Custom Search
Blogumulus by Roy Tanck and Amanda Fazani

The Sixth Sense--An Extrasensory Perception(ESP)

Posted by VeNoM

A lady gets a vague dream of losing her dearest in a plane crash the following day, she just ignores it and presumes it to be yet another nightmare. The next day she sees herself at the airport to give a send-off but something urges her not to and she asks them to cancel their flight. They find her acting crazy, call her being over-superstitious but she avoids them getting on board. The evening they hear the news reporting the crash of their flight(the one they are supposed to board). This sounds a scene from Final Destination, isn't it? yes it does but let me tell you there have been many instances such as these for the humans.

I am talking about the 'SIXTH SENSE' or the SECOND SIGHT' or an EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION' . Did you ever experience a situation where you feel that you have already been through it though you are pretty sure that you didn't. A kind of hint, a haunch ,an instinct, a scene, an instance, a faint resemblance of the present, you might have very well experienced this. This is what professors and scientists refer as the Sixth sense. I always wondered as why this has to happen? Why are we pre-informed the future, Why are we warned off our dangers plying in near future? I guess this is the same with you and hence the following post deals with the very thought of Sixth Sense.

What is Sixth Sense/ESP??

Extrasensory perception (ESP) is the purported ability to acquire information by paranormal means independent of any known physical senses or deduction from previous experience. The term was coined by Duke University researcher J. B. Rhine abilities such as to denote psychictelepathy, the sensing of thoughts or feelings without help from the 5 known senses, precognition, the knowledge of future events, and clairvoyance, the awareness of people, objects or events without the help of the 5 known senses. ESP is also sometimes casually referred to as a sixth sense, gut instinct, a hunch, a weird vibe or an intuition.

Is it Scientific??


Every human being is equipped from birth with what they need to communicate with the spirit world from where they came, and to where they will eventually go when they give up their physical body. This is the same scientific phenomenon that works in the transmission of electronic information such as the television or radio. These require that you tune into a particular band or frequency to get the program that you want. The sixth sense is similar in that it requires tuning in to another person’s frequency or to the frequency of someone in the spirit world. Electronic tuning is done through electronic means that is mechanical in nature. Spiritual tuning is done through the brain with mental focus, intent and desire being the means.

The Research

In the mid-1960s, psychologist Charles Tart, Ph.D., of the University of California at Davis, measured skin conductance, blood volume, heart rate, and verbal reports between two people; called a sender-receiver pair. He, as the sender, received random electrical shocks to see if remote receivers could detect those events. Tart found that while they weren't consciously aware of anything out of the ordinary, the distant receivers' physiology registered significant reactions to the shocks he experienced.

In other, independent experiments, engineer Douglas Dean at the Newark College of Engineering; psychologist Jean Barry, Ph.D., in France; and psychologist Erlendur Haraldsson, Ph.D., at the University of Utrecht, all observed significant changes in receivers' finger blood volume when a sender, located thousands of miles away, directed emotional thoughts toward them. The journal Science also published a study by two physiologists who reported finding significant correlations in brain waves between isolated identical twins. These sorts of studies came to be known as Distant Mental Intention on Living Systems (DMILS).


Why do we need to study the ESP??

If scientists eventually agree that a sixth sense exists, how might this change society? On one hand, it may change nothing; we may learn that genuine psi abilities are rare and only weakly predictive, and thus inconsequential for most practical purposes.

On the other hand, it's possible that the study of the sixth sense will revolutionize our understanding of causality and have radically new applications. For example, in an article co-titled 'Exploring an Outrageous Hypothesis,' psychologist William Braud, Ph.D., professor and research director at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and co-director of the Institute's William James Center for Consciousness Studies, discusses the concept of "retroactive intentional influence" as applied to healing. He poses the idea that in cases where serious illnesses disappear virtually overnight, perhaps a healer went back in time to jumpstart the healing process.

Braud is well aware of the mind-bending nature of this hypothesis, but it is not purely fantastical. In his article, he reviews several hundred experiments examining a wide range of retrocausal phenomena, from mental influence of random numbers generated by electronic circuits, to guessing picture targets selected in the future, to studies examining the "feeling of being stared at," to presentiment experiments. He concludes that this sizable but not well-known body of carefully controlled research indicates that some form of retroactive intentional influence is indeed possible, and may have important consequences for healing.

A less radical application might be for early warning systems. Imagine that on a future aircraft all the members of the flight crew are connected to an onboard computer system. The system is designed to continuously monitor heart rate, electrical activity in the skin, and blood flow. Before the crew comes aboard, each person is calibrated to see how he or she responds before, during and after different kinds of emotional and calm events. Each person's idiosyncratic responses are used to create a person-unique emotional "response template," which is fed into the computer.

Further Info

Wiki Link-Sixth Sense
Psychology Today Magazine, Jul/Aug 2000
thephysics.co.uk
Spiritual Research

Bookmark this post:
Ma.gnolia DiggIt! Del.icio.us Blinklist Yahoo Furl Technorati Simpy Spurl Reddit Google

Be proud to be an INDIAN

Posted by RAJESH



India:
When we hear this name, the first thing that strikes our mind is population.........
then if people are asked what is india famous for.....?
these will be the answers....
Poverty,Illiteracy,Cricket,Taj Mahal, movies , tourism etc.........
but atleast one will be there who tells MATHEMATICS,SCIENCE,ASTROLOGY,CULTURE,CIVILIZATION....
he is the true indian..(he had recognized the greatness of our country)...

Do you know that ........?
earth's diameter was first calculated by an INDIAN
pie value was evaluated by an INDIAN
exact value of square root of 2 was given by an INDIAN
geocentric theory was proposed by INDIANS
Trigonometry was developed by INDIANS
0 was given by INDIANS
and many more......
But people say INDIANS CONTRIBUTION TO MATHS IS ZERO (in both ways)...

show this to them and say
INDIANS have really gone BEYOND NATURE
lets now know about ARYABATTA (born genius) and his works...



Biography

Though Aryabhata's year of birth is clearly mentioned in Aryabhatiya, exact location of his place of birth remains a matter of contention amongst the scholars. Some scholars argue that Aryabhata was born in Kusumapura, while others argue that Aryabhata was from Kerala.[1]Some believe he was born in the region lying between Narmada and Godavari, which was known as Ashmaka and they identify Ashmaka with central India including Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, though early Buddhist texts describe Ashmaka as being further south, dakShiNApath or the Deccan, while other texts describe the Ashmakas as having fought Alexander, which would put them further north. Recently in one of the scholarly studies based upon the astronomical readings in his works, it has been pointed out that Aryabhata's location may have been in Ponnani, Kerala .

However, it is fairly certain that at some point, he went to Kusumapura for higher studies, and that he lived here for some time. Bhāskara I (AD 629) identifies Kusumapura as Pataliputra (modern Patna). He lived there in the dying years of the Gupta empire, the time which is known as the golden age of India, when it was already under Hun attack in the Northeast, during the reign of Buddhagupta and some of the smaller kings before Vishnugupta.

Works

Aryabhata is the author of several treatises on mathematics and astronomy, some of which are lost. His major work, Aryabhatiya, a compendium of mathematics and astronomy, was extensively referred to in the Indian mathematical literature, and has survived to modern times. The mathematical part of the Aryabhatiya covers arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry and spherical trigonometry. It also contains continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums of power series and a table of sines.

The Arya-siddhanta, a lost work on astronomical computations, is known through the writings of Aryabhata's contemporary Varahamihira, as well as through later mathematicians and commentators including Brahmagupta and Bhaskara I. This work appears to be based on the older Surya Siddhanta, and uses the midnight-day-reckoning, as opposed to sunrise in Aryabhatiya. This also contained a description of several astronomical instruments, the gnomon (shanku-yantra), a shadow instrument (chhAyA-yantra), possibly angle-measuring devices, semi-circle and circle shaped (dhanur-yantra / chakra-yantra), a cylindrical stick yasti-yantra, an umbrella-shaped device called chhatra-yantra, and water clocks of at least two types, bow-shaped and cylindrical.

