Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Friday, September 23, 2016
Questioning Vivekananda
This is a small part of a lecture given by Swami Vivekananda on January 8, 1900.
I was in the city of Hyderabad(the Hyderabad mentioned over here is most probably Hyderabad, Sindh. Which is now in Pakistan.) in India, and I was told of a Brâhmin there who could produce numbers of things from where, nobody knew. This man was in business there; he was a respectable gentleman. And I asked him to show me his tricks. It so happened that this man had a fever, and in India there is a general belief that if a holy man puts his hand on a sick man he would be well. This Brahmin came to me and said, "Sir, put your hand on my head, so that my fever may be cured." I said, "Very good; but you show me your tricks." He promised. I put my hand on his head as desired, and later he came to fulfil his promise. He had only a strip of cloth about his loins, we took off everything else from him. I had a blanket which I gave him to wrap round himself, because it was cold, and made him sit in a corner. Twenty-five pairs of eyes were looking at him. And he said, "Now, look, write down anything you want." We all wrote down names of fruits that never grew in that country, bunches of grapes, oranges, and so on. And we gave him those bits of paper. And there came from under his blanket, bushels of grapes, oranges, and so forth, so much that if all that fruit was weighed, it would have been twice as heavy as the man. He asked us to eat the fruit. Some of us objected, thinking it was hypnotism; but the man began eating himself — so we all ate. It was all right.
He ended by producing a mass of roses. Each flower was perfect, with dew-drops on the petals, not one crushed, not one injured. And masses of them! When I asked the man for an explanation, he said, "It is all sleight of hand."
Whatever it was, it seemed to be impossible that it could be sleight of hand merely. From whence could he have got such large quantities of things?
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Reading this piece raises more questions than it gives answers. First of all, if it is true that such a man did exist then why we don't find any record of the man by anyone else?
Secondly Why the man did not use his powers to feed the starving and poor. It was a well known fact that most of India back then was poor and people were starving?
Finally why didn't Vivekananda learn the tricks himself and feed the people whom he thought about so much?
The above questions raise an obvious question. Did Vivekananda create a story while giving his lecture? What was the need of such a lecture. ?
It is a very well known fact that one cannot create stuff out of zero. One form of matter can be transformed into another form of matter and why today we don't have a single person who can emulate such a feat.
Obviously what's described by him violates the laws of physics. So I believe its very much possible that he just made a story up while giving his lecture.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Double Solution - Producing petroleum from waste plastic
Plastics are basically hydrocarbons that are extracted from petroleum. Plastics are used in every sphere of life whether it be bags, electronic devices, clothing, sports material, construction, vehicles etc.. While plastics are low cost and durable once the plastic products are of no use they are disposed off in the garbage bins. It is here that the problem starts.
It takes hundreds of years for plastics to completely decompose as a result plastic waste is on a rise and its choking up the oceans and rivers across the world for years. However scientists from across the world and India have come up with solutions that would not only convert this waste plastic into gold but also eliminate the land and water pollution that is caused because of plastics.
As mentioned earlier plastics are hydrocarbons produced from crude oil. Hence if we can find a technology that can reconvert waste plastic back to crude oil, we can solve many of our problems. Over the last couple of years scientists in India, US and a few other countries have successfully extracted petroleum from waste plastic. In fact Indian Railways had announced its plan to set up a plant to produce diesel from waste plastic back in April 2015.
According to government figures 60 Indian cities produce 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year. As per the report one ton of waste plastic can produce 850 litres of diesel/petrol. So we can get millions of litres of petrol and diesel from waste plastic that would reduce our oil import bills and eliminate the pollution caused by plastic waste.
Globally speaking each year 8 million tonnes of plastic is dumped into the oceans. So this technology will reduce our need to extract oil from wells and at the same time we can prevent any plastic going into the oceans. In fact if we are able to retrieve at least some of the plastic that is dumped in the oceans we can get billions of litres of petrol and diesel.
This is an example of the advantage that we have when we invest in science and technology research. We not only find solutions of complex problems but also enrich our lives.
It takes hundreds of years for plastics to completely decompose as a result plastic waste is on a rise and its choking up the oceans and rivers across the world for years. However scientists from across the world and India have come up with solutions that would not only convert this waste plastic into gold but also eliminate the land and water pollution that is caused because of plastics.
As mentioned earlier plastics are hydrocarbons produced from crude oil. Hence if we can find a technology that can reconvert waste plastic back to crude oil, we can solve many of our problems. Over the last couple of years scientists in India, US and a few other countries have successfully extracted petroleum from waste plastic. In fact Indian Railways had announced its plan to set up a plant to produce diesel from waste plastic back in April 2015.
