ULTIMATE WISH...

Space Exploration: We Need to Travel near Light speed To Do It

Introduction


If we are going to explore anything beyond our solar system and out into the vastness of the universe in a spaceship or probe we need some serious speed to do it. There is a tremendous difference in distant we travel locally here on earth when compared to the distant we must travel just to get from here to our nearest star, the sun, and beyond. We must come close to the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second to transverse the vastness of space if we want to get to the NEAREST STAR with an earth-like planet orbiting it. To get a better understanding of speed I will start with speeds we are familiar with and work my way up to the speed limit of our UNIVERSE, the speed of light.

Speed As We Understand it on Earth


Speed on earth is pretty slow to transverse the vast distant of space. For starters, the fastest sprinter maximum speed is just under 28 miles per hour. A racehorse maximum speed on the track is about 50 miles per hour. To go ever faster we need something with power such as a stock car, which reaches a maximum speed of about 240 miles per hour and with more power such as fighter jet we begin to approach speeds of 1000 miles per hour. The International SPACE Station orbiting the earth is moving at an astounding speed of 17,000 miles per hour and the Horizon probe currently speeding toward Pluto is the fastest man-made object moving at a speed of 52,000 miles per hour and even at this speed it will still take about 9 years to get there. Even at 52,000 miles per hour this speed is still not enough to do serious space exploration in a spaceship or probe.


NASA recently announced that the Voyager 1 space probe launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets in our solar system finally left the solar system after traveling for nearly 37 years. It finally left the region of particles from the Sun known as the heliosheath, a distant of about 11 billion miles from earth, at a speed of about 38,000 mph and is currently entering interstellar space.


Now let us look at speed from a different and familiar perspective, in terms of distance. If we had a fast car such as a Lamborghini and travels about 3, 000 miles across the United States from New York City to Los Angeles at 100 miles per hour it would take us approximately 30 hours to complete that trip. If we travel to the moon at that speed it would take us about 14 weeks to get there. The moon’s center is about 238,000 miles (average distance) from the earth’s center. And to travel to the last planet in the our solar system, Neptune, at 100 miles per hours it would take an incredible 3,100 years to get there. Obviously, 100 miles per hour is nothing to the vast distance of space. We need something much faster like the speed of light.


Nothing in the universe is faster than the speed of light even though a recent experiment was conducted that indicated neutrinos might travel faster than light. Further investigations of the results of the experiment indicated the speed of the neutrinos particles was less than the speed of light. After all they were talking about measurements in nanoseconds. For clarity, a nanosecond is one billionth of a second. Another way of looking that is one second sliced into one billion slices. That is an extremely short period of time.


Light Speed, the Universe Speed Limit


As I mentioned before, the speed of light is an incredible 186,000 miles per second or about 670 million miles per hour. At that speed light will travel a distance of about 6 trillion miles in one year or a distant equal to one light-year, a term used by astronomers to define the vast distant light travels in the cosmos. To put this in a different perspective, a beam of light can travel back and forth between New York City and Los Angeles 75 times in a second. It can circle the earth seven times a second. When we look up at the sun the light and heat that we are seeing and feeling left the sun eight minutes ago. Another way of looking at this is if the sun for some reason was to disappear on us we will not notice it until eight minutes later because it take light and heat (infrared light) eight minutes to traverse the 93 to 96 million miles distant from the sun to the earth. In other words, the sun is eight light-minutes from the earth in astronomical terms.

A Serious Need for Speed


Now, if we start looking at the stars and galaxies in the night sky the distant from earth to the stars and galaxies increases dramatically. Everything that we see happening in the night sky already happened millions or even billions of years ago because that is how long it took light even at its speed to travel through the vastness of space to get here. Just to leave our own solar system will take a large and massive spaceship with a lot of fuel to reach the speed of light. Going from zero to the speed of light is not an instantaneous feat. A lot of energy is required to do that. If the spaceship left Earth it will take some time to accelerate to the speed of light. The spaceship would take 1 year to reach Pluto while accelerating to the speed of light and even after passing Pluto it would only be moving at half the speed of light. On the other hand, starting at the speed of light from Earth the spaceship will pass Pluto in a little less than 7 hours. Light from the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, would take a little more than 4 years to reach earth and light from the nearest star, Epsilon Eridini, with planet similar to earth would take at least 10 years to get here.


Going off the subject a little, the previous statement pretty much explains why earth probably have not been visited by any visitors even from our very own galaxy and they must also have the capability (intelligence) to do so even if there is life out there. Once we go beyond our galaxy the probability of this ever happening seems highly unlikely because the next galaxy is two and half million light years away if they can travel at 99 percent the speed of light. Any speed less than light speed would make it virtually impossible for some form of life to transverse intergalactic space.