A third text that may have survived in Arabic translation is the Al ntf or Al-nanf, which claims to be a translation of Aryabhata, but the Sanskrit name of this work is not known. Probably dating from the ninth c., it is mentioned by the Persian scholar and chronicler of India, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī.

Aryabhatiya

Direct details of Aryabhata's work are therefore known only from the Aryabhatiya. The name Aryabhatiya is due to later commentators, Aryabhata himself may not have given it a name; it is referred by his disciple Bhaskara I as Ashmakatantra or the treatise from the Ashmaka. It is also occasionally referred to as Arya-shatas-aShTa, lit., Aryabhata's 108, which is the number of verses in the text. It is written in the very terse style typical of the sutra literature, where each line is an aid to memory for a complex system. Thus, the explication of meaning is due to commentators. The entire text consists of 108 verses, plus an introductory 13, the whole being divided into four pAdas or chapters:

1. Gitikapada: (13 verses) large units of time - kalpa, manvantra, yuga, which present a cosmology that differs from earlier texts such as Lagadha's Vedanga Jyotisha(ca. 1st c. BC). Also includes the table of sines (jya), given in a single verse. For the planetary revolutions during a mahayuga, the number of 4.32mn years is given.
2. Ganitapada (33 verses), covering mensuration (kShetra vyAvahAra), arithmetic and geometric progressions, gnomon / shadows (shanku-chhAyA), simple, quadratic, simultaneous, and indeterminate equations (kuTTaka)
3. Kalakriyapada (25 verses) : different units of time and method of determination of positions of planets for a given day. Calculations concerning the intercalary month (adhikamAsa), kShaya-tithis. Presents a seven-day week, with names for days of week.
4. Golapada (50 verses): Geometric/trigonometric aspects of the celestial sphere, features of the ecliptic, celestial equator, node, shape of the earth, cause of day and night, rising of zodiacal signs on horizon etc.

In addition, some versions cite a few colophons added at the end, extolling the virtues of the work, etc.

The Aryabhatiya presented a number of innovations in mathematics and astronomy in verse form, which were influential for many centuries. The extreme brevity of the text was elaborated in commentaries by his disciple Bhaskara I (Bhashya, ca. 600) and by Nilakantha Somayaji in his Aryabhatiya Bhasya, (1465).

Mathematics

Place Value system and zero

The number place-value system, first seen in the 3rd century Bakhshali Manuscript was clearly in place in his work. ; he certainly did not use the symbol, but the French mathematician Georges Ifrah argues that knowledge of zero was implicit in Aryabhata's place-value system as a place holder for the powers of ten with null coefficients.

However, Aryabhata did not use the brahmi numerals; continuing the Sanskritic tradition from Vedic times, he used letters of the alphabet to denote numbers, expressing quantities (such as the table of sines) in a mnemonic form.

Pi as Irrational

Aryabhata worked on the approximation for Pi (π), and may have realized that π is irrational. In the second part of the Aryabhatiyam (gaṇitapāda 10), he writes:

chaturadhikam śatamaśṭaguṇam dvāśaśṭistathā sahasrāṇām
Ayutadvayaviśkambhasyāsanno vrîttapariṇahaḥ.
"Add four to 100, multiply by eight and then add 62,000. By this rule the circumference of a circle of diameter 20,000 can be approached."

Aryabhata interpreted the word āsanna (approaching), appearing just before the last word, as saying that not only that is this an approximation, but that the value is incommensurable (or irrational). If this is correct, it is quite a sophisticated insight, for the irrationality of pi was proved in Europe only in 1761 by Lambert).


After Aryabhatiya was translated into Arabic (ca. 820 AD) this approximation was mentioned in Al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra.

Mensuration and trigonometry

In Ganitapada 6, Aryabhata gives the area of triangle as

tribhujasya phalashariram samadalakoti bhujardhasamvargah

that translates to: for a triangle, the result of a perpendicular with the half-side is the area. His great contribution to mensuration and trigonometry is used in the current international mathematics.

From "ardha-jya" to "sine"

Aryabhata discussed the concept of sine in his work by the name of ardha-jya. Literally, it means "half-chord". Because of simplicity, people started calling it jya. When Arabic writers translated his works from Sanskrit into Arabic, they referred it as jiba (after driven by the phonetic similarity). However, in Arabic writings, vowels are omitted and it got abbreviated to jb. When later writers realized that jb is an abbreviation of jiba, they substituted it back with jiab, means "cove" or "bay" (in Arabic, other than being merely a technical term, jiba is a meaningless word). Later in 12th century, when Gherardo of Cremona translated these writings from Arabic into Latin, he replaced the Arabic jiab with its Latin counterpart, sinus (which has a same literal meaning of "cove" or "bay"). And after that, the sinus became sine in English, which is what the world now knows.

Indeterminate Equations

A problem of great interest to Indian mathematicians since ancient times has been to find integer solutions to equations that have the form ax + b = cy, a topic that has come to be known as diophantine equations. Here is an example from Bhaskara's commentary on Aryabhatiya: :

Find the number which gives 5 as the remainder when divided by 8; 4 as the remainder when divided by 9; and 1 as the remainder when divided by 7.

i.e. find N = 8x+5 = 9y+4 = 7z+1. It turns out that the smallest value for N is 85. In general, diophantine equations can be notoriously difficult. Such equations were considered extensively in the ancient Vedic text Sulba Sutras, the more ancient parts of which may date back to 800 BCE. Aryabhata's method of solving such problems, called the kuṭṭaka (कूटटक) method. Kuttaka means pulverizing, that is breaking into small pieces, and the method involved a recursive algorithm for writing the original factors in terms of smaller numbers. Today this algorithm, as elaborated by Bhaskara in AD 621, is the standard method for solving first order Diophantine equations, and it is often referred to as the Aryabhata algorithm.

The diophantine equations are of interest in cryptology, and the RSA Conference, 2006, focused on the kuttaka method and earlier work in the Sulvasutras.

Astronomy

Aryabhata's system of astronomy was called the audAyaka system (days are reckoned from uday, dawn at lanka, equator). Some of his later writings on astronomy, which apparently proposed a second model (ardha-rAtrikA, midnight), are lost, but can be partly reconstructed from the discussion in Brahmagupta's khanDakhAdyaka. In some texts he seems to ascribe the apparent motions of the heavens to the earth's rotation.

Motions of the Solar System

Aryabhata appears to have believed that the earth rotates about its axis. This is made clear in the statement, referring to Lanka , which describes the movement of the stars as a relative motion caused by the rotation of the earth:

Like a man in a boat moving forward sees the stationary objects as moving backward, just so are the stationary stars seen by the people in lankA (i.e. on the equator) as moving exactly towards the West. [achalAni bhAni samapashchimagAni - golapAda.]

But the next verse describes the motion of the stars and planets as real movements: “The cause of their rising and setting is due to the fact the circle of the asterisms together with the planets driven by the provector wind, constantly moves westwards at Lanka”.

Lanka (lit. Sri Lanka) is here a reference point on the equator, which was taken as the equivalent to the reference meridian for astronomical calculations.

Aryabhata described a geocentric model of the solar system, in which the Sun and Moon are each carried by epicycles which in turn revolve around the Earth. In this model, which is also found in the Paitāmahasiddhānta (ca. AD 425), the motions of the planets are each governed by two epicycles, a smaller manda (slow) epicycle and a larger śīghra (fast) epicycle. The order of the planets in terms of distance from earth are taken as: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the asterisms.

