TREMORS

The Nepal earthquake (also referred to as the Himalayan earthquake) was a magnitude 7.8 (Mw) earthquake that occurred at 11:56 NST (6:11:26 UTC) on Saturday 25 April 2015, with the epicenter approximately 34 km (21 mi) east-southeast of Lamjung, Nepal, and the hypocenter at a depth of approximately 15 km (9.3 mi). It is the most powerful earthquake to have hit Nepal since the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake. Over 1,900 people are known to have died as a result of the earthquake with casualties reported in Nepal and adjoining areas of India, China, and Bangladesh. It was the deadliest day on Mount Everest, surpassing the death toll in the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche. Centuries-old buildings were destroyed in the UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley, including some at Kathmandu Durbar Square.(Wikipedia)

 

I remember an incident years back , we used to sleep on terrace in summer. It was a cool and starry night . Soon I was asleep. At midnight I was awakened by a rumbling noise, the vibrations penetrated my bones. I gasped for breath and wondered what it was. I felt the tremors on the floor and knew for sure that it was an earthquake. I woke everybody up. The vibrations had lasted for seconds only.. my family did not notice anything and they all went to sleep. It took quite sometime for me to get back to sleep. Next morning there were headlines in the newspapers that our city had experienced an earthquake. Many people experienced the tremors in different parts of the city.. No damage or loss of life was reported. I thanked the almighty!

 

Another incident i recall,of childhood when we were in Srinagar. We were playing outside on the playground. A sudden moms cry calling us all to come out of our houses . She witnessed the vessels and articles on the stand starting tumbling . We heard the rumbling sound, we could see our house and ground tilted to some degrees and back. People came out shrieking. God know what was the scale of the richter. We were too young to know what was it all about.

 

By Gods grace no tragic incident had occurred . It was indeed a memorable hair raising incident though. 

 

There were n number of questions in my mind. What caused the Earth to Tremor. The encyclopedia was referred. It said that sudden release of energy in the earths crust creates seismic waves.. Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of geological faults, huge amount of gas migration mainly methane deep within the earth, also by volcanic activity landslides mine blasts and Nuclear experiments. Remember the earthquake in Gujrat (26January 2001), nearly 20, thousand people were killed and many thousands rendered homeless.The Tsunami waves (26December 2004).. The earthquake in China on 12 of May 2008 left thousands of homes and families devastated! I felt the pangs of sorrow . I pondered we can know the impending disaster of climate etc. by the help of satellite .Isn’t there any way to know the impending earthquakes so that we could save the lives of people. 

 

A couple of years back:

The BBC News “Plan for Quake warning System” by Paul Rincon had caught my attention . I gave a sigh of hope and read it eargely. In the news they reported that NASA has achieved a breakthrough in forcasting earthquake. They have found a link between the electrical disturbances occurring at the edge of our atmosphere and the impending quakes on the ground below. Signals were spotted during devastation in China . Minoru Freund a physicist and director for advanced aerospace material and devices at NASA Ames Research Centre in California told BBC “I do believe that we will be able to establish a correlation between certain earthquakes and certain pre-earthquakes signals in the unbiased way”.

The Research is going on. Earthquaqe in Gujrat

 

A lot of devastation of Japan due to the recent earthquake and Tsunami waves has triggered new peril for the whole of mankind. The Nuclear Plants getting damaged by the earthquakes. The Fukushima Nuclear Plant is quake damaged . A Nuclear War not from the countries or Terrorrists but by natural calamities is going on. The fresh memories of Chernobyl disaster in 26th April 1986 in Ukraine when millions of people suffered the blast and the aftermaths. 

 

At Home:

India has 20 nuclear reactors in operation in total six nuclear plants. People are concerned and fear the nuclear explosions due to seismic or any other activity. 

 

What amount of security measures can we take for Natural disasters.? If Japan is prone for earthquakes why were it permitted for Nulear Development. Actually none of the countries should be permitted for Nuclear Armaments or Energy Source. Why are we not learning lessons from the recent disasters. 

 

Pt. Nikhil Banerjee & Swapan Chaudhuri - Raga Yaman 1975

Nikhil Banerjee Raga Piloo Live in Stockholm 1975

Michio Kaku "The Future of Civilization" [RARE Interview!]

ARE WE ALONE

SETI’s Alien Telescope Array (ATA) listens day and night for a signal from space (SETI)

ARE WE ALONE

Humanity is at the pinnacle of Life at this planet.  For roughly 30,000 years we human beings have struggled and fought our way for survival.  We created civisation .  Many civilizations rose and fell.  The most successful civilization was of the Egyptians lasted some 4500 years .  The Greeks lasted a thousand and the Romans civilization lasted some 1500 years miniscule as compared to the Stars.

SEARCH FOR EXTRA-TERRISTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI)

Since the beginning of civilization mankind has wondered if we are Alone in this Universe or is there any Life elsewhere. Probes are sent to other planets (Mars,) of our Solar system, to investigate any other life exists there or not.