According to government figures 60 Indian cities produce 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year. As per the report one ton of waste plastic can produce 850 litres of diesel/petrol. So we can get millions of litres of petrol and diesel from waste plastic that would reduce our oil import bills and eliminate the pollution caused by plastic waste.
Globally speaking each year 8 million tonnes of plastic is dumped into the oceans. So this technology will reduce our need to extract oil from wells and at the same time we can prevent any plastic going into the oceans. In fact if we are able to retrieve at least some of the plastic that is dumped in the oceans we can get billions of litres of petrol and diesel.
This is an example of the advantage that we have when we invest in science and technology research. We not only find solutions of complex problems but also enrich our lives.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Astrology is no science
Astrology has been there since ancient times. It was supposed to be a science that would foretell human future. People believed in astrology got their horoscopes made. In India astrology was taught to all Brahmins as a subject.
However the belief in astrology was more out of fear and the priests of ancient times fueled that fear by telling the people about various shortcomings and bad events that are going to happen in one's life and how can it can be overcome. The Brahmins got lots of gifts from people and kings and also tremendous amount of respect in the society because of this.
Astrology is supposed to tell us about of the future by just looking up to the stars in the sky. In ancient times when the rules of astronomy were formulated, humans can only look up to the sky and believed that what they saw comprised of the entire universe a few thousand stars, a moon, the sun and a few planets.
It was only much later that the telescope was invented and subsequent rapid development in technology led to the discovery of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each of them. The universe also comprises of black holes. Later it was discovered that the major amount of universe comprises of invisible dark matter and dark energy.
It is absolutely impossible for the astrologers to take all this celestial bodies into account and formulate any set of rules that would predict the future of an individual. Astrology is all myth. It is no science at all. People believe in astrology out of fear and a bunch of unscrupulous astrologers make good money out of their fear.
So my advice to you all is "Stay away from astrologers and astrology".
However the belief in astrology was more out of fear and the priests of ancient times fueled that fear by telling the people about various shortcomings and bad events that are going to happen in one's life and how can it can be overcome. The Brahmins got lots of gifts from people and kings and also tremendous amount of respect in the society because of this.
Astrology is supposed to tell us about of the future by just looking up to the stars in the sky. In ancient times when the rules of astronomy were formulated, humans can only look up to the sky and believed that what they saw comprised of the entire universe a few thousand stars, a moon, the sun and a few planets.
It was only much later that the telescope was invented and subsequent rapid development in technology led to the discovery of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each of them. The universe also comprises of black holes. Later it was discovered that the major amount of universe comprises of invisible dark matter and dark energy.
It is absolutely impossible for the astrologers to take all this celestial bodies into account and formulate any set of rules that would predict the future of an individual. Astrology is all myth. It is no science at all. People believe in astrology out of fear and a bunch of unscrupulous astrologers make good money out of their fear.
So my advice to you all is "Stay away from astrologers and astrology".
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Softbank to acquire ARM Holding for $32 bn
Most of the microprocessors sold today are designed by ARM. ARM designs RISC microprocessors that are used in mobile phones, tablets other microcomputers. Single board computers like Raspberry Pi and Parallela also uses processors designed by ARM. ARM is a UK based company.
Now yesterday reports have come in media that says the Japan's Softbank will acqurie ARM Holdings for a neat sum of $32 billion. Currently ARM Holdings has a revenue of $1.281 billion and an operational profit of $537 million. ARM is indeed a highly profitable company. Softbank's offer to acquire ARM indicates that it is betting on the future. The company is willing to pay a price that is almost 28 times ARM's current revenue.
Actually Japan's Softbank has its eye set on the Internet of things, where every electronic device will be connected to each other and seamlessly share information among themselves. With the development in Deep Learning and AI, we can look forward to a future where we will have smarter televisions, refrigerators and microwave ovens. Softbank is surely aiming at this market and they are definitely expecting the market for low power consuming ARM processors to grow multiple fold.
Softbank may also be aiming computer, supercomputer and server market of the future, if they develop faster processors. With this Japanese will be back in the microprocessor industry and can potentially lead the market of the future. Softbank is not a small company either it has a global revenue of $86.42 billion.
The acquisition of ARM holdings will give them a foothold in the microprocessor and graphical processor industry, they are vital components for computing. We have to wait and see if this acquisition leads to some increase in the price of microprocessor which may lead to slight increase in the price of mobile phones and tablets.
The acquisition will be the biggest acquisition made by any Japanese company.