The positions and periods of the planets was calculated relative to uniformly moving points, which in the case of Mercury and Venus, move around the Earth at the same speed as the mean Sun and in the case of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn move around the Earth at specific speeds representing each planet's motion through the zodiac. Most historians of astronomy consider that this two epicycle model reflects elements of pre-Ptolemaic Greek astronomy. Another element in Aryabhata's model, the śīghrocca, the basic planetary period in relation to the Sun, is seen by some historians as a sign of an underlying heliocentric model.

Eclipses

He states that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight. Instead of the prevailing cosmogony where eclipses were caused by pseudo-planetary nodes Rahu and Ketu, he explains eclipses in terms of shadows cast by and falling on earth. Thus the lunar eclipse occurs when the moon enters into the earth-shadow (verse gola.37), and discusses at length the size and extent of this earth-shadow (verses gola.38-48), and then the computation, and the size of the eclipsed part during eclipses. Subsequent Indian astronomers improved on these calculations, but his methods provided the core. This computational paradigm was so accurate that the 18th century scientist Guillaume le Gentil, during a visit to Pondicherry, found the Indian computations of the duration of the lunar eclipse of 1765-08-30 to be short by 41 seconds, whereas his charts (by Tobias Mayer, 1752) were long by 68 seconds..

Aryabhata's computation of Earth's circumference as 24,835 miles, which was only 0.2% smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles. This approximation was a significant improvement over the computation by the Greek mathematician, Eratosthenes (c. 200 BC), whose exact computation is not known in modern units but his estimate had an error of around 5-10%.

Sidereal periods

Considered in modern English units of time, Aryabhata calculated the sidereal rotation (the rotation of the earth referenced the fixed stars) as 23 hours 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds; the modern value is 23:56:4.091. Similarly, his value for the length of the sidereal year at 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes 30 seconds is an error of 3 minutes 20 seconds over the length of a year. The notion of sidereal time was known in most other astronomical systems of the time, but this computation was likely the most accurate in the period.

Heliocentrism

Āryabhata claimed that the Earth turns on its own axis and some elements of his planetary epicyclic models rotate at the same speed as the motion of the planet around the Sun. Thus it has been suggested that Āryabhata's calculations were based on an underlying heliocentric model in which the planets orbit the Sun. A detailed rebuttal to this heliocentric interpretation is in a review which describes B. L. van der Waerden's book as "show[ing] a complete misunderstanding of Indian planetary theory [that] is flatly contradicted by every word of Āryabhata's description," although some concede that Āryabhata's system stems from an earlier heliocentric model of which he was unaware. It has even been claimed that he considered the planet's paths to be elliptical, although no primary evidence for this has been cited. Though Aristarchus of Samos (3rd century BC) and sometimes Heraclides of Pontus (4th century BC) are usually credited with knowing the heliocentric theory, the version of Greek astronomy known in ancient India, Paulisa Siddhanta (possibly by a Paul of Alexandria) makes no reference to a Heliocentric theory.

Legacy

Aryabhata's work was of great influence in the Indian astronomical tradition, and influenced several neighbouring cultures through translations. The Arabic translation during the Islamic Golden Age (ca. 820), was particularly influential. Some of his results are cited by Al-Khwarizmi, and he is referred to by the 10th century Arabic scholar Al-Biruni, who states that Āryabhata's followers believed the Earth to rotate on its axis.

His definitions of sine, as well as cosine (kojya), versine (ukramajya), and inverse sine (otkram jya), influenced the birth of trigonometry. He was also the first to specify sine and versine (1 - cosx) tables, in 3.75° intervals from 0° to 90°, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places.

In fact, the modern names "sine" and "cosine", are a mis-transcription of the words jya and kojya as introduced by Aryabhata. They were transcribed as jiba and kojiba in Arabic. They were then misinterpreted by Gerard of Cremona while translating an Arabic geometry text to Latin; he took jiba to be the Arabic word jaib, which means "fold in a garment", L. sinus (c.1150).

Aryabhata's astronomical calculation methods were also very influential. Along with the trigonometric tables, they came to be widely used in the Islamic world, and were used to compute many Arabic astronomical tables (zijes). In particular, the astronomical tables in the work of the Arabic Spain scientist Al-Zarqali (11th c.), were translated into Latin as the Tables of Toledo (12th c.), and remained the most accurate Ephemeris used in Europe for centuries.

Calendric calculations worked out by Aryabhata and followers have been in continuous use in India for the practical purposes of fixing the Panchangam, or Hindu calendar, These were also transmitted to the Islamic world, and formed the basis for the Jalali calendar introduced 1073 by a group of astronomers including Omar Khayyam, versions of which (modified in 1925) are the national calendars in use in Iran and Afghanistan today. The Jalali calendar determines its dates based on actual solar transit, as in Aryabhata (and earlier Siddhanta calendars). This type of calendar requires an Ephemeris for calculating dates. Although dates were difficult to compute, seasonal errors were lower in the Jalali calendar than in the Gregorian calendar.

India's first satellite Aryabhata, was named after him. The lunar crater Aryabhata is named in his honour. An Institute for conducting research in Astronomy, Astrophysics and atmospheric sciences has been named as Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciences (ARIES) near Nainital, India.

The interschool Aryabhatta Maths Competition is named after him.

ARYABATIA: in detail

Structure and style

The text is written in Sanskrit and structured into four section, overall covering 121 verses that describe different results using a mnemonic style typical of the Indian tradition.

33 verses are concerned with mathematical rules.

The four chapters are:

(i) the astronomical constants and the sine table (ii) mathematics required for computations (gaNitapāda) (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets using eccentrics and ellipses (iv) the armillary sphere, rules relating to problems of trigonometry and the computation of eclipses (golādhyaya).

It is highly likely that the study of the Aryabhatiya was meant to be accompanied by the teachings of a well-versed tutor. While some of the verses have a logical flow, some don't and its lack of coherance makes it extremely difficult for a casual reader to follow.

Indian mathematical works often used word numerals before Aryabhata, but the Aryabhatiya is oldest extant Indian work with alphabet numerals. That is, he used letters of the alphabet to form words with consonants giving digits and vowels denoting place value. This innovation allows for advanced arithmetical computations which would have been considerably more difficult without it. At the same time, this system of numeration allows for poetic license even in the author's choice of numbers. Cf. Āryabhaṭa numeration, the Sanskrit numerals.

Contents

Crowning glory of Aryabhatiya is the decimal place value notation without which mathematics, science and commerce would be impossible. Prior to Aryabhatta, Babylonians used 60 based place value notation which never gained momentum. Mathematics of Aryabhatta went to Europe through Arabs and was known as "Modus Indorum" or the method of the Indians. This method is none other than our arithmetic today.

The Aryabhatiya begins with an introduction called the "Dasagitika" or "Ten Giti Stanzas." This begins by paying tribute to Brahman, the "Cosmic spirit" in Hinduism. Next, Aryabhata lays out the numeration system used in the work. It includes a listing of astronomical constants and the sine table. The book then goes on to give an overview of Aryabhata's astronomical findings.

Most of the mathematics is contained in the next part, the "Ganitapada" or "Mathematics."

The next section is the "Kalakriya" or "The Reckoning of Time." In it, he divides up days, months, and years according to the movement of celestial bodies. He divides up history astrologically - it is from this exposition that historians deduced that the Aryabhatiya was written in 522 C.E. It also contains rules for computing the longitudes of planets using eccentrics and epicycles.

In the final section, the "Gola" or "The Sphere," Aryabhata goes into great detail describing the celestial relationship between the Earth and the cosmos. This section is noted for describing the rotation of the earth on its axis. It further uses the armillary sphere and details rules relating to problems of trigonometry and the computation of eclipses.

