Wonderful things done through Dreams

Srinivasa Ramanujan 

Srinivasa Ramanujan a great Indian mathematician was devout follower  Namagiri Thayar the deity of Namakkal temple. Ramanujan used to get the solutions of the mathematical problems in his dreams. When GH Hardy asked him to come to England, he being an orthodox Brahmin went to his mother to ask for permission. But the superstitious people of India in those time were religiously barred from crossing the sea. However Ramanujan's mother had a dream where the goddess of Namakkal temple asked her to let her son cross the sea.

Sensei who can make animals go to sleep 

     Below I have inserted a Youtube link of a video that shows how this Chi master from Japan can make animals go to sleep without touching them. He says that he got the knowledge of this power while he was asleep. 

The structure of Benzene

Benzene structure

        Fedrich Augustine Kekule' the scientist who discovered the structure of Benzene' , had a dream while working on the subject. In his own words :

"...I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis"

Dr Otto Lowei

Dr Otto Lowei

    Dr Otto Lowei won Noble prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Earlier it was unknown whether nerve impulses are transmitted electrically or chemically. He dissected the beating hearts of two frogs one with vagus nerve(the vagus nerve controls the heart rate) another heart was on its own. Both the hearts were bathed in Ringer's solution and then the vagus nerve of the first heart was electrically simulated , the heart beat slower. Lowei took some of the liquid form the first heart and then applied it to the second heart. On applying the liquid the second heart beat slower . Thus it became clear that some chemical from the vagus nerve was controlling the rate of heart beats. The chemical was initially called Vagusstoff which was later found to acetylcholine.

       Now Lowei said the motivation for the experiment came to him in a dream in his own words :

"The night before Easter Sunday of that year I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at 6 o'clock in the morning that during the night I had written down something most important, but I was unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at 3 o'clock, the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered 17 years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a single experiment on a frog's heart according to the nocturnal design."

[I will include more wonderful things that happened being inspired by dreams on this post very soon.]

[Updating this post with more wonderful dreams]

 I live in a state of India called West Bengal and I am a great fan and follower of Swami Vivekananda. So when I think about great dreams how do I forget great dreams associated with this man. So I will put some dreams that are associated with Swami Vivekananda his guru Ramakrishna Paramhamsa. 

   Swami Vivekananda's guru Ramakrishna Paramhamsa was a priest of the Dakshineshwar Kali temple . Now there is a divine dream connection to the Dakshineswar Kali temple. Rani Rashmoni was preparing to leave for Kashi to express her devotions to the divine mother , the night before she had a dream in which the Divine Mother appeared in front for her and said 

"There is no need to go to Banaras. Install my statue in a beautiful temple on the banks of the Ganges river and arrange for my worship there. Then I shall manifest myself in the image and accept worship at that place."

Rani Rashmoni

Dakshineshwar Temple

    Rani Rashmoni followed the instructions bought 20 acres of land on the banks of the Ganga River and got a temple built there. Ramkumar Chattopadhay was the chief priest in time he brought in his younger brother Gadadhar Chattopadhay(Gadai) to assist him, Ramkumar died in some after that Gadai who later went on to become Ramakrishna Paramhamsa became the chief priest. Ramakrishna stayed there as a priest till his death. Dakshineshwar is the same temple when Swami Vivekanda(then Narendranath Dutta) and other boys were trained by Ramakrishna Paramhamsa who later on went ahead to build the Ramakrishna Mission. 

Swami Vivekananda

     Swami Vivekananda was adviced by many people including Maharaja Ajay Singh of Kehtri to visit US to attain the Parliament of Religions. While in an uncertain state of mind one night he had a dream:

(The following is an excerpt from Swami Nikhilananda's biography of Swami Vivekananda)

"The Swami one day had a symbolic dream, in which he saw Sri Ramakrishna walking into the water of the ocean and beckoning him to follow. He also heard the authoritative word 'Go!' In response to a letter that he had written to Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother, she gave him her blessings for the fulfilment of his desire, knowing that it was Ramakrishna's wish that he should undertake thejourney to America. And now, at last, he felt sure of his call."

    

Space Travel Future

From Einstein's special theory of relativity we learn that time is not uniform. For different observers in space time passes differently depending upon their relative speeds. 

The following is the expression for time dilation:

Where T= change in time of a body moving with velocity v 

           Tr = change in time of a body at rest 

             c= velocity of light in vacuum

Now for small values of v the time passing in both the mediums is same, that's why here on earth we find that there is hardly any difference between the time passing for a man standing in a bus stop as compared to a man travelling in a car. 