Getting back on track, to get to the edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way, would take us approximately 24,000 years traveling at the speed of light. Any speed less than that will take us almost practically forever just to leave the Milky way to reach intergalactic space; the space between the galaxies out there. And to get to the nearest spiral galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy will take us incredible two and a half million years to get there from earth as previously mentioned. Currently, the twin Voyager probes launched 35 years ago are just reaching the point where they will be in interstellar space after passing the wall where the particles from the Sun are stop by the particles originating from interstellar space. This point in space is the edge of our solar system. These probes are traveling at a speed of about 58,000 miles per hour but nowhere near the speed of light.


Our nearest spiral galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy (M31)


At the speed of light we will not see streaks of light like this, instead we will see distant stars and galaxies as points of light since they are so far away.


To Get More Speed We Need More Power


Obviously, to get more speed we need more power. The astronauts would not have made it to the moon without the tremendous amount of power needed to send their rocket there. The space shuttle needs 3 million pounds of rocket fuel to send it into orbit every time it is launched. The weight of that fuel is 20 times the weight of the shuttle. Just imagine how much fuel we need to go beyond the moon. Researchers are currently coming up with alternative means of propulsion for space exploration. There are right now two promising methods; one involves using the particles injected from the sun, which will propel space vehicle equipped with large sails on them. The momentum from these high-speed particles will be transferred to the sails thus giving the spacecraft the boost needed to move through the solar system at much higher speeds. The other method involves using powerful magnets to re-direct ejected high-speed streams of hot plasma gases out of the nozzles of rockets called magnetoplasma rockets to propel the spacecraft at speeds greater than 50,000 miles per hour. Even at this speed space exploration would be limited to just our solar system.


Strange Things Happen To Us At the Speed of Light


If we ever develop the technology to send humans on a spacecraft near the speed of light to explore space they would experience strange events. They would also encounter a very serious and potentially deadly problem traveling at such a high speed.


If a spaceship is moving near the speed of light and impact something out there it would be a catastrophic event. The impact would create an explosion similar to an atomic bomb explosion because the mass of the object would be so great at that speed that it would release an incredible amount of energy (remember the equation E=mc²) after the collision with another object. Travelling at the speed of light would only be possible in intergalactic space after the spaceship cleared the space within the galaxy.


Strange things happen when it comes to speed near the speed of light. The laws of physics behave differently at light speed versus the relatively slow speed we experience on earth. For example, if two cars were each traveling at 50 miles per hours as they approach each other from opposite directions they will pass each other at 100 miles per hours. This is why head on collisions are generally deadly. In the second example, if two cars are traveling in the same direction, one at 40 miles per hours and the other at 50 miles per hours, the faster car will go by the slower car at a relative speed of only 10 miles per hours. Guys you see this effect all the time on the highway you do not pass the other car that fast unless it is not moving.


Now, if you do these same experiments at the speed of light the outcome is completely different. In the first example if the two cars each were traveling toward each other at the speed of light from opposite directions they will pass each other at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, not double the speed of light. In the second example, the faster car will pass the slower car which is going a little slower than the speed of light, will pass it at the speed of light. This phenomenon happens because the speed of light does not change in the vacuum of space it is always moving along at a constant speed of 186,000 miles per hour so time slows down to keep the cars from passing each at speeds greater than the speed of light. The other effect humans will experience is the time dilation effect of moving at the speed of light. If an astronaut left earth for a 20-year trip into space and back at 99.9% the speed of light he would be surprise to see that 1,000 years have gone by on earth since he left and he will be basically the same in appearance when he left. Our astronauts today experience this time dilation effect when they are in orbit around earth on the space shuttle or space station. When they return to earth they are a fraction of a second younger than everyone on earth because they are moving at 17,000 miles per hours for a few days. I am sure no one noticed that when they return.



The Time Dilation Effect

Conclusion

As you can see, there are benefits of traveling at the speed of light you will stay young longer, but to achieve this speed will be an incredible achievement in itself if we ever develop the technology to do it. It look like it is going to be a while before we can leave the boundary of our solar system to do some serious space explorations physically.

Unexpected FATE...

Around 450 million years ago, the Earth was devastated by a terrible disaster that annihilated around 85 per cent of all marine species – at the time, the predominant form of life on the planet.