Significance
The treatise uses a geocentric model of the solar system, in which the Sun and Moon are each carried by epicycles which in turn revolve around the Earth. In this model, which is also found in the Paitāmahasiddhānta (ca. AD 425), the motions of the planets are each governed by two epicycles, a smaller manda (slow) epicycle and a larger śīghra (fast) epicycle. It has also been interpreted as advocating Heliocentrism, where Earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to the sun (according to this view, it was heliocentric). Aryabhata asserted that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight and that the orbits of the planets are ellipses. He also correctly explained the causes of eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. His value for the length of the sidereal year at 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes 30 seconds is only 3 minutes 20 seconds longer than the true value of 365 days 6 hours 9 minutes 10 seconds. In this book, the day was reckoned from one sunrise to the next, whereas in his "Āryabhata-siddhānta" he took the day from one midnight to another. There was also difference in some astronomical parameters. A close approximation to π is given as : "Add four to one hundred, multiply by eight and then add sixty-two thousand. The result is approximately the circumference of a circle of diameter twenty thousand. By this rule the relation of the circumference to diameter is given." In other words, π ≈ 62832/20000 = 3.1416, correct to four rounded-off decimal places. Aryabhata was the first astronomer to make an attempt at measuring the Earth's circumference since Erastosthenes (circa 200 BC). Aryabhata accurately calculated the Earth's circumference as 24,835 miles, which was only 0.2% smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles. This approximation remained the most accurate for over a thousand years. Aryabhata's methods of astronomical calculations have been in continuous use for practical purposes of fixing the Panchanga (Hindu calendar). Significant verses shulva-sUtras: form a shrauta part of kalpa vedAnga - nine texts - mathematically most imp - baudhAyana, Apastamba, and kAtyAyana shulvasUtra. dIrghasyAkShaNayA rajjuH pArshvamAnI tiryaDaM mAnI. cha yatpr^thagbhUte kurutastadubhayAM karoti. The diagonal of a rectangle produces both areas which its length and bread produce separately. samasya dvikaraNI. pramANaM tritIyena vardhayet tachchaturthAnAtma chatusastriMshenena savisheShaH. sqrt(2) = 1 + 1/3 + 1/(3.4) - 1(3.4.34) -- correct to 5 decimals = 1.41421569 chaturadhikaM shatamaShTaguNaM dvAShaShTistathA sahasrANAm AyutadvayaviShkambhasyAsanno vr^ttapariNahaH. [gaNita pAda, 10] Add 4 to 100, multiply by 8 and add to 62,000. This is approximately the circumference of a circle whose diamenter is 20,000. i.e. PI = 62,832 / 20,000 = 3.1416 correct to four places. Even more important however is the word "Asanna" - approximate, indicating an awareness that even this is an approximation. tribhujasya falasharIraM samadalakoTI bhujArdhasaMvargaH It depicts the area of a triangle. jyA = sine, koTijyA = cosine jyA tables : Circle circumference = minutes of arc = 360x60 = 21600. Gives radius R = radius of 3438; (exactly 21601.591) [ with pi = 3.1416, gives 21601.64] The R sine-differences (at intervals of 225 minutes of arc = 3:45deg), are given in an alphabetic code as 225,224,222,219.215,210,205, 199,191,183,174,164,154,143,131,119,106,93,79,65,51,37,,22,7 which gives sines for 15 deg as sum of first four = 890 --> sin(15) = 890/3438 = 0.258871 vs. the correct value at 0.258819. sin(30) = 1719/3438 = 0.5 Expressed as the stanza, using the varga/avarga code: ka-M 1-5, ca-n~a: 6-10, Ta-Na 11-15, ta-na 16-20, pa-ma 21-25 the avargiya vyanjanas are: y = 30, r = 40, l=50, v=60, sh=70, Sh=80, s =90 and h=100 makhi (ma=25 + khi=2x100) bhakhi (24+200) fakhi (22+200) dhakhi (219) Nakhi 215, N~akhi 210, M~akhi 205, hasjha (h=100 + s=90+ jha=9) skaki (90+ ki=1x00 + ka=1) kiShga (1x100+80+3), shghaki, 70+4+100 kighva (100+4+60) ghlaki (4+50+100) kigra (100+3+40) hakya (100+1+30) dhaki (19+100) kicha (106) sga (93) shjha (79) Mva (5+60) kla (51) pta (21+16, could also have been chhya) fa (22) chha (7). makhi bhakhi dhakhi Nakhi N~akhi M~akhi hasjha 225, 224 222 219 215 210 205 skaki kiShga shghaki kighva ghlaki kigra hakya 199 191 183 174 164 154 143 dhaki kicha sga shjha Mva kla pta fa chha 119 106 93 79 65 51 37 22 7 given radius R = radius of 3438, these values give the Rxsin(theta) within one integer value; e.g. sine (15deg) = 225+224+222+219 = 890, modern value = 889.820. Both the choice of the radius based on the angle, and the 225 minutes of arc interpolation interval, are ideal for the table, better suited than the modern tables.


Translations

The Aryabhatiya was an extremely influential work as is exhibited by the fact that most notable Indian mathematicians after Aryabhata wrote commentaries on it. At least twelve notable commentaries were written for the Aryabhatiya ranging from the time he was still alive (c. 525) through 1900 ("Aryabhata I" 150-2). The commentators include Bhaskara and Brahmagupta among other notables.

The work was translated into Arabic around 820 by Al-Khwarizmi, whose On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals was in turn influential in the adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe from the 12th century.

Although the work was influential, there is no definitive English translation.

let talk about other great people who went BEYOND NATURE in the next post

Bookmark this post:
Ma.gnolia DiggIt! Del.icio.us Blinklist Yahoo Furl Technorati Simpy Spurl Reddit Google

Stephen Hawking - Next Generation Einstein

Posted by RAJESH


In the year 1942 January 8.. a remarkable incident took place in the field of astronomy and theoretical physics.... has any one done anything amazing on that day????
No absolutely not on that fine day a kid was born to Frank Hawking...He was named STEPHEN HAWKING...
At that time no one recognized that day.. but it really matters today because its the day when another Einstein had come to earth....... None other than STEPHEN HAWKING...
you have ever wanted to know about the man who wrote the all-time best seller 'A Brief History of Time', and more recently the book that is still topping charts all over the world 'The Universe in a Nutshell' then this is an excellent place to start. These pages have been written so that you can learn more about not only Stephen, but also his work.

Biography

Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 to Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel Hawking. He had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. Though Hawking’s parents were living in North London, they moved to Oxford while Isobel was pregnant with Stephen, desiring a safer location for the birth of their first child (London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe). After Hawking was born, the family moved back to London, where his father headed the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research.

In 1950, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire where he attended St Albans High School for Girls from 1950 to 1953. (At that time, boys attended the Girls school until the age of 10.) From the age of 11, he attended St Albans School, where he was a good, but not an exceptional, student. When asked later to name a teacher who had inspired him, Hawking named his Mathematics teacher, "Mr Tahta". He maintains his connection with the school, giving his name to one of the four houses and to an extracurricular science lecture series. He has visited to deliver one of the lectures and has also granted a lengthy interview to pupils working on the school magazine, The Albanian.

He was always interested in science. He enrolled at University College, Oxford with the intent of studying mathematics, although his father preferred he go into medicine. Since mathematics was not offered at University College, Hawking instead chose physics. His interests during this time were in thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in the New York Times Magazine, "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it. ... He didn’t have very many books, and he didn’t take notes. Of course, his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries." He was passing with his fellow students, but his unimpressive study habits gave him a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honours, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman said of the oral examination, "And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves."

After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford University in 1962, he stayed to study astronomy. He decided to leave when he found that studying sunspots, which was all the observatory was equipped for, did not appeal to him and that he was more interested in theory than in observation. He left Oxford for Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he engaged in the study of theoretical astronomy and cosmology.

