Knowledge and Superstitions

One trait common among all individuals is curiosity. As man evolved into more and more intelligent species his curiosity levels kept going up. While others animals were content with eating, drinking, sleeping and having sex, man went a step further. Humans wanted to know, who they are and how did their existence, the existence of everything came into being.

Why did the sun exist, why after sunset there were stars and what did the stars really show. What is the moon and why did the moon exist. Then came the theory of God, someone must have created us and that's God. So humans started praying, sacrificing, worshipping etc to please god. Humans started regarding the Sun, Water and other stars and planets as gods.

Thousands of stories and blind beliefs came into existence that some demon was responsible for the solar and lunar eclipse. The demon gulped up the sun or the moon for some time and then released it. When people got frightened they started remembering their creator, about which they had heard stories from others and about whom, a lot was written by their ancestors.

Conditions got so worse that anyone questioning the things written in ancient texts was persecuted. Copernicus, when he proposed that the Sun was at the centre of the solar system and other planets including the earth revolved around it was burned to death by the Catholic Church. Galileo was jailed and not released until he apologised.

But ultimately with development in science and technology we knew that most of things that were written in old books had no basis in terms of reality. The sun was no god but a massive sphere of hydrogen nuclei in plasma state of matter, this hydrogen nuclei are constantly undergoing nuclear fusion reaction.

So this is how various superstitions regarding the universe finally disappeared. Superstitions exists in every culture , everywhere around the world. However all the superstitions are dispelled by scientific discoveries.

Superstition hold people back and instill unnecessary fears. Till today there are people who believe in astrology, now astrology was based on the relative positions of the stars that could be seen by the naked eye. Trillions of other stars exist that cannot be seen through the naked eye. Again isn't it hilarious that the universe can actually tell what is gonna happen to us in the future. But being fearful about the feature makes them belive in all the junk that astrologers tell people. 

The priests, astrologers, babas all tap into people's fears and run their business, where there is ignorance there is superstition. Such superstitions were responsible for degradation of India, from a strong and rich nation to a weak and poor nation. Till today the nation suffers because of ignorance and blind beliefs. 

The biggest detriment to India's progress has been population explosion since Independence. A simple operation could have stopped many people from having large families, but false beliefs like it may lead to loss of manhood and muscle power prevented millions from undergoing the operation and thus they kept adding kids to their family. The resources of the family was divided, the kids could not be taken care of well because of economic constraints. The result - millions of unhappy, uneducated families and poor families and they live a really pitiable life. 

Knowledge is power, the cause of all unhappiness is ignorance and the cause of contentment and joy is knowledge. Learning is not a one day phenomenon, neither it is done only during formal education. Learning and knowledge acquisition is a life long process.  

India - Future development

In India most of the people are dependent on agriculture as a means of their livelihood. However looking into the future one can clearly see that agriculture would be even more mechanised in the future.Futuristically speaking one can see robots doing the routine tasks with humans guiding them. So one man is enough for hundreds of hectares of land, the challenge of pests can be met through artificial intelligence controlled pest control systems. Biotechnology and genetic engineering will give us higher yielding variety of seeds.

Already there is huge scope of increase of farm productivity in India, advancements in technology will make the farms more productive. Since a huge tract of land can be taken care of by one man, manual labour of hundreds of millions of farmers will not be needed. So how are they going to feed themselves. Well, since the farms productivity will be many times more than what it is today. The government has to make sure that ample resources reach this people. They must have access to food, clothing, medication,education and all the other basic necessities of life. 

It would be interesting to see how this people are deployed in other sectors of the economy. As farmers they are entrepreneurs, the best employment that anyone can have. They have their own land where they can grow the crop of their choice, sell their product in the market. However since a huge section of Indians are involved in farming and area of land per farmer is low, most of the farmers in India are poor. 

Also Indian farming lack lots of basic facilities like availability of 24 hour steady electricity, access to irrigation facilities, pest control. Also remote villages in India lack medical facilities, good roads and lack in terms of quality educational facilities. The answer to all these problems is technology. Education levels must go up among Indians. If that happens they will be able to solve lot of their problems themselves.

Good Education would lead to :-

• Choosing the correct leaders who will work for them, rather than robbing them.
• They will understand the value of family planning and keeping their families small by bearing less children.
• Accessing the Internet and other modes of information and knowledge to maximise their farm productivity and exploring other areas of opportunity. 

In the above point the first point is very important since choosing right leaders is vital for economic prosperity and good law and order in the region. Its because of ignorance that people get fooled by selfish politicians and they in turn loot the masses. 

Consider this fact in the last 10 years along India has added an extra Brazil to its population. Providing good education, medical and other facilities to this rapidly growing population is a big challenge. Had India been able to contain this population growth we would have been a developed nation long ago. This again takes us back to our first point, the importance of good leaders. 

While they are brilliant at campaigning during the elections .Immediately after they get their seats, they forget about the people and are busy filling up their pockets at the cost of ordinary people. They never focused hard on controlling the growth of population and that's why we have come to such a situation today. 

