Posted by Sunny Kalara | 1 Comment
Energy Scale of over 100 orders of magnitude
I know, there are a lots of things that are wrong in this image, but as an illustrative example of energy associated with different phenomena that we observe, it is an interesting read.
For example :
A photon from cosmic background has energy of 10^(-22) Joules,
X ray photon has energy of 10^(-13) Joules
ultra high energy cosmic ray could be about 100 Joules,
first atomic bomb was about 10^(13) Joules,
annual US energy consumption is 10^(20) Joules
yearly output of Sun is 10^(32) Joules,
total yearly output of Milkeyway is 10^(47) Joules and
recent Gamma Ray burst from a Supernova had the energy of about 10^(50) Joules.
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 3 Comments
Not Christmas Holidays but Newton Festival : Happy Newton, everybody!
On December 25th
a savior was born.
He revealed eternal truth
bringing joy to millions.
He astonished the world
with his command over nature.
He changed history for ever!
Even if you are an atheist or a Bright, you don’t want to destroy the holiday season! So Richard Dawkins suggested that the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics and mathematics, and arguably the greatest scientist of all time, could be used as an alternate excuse for a winter holiday!
Depending on the calendar you follow and how purist you want to be, Newton was born either on 25th December or 4th January.
Perfect! Who needs poinsettia, when you can have red apples? I’d rather teach kids about F=ma than tell them about a fat guy flying from the north pole in a sleigh being pulled by reindeers! I’d rather have a (dwarf) tree, dropping apples on my head, than have a Christmas tree shedding needles and being a fire hazard! Instead of fake snow, every house will have a real rainbow created using a prism! Instead of playing with candy canes, kids will be peering through telescope! I like the sound of that!
So, as suggested Richard Dawkins and by Olivia Judson of NYTimes, I support renaming Christmas holidays as Newton’s birthday festival.
In honor of Newton’s Birthday festival, I therefore propose the following song, to be sung to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” For brevity, I include only the final verse. All together now!
On the tenth day of Newton,
My true love gave to me,
Ten drops of genius,
Nine silver co-oins,
Eight circling planets,
Seven shades of li-ight,
Six counterfeiters,
Cal-Cu-Lus!
Four telescopes,
Three Laws of Motion,
Two awful feuds,
And the discovery of gravity!
Happy Newton, everybody!
Just as an aside note; when I was thinking of a date to select for Talk Like a Physicist Day, I did consider using Newton’s birthdate as a potential TLP date, but rejected it precisely because it fell on the Christmas day. So I am glad to get a second chance.
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said “Let Newton be” and all was light.
Newton Christmas Cards are designed by John Powers and can be purchased here. The happy Newton Birthday cards are from Irregular Goods.
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Win for Obama is a win for science: Obama win announcements from 700+ newspaper headlines.
“Ensuring that the US continues to lead the world in science and technology will be a central priority for my administration.”
700+ Newspaper Headlines
Any candidate who arranges to have $2M spent for an “overhead projector” for a planetarium is A-OK in my book. Would be great to have a president who understand the importance of Science in public policy!
Some of my favorite quotes about science from Obama:
“I’ll change the posture of our federal government from being one of the most anti-science administrations in American history to one that embraces science and technology.”
And the best one:
“I will set big goals for this country as president – some so large that the technology to reach them does not yet exist.”
For a images linked to individual newspaper articles, please click here.
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 1 Comment
No, LHC is not trying to make Blackholes! LA girls discuss LHC on the “The Hills”
Surprisingly, LHC was discussed on The Hill yesterday!
If you are American realty TV deprived, The Hills is an MTV reality television series and a spin-off of the popular MTV show Laguna Beach. It documents the lives of Lauren Conrad and her friends in Los Angeles after Conrad’s move from Laguna Beach, California.
Entertainment Weekly labeled the show a “New Classic” in its special 1000th issue and ranked it 82nd on a list of The 100 Best Shows of the Last 25 Years.
I haven’t watched The Hills ever, but considering that I live in LA, I can at least fathom the shallowness of the characters on the show.
Getting past the surreal quality of the clip, what bothered me even more was the description of LHC as a place to make blackholes!
It was bad enough that people were (wrongly) worried about accidental production of blackholes that would destroy the earth, but now person on the street has started to believe that the whole purpose of LHC is to make blackholes!
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Light Pollution in LA – 100 years
Year : 1908
Population: 350,000
A dark countryside surrounded Los Angeles and Pasadena in a view from Mount Wilson.
Year: 2008
Population 5,000,000
A see of brightness!
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Spectacular images of Sun and its active regions at different wavelengths
Blue : 1M degrees
Green: 1.5M degrees
Red: 2M degrees
The image shows the corona for a moderately active Sun, with some (red) hot active regions in both hemispheres, surrounded by the (blue/green) cooler plasma of the quiet-Sun corona. Notice also the north polar-crown filament, the trans-equatorial loops, and the coronal hole in the south-east (lower-right) corner of the image and the smaller one over the north pole. This image shows the solar corona in a false-color, 3-layer composite: the blue, green, and red channels show the 171Å , 195Å , and 284Å wavelengths, respectively (most sensitive to emission from 1, 1.5, and 2 million degree gases). (TRACE Project, Stanford-Lockheed Institute for Space Research, NASA)
A view of a sunspot and granules on the Sun’s surface, seen in the H-alpha wavelength on August 4, 2003. H-alpha, is a specific emission line created by hydrogen at 6562.8 Angstroms.
This TRACE 171 Angstrom-wavelength image from November 11, 2006 shows a sizeable active region at the east limb of the Sun (rotated clockwise 90 degrees so north is to the right) just as it rotates onto Earth-facing hemisphere. Notice the low-lying dark structures of filaments at the leading edge of the region, some “levitating” dark material on the right-hand side of the region, and the small ephemeral region towards the lower right.
This LASCO C2 image, taken 8 January 2002, shows a widely spreading coronal mass ejection (CME) as it blasts more than a billion tons of matter out into space at millions of kilometers per hour. The C2 image was turned 90 degrees so that the blast seems to be pointing down. An EIT 304 Angstrom image from a different day was enlarged and superimposed on the C2 image so that it filled the occulting disk for effect
Click on the pictures for better view.
For additional pictures please visit Boston.com
Talk Like a Physicist