now it is also set to introduce the car that runs on air, compressed air.
With spiralling fuel prices it is about time we heard some breakthrough!
India's largest automaker Tata Motors is set to start producing the world's first commercial air-powered vehicle.
The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre for Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air, as opposed to the gas-and-oxygen explosions of internal-combustion models, to push its engine's pistons. Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets by August 2010.
The Air Car, called the MiniCAT could cost around Rs. 3,50,000 ($ 8177) in India and would have a range of around 300 km between refuels.
The cost of a refill would be about Rs. 85 ($ 2).
The MiniCAT which is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not welded and a body of fiberglass powered by compressed air. Microcontrollers are used in every device in the car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, indicators etc.
There are no keys - just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket. According to the designers, it costs less than 50 rupees per 100Km (about a tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of motorists drive at less than 60Km. The car has a top speed of 105 kmph. Refilling the car will, once the market develops, take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately 100 rupees, the car will be ready to go another 200-300 kilometers.
As a viable alternative, the car carries a small compressor which can be connected to the mains (220V or 380V) and refill the tank in 3-4 hours. Due to the absence of combustion and, consequently, of residues, changing the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 50,000Km).
The temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0-15 degrees below zero, which makes it suitable for use by the internal air conditioning system with no need for gases or loss of power.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
DO ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS?
To answer this question one can look within and, as Nietzsche famously suggested, ask “what does my conscience tell me?” Or such a one can look at the greatest thinkers and their body of work in respect to the philosophical problematic of “means and ends.” In my view, one towering figure stands alone in this regard. And that is Mahatma Gandhi. For Gandhi there were no boundary demarcations between ends and means. Where some dialectical materialists steadfastly cling to the thesis of ends justifying the means, thereby excusing violent methods via which they and their followers sometimes achieve their goals, Gandhi always stood in a moral space diametrically opposed to such a view, never accepting it.
It suffices to say that Gandhi—correctly, I shall argue –believed in a direct moral connection between means and ends. Given the commitment he had to truth and nonviolence and their interdependence, it follows that one ought not employ immoral acts to gain social justice, as these acts will transform one from a moral agent to an immoral agent. In one of his early writings in Young India journal he wrote, “The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree.”
To follow Gandhi’s duty-ethics of truth and nonviolence is to pursue what Rousseau called “civilization.” No civilization can be achieved by violent means. Dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima may have led to an early surrender of Japanese imperial forces (one that many historians argue was inevitable without the bomb), but it destroyed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and led to the nuclear proliferation, which is a major planetary concern. The means transformed the world in this case into a more violent place where smaller wars in tandem with potential nuclear annihilation are not farfetched realities. To be ethical human beings we must think in holographic ways and see the means as part of any end. In other words, ends do not justify the means. We must commit to the morally correct philosophy of truth and nonviolence if we seek planetary peace.
References:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
2. http://www.tonykashani.com/?p=84
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Few Interesting things about Large Hadron Collider(LHC)
It's essentially an expensive ($10 billion) tunnel that runs for 17 circular miles deep underneath the Franco-Swiss border. Within this tunnel, 10,000 scientists and engineers from almost 100 countries have built a machine that will accelerate two beams of protons in opposite directions, then smash them into each other in the hopes that the results will give them a glimpse of the universe less than a billionth of one second after the Big Bang.
Since September 2008, the LHC -- and by extension, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) that runs it -- has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, ever since damage from a helium leak delayed the machine's planned launch. There was also that news of a scientist employed by an outside institute to work on the LHC being arrested on suspicion of having ties to al-Qaeda. Allegedly, the man had only progressed to the point of wanting to blow up something; he hadn't actually collected his supplies yet.
The LHC was fired up in November 2009 and on November 23rd, the first proton-proton collision was recorded. On March 30, 2010, the first planned collision occurred creating the highest energy reached by a particle accelerator.
Here are five things you didn't know about the Large Hadron Collider.
1- The Large Hadron Collider is kept colder than outer space
The first thing you didn’t know about the LHC is that it's the world’s largest fridge.Accelerating charged particles like protons requires a powerful magnetic field, one that can only be produced by using magnets that are first cooled with liquid hydrogen and then supercooled with superfluid helium. Together, this cryogenic distribution system lowers the magnets to an astonishingly cold -456.34F (-271.3C), a temperature slightly colder than that of deep outer space (-454F/-270C). The niobium-titanium cables in the magnets are so cold that they lose all their electrical resistance and become superconducting magnets.
These superconducting magnets create a magnetic field with the force necessary to accelerate the proton beams to 99.9999991% of the speed of light -- the speed at which they collide.
2- The Large Hadron Collider may be trying to sabotage itself
Particle physicists can be divided into two groups: theoretical physicists and experimental physicists. One thinks while the other does, and each figures the other for a chump. Nobel laureate and experimental physicist Leon Lederman once wrote: “If I occasionally neglect to cite a theorist, it’s not because I’ve forgotten, it’s probably because I hate him.”This disdain is easy to understand after reading the recent work of Holger Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya. As physicists work around the clock to fix the LHC, these two theoretical physicists have offered, as their primary contribution, the following reason for why the LHC is not working: From the moment of the Big Bang, God/nature has hated the fundamental particle researchers hope to create with the LHC -- the so-called Higgs Boson -- with a passion. In fact, it hates it so much that it has sent a Higgs particle into the future in order to kill the machine intent on discovering it.
3- The Large Hadron Collider could win Stephen Hawking his Nobel Prize
For years, celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking has suffered from a severe impediment, one that almost never strikes his peers: Hawking is a best-selling author.His 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, introduced millions to the basics behind black holes, those astro-toilets with gravitational fields so mighty not even light can avoid the flush. Such unbridled commercial success arrested his credibility in the scientific community the way ALS has paralyzed his body; however, with some luck the LHC could change all that.
In 1974, Hawking published a paper in Nature called "Black Hole Explosions?" predicting that the death of a black hole would produce a burst of thermal radiation (now called Hawking radiation). Should the LHC, as some fear, create a mini black hole (the odds aren't very good) and it dies according to prediction, many agree that it would earn Hawking the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Curiously, Hawking radiation is so widely accepted that scientists at CERN actually used it in a 2003 safety report to dismiss the danger of mini black holes, writing "any microscopic black holes produced at the LHC are expected to decay by Hawking radiation before they reach the detector walls."
4- The Large Hadron Collider contained the hottest spot in the solar system
The superfluid helium within the LHC's superconducting magnets lowers the temperature inside the beam pipes to a chilly -456.34F (-271.3C), but there will be moments within those pipes when the weather changes -- drastically.Prior to March 2010, officials expected two proton beams to collide 600 million times every second; each collision was expected to create temperatures estimated to be about 100,000 times hotter than the temperature at the core of our sun, which normally runs at around 15,000,000 Kelvin. That equates to a scorching 27 trillion F (1.5 trillion C), so it's fortunate that those moments won't last more than about one trillionth of one second.
5- The Large Hadron Collider relies on Einstein's famous equation
The last thing you didn't know about the LHC is that it won't violate the laws of nature.Albert Einstein's famous 1905 mass-energy equivalence, E=mc2, revolutionized the way we see the world. Its applications are everywhere including nuclear weapons, in which a mass, such as a lump of Plutonium, is converted into energy. The LHC relies on the same equation, though inverted to m=E/c2 .
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