Almost as soon as he arrived at Cambridge, he started developing symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (colloquially known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), a type of motor neuron disease which would cost him almost all neuromuscular control. During his first two years at Cambridge, he did not distinguish himself, but, after the disease had stabilized and with the help of his doctoral tutor, Dennis William Sciama, he returned to working on his Ph.D. He revealed that he did not see much point in obtaining a doctorate if he was to die soon. Hawking later said that the real turning point was his 1965 marriage to Jane Wilde, a language student. After gaining his Ph.D. Stephen became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

Hawking was elected as one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society in 1974, was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1982, and became a Companion of Honour in 1989. Hawking is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Jane Hawking (née Wilde), Hawking’s first wife, with whom he had three children, cared for him until 1991 when the couple separated, reportedly due to the pressures of fame and his increasing disability. Hawking married his nurse, Elaine Mason (who was also the previous wife of David Mason, designer of the first version of Hawking’s talking computer), in 1995. In October 2006, Hawking filed for divorce from his second wife.

In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, detailing her own long-term relationship with a family friend whom she later married. Hawking’s daughter Lucy Hawking is a novelist. Their son Robert Hawking emigrated to the United States, married, and has one child, George Edward Hawking. Reportedly, Hawking and his first family were reconciled in 2007.

At the celebration of his 65th birthday on January 8, 2007, Hawking announced his plans for a zero-gravity flight in 2007 to prepare for a sub-orbital spaceflight in 2009 on Virgin Galactic’s space service. Billionaire Richard Branson pledged to pay all expenses for the flight, costing an estimated £100,000. Stephen Hawking’s zero-gravity flight in a "Vomit Comet" of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times, took place on April 26, 2007.

He became the first quadriplegic to float free in a weightless state. This was the first time in 40 years that he moved freely beyond the confines of his wheelchair. The fee is normally US$3,750 for 10-15 plunges, but Hawking was not required to pay the fee. A bit of a futurist, Hawking was quoted before the flight saying:

"Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."

Research fields

Hawking’s principal fields of research are theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity.

In the late 1960s, he and his Cambridge friend and colleague, Roger Penrose, applied a new, complex mathematical model they had created from Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This led, in 1970, to Hawking proving the first of many singularity theorems; such theorems provide a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a singularity in space-time. This work showed that, far from being mathematical curiosities which appear only in special cases, singularities are a fairly generic feature of general relativity.

He supplied a mathematical proof, along with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson, of John Wheeler’s “No-Hair Theorem” – namely, that any black hole is fully described by the three properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.

Hawking also suggested that, upon analysis of gamma ray emissions, after the Big Bang, primordial or mini black holes were formed. With Bardeen and Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. In 1974, he calculated that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles, known today as Hawking radiation, until they exhaust their energy and evaporate.

In collaboration with Jim Hartle, Hawking developed a modeling which the Universe had no boundary in space-time, replacing the initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models with a region akin to the North pole: one cannot travel North of the North pole, there is no boundary there. While originally the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed Universe, discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a Universe which is not closed.

Among Hawking’s many other scientific investigations, included are the study of: quantum cosmology, cosmic inflation, helium production in anisotropic Big Bang universes, large N cosmology, the density matrix of the universe, topology and structure of the universe, baby universes, Yang-Mills instantons and the S matrix; anti de Sitter space, quantum entanglement and entropy; the nature of space and time, including the arrow of time; spacetime foam, string theory, supergravity, Euclidean quantum gravity, the gravitational Hamiltonian; Brans-Dicke and Hoyle-Narlikar theories of gravitation; gravitational radiation, and wormholes.

At a George Washington University lecture in honour of NASA's 50th anniversary, Prof. Hawking theorised on the existence of extraterrestrial life: "Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare."

Losing an old bet

Main article: Thorne-Hawking-Preskill bet

Hawking was in the news in July 2004 for presenting a new theory about black holes which goes against his own long-held belief about their behavior, thus losing a bet he made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech. Classically, it can be shown that information crossing the event horizon of a black hole is lost to our universe, and that thus all black holes are identical beyond their mass, electrical charge and angular velocity (the “no hair theorem”). The problem with this theorem is that it implies the black hole will emit the same radiation regardless of what goes into it, and as a consequence that if a pure quantum state is thrown into a black hole, an “ordinary” mixed state will be returned. This runs counter to the rules of quantum mechanics and is known as the black hole information paradox.

Hawking had earlier speculated that the singularity at the centre of a black hole could form a bridge to a “baby universe” into which the lost information could pass; such theories have been very popular in science fiction. But according to Hawking’s new idea, presented at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, on 21 July 2004 in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, black holes eventually transmit, in a garbled form, information about all matter they swallow:

The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon.

Having concluded that information is conserved, Hawking conceded his bet in Preskill’s favour, awarding him Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia. Thorne, however, remained unconvinced of Hawking’s proof and declined to contribute to the award. Another older bet – about the existence of black holes – was described by Hawking as an “insurance policy” of sorts. To quote from his book, A Brief History of Time:

This was a form of insurance policy for me. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would win me four years of the magazine Private Eye. If black holes do exist, Kip will get one year of Penthouse. When we made the bet in 1975, we were 80 % certain that Cygnus was a black hole. By now, I would say that we are about 95 % certain, but the bet has yet to be settled.

—Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1988)[1]

According to the updated 10th anniversary edition of A Brief History of Time, Hawking has conceded the bet “to the outrage of Kip’s liberated wife” due to subsequent observational data in favour of black holes.

Illness



Hawking on 5 May 2006, during the press conference at the Bibliothèque nationale de France to inaugurate the Laboratory of Astronomy and Particles in Paris and the French release of his work God Created the Integers.


Hawking is severely disabled by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS (a type of motor neurone disease); this condition is commonly known in the United States as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

When he was young, he enjoyed riding horses and playing with other children. At Oxford, he coxed a rowing team, which, he stated, helped relieve his immense boredom at the university. Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. Worried that he would lose his genius, he took the Mensa International test to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact. The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said he would not survive more than two or three years.

Hawking gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and is now almost completely paralyzed. During a visit to the research centre CERN in Geneva in 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening as it further restricted his already limited respiratory capacity. He had an emergency tracheotomy, and as a result lost what remained of his ability to speak. He has since used an electronic voice synthesizer to communicate. The voice synthesizer, which has an American accent, is no longer being produced. Asked why he has still kept it after so many years, Hawking mentioned that he has not heard a voice he likes better and that he identifies with it. Hawking is said to be looking for a replacement since, aside from being obsolete, the synthesizer (a DECtalk DTC01) is both large and fragile by modern standards. However, as of present, finding a workable software alternative has been difficult. In Hawking's many media appearances, he appears to speak fluently through his synthesizer, but in reality, creating the text is a tedious drawn-out process. Hawking's setup uses a T9-like entry system, which only requires the first few characters in order to auto-complete the word, but as he is only able to use his cheek for data entry, constructing complete sentences takes time. His speeches are prepared in advance, but having a live conversation with him provides insight as to the complexity and work involved in his responses. During a TED Talk, a posed question took 7 minutes to answer.

Despite his disease, he describes himself as “lucky" – not only has the slow progress of his disease provided time to make influential discoveries, it has also afforded time to have, in his own words, “a very attractive family”. When Jane was asked why she decided to marry a man with a 3-year life expectancy, she responded: “Those were the days of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had a rather short life expectancy."

Computer

The computer system attached to his wheelchair is operated by Hawking via an infra-red 'blink switch' clipped onto his glasses. By scrunching his right cheek up, he is able to talk, compose speeches and research papers, browse the World Wide Web, and write e-mails. The system also uses radio transmission to provide control over doors in his home and office. His computer was created by an American engineer. He once joked that his computer "had an American accent."

Hawking receives a new computer every 18-24 months donated by Intel. The latest computer was donated in June of 2007 and is based on the Centrino chipset. It consists of two pieces, a rear chassis which houses a single 300 watt hour battery, a laptop computer, and various external peripherals, and a front chassis, which houses a touchscreen LCD and speakers which project his hardware-synthesized voice. The two chassis are connected via a custom-designed umbilical cable which allows power and electrical signals to travel back and forth. Hawking’s computer can run for up to 7 hours without needing a recharge, or be switched to run directly from his wheelchair battery when needed.

