SPACE.com -- Venus and Earth: Worlds Apart

Information about Venus.

Read more at www.space.com/scienceas...

Stars to observe for life.

Margaret Turnbull, at the Carnegie Institution of Washingtion has compiled a list of stars could support life.

Read more at www.newscientistspace.c...

Personal and Historical Perspectives of Hans Bethe

Todo - watch these lectures sometime. They are supposed to be lectures that make quantum mechanics simple. Hopefully they will live up to the promise..

Let the unconcious make the decisions for you.

People always ask you to sleep over some problems before deciding about anything. New research has now confirmed that this is indeed good advice.

I have actually encountered this several times. There are several days when I am stuck with a major problem and cannot decide among the several options that exist. Then I decide that the best thing to do is to procrastinate and do nothing about it. The next day, the solution would be clear and I am happy again.

I always thought that this is because the problem lost its importance the next day. But this recent finding is enlightening and its good to know that my naive method of solving my problems by procrastination actually has scientific roots.

Five papers that shook the world (January 2005) - Physics World - PhysicsWeb

Another article that I should read and blog sometime soon.

Dinosaur Extinction

This is an interesting article that I just read.

Until recently, most people have believed that the dinosaurs became extinct due to a huge meteroid impact off the coast of Mexico. This is called the Chicxulub impact.

The impact at Chicxulub probably led to lots of damage and weakening of the living species. There was another theory that the Chicxulub impact was somehow responsible for the Deccan traps erupting in India, which was exactly opposite the impact site. The combined environmental effect of the impact and the volcanic eruption was proposed as the cause of the death of dinosaurs.

In this article, the scientists reveal recent findings that point to the fact that the extinction of dinosaurs took place around 300,000 years after the impact. The scientists suspect that there was another impact called Shiva Impact, off the coast of India which led to complete extinction of dinosaurs. This impact caused a crater about 600 kilometers wide, 450 kilometers across, and 12 kilometers deep. This is way bigger than the Chixculub crater that was estimated to be around 180 Kms. Seems like this crater is much better equipped one to cause an extinction. However in all probability the series of events combined would be the one that caused the complete extinctions.

For more read www.priweb.org/ed/ICTHO...

BLACK HOLES

Amazing article on Black Holes by Ted Bunn.

Most interesting bits for me were

1) We have always have heard that nothing can escape a black hole - not even light. Now I know why. Its a simple case of escape velocity. Everyone has at some point in their schooling calculated the escape velocity of the earth. But the fact that the escape velocity of any object can be more than 300,000 Km/s is a great revealation for me. A related question that popped into my mind is (Please do pardon me for my ignorance) - if there is a huge planet / star with great mass such that the escape velocity is more than 300,000 km/s would that be a black hole.

2) A black hole with the same amount of mass as our sun would be just 3 kms in radius. Gives a perspective of the density of this black hole.

3) The fact that a one solar mass black hole is the same as a one solar mass object (the Sun) meaning, if we were to replace the sun with a blackhole with the same mass as our sun, everything in the solar system would be exactly as they are now (excepting that there would be no light). This was a total surprise to me (showing my ignorance) as I always believed that black holes grew and hence increase their mass and due to this would increase their gravity and this cycle would eventually lead to the entire galaxy being inside the black hole and untimately the entire universe would be sucked into the black hole. So this revealation is a particularly enlightening and comforting thought that the universe would not be sucked into a black hole.

4) In my mind, I always thought that black holes were a part of a system that would allow objects to transport to other galaxies or universes or even places within the same galaxy. This article kind of makes my belief true by saying that a black hole and a white hole when linked could form a wormhole. However it also says that white holes are only mathematical and havent yet been observed shattering my dreams of inter-universal travel.

If you are even remotely interested or curious, this is a great article. Highly Recommended.

Photo Gallery: "Lost World" of New Species Found in Indonesia

As most have already read, scientist found a huge number of previously undiscoved species in an island in Indonesia. This article from National Geographic shows photos of some of the species found.

The rich treasure of unfound species is great news. On the other hand, it makes one think about how many species like these and many others have been lost due to man colonizing almost all available land. Even a few hundred years ago, the amount of land man was using was quite reasonable and made us one species struggling for survival.

However, with the recent technological advances vast areas of land have been deforested in order to meet the greater demands of housing and food for the ever increasing population. For eg. Is it fair that there are over 6,000,000,000 humans in this world but only 6000 tigers in the wild.

I think this is one of the issues that we have to take utmost urgency in. We should stop behaving like we are the only species on this planet. Remember that we are sharing this planet with millions of other species who have the same right as us to survive and live. Just because we are the current fittest does not give us the right to exterminate all other species.

Space Time - Relativity, Quantum Physics and the Universe

Good and detailed description of Einsteins work. Definite must read. (hope to blog interesting bits sometime)

Read more at www.thebigview.com/spac...

Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures

Good list of algorithms and data structures.

Read more at www.nist.gov/dads/

Hundred Greatest Theorems

Hundred Greatest mathematical Theorems according to Paul and Jack Abad are listed here. Quite interesting.

Read more at personal.stevens.edu/~n...