Known as the Late Ordovician Extinction, it was the second most devastating blow to life on Earth during its history – worse even than the notorious impact-related event that forced the dinosaurs in the line of extinction 65 million years ago. Geological evidence points to a sudden plunge in global temperatures, though the cause remains uncertain. But one possibility is the explosion of a death star relatively very close to Earth.

Analysis of the effects of a gamma-ray burst by researchers at the University of Kansas and the US space agency NASA suggests it would have triggered the destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer, as it allowing intense ultraviolet radiation from the Sun to reach the surface. This would have wiped out many life-forms in the upper layers of the oceans – including plankton, a key part of the marine food chain.

It’s also possible that the changes in atmospheric chemistry triggered by the blast may, in turn, have it been triggered global cooling – though whether this would be enough to account for the Ordovician ice age is unclear.

What is certain is that the giant stars capable of producing gamma-ray bursts are spread throughout the cosmos. As such, it is not only life on Earth that’s threatened by them. According to research by known Professor James Annis of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Illinois, gamma-ray bursts may be then regularly sterilize their host galaxies; if that’s true, our chances of finding life elsewhere in the very Milky Way would be much reduced.

Windows XP. The End of most user friendly OS from Microsoft.

 The Lone Warrior, will be Long Gone....


All those who are still running Windows XP on their computers will have to upgrade and they should do it now.
However much you may love this operating system the truth is that it is over 12 years old and it is dying.
Microsoft will dump the software on April 8 next year. This means the company will no longer be responsible for any hassles you face on your computer. And those still on it may face severe trouble, from virus attacks to total system failure.
" Windows XP was launched at a time when there were very few cell phones around. There was no WiFi and no Bluetooth. The entire ecosystem of hardware and software has changed completely," says Amrish Goyal, Microsoft India's director of Windows Business Group. Goyal is spearheading the drive to get businesses and individuals to change to Windows 7 or Windows 8 immediately.
He points out Microsoft will stop issuing bug fixes, and security patches for the operating system.
As it is these have already started drying up for those on XP. Businesses, banks and individuals are particularly at risk, says Goyal. He cites a recent report by International Data Corporation ( IDC) that says an alarming 50 to 60 per cent of Windows users in organisations are still on XP. These firms, small or large, run the risk of losing their certifications, as no internal or external audit will ratify them because of stringent data security and privacy laws. IDC is a US- based market research, analysis and advisory firm specialising in information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology. It works in almost 120 countries, including India.
Microsoft commissioned them to find out how prevalent was the use of Windows XP in India.
Many of you will say that your system works fine so why should you replace it. The average life cycle of a PC is five years, after which you should change it. I know many of you bought PCs in the last two or three years and downgraded it from Windows 7 to Windows XP since you were comfortable with it, or were running software that you had become cozy with. Let’s take a look at the risks involved.
Anti- virus and anti- malware are all being reworked for Windows 7 and Windows 8. These will never be able to protect your computer if you are still running an old operating system.
Windows relies on drivers so that a piece of hardware can talk to the software. Drivers will no longer be updated for Windows XP. So if you’re to plug in a newly bought printer to your older operating system, chances are that it will not work at all. You will in all probability get an irritating message saying, " Driver not found, contact your hardware manufacturer". But the printer manufacturer will not be able to help you, and neither will Microsoft.
Plug in your new camera and imagine how frustrating it will be when you cannot transfer the pictures to your PC. Simple tasks like printing, accessing browser- based applications and the like will become difficult to accomplish from a Windows XP– based PC. Those using XP for financial transactions and Internet banking face the gravest threat. They feel that since these applications are browser based they do not need a new machine.
Little can be further from the truth. Using an old browser will increase the risk of your password or banking data being stolen manifold.
IDC feels that some large banks that have thousands of branches and computers in each of these locations are most vulnerable. Bank officers interviewed thought that since they only access the corporate database with their browser there is no need to upgrade their PCs. It warns that such organisations face major disruption in their work and are staring at huge financial losses that they will never be able to justify because of stringent RBI guidelines and amendment to the IT Act.
If you are planning to change your computer now I would recommend that you make sure that it is at least able to run Windows 8. Take a new processor such as i7 and also ensure that it has at least 4GB RAM. This way you will have technologyproofed yourself for at least three years.

Last West Tibetan Dynasty.. LADAKH...

Ladakh in Modern Times....

By the beginning of the 19th century, the Mughal empire had collapsed, and Sikh rule had been established in Punjab and Kashmir. However the Dogra region of Jammu remained under its Rajput rulers, the greatest of whom was Maharaja Gulab Singh whose General Zorawar Singh invaded Ladakh in 1834. King Tshespal Namgyal was dethroned and exiled to Stok. Ladakh came under Dogra rule and was incorporated into the state of Jammu and Kashmir in 1846. It still maintained considerable autonomy and relations with Tibet. During the Sino-Sikh war (1841-1842), the Qing Empire invaded Ladakh but the Sino-Tibetan army was defeated.