The computer utilizes a wireless data card that runs on mobile phone networks. This allows Hawking to check his email and browse the web while away from a wireless LAN. Hawking can also make and receive voice phone calls via a mobile phone with an external microphone in front of his computer speakers.

Acclaim

Statues

  • On 19 December 2007, a unique statue of Professor Stephen Hawking by renowned late artist Ian Walters was unveiled at Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, Cambridge University.
  • In May 2008 a statue of Hawking was unveiled at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town.

Distinctions

Hawking’s belief that the lay person should have access to his work led him to write a series of popular science books in addition to his academic work. The first of these, A Brief History of Time, was published on April 1, 1988 by Hawking, his family and friends, and some leading physicists. It surprisingly became a best-seller and was followed by The Universe in a Nutshell (2001). Both books have remained highly popular all over the world. A collection of essays titled Black Holes and Baby Universes (1993) was also popular. His most recent book, A Briefer History of Time (2005), co-written by Leonard Mlodinow, aims to update his earlier works and make them accessible to an even wider audience. He and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, have recently published a children’s book focusing on science that has been described to be “like Harry Potter, but without the magic.” This book is called George’s Secret Key to the Universe and includes information on Hawking radiation.

Hawking is also known for his wit; he is famous for his oft-made statement, “When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol.” This was a deliberately ironic paraphrase of “Whenever I hear the word culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning”, from the play Schlageter (Act 1, Scene 1) by German playwright and Nazi Poet Laureate, Hanns Johst. His wit has both entertained the non-specialist public and helped them to understand complex questions. Asked in October 2005 on the British daytime chat show Richard & Judy, to explain his assertion that the question “What came before the Big Bang?” was meaningless, he compared it to asking “What lies north of the North Pole?”

Hawking is an active supporter of various causes. He appeared on a political broadcast for the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, and actively supports the children’s charity SOS Children's Villages UK.

Bookmark this post:
Ma.gnolia DiggIt! Del.icio.us Blinklist Yahoo Furl Technorati Simpy Spurl Reddit Google

Origin of UNIVERSE

Posted by RAJESH

As a human being (only animal with good intelligence on this planet) we really face a lot of questions... one of them which everyone likes to know the answer is...
"How the universe has originated???"
lets see the story below to know about origin of

Universe

Basically the are two groups of people with their own beliefs .....

Theism vs. Atheism
In general, theists attribute the origin of the universe to some sort of transcendent, intelligent Designer. Atheists envision a natural, undirected process by which universes spring into existence spontaneously. Prior to the 20th century most atheists believed the universe was eternal. This changed however as discoveries throughout the 20th Century rendered that view untenable. Einstein’s theory of gravity (which has been thoroughly validated by extensive experimental confirmation) and Hubble’s astronomical observations preclude an eternal universe. We now know beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe began at some point in the finite past.

Now we understand that there are only two legitimate options for the origin of the universe:

(1) Someone made the universe (Intelligent Design), or
(2) The universe made itself (Random Chance).

The third option, the universe has always been here, is no longer a feasible alternative -- it contradicts empirical science. No other scientifically plausible theories for the origin of the universe have ever been proposed.

The implications of various 20th century discoveries have put atheists in an awkward position. Logic now requires that they identify an uncontrolled mechanism by which the universe could have initiated, designed, created and developed itself without an Intelligent Director. Otherwise, intellectual honesty requires the necessity of a Creator God.

The Big Bang Theory
So began the effort to propose an atheistic mechanism for the origin of the universe. Enter the Big Bang Theory and Darwinian Evolution. The original Big Bang Theory seeks to explain the sudden appearance of everything from nothing, while Darwinian Evolution seeks to explain the origin of complex life forms from their supposed simpler ancestors. The premise of the Big Bang is that the entire universe was compacted into a teeny tiny little ball, which, after randomly coming into existence for no apparent reason in the first place, exploded into all space, time, matter and energy in an instant. Yes, that's the theory. No Ph.D. required.

in detail:
The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an effort to explain what happened during and after that moment.

According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as "singularity" around 13.7 billion years ago. What is a "singularity" and where does it come from? Well, to be honest, we don't know for sure. Singularities are zones which defy our current understanding of physics. They are thought to exist at the core of "black holes." Black holes are areas of intense gravitational pressure. The pressure is thought to be so intense that finite matter is actually squished into infinite density (a mathematical concept which truly boggles the mind). These zones of infinite density are called "singularities." Our universe is thought to have begun as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, something - a singularity. Where did it come from? We don't know. Why did it appear? We don't know.

After its initial appearance, it apparently inflated (the "Big Bang"), expanded and cooled, going from very, very small and very, very hot, to the size and temperature of our current universe. It continues to expand and cool to this day and we are inside of it: incredible creatures living on a unique planet, circling a beautiful star clustered together with several hundred billion other stars in a galaxy soaring through the cosmos, all of which is inside of an expanding universe that began as an infinitesimal singularity which appeared out of nowhere for reasons unknown. This is the Big Bang theory.

Big Bang Theory - Common Misconceptions
There are many misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang theory. For example, we tend to imagine a giant explosion. Experts however say that there was no explosion; there was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: an infinitesimally small balloon expanding to the size of our current universe.

Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.

Big Bang Theory - Evidence for the Theory
What are the major evidences which support the Big Bang theory?

  • First of all, we are reasonably certain that the universe had a beginning.
  • Second, galaxies appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. This is called "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the universe and suggests that the universe was once compacted.
  • Third, if the universe was initially very, very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should be able to find some remnant of this heat. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin (-454.765 degree Fahrenheit, -270.425 degree Celsius) Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which pervades the observable universe. This is thought to be the remnant which scientists were looking for. Penzias and Wilson shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.
  • Finally, the abundance of the "light elements" Hydrogen and Helium found in the observable universe are thought to support the Big Bang model of origins.

Big Bang Theory - The Only Plausible Theory?
Is the standard Big Bang theory the only model consistent with these evidences? No, it's just the most popular one. Internationally renown Astrophysicist George F. R. Ellis explains: "People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations….For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations….You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."4

In 2003, Physicist Robert Gentry proposed an attractive alternative to the standard theory, an alternative which also accounts for the evidences listed above.5 Dr. Gentry claims that the standard Big Bang model is founded upon a faulty paradigm (the Friedmann-lemaitre expanding-spacetime paradigm) which he claims is inconsistent with the empirical data. He chooses instead to base his model on Einstein's static-spacetime paradigm which he claims is the "genuine cosmic Rosetta." Gentry has published several papers outlining what he considers to be serious flaws in the standard Big Bang model.6 Other high-profile dissenters include Nobel laureate Dr. Hannes Alfvén, Professor Geoffrey Burbidge, Dr. Halton Arp, and the renowned British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who is accredited with first coining the term "the Big Bang" during a BBC radio broadcast in 1950.


Origin of the Universe - The Inflation Universe Theories
The Big Bang Theory provided an atheistic explanation for the origin of the universe, but its obvious simplicity was subject to multiple attacks. As a result, the original theory is no longer the dominant scientific explanation for the atheistic origin of the universe. While the original Big Bang Theory is now "dead," from its ashes have emerged the various Inflationary Universe Theories (IUTs). Starting with Alan Guth in the late 1990's (The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins), the scientific community has now proposed roughly 50 different IUT variants. Scientists hope that one of the current IUTs will sire an accurate reconstruction of the birth of our universe, though it is universally acknowledged that all of the current IUTs have their problems. It seems the only way to get realistic calculations to match an IUT model is to make assumptions that are poorly justified.