But if we build a spacecraft which has some kind of fuel that can constantly accelerate it and gain speeds upto 99.9999% , in that case 1 day (24 hours) in the spaceship would be equivalent to 707 days on earth. Such space ships can reach distant stars and for the astronauts on board very little time would passed in the entire travel . But when they come back to earth thousands of years would have passed. 

      NASA's Kepler mission is observing 150000 stars with earth like planets in their orbit. Maybe in the future a 100 ,200 years from now we would send batches of humans to those planets , to start a human colony over there. A few hundred years from now when we have the technology . Human civilizations main target would be to travel explore and spread around the universe. 

Humans and sex

Life began on earth starting form the phase of amoeba and then evolved to higher and higher organisms, it further got subdivided into plant and animal kingdom. The animal kingdom varied from single cell beings to complex multi cellular organisms as big as Dinosaurs in the past and Blue Whales today.

     The single cell organisms reproduced asexually by growing and dividing itself, the cells of our body divide like that. But as the single cell organisms later evolved into multi cellular organisms that were more complex genetically, for these organisms, asexual reproduction was replaced by sexual reproduction. The same organisms were divided into two sexes male and female. 

       For sexual reproduction the male and female mated and then a new organism of the same species came into existence. The male has a reproductive organ called the penis, in the testicles sperm is produced. During sexual intercourse the penis penetrates into the vagina of the female ultimately ejaculating the seamen which contains millions of sperms that would move towards egg .

So what we call sex is actually a process that  is designed by nature so that life continues on earth. The sexual enjoyment is the incentive that is given by nature so that animals get into the act of sexual intercourse.

Sexual reproduction leads to mixing of genes of two different animals of the same species, as a result the defects in the genes of one organism are corrected by the genes of other organism. The rate of population growth becomes slower but the rate of evolution becomes faster, since there is mixing of genes of two organisms involved.  

That's why in animals there exists the instinct of mating between males and females of the species. On sexual intercourse there is a transfer of male semen that contains the sperm that fuses with the female egg. The same is true in case of us Humans.

What we feel as lust is nothing but the same natural urge to copulate with the opposite sex of our species. The penetrative sexual intercourse that involves the penetration of male penis into the vagina of female ultimately results in the male ejaculating the seamen inside the vagina of the female. The sperms contained in the seamen move ahead in an attempt to fuse with the egg.

       As humans we are higher creatures , living beings who can think higher and control nature. Man has become what he is by controlling nature and also our basic sexual instinct.  The pleasure that animals feel is the incentive given by nature to get into the act of sexual intercourse. However humans can control this by raising above lust.

              Men have been there who gave up lust in thought , word and action. This is called Bramhacharya and the practice of bramhacharya for a long period of time is said to result in tremendous spiritual energy. In this context I will quote Swami Vivekananda from Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda in his explanation of Patanjali Yogasutras  he says:

ब्रह्मचर्यप्रतिष्ठायां वीर्यलाभः ॥३८॥

38. By the establishment of continence energy is gained.

The chaste brain has tremendous energy and gigantic will-power. Without chastity there can be no spiritual strength. Continence gives wonderful control over mankind. The spiritual leaders of men have been very continent, and this is what gave them power. Therefore the Yogi must be continent.

On another occasion he says 

"Is there a greater strength than that of Brahmacharya—purity, my boy?"

         However the ideal of Bramhacharya is practiced only by few. Most men marry get a wife for themselves and she is the one who remains the sex partner of the man for the rest of his life, this is the best level of sexual control for most men. 

     But there remains people who are taught wrongly that they would get sick without sexual intercourse. That they are being fools not having sex or simply out of ignorance give into their basic instincts.  Even in humans some men and women get so addicted to their sexual urge that they end up having sexual intercourse outside their marriage or having multiple sex partners.

        The above problem is more in case of human males. There are women who work as sex workers (prostitutes) whose work is to have sexual intercourse with men in return of money . In India by government statistics there were about 2.8 million  female sex workers in the year 2007 and the sad part about it is that the number actually doubled in a decade.  Again the numbers are from 2007 the numbers now are surely above 3 million. Out of this 3 million 1.2 million are children. 

         This means that at least 8-9 million men visit brothels each day a big proportion of them are married men. Thus it is very much possible that half of India's adult male population have sex with prostitutes. 

      Most of the sex workers work out of dire need, either because of poverty or they are forced to work as sex workers by some of their family members. Many of the girls are trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh who work in India as sex workers, some of the sex workers are daughters of prostitutes and work in this profession because the society will not accept them back. 