Now yesterday reports have come in media that says the Japan's Softbank will acqurie ARM Holdings for a neat sum of $32 billion. Currently ARM Holdings has a revenue of $1.281 billion and an operational profit of $537 million. ARM is indeed a highly profitable company. Softbank's offer to acquire ARM indicates that it is betting on the future. The company is willing to pay a price that is almost 28 times ARM's current revenue.
Actually Japan's Softbank has its eye set on the Internet of things, where every electronic device will be connected to each other and seamlessly share information among themselves. With the development in Deep Learning and AI, we can look forward to a future where we will have smarter televisions, refrigerators and microwave ovens. Softbank is surely aiming at this market and they are definitely expecting the market for low power consuming ARM processors to grow multiple fold.
Softbank may also be aiming computer, supercomputer and server market of the future, if they develop faster processors. With this Japanese will be back in the microprocessor industry and can potentially lead the market of the future. Softbank is not a small company either it has a global revenue of $86.42 billion.
The acquisition of ARM holdings will give them a foothold in the microprocessor and graphical processor industry, they are vital components for computing. We have to wait and see if this acquisition leads to some increase in the price of microprocessor which may lead to slight increase in the price of mobile phones and tablets.
The acquisition will be the biggest acquisition made by any Japanese company.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
God vs Science
The highest form of evolution of life on earth --- the humans have something that differentiates them from the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans are inherently inquisitive about their own existence. We want to know about everything we see, we see a stone and are intrigued how it got there? what is it made up of? How did it come into existence.
Our inborn curiosity and the quest of finding the truth has got us to where we are today. Every phenomenon that we observed in nature, we tried to find the cause of it. At times we made some assumptions, which in turn turned out to be completely false. In ancient times Indians were taught that the demons Rahu and Ketu completely or partially swallowed the sun and moon respectively and that was the cause of solar and lunar eclipses. Today we know that this is complete nonsense, but back in ancient times this eclipses were observed with fear.
What's more this Rahu and Ketu demons got into astrology. Astrology is a funny pseudo-science where people are trying to predict the future of a person depending on the positions of the planets and stars. Now this planets and stars are the ones that can only be observed by the naked eye. After the invention of telescope and after subsequent improvements in the telescope's design, millions of other stars and planets were discovered. However they will never make their way into the astrologer's algorithm.
People believe in astrology out of fear or superstition. No one is bothered to analyse the correctness of the astrologers predictions. In most cases the predictions are completely false or they are simply most likely situations that is likely to happen. Although in recent times faith in astrology has come down due to increase in scientific knowledge, it is still pretty high even in developed nations.
The fact is astrologers are busy making money by fooling people -- taking advantage of their insecurities, anxiety and fear. Most ancient books that we read today are full of false things are products of someone else's imagination.
The existence of God itself is questionable, sif god really exists then he will never mind communicating with us – his children. So all the stories of having seen god are either false or are some alien interactions. It is very much possible what people described as interactions with divine beings are but interactions with some advanced living beings from some other part of the universe.
This can be explained by taking our own example. When our technology advances to a level at which we can do space travel easily, change our physical forms as per situation, then we will be visiting different parts of the universe and try to make contact with living beings elsewhere in the universe.
There are many who simply tend to dismiss alien theory as pseudo-science, as a piece of fickle imagination. These people must understand the fact that the entire universe is made of the same material that exists on earth. The conditions in different planets that revolve around different stars maybe different, but that does not mean that there can't be life on any of those planets. They would be different kinds of living organisms. They might have evolved before us, they may be a million years ahead of us in terms of intelligence.
Considering the fact that our scientific and technological achievements are growing exponentially in a million years we will be super gods. We can't even imagine what knowledge we will have then and what amazing technology we will posses. Now if you imagine somewhere else in the universe there were beings who were similar to us just a million years ago, so by now they have achieved such high levels of knowledge and technological development that we can easily mistake them for god.
The ancient man was not aware of the vastness of the Universe. For him the earth was the centre of the Universe, the sun , other planets and stars revolved around earth. As technology developed we came to know that what we can observe with the naked eye was a less than micro-drop in the super vast ocean of the universe.
In our own galaxy there are over a 100 billion stars. Planets revolve around this stars. So there are at least a trillion planets in the Milky Way. Now there are trillions of such galaxies in the universe. To say that life does not exist anywhere else in the universe is the most ignorant and foolish statement that one can make.
Once we have the technology where we will become half robots -half humans along with the technology to travel anywhere in the universe and the know how of utilizing space-time wormholes to travel across the different parts of the universe, we would probably become gods to living beings that are in the initial stages of their evolution.
Our inborn curiosity and the quest of finding the truth has got us to where we are today. Every phenomenon that we observed in nature, we tried to find the cause of it. At times we made some assumptions, which in turn turned out to be completely false. In ancient times Indians were taught that the demons Rahu and Ketu completely or partially swallowed the sun and moon respectively and that was the cause of solar and lunar eclipses. Today we know that this is complete nonsense, but back in ancient times this eclipses were observed with fear.