In 1947, partition left Ladakh a part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, to be administered from Srinagar. In 1948, Pakistani raiders invaded Ladakh and occupied Kargil and Zanskar, reaching within 30 km of Leh.Reinforcement troops were sent in by air, and a battalion of Gurkhas made its way slowly to Leh on foot from south. Kargil was a scene of fighting again in 1965, 1971, and 1999.

In 1949, China closed the border between Nubra and Sinkiang, blocking the 1000-year old trade route from India to Central Asia. In 1950, China invaded Tibet, and thousands of Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama sought refuge in India. In 1962, China occupied Aksai Chin, and promptly built roads connecting Sinkiang and Tibet, and the Karakoram Highway, jointly with Pakistan. India built the Srinagar-Leh highway during this period, cutting the journey time between Srinagar to Leh from 16 days to two. Simultaneously, China closed the Ladakh-Tibet border, ending the 700-year old Ladakh-Tibet relationship.

Since the early 1960s the number of immigrants from Tibet (including Changpa nomads) have increased as they flee the occupation of their homeland by the Chinese. Today, Leh has some 3,500 refugees from Tibet. They hold no passports, only customs papers. Some Tibetan refugees in Ladakh claim dual Tibetan/Indian citizenship, although their Indian citizenship is unofficial. Since partition Ladakh has been governed by the State government based in Srinagar, never to the complete satisfaction of the Ladakhis, who demand that Ladakh be directly governed from New Delhi as a Union Territory. They allege continued apathy, Muslim bias, and corruption of the state government as reasons for their demands. In 1989, there were violent riots between Buddhists and Muslims, provoking the Ladakh Buddhist Council to call for a social and economic boycott of Muslims, which was lifted in 1992. In October 1993, the Indian government and the State government agreed to grant Ladakh the status of Autonomous Hill Council. In 1995, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council was created.

The Dynasty simplifies the beauty of its nature and vast enormous rich lavishing panoramic experience.

 A Story of the Dynasty. The Ladakh....

Few beauties captured....

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Land of Predators

AMAZON.. Explore the Unexplored..

The Amazon is the greatest river in the world by so many measures; the volume of water it carries to the sea (approximately 20% of all the freshwater discharge into the oceans), the area of land that drains into it, and its length and width. It is one of the longest rivers in the world and, depending upon who you talk to, is anywhere between 6,259km/3,903mi and 6,712km/4,195mi long.

For the last century the length of the Amazon and the Nile Rivers have been in a tight battle for title of world's longest river. The exact length of the two rivers varies over time and reputable sources disagree as to their actual length. The Nile River in Africa is reported to be anywhere from at 5,499km/3,437mi to 6,690km/4,180mi long. But there is no question as to which of the two great rivers carries the greater volume of water - the Amazon River.

At its widest point the Amazon River can be 11km/6.8 mi wide during the dry season. The area covered by the Amazon River and its tributaries more than triples over the course of a year. In an average dry season 110,000 square km of land are water-covered, while in the wet season the flooded area of the Amazon Basin rises to 350,000 square km. When the flood plains and the Amazon River Basin flood during the rainy season the Amazon River can be up to 40km/24.8 mi wide. Where the Amazon opens at its estuary the river is over 325km/202 mi wide!

Because the Amazon drains the entire Northern half of the South American continent (approx. 40% landmass), including all the torrential tropical rains that deluge the rainforests, it carries an enormous amount of water. The mouth of the Amazon River, where it meets the sea, is so wide and deep that ocean-going ships have navigated its waters and traveled as far inland as two-thirds the way up the entire length of the river.

So, how did the Amazon get to be so big? The first reason has to do with its location - right at the equator. Around the "belt line" of the earth lies a warm, tropical zone where over 400 in/1016cm of rain fall every year. That averages out to more than an inch (3cm) of rain, everyday! A lot of water falls onto the land surrounding the river, what is called the "Amazon River drainage basin". A good way to understand what a drainage basin is to think of the whole northern half of the continent of South America as a shallow dish, or saucer. Whenever rain falls and lands anywhere in the river basin it all runs into the lowest place in the pan, which happens to be the Amazon River. The sheer volume of rain in the Amazon jungle, as well as the slope of the surrounding land, combines to create the enormous river known as the Amazon.

SharkBreak a little MARINE Awareness........

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