      Somehow mother nature has hit back at human lust by coming out with a virus called Human Immuno Virus(HIV) which leads to a syndrome called AIDS(Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome) . A person suffering with AIDS has no effect of medicines on him. AIDS spread through 1) Unprotected sexual intercourse 2) Blood transfusion from an AIDS affected individual to someone else 3) From a HIV affected pregnant mother to her baby in the womb. 

     Millions of people in the world are affected by AIDS and millions have died. It is a fact that most sex workers have unprotected sexual intercourse with their clients and therefore have a very high probability of contracting AIDS. 

     Currently there is no vaccine to prevent HIV. 

The human lust can be controlled through willpower also yoga and meditation helps.

        

Understanding Relativistic Mass

Do you know that the mass of a body increases with increase in its speed. From Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity we get

where M = mass of a body moving with velocity v.
           Mo= mass of the body at rest(ie v=0)
            c   = velocity of light in vacuum

     Now we do not observe it in our daily lives since the fastest we move here on earth is maybe at 100 , 200 or at the most 300 km per hr . If you substitute this velocities in the above equations the differences in mass is negligible. However as the speed approaches the speed of light the difference becomes more and more pronounced.  

     So what does it imply :
1) As a body moves faster it gets heavier. 

-If a body becomes as fast as half the speed of light its mass increases by just 50% of the rest mass. 

-If a body attains 90% of the speed of light its mass becomes 2.29 times more than the rest mass.

-If a body attains 99% of the speed of light its mass becomes more than 7.1 times the rest mass.

-If a body attains 99.9% of the speed of light its mass becomes 22.366 times the rest mass. 

-If a body attains 99.99% of the speed of light its mass becomes 70.71 times the rest mass.

-If a body attains 99.999999999% of the speed of light its mass becomes 22360.67 times the rest mass.

-If a body attains 99.999999999999% of the speed of light its mass becomes 707114.60 times the rest mass of the body.

      So from the above data it is clear that at very high velocities approaching the speeds of light a small increase in velocity leads to big increase in mass. Also it would require lot more kinetic energy at high speeds to accelerate the body since the mass is constantly increasing. 

      We do not come across such speeds in normal life except for certain high energy labs like CERN's  Large Hadron Collider and only subatomic particles which have extremely low mass can be accelerated to this speeds with the technology that we have today. 

      
            

Stan Lee's superhumans.

I am a fan of History TV18 's programme Stan Lee Superhumans. Its amazing the number of people they have found who can do amazing things . Some martial art expert can make his opponents faint without touching their body just by the power of Chi. They showed another Sensei who can actually make any animal go to sleep using the power of Chi(the term in Sanskrit for CHI is Prana) .

      Blind man who can see with his mind's eye. A knifethrower throwing knives with unbelievable accuracy, an American Football quarterback who can throw the football to a catcher who is travelling in a car at a great distance with perfect accuracy. People who can break steel with their head. People who can balance their bodies head first on a nail and do many many many kinds of freakish things.

    Every time one watches the show one thinks how little we know about the human body and mind. How can someone swim in ice cold water for hours without being affected while ordinary person will die in a matter of minutes. Most of the  moves shown by the people in the show are so dangerous that if ordinary people try it they will end up doing considerable damages to their bodies. 

    But watching the show has actually made me curious about how much really we know about our body and mind. There is lot about nature that is left to be discovered. Especially amazing moves made by the monks like hanging heavy weight from their eyelids which biology or physics would tell us that will destroy the eyes. They claim that they have a hidden power called Chi that they have mastered by years of meditation and martial arts practice. 

      Just a few days ago saw an episode in which a person was shown who is able to move a 140 ton truck by the power of his arms ordinary people would struggle to move even a 1 ton vehicle with their hands. 

       The list in endless but among us live people who can do amazing things with their bodies and minds.

The tiny thing called the sun

       When it was not known that the sun was not the only star in the universe it was regarded as god as the sole sustainer of life on earth. However as astronomy advanced with the development of better telescopes it was discovered that the sun was just another star that is nearest to the earth. There are quadrillions of other stars in the universe many of whom are much larger than our sun

       This stars are basically composed of Hydrogen atoms in plasma state of matter . At the core of the sun  the temperature exceeds 1 million degree centigrade , this temperature is ideal for initiation of a thermonuclear fusion reaction in which two hydrogen nuclei fuse to form a helium nucleus . The mass of this helium nucleus is slightly less than than the combined mass of the two hydrogen nuclei . The disappeared mass is actually converted into energy, the amount of energy is given by the equation (E=mXcXc) . Thus the equation indicates that a massive amount of energy is released this energy is transferred across the solar system in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The same phenomenon goes on in all other stars.