What's more this Rahu and Ketu demons got into astrology. Astrology is a funny pseudo-science where people are trying to predict the future of a person depending on the positions of the planets and stars. Now this planets and stars are the ones that can only be observed by the naked eye. After the invention of telescope and after subsequent improvements in the telescope's design, millions of other stars and planets were discovered. However they will never make their way into the astrologer's algorithm.
People believe in astrology out of fear or superstition. No one is bothered to analyse the correctness of the astrologers predictions. In most cases the predictions are completely false or they are simply most likely situations that is likely to happen. Although in recent times faith in astrology has come down due to increase in scientific knowledge, it is still pretty high even in developed nations.
The fact is astrologers are busy making money by fooling people -- taking advantage of their insecurities, anxiety and fear. Most ancient books that we read today are full of false things are products of someone else's imagination.
The existence of God itself is questionable, sif god really exists then he will never mind communicating with us – his children. So all the stories of having seen god are either false or are some alien interactions. It is very much possible what people described as interactions with divine beings are but interactions with some advanced living beings from some other part of the universe.
This can be explained by taking our own example. When our technology advances to a level at which we can do space travel easily, change our physical forms as per situation, then we will be visiting different parts of the universe and try to make contact with living beings elsewhere in the universe.
There are many who simply tend to dismiss alien theory as pseudo-science, as a piece of fickle imagination. These people must understand the fact that the entire universe is made of the same material that exists on earth. The conditions in different planets that revolve around different stars maybe different, but that does not mean that there can't be life on any of those planets. They would be different kinds of living organisms. They might have evolved before us, they may be a million years ahead of us in terms of intelligence.
Considering the fact that our scientific and technological achievements are growing exponentially in a million years we will be super gods. We can't even imagine what knowledge we will have then and what amazing technology we will posses. Now if you imagine somewhere else in the universe there were beings who were similar to us just a million years ago, so by now they have achieved such high levels of knowledge and technological development that we can easily mistake them for god.
The ancient man was not aware of the vastness of the Universe. For him the earth was the centre of the Universe, the sun , other planets and stars revolved around earth. As technology developed we came to know that what we can observe with the naked eye was a less than micro-drop in the super vast ocean of the universe.
In our own galaxy there are over a 100 billion stars. Planets revolve around this stars. So there are at least a trillion planets in the Milky Way. Now there are trillions of such galaxies in the universe. To say that life does not exist anywhere else in the universe is the most ignorant and foolish statement that one can make.
Once we have the technology where we will become half robots -half humans along with the technology to travel anywhere in the universe and the know how of utilizing space-time wormholes to travel across the different parts of the universe, we would probably become gods to living beings that are in the initial stages of their evolution.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Stem cells for Brain and research on Brain Science
A few days ago I came across this article in ScienceAlert. It is about a research that is done on stroke patients by injecting stem cells into their brain. It was found that all the stoke patients on which the clinical trials took place showed marked improvement in their mobility, speech and brain functions. As you can read in this article, the lead researcher describes how a woman who could move only her left thumb was now able to walk and raise her arms above her shoulder after she was injected with stem cells into the brain.
The researchers are still studying the mechanism. It seems that the injection of stem cells into the brains of people makes the brain younger. This is very significant since this may lead to not only stroke patients but also normal people improving their brain functions at old age.
As you can read in the article it is mentioned that we have underestimated brain's ability to heal itself. Research on the human brain is very important, this research might give us clues of how we can improve the functionality of our brain. So in the future we may have treatments that can improve our logical and mathematical abilities to extraordinary levels. We may be able to create treatments that can make average individuals get extraordinary hand eye co-ordination like the best sportsmen.
We may be able to induce talents in people in different areas like painting, music etc. Research on brain and brain science is very important for humanity to go to the next level of its evolution.
The researchers are still studying the mechanism. It seems that the injection of stem cells into the brains of people makes the brain younger. This is very significant since this may lead to not only stroke patients but also normal people improving their brain functions at old age.
As you can read in the article it is mentioned that we have underestimated brain's ability to heal itself. Research on the human brain is very important, this research might give us clues of how we can improve the functionality of our brain. So in the future we may have treatments that can improve our logical and mathematical abilities to extraordinary levels. We may be able to create treatments that can make average individuals get extraordinary hand eye co-ordination like the best sportsmen.
We may be able to induce talents in people in different areas like painting, music etc. Research on brain and brain science is very important for humanity to go to the next level of its evolution.
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