Bookmark this post:
Ma.gnolia DiggIt! Del.icio.us Blinklist Yahoo Furl Technorati Simpy Spurl Reddit Google

ET:Extra Terrestrial

Posted by RAJESH

MAN had been searching for a companion since decades.. i mean a companion from outer world.. from the blank dark space..

there had been various incidents when people complained that they had sighted an UFO....
in simple terms vehicle of aliens..(life from other planet).. did those people really see UFO's...
who knows..??
but i can say one thing few became popular n rich...
Directors cashed upon people belief n became rich...
movies like ET,Independence day,Star wars n many more.. r based on the same concept..
k lets come to the point..
about extra terrestrial life..
Few people believe n few dont .....
but man has his own fears so we have many missions to space..
one of them is.....


One of Darwin's telescopes
One of Darwin's telescopes

DARWIN MISSION

Darwin will be a flotilla of four or five free-flying spacecraft that will search for Earth-like planets around other stars and analyse their atmospheres for the chemical signature of life.

In addition the flotilla will be able to carry out high-resolution imaging using aperture synthesis, to provide pictures of celestial objects with unprecedented detail.

Looking for extrasolar planets, that is, planets orbiting around stars, is very hard. Even for nearby stars, it is like trying to see the difference between the feeble light from a candle next to a lighthouse from a point 1000 kilometres away.

At optical wavelengths, a star outshines an Earth-like planet by a thousand million to one. Partly to overcome this difficulty, Darwin will observe in the mid-infrared. At these wavelengths, the star-planet contrast drops to a million to one, making detection a little easier.


The science objectives of DARWIN are:
  • to detect and analyse Earth-like worlds
  • to detect atmospheres on these planets and to search for gases that can indicate life
  • to solve the technological challenges of far infrared interferometric imaging in space
Darwin is an infrared (6 - 30 microns wavelength) nulling interferometer. It will reduce the intensity of the host star, so the faint reflected light from planets can be detected. DARWIN will detect gases in the atmospheres terrestrial exoplanets. The earth's spectrumis shown opposite has easily identifiable lines of water, carbon dioxide, oxygen and ozone
Looking for life

Another key reason for observing in the infrared is because life on Earth leaves its mark at these wavelengths. On Earth, biological activity produces gases that mingle with our atmosphere. For example, plants give out oxygen and animals expel carbon dioxide and methane.

These gases, and others, such as water, leave their fingerprints by absorbing certain wavelengths of infrared light. Darwin will split the light from an extrasolar planet into its constituent wavelengths, using a device called a spectrometer. This will show the drop in light caused by the presence of certain gases in the atmosphere, allowing them to be identified. If they are the same as those produced by life on Earth, rather than by non-biological processes, Darwin will have found evidence for life on another world.

Why does the mission have to be in space?

The mission has to be in space for two reasons. Firstly, on Earth, the atmosphere blocks the mid-infrared wavelengths of light that Darwin is designed to observe.

At room temperature, the telescopes would themselves emit infrared radiation, swamping their own observations. It would be like using a conventional telescope to perform optical astronomy with a bank of floodlights pointing into the telescope.

However, in space it is so cold that the telescope can be designed to be just 40 K (-233 °C) whilst the actual detector can be reduced in temperature further to just 8 K (-265 °C). This all but stops the telescope radiating its own infrared signal and allows it to search for the faint light of distant planets.

How will Darwin find planets?

There are two overwhelming challenges when trying to take images of planets around other stars. Firstly, the planet will appear to be very close to its parent star. Secondly, the star will outshine the planet by a factor of a million or even a billion.

The first condition requires that Darwin possess superb resolving power. This is the technical term for a telescope's ability to discern closely spaced celestial objects. The larger the telescope, the better its resolving power.

To see planets around nearby stars would require a telescope of roughly 30 metres in size and this is way beyond the current limits of technology. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is just 2.3 metres and even the planned Next Generation Space Telescope (JWST) will be, at most, 6.5 metres. The largest telescopes on Earth are 10 metres in diameter.

To overcome this limitation, Darwin will use a technique known as interferometry. Pioneered during the 1950s by astronomers in Cambridge, United Kingdom, originally using radio telescopes, the technique uses a number of smaller telescopes and combines their individual signals to mimic a much larger telescope.

The technique can also be applied to optical and infrared telescopes and will be used by Darwin. Six separate space telescopes will combine their individual signals to produce the final, high-resolution image.

The second problem means that Darwin must cut out the blinding light from the central star. In 1978, Ronald Bracewell, a physicist and electrical engineer interested in telescopes, pointed out that an interferometer can do this too if the signals from some of the telescopes are delayed slightly. By precisely adjusting this delay, the central bright object is 'cancelled' out, allowing the faint, nearby planet to stand out. Working like this, the instrument is known as a nulling interferometer.

Technologies:

Darwin is a highly complex optical
system containing a range of advanced
optical, infrared, cryogenic and photonics
technologies. The next article provides an
overview of the mission science and
technical challenges






Principle of a nulling interferometer. Click to see a larger version of this fimage Nulling Interferometry adds a 180 degree phase shift in one of the light paths of the interferometer. By placing the image of the star in the moddle of the destructive fringe, or null, the faint reflected light from nearby planets to the star can be

Launch:

Soyuz rocket with its Fegat upper stage

Each of the four telescopes will have a diameter of around 3.5m in diameter based on the design used for the Herschel mission. The small flotila will be launched on 2 Soyuz-Fregat rockets.

Because the telescopes will be used to detect infrared light, they must be shielded from the Sun's rays. If not, sunlight would heat the telescope, causing it to emit its own infrared radiation, blinding its view of the distant planets. To prevent this, each telescope is equipped with a large sunshield.

During launch, the sunshields are wrapped around their telescopes to save space. Once Darwin is in orbit, the shields are deployed like unfurling an umbrella. Although, Darwin will face away from the Sun, it must also tilt up and down by an angle of 45 degrees, to see all of its target stars, whilst keeping the telescope's tube in the shade, requiring a large sunshield with a diameter of 7.4 metres.

A platform will sit behind the sunshield, consisting of a communications antenna, various receivers to detect the motion of the spacecraft and a small propulsion system. Below this, constantly facing the Sun, will be a solar array to generate power.

Journey

Darwin's launch date is to be defined in the context of ESA's Cosmic Vision scientific programme. For the launch, ESA will use two launches with Soyuz-Fregat rockets, probably from ESA's Spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana.

Instead of an orbit around the Earth, Darwin will be placed far away, beyond the Moon. At a distance of 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, in the opposite direction from the Sun, Darwin will operate from a special location known as Lagrangian Point L2.


History

The idea for this mission was proposed in 1993. Darwin's goals were to detect Earth-like planets circling nearby stars and to set constraints on the possibility of the existence of life as we know it on these planets.

Since then, the goals have been expanded to include the capability to provide high-resolution images, at least ten to one hundred times more detailed than the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a joint ESA/NASA mission due for launch around 2013.

Since the mid-1990s, ESA has been working on a feasible design. Scientists and engineers have redesigned the Darwin flotilla and have found ingenious ways to reduce the demanding technological requirements of the various spacecraft. ESA continued to investigate whether there was any way to achieve the same scientific results using just four free-flying telescopes instead of eight.


Partnerships

NASA is also considering missions similar to Darwin. They have a programme called the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and is the subject of on-going studies. TPF consists of two separate missions, consisting of a single spacecraft which could only study a few of the most nearby stars. The second mission, with a performance similar to Darwin, with a launch foreseen some years after the single spacecraft mission.

Given the ambitious nature of both projects, NASA and ESA may collaborate on the final mission, building a joint Darwin/Terrestrial Planet Finder, which they will launch and operate together. Other countries, such as Russia and Japan, have also expressed an interest in contributing to the mission.

Despite some great efforts put into this article some errors might have crept in so i request the readers to kindly report them as a comment below.

Your Suggestions will be greatly entertained.