In the late twentieth century scientists converged upon the basic idea of scanning the sky and listening for non random pattern of electromagnetic waves (radio and TV waves) to determine the existence of another civilization in the universe. NASA joined in SETI efforts in 1960/70ties. By their mutual efforts more intensive Search was organized in 1995.  But their Government cancelled their programme within a year. It is now funded by private foundations. Scientist Carl Sagan was promoter and believer of the presence of life outside Earth. 

  Frank Drake   of SETI, a Scientist  has devoted his life to establish the presence of extra-terrestrial life. He derived an equation which is known as Drake Equation..The probability of life elsewhere. Frank Drake had conceived an approach to bind the terms involved in estimating the number of technological civilizations that may exist in our galaxy. The equation  is represented as

N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L, where

N = The number of civilizations in the Milky Way whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.

R* = The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.

fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.

ne = The number of planets per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.

fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.

fi = The fraction of life-bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.

fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

To scan the sky SETI needed equipments, very large computers .  But the largest fastest computer too was uable to scan decode  radio TV waves in the sky.  Therefore, they 

devised a project called SETI@home, which they distributed as free Screen Savers to public's personnel computers from their website://setiathome.berkley.edu which once installed routinely downloaded packets of information from the central server and analysez them.  Thousands of people have uploaded this free project showing their awareness and interest in the mission.  I and my daughter too have installed on our computers Seti@home since its inception in 1999.

Recent Debate:

There was a furious debate recently among the astronomers about whether we should send our signals to the Universe saying/we're here..Whether we should take the risk of letting all the Aliens know that we are here.

A scientist and science  fiction writer David Brin said,

"The arrogance of shouting into the cosmos without any proper risk assessment defies belief. It is a course that would put our grandchildren at risk." If we send them (aliens) messages they will come here and enslave us. Or just eat us.

Actually we have been sending our radio and TV singnals since many years (100 yrs), and by now they must have been received .  The nearest star is four light years away..Our signals fade away in just one light year…

This new debate is actually of active SETI.  We have been doing passive SETI listening for messages from civilization from other stars for more than forty years.

Ellan Stofan (NASA chief scientist) said I think we are going to have strong indications of Life beyond Earth within a decade, and i think we are going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.   WE know where to look, we know how to look.  We have the technology and we are on the path to implementing it.  And so I think we are definitely on the road."

Latest News from NASA that, Be ready to witness Alien Life by 2025 .It’s really becoming interesting isn’t it?

 

THE DARK UNIVERSE

.

THE DARK UNIVERSE
Looking up in the sky we see stars shining the moon the sun and with the help of telescope we can see far far away stars and galaxies etc. The Universe is much more than the shining materials gases dust particle etc. Where light cannot penetrate how can we see such materials? Our Scientist Physicsts and




Astronomers have found that most of our Universe is Dark yet it is not empty. All the luminous matter in the Universe is only 4 to 5% rest is stark Dark.. known as Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
DARK MATTER:
At the moment of big bang dark matter was created and it played a critical role helping ordinary matter clump together and form stars and planets acted like scaffolding upon which ordinary matter could attach itself. dark matter was pulled together by gravity very slowly over time and actually form the scenes around which normal matter coalesced , like a cosmic web ,(a spiders web) where these strands of dark matter is the framework..
Astronomers have been able to take their theory one step further and create detailed 3d map of dark matter in the universe using gravitational lensing . Einstein said, the gravity affects everything just like gravity is caused by everything so one of the things that is affected by gravity is light itself .When light goes to the dark matter it bends just the way light bends when it goes thru the glass and light dosn’t discriminate ordinary matter and dark matter.
An overlay of an optical image of a cluster of galaxies
with an x-ray image of hot gas lying within the cluster
The missing mass in the galaxies during rotation speed of galaxies calculate by Fritz Zwhaky Jan Oort in 1930s and Vera Rubin in 1970s was termed as Dark Matter. Dark Matter hides in space…. acts as skeleton it is the backbone around which the visible material is clumping by…it is estimated dark martter makes up 24percent in the universe, well ordinary matter makes up only 4.6%. The final 71.4%percent of the universe Scientist were shocked to discover new mysterious dark energy was dominating space .It is driving the glaxies apart.
The prediction by the scientists that the Universe continues to grow in size..it will eventually slow expansion or perhaps even collapse on itself. But by measuring the expansion history of the Universe,Scientists were shocked to realize that the Universe was not slowing down it was speeding up…what mysterious force was acting for this vast speeding galaxies apart? ..The Dark Energy

An overlay of an optical image of a cluster of galaxies

with an x-ray image of hot gas lying within the cluster

The Dark Energy the mysterious force is created with the bursting of (white dwarf)dead star. … This Supernovae.or stellar explosion ,their brightness amounts to the Suns or a Stars radiation throughout its lifetime….
A lot of research is being done in particle physics on dark matter by the U.S. government. Projects like the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS), the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment, and the Axion Dark Matter Experiment Gen2 (ADMX-Gen2) have been initiated by the U.S. government for studying dark matter and its Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMP)   

Share