       In terms of volume the sun is more than a million times larger than the earth and in terms of weight the sun is more than 1,00,000 times heavier than the earth. But in the universe there are stars that have a radius that is more than 1500 times that of the sun. Which makes them 3.3 million times larger and more massive than the sun. Every galaxy in the universe has a super massive blackhole at the centre. There are super massive black holes that are 17 billion times more massive than the sun. The stars and other planetary bodies encircle this black hole and revolve around it.

      Just a few days ago NASA shared photograph of a Pulsar that is radiating electromagnetic energy at the rate of 10 million suns a second. While a supernovae which is an exploding star can radiate an amount of energy that is equivalent to what the Sun or any other ordinary star radiates in its entire lifetime before is fades away in a few weeks or few months . 

      So in terms of size and the amount of energy radiated  there are stellar bodies in the universe in front of which our sun appears to be a microsome. 

    

Space

"Space the final frontier" the famous beginning line of long running TV soap Star Trek tells us about the ultimate ambition of humankind. Ever since humans existed on the face of earth they wondered what is up there in the sky? What are those twinkling stars ? Why there are some stars that don't twinkle at all? Why does the sun travel across the sky ? and what is there beyond the sky? There were myths and legends in ancient times the sun , moon and stars were called gods in different cultures. Some races called themselves decedents of sun. Some called themselves decedents of moons. Some planet was called the the god of war and another planet was called the goddess of love. The periodic partial and full view of the moon that humans got to see because of the shadow of the earth falling on the moon while the moon was rotating around the earth made some cultures think that the moon was swallowed up by some demon , or some curse from a sage makes it shirk and then regain its shape. Some believed that the position of the stars in the sky determines the future of people .

         This continued for centuries later on ancient astronomers from India, China ,Europe  made different observations of the motions of stars and planets made some calculations about the orbital periods of various planets that can be observed from the naked eye. But the major change came with the invention of telescope by Galileo and the subsequent improvements made in its design, humans started knowing more facts about the universe. They discovered Milky Way as a Galaxy and later on discovered that there are billions of galaxies in the observable universe.

     The General Theory of Relativity helped to explain various phenomenons in the universe that could not be explained by Newtonian theory of Gravity. As humans knew more and more about the universe the desire to visit moon and other planets in solar system grew. Rocket technology has been there since a long time mostly used in war it was also used in World War and there was lot of improvement done in rocket technology between World War 1 and World War 2 , while it was for military purposes then, after the world war the focus began shifting on peaceful uses of rocket technology .The Russians and Americans started working on space technology and developed rockets that were powerful enough the send satellites that would orbit around earth and use it for the purpose of communication. The following years showed rapid development in rocket technology. 

         In the Cold War era there was a race between USA and USSR for space dominance . The USSR became the first nation to launch a satellite and then put a man in space. The following years saw great competition between USA and USSR both countries launched satellites and sent orbiters and probes to different planets including the Moon. The space race ended with the Apollo mission in which man for the first time set his foot on moon. 

    As for India its space journey began with the launch of Aryabhatta the first Indian satellite launched from USSR. So India was actually one of the early entrants into the space age. At that time it was unthinkable for a developing nation to get into space race . Eventually India developed its own satellite launch vehicle the first was SLV that launched Rohini series of satellites with 50% success rate. Followed by ASLV for heavier satellites weighing upto 150 kilos ASLV had a success rate of 25%. Then came PSLV only the first launch was a faliure after that next 26 launches were success however in 1997 the launch was only a partial success since the fourth stage underperformed and the satellite was set to a lower than expected orbit. However the satellites own propulsion was used to get it into the correct orbit. So one can consider that PSLV has a success rate of 96%. 

        The biggest success of PSLV is surely the success in launching Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan .Chandrayaan detected water in form of solid ice present on lunar poles ,  ISRO became only the fourth space agency in the world to successfully launch an orbiter into Mars. India was the first country to have its mars mission as a success. The Mars Orbiter Mission(MOM) cost only $ 74 million a fraction of other Mars missions. 

      Space research is an expensive business with no immediate returns so if other space agencies collaborate with ISRO they will save on costs. They will achieve more for the same amount of money. 

      At the moment only Voyger 1 has gone beyond the solar system. The universe is so vast that the star that is nearest to our solar system is 4.2 light years away. To send space probes to distant stars we would require engines that can travel almost at the speed of light or find some regions in space with wormhole that would help it go directly to a desired location in space.