Bookmark this post:
Ma.gnolia DiggIt! Del.icio.us Blinklist Yahoo Furl Technorati Simpy Spurl Reddit Google

Jewels of Mankind - A Tribute

Posted by Sunny

To start with i like to dedicate my first article here to those jewels of mankind whose ground breaking contemporary inventions and theories have revolutionized the way we think, the way we live, the way we conduct ourselves on this beautiful yet arrogant planet.

And it's not just for our (mankind) sakes that we want to remember them; it's also for the sake of all the living creatures from micro to macro , and perhaps their offspring not yet born.

Note: Actually, I wanted to give a noteworthy meaning to the template i have used here-then i got the idea to deal with the mystic questions (mentioned in the sidebar) that haunted me for a long time now. I suppose this is a rather good justification of the template.

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us


This Remarkable ArtWork consists of 100 most famous people (Click to view enlarged image)


Albert Einstein

(March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, E = mc 2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." In wider culture the name "Einstein" has become synonymous with genius.

Stephen Hawking

(born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes, and his popular works in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general. These include the runaway popular science bestseller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Aristotle
(384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.

Thomas Alva Edison
(February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb and large teamwork to the process of . Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass productioninvention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Archimedes

(c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. Modern experiments have tested claims that Archimedes designed machines capable of lifting attacking ships out of the water and setting ships on fire using an array of mirrors.

Galileo Galilei
(15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) a Tuscan (Italian) physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and “the Father of Modern Science.”

Aryabhata
(AD 476 – 550) is the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. Aryabhata is the father of the Hindu-Arabic number system which has become universal today. His most famous works are the Aryabhatiya (AD 499 at age of 23 years) and Arya-Siddhanta.

Neil Alden Armstrong
(born August 5, 1930) is a former American astronaut, test pilot, university professor, and United States Naval Aviator. He is the first person to set foot on the Moon. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2.5 hours exploring while Michael Collins remained in orbit in the Command Module. Armstrong is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Manoj Night Shyamalan
(born August 6, 1970), known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Academy-award nominated Indian American writer-director of major studio films, known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots that usually climax with a twist ending. Shyamalan gained international recognition when he wrote and directed 1999's The Sixth Sense, which was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

Alfred Hitchcock
(13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) an iconic and highly influential British filmmaker and producer, who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres.

Subrahamanyan Chandrasekhar
October 19, 1910 – August 21, 1995 was an Indian born American astrophysicist. He was a Nobel laureate in physics along with William Alfred Fowler for their work in the theoretical structure and evolution of stars. He was the nephew of Indian Nobel Laureate Sir C. V. Raman.

C.V.Raman

(7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) was an Indian physicist who was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the molecular scattering of light and for the discovery of the Raman effect, which is named after him.

Christopher Columbus
(1451 – May 20, 1506) was an Italian navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Though not the first to reach the Americas from Afro-Eurasia — preceded some five hundred years by Leif Ericson, and perhaps by others — Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans. The anniversary of Columbus' 1492 landing in the Americas (Columbus Day) is observed throughout the Americas and in Spain on October 12.

Srinivasa Ramanujan
(22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician. With almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions in the areas of mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions. Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3900 results (mostly identities and equations) during his short lifetime.

Abdul Kalam
(October 15, 1931, Tamil Nadu, India) was the eleventh President of India, serving from 2002 to 2007. He is popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his work and is considered a progressive mentor, innovator and visionary in India.

Steven Spielberg
(born December 18, 1946) is an American film director and producer. Forbes magazine places Spielberg's net worth at $3 billion. In 2006, the magazine Premiere listed him as the most powerful and influential figure in the motion picture industry. Time listed him as one of the 100 Greatest People of the Century. In a career that spans almost four decades, Spielberg's films have touched many themes and genres. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, three of his films, Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park became the highest grossing films for their time.

Michael Faraday
(September 22, 1791 – August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher and , in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetismelectrochemistry. Some historians science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him.

Isaac Newton
(January 4, 1643 – March 31, 1727) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is considered to be the most influential book in the history of science. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.

Wright Brothers
Orville (19 August 1871 – 30 January 1948) and Wilbur on (16 April 1867 – 30 May 1912), were two Americans who are generally credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight17 December 1903. In the two years afterward, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed wing flight possible.

Nicolaus Copernicus
(February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543) was the first astronomer to formulate a scientifically based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. His epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution.

Charles Robert Darwin
(12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, eminent as a collector and geologist, who proposed and provided scientific evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process he called natural selection. The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and the general public in his lifetime, while his theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s, and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery remains the foundation of biology, as it provides a unifying logical explanation for the diversity of life.

Louis Pasteur
(childbed), and he created the first (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist best known for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of disease. His experiments supported the germ theory of disease, also reducing mortality from puerperal fevervaccine for rabies. He was best known to the general public for inventing a method to stop milk and wine from causing sickness - this process came to be called pasteurization.

Alexander Graham Bell
(3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor and innovator who is widely credited with the invention of the telephone. His father, grandfather and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's workresearch on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices that eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. In reflection, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study. Bell's death, all telephones throughout the United States "stilled their ringing for a silent minute in tribute to the man whose yearning to communicate made them possible."

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706-April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity.

Neils Bohr
(October 7, 1885 – November 18, 1962) was a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in Copenhagen.

Johannes Kepler
(December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and key figure in the 17th century astronomical revolution. He is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astrononomy. They also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.

Max Planck
(April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947) was a German physicist. He is considered to be the founder of quantum theory, and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century.

Edwin Hubble
(November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He profoundly changed astronomers' understanding of the nature of the universe by demonstrating the existence of other galaxies besides the Milky Way. He also discovered that the degree of redshift observed in light coming from a galaxy increased in proportion to the distance of that galaxy from the Milky Way. This became known as Hubble's law, and would help establish that the universe is expanding.

James Clerk Maxwell
(13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist. His most significant achievement was the development of the classical electromagnetic theory, synthesizing all previous unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and even optics into a consistent theory.Maxwell's work in electromagnetism has been called the "second great unification in physics", after the first one carried out by Newton.

James Watson
(born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA. Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

Christiaan Huygens
(April 14, 1629 – July 8, 1695) was a Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist; born in The Hague as the son of Constantijn Huygens, a friend of René Descartes.Historians commonly associate Huygens with the scientific revolution. He is famous for his Wave Theory of Light.

Leonard Euler
(April 15, 1707 – September 18 1783) was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist who spent most of his life in Russia and Germany. Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. Euler is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time. He is also one of the most prolific; his collected works fill 60–80 quarto volumes. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master [i.e., teacher] of us all."

Marie Curie
(November 7, 1867 – July 4, 1934) was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and, subsequently, French citizenship. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the only person honored with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and the first female professor at the University of Paris.

John von Neumann
(December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields. He is generally regarded as one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century. The mathematician Jean Dieudonne called von Neumann "the last of the great mathematicians.

Anton van Leeuwenhoek
(October 24, 1632 – August 30, 1723) was a Dutch tradesman and scientist from Delft, the Netherlands. He is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and considered to be the first microbiologist.

Humphry Davy
(17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth elements, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. He invented the Davy lamp, which allowed miners to enter gassy workings. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."

Har Gobind Khorana
(born January 9, 1922) is an Indian-American molecular biologist. He was awarded the Nobel prize (shared with Robert W. Holley and Marshall Warren Nirenberg) in 1968 for his work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.

James Watt
(19 January 1736 – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both Britain and the world.

Bill Gates
(born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, USA) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, the world's third richest person (as of 2008), and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

To know more Details about the Scientists mentioned above, search for the same in Wikipedia

A man who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do.

Despite some great efforts put into this article some errors might have crept in so i request the readers to kindly report them as a comment below.

Your Suggestions will be greatly entertained.

Bookmark this post:
Ma.gnolia DiggIt! Del.icio.us Blinklist Yahoo Furl Technorati Simpy Spurl Reddit Google