One thing is for sure the cure of almost all of India's problems lies in political will, good education and scientific and technological advancements. 

Studying the Universe.

Before we knew that the sun was a gigantic mass of hydrogen atoms in plasma state in which thermonuclear fusion is going on, that is generating lot of energy. The sun was thought to be a God, there were people across the world who thought that they were the descendants of sun. 

In India millions of people practice a set of postures saluting the sun, the practice is known as suryanamaskar. You will find people offering water to sun every morning in India. Many festivals are timed depending on the position of the sun in the sky. Again when solar eclipse used to happen, people were frightened, many thought that some demon was trying to eat the sun. 

The sun, the wind, water , earth were all considered to be gods. So many myths and stories used to exist about the sun god. In Hindu mythology he is considered to be an important god, the ancient sages used to practice yagyas to appease the sun. A yagya is a ritual in which a bunch on sages would sit around a fire, then chant some mantras in Sanskrit while keeping the fire lit up by pouring ghee in it at the end or even in the middle they would sacrifice an animal and thought that it pleased the God. Similar practices existed to appease the rain god(Indra) and other gods. 

So look what ignorance can do, people end up doing all kinds of stupid things. 

Ultimately it was discovered that the sun was but a gigantic mass of hydrogen atoms in plasma state of matter , that is continuously undergoing nuclear fusion reaction, which is generating tremendous amount of energy. A microcosmic fraction of the energy reaches the earth in form of electromagnetic radiation. However this energy is enough for the all the living being on earth. The radiation from the sun has played a vital role in generation, sustenance and continuation of life on earth. 

The sun has no consciousness of its own, so its no god. The sun is just one of the quadrillions of stars that exists in the universe. The study of astronomy has been exciting and it has revealed this truths about the universe. There may huge amount of things about which we are yet not aware of. 

The study of universe is absolutely essential, for the study of  the cosmos is closely linked to our consciousness.  What are we? Aren't we made of the same stuff that blurted out during the big bang. Our bodies comprise of the same matter that constitutes the rest of the universe. We are not different from the universe but we are a part of it and in studying the universe, we are actually on a path of self discovery, about ourselves and our creation. 

Electron

As I mentioned in the earlier blog post matter has a wave like nature along with a particle like nature. However it is only apparent in case of subatomic particles since they have very little mass.  Now because of the wave like nature there is fundamental uncertainty in determining the position of  a subatomic particle. An electron's mass is 9.1X10^-31while the mass of a proton is 1.673X10^-27kg.

Mathematical calculations for fundamental uncertainty to determine the position of electron actually exceeds the radius of the nucleus of an atom and hence you never find electron inside the nucleus of an atom. 

This fundamental uncertainty is the reason why one cannot plot an exact circular path of the rotation of the electron around the nucleus. One can only plot a probability region where the electron is most likely to be found around the nucleus. Also the wavelike nature of a very light particle like the electron makes its orbit spherical rather than circular.

Electrons are very important because the electricity that is produced is due to the flow of electrons. All electrons carry a negative charge. If you are using a solar cell, the phenomenon by which the electricity if generated is called PhotoElectricity. It works this way:-

The electrons in the outermost shell of the atom are least strongly bound to the nucleus. When this atom absorbs a photon, the photon's energy is transmitted to the atom. If this energy exceeds the binding energy of nucleus and the electron then the electron is release from the atom and it is now a free electron. When this electron is in an electric field, it will travel across the circuit thus generating electricity. The solar panels are made from silicon or germanium and this materials have the property of generating photoelectricity absorbing photoelectrons from visible light. Charge of an electron is about 1.602X10^-19 coulomb

Proton carries an equivalent amount of opposite charge but it much heavier than electron, hence it resides inside the nucleus and it is more strongly bound to the nucleus. 

Wave Magic

Waves or vibrations are an integral part of the universe.

De Broglie showed that matter not only has a particle like nature it also has a wave like nature, only that the wave like nature of matter is not observable to the human eye. The main reason for this is that human eye cannot detect microscopic or subatomic particles. In case of of larger objects the wave lengths is so long that the wave like nature is not apparent.

What are waves. Waves are but regular disturbances in a medium. Sound waves are disturbances in air, while visible light is disturbances in electromagnetic field. The particle of light is known as photon. The energy of a photon is directly proportion to its frequency. Plants absorb this photons from sunlight during the process of photosynthesis. They manufacture their own food by absorbing this photon.

Music is rhythmic sound that tends to have some effect on the mind. Now why does this effect happen? Why do we like certain forms of music or sound like the song of a cuckoo but don't like the unrythmic sound made by a crow. Certain people have the ability generate soul stirring music, how do they have this ability? and why we are so much attracted towards their music? 

We don't realize how much we are surrounded by such waves. The AC electricity that we receive, when its magnitude and direction are plotted in a graph, it would generate a wavelike profile. Our heart that pumps blood to all the parts of the body beats rhythmically. 

The phenomenon of resonance has a very vital importance in tuning musical instruments to the right frequency. This phenomenon is very important and its knowledge is also very important to engineers and scientists. Take the example of Tacoma Bridge disaster , the entire bridge was destroyed because of the phenomenon of resonance, when the natural frequency of the bridge was matched by the frequency produced due to 40 mph winds.

Nicola Tesla once said " If you want to understand the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration". Tesla is one of the greatest scientist of all times and this shows that the study of waves i.e. frequency, vibration, wavelength, resonance etc is very vital. 

PLASMA

Ordinary matter can exist in four states, three are most commonly observable to us. The three states that we commonly observe are solid, liquid and gas.

However there exists a fourth state of matter and it happens to be the most common state of ordinary matter in the entire universe, but it is not commonly observed by us on earth. That state of matter is called plasma. 99% of the ordinary matter in the universe is in plasma state. So on earth's surface we are essentially living in an island that is free from matter that is in plasma state. 

In the plasma state of matter is a combination of highly ionised atoms and free electrons. The sun and other stars comprises of hydrogen atoms in plasma state of matter i.e. there is no electrons moving around the nucleus of those atoms they are all positively charged.

High temperatures in the core of the sun, more than 1 million degree Kelvin, results in combining of two Hydrogen nuclei into a Helium nucleus. The mass of the Helium nucleus is slightly less than that of the combined mass of the two Hydrogen atoms, the mass that is disappeared is converted into energy. The magnitude of this energy is equal to 

      Energy = (change in mass)X(velocity of light in vacuum)X(velocity of light in vacuum)

This reaction is called nuclear fusion reaction and the entire energy of the sun and other stars are produced in this way. So although matter in plasma state is not available on the surface of the earth it is important to us. Actually high temperatures at the core of the sun is the reason because of which matter goes into plasma state. Even the thunderbolt of lightening is plasma. 

On earth a small amount of plasma matter can be created by subjecting gases to high magnetic or electric field. Scientists are highly interested in plasma state of matter and lot of research is being done in this direction. 

What we see is not exactly what we get, if you are watching stuff on earth you will be deluded to thinking that matter has only 3 states solid , liquid and gas. But once we searched the universe we found , no that's not correct most of the matter is in plasma state. We don't know how many more secrets that the universe has that we are yet to discover. This search will be an exciting journey for humankind.

The machines of Future and 3D printing

Amazing things are possible in the world of science and technology. Albert Einstein rightly said "Facts can be stranger than fiction". Consider the first computer or the Babbage's analytical engine and compare it to the fastest computer today, or even your desktop/laptop or mobile phone for that matter. Your mobile phone is way more powerful than than the first computer or even computers that were used around 20 years ago.

3D printing is only now catching up, people are mesmerised by the power of 3d printing. The 3D printing machines are getting cheaper, better and faster. Engineers are working on technologies to 3D print houses, already some residential structures are made by 3D printing and that too in a very short amount of time.

Looking forward, with 3D printing technology, in the future we may have 3D printer that can print out other 3D printing machines. Only the raw materials have to be provided to the 3D printers for that purpose.

Now consider the example of a tree. A tree normally germinates out of the seed. It absorbs the nutrients from the soil along with water and with the help of sunlight it carries out the process of photosynthesis and produces its own food. Almost every part of a plant or tree is edible to some animal or other.

Micro-organisms and termites eat the wood; ants, cattle etc eat the leaves and other animals as well as humans can consume the fruits. The fruits themselves contain the seeds that can again give birth to a new plant. This is a beautiful self controlled food generation system of nature.

Now as humans can we intervene and make a 3D printer that can mimic this process. Just as the plants, trees etc absorb nutrients and water from the soil, in a similar way we can provide soil and water as the raw materials to the machine and the machine then converts the soil and water into more basic substances and then produce the stuff that we want be it food, wood or any other organic material. In theory this is possible.

3D printing has achieved the above mentioned dream to some extent. NASA is planning to make 3D printers for astronauts to give them 3d printed food in space. There are already 3D printed artificial animal tissues being made. So it is technologically possible to have 3D printed meat, hence a 3D printed artificial hamburger is a possibility that one cannot deny.

The problems that technology created in the past like air, water and noise pollution have their solutions in technology as well. The air pollution caused by cars and coal fired power plants can be sorted out by utilization of wind, tidal and solar power.

The technology of 3D printing is most promising. In the future our houses, cars and almost everything maybe 3d printed. 3D printed items are also cheaper, there have been prosthetic limbs made for amputees that are customised for their needs and they are cheaper than the traditionally manufactured prosthetics.

 An example is given in the video below.

You can see how this 3D printed prosthetic arm not only costs less but also it is better in terms of functionality since it is customised for the amputee, depending on the structure and functionality of the portion of the body that is incomplete. 

Note that the above video is an example of the current state of technology, this technology will advance in the future and amazing things will be possible.