Thoughts And Trivia

Flame of an oil lamp, flares up, one last moment, before it runs out of oil and it just starts spewing black soot.
Evolution of societies also follow this route to oblivion. The dying society flares into megalomaniac creations just before being snuffed out. Is the present 21st Century also the last for the Human Race? From the megalomaniac creations - it just looks to be the case of burst of the dying flame.
There is a web-game about what it would be like for the human race to die in year 2100, if do not wake-up.
But look at the megalomania. We have created a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe to just smash two protons (travelling at almost the speed of light) together, just to prove whether two mathematically elegant theories could actually govern the sub-particle universe.

LHC has been built in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference. The tunnel is buried around 50 to 175 m. underground. It straddles the Swiss and French borders on the outskirts of Geneva.
The statistics and Money spent is nothing Human Race has ever seen. For example:

1. The combined strands of the superconducting cable being produced for the LHC would go around the equator 6.8 times. If you added all the filaments of the strands together they would stretch to the sun and back 5 times with enough left over for a few trips to the moon.


2. Part of the LHC will be the world's largest fridge. It could hold 150 000 fridge full of sausages at a temperature colder than deep outer space.
3. The cost of the accelerator only (without experiments and computing) but including manpower and material is 4.7 Billion CHF (that's around 3.03 billion euros)

There is more on the web, officially.
...and unofficially
I think there could be a simpler way to do science.
This is not all. The type of buildings that we are now making in the Middle East is super-megalomania.
Mahatma Gandhi used to say: "There is enough on earth for our needs, but not enough for our greed."
We are going to kill the Human Race if we do not temper our use of Earth's resources.
What Do You think? Please leave comments!!!

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I am afraid of the Lightning since childhood. I read a lot about lightning as a child out of curiosity. This has instilled a sense of panic in me when the clouds are angry - specially in the dark.
What I recall learning is:

1. The bolt of the lightning travels at a speed of 60,000 m/s ; temperature of 30,000^oC (five times hotter than surface of Sun)and carries a current of 40-120 kilo-amperes. A normal strike travels a distance of approx 1.3 Kms. Target is struck actually by 3-4 strikes 30-40 ms apart, due to repeated discharge of the charge in the cloud. The discharge channel in air is only 1 cm dia.


2. Lightning strikes the highest or the electrically the least resistive path to the earth. Be away from these high sites. Do not stand under a tree in an open space.


3. Its its search of least resistive paths that causes the cracking sound due to sudden changes in its paths. The thundering sound is due to the shock wave created by air in contact being suddenly heated to 10,000^oC.


4. In a structure it strikes the corners. Stay away from corner rooms or a corner in a room.


5. If standing in a row, it strikes the extremities. Stand in the middle of a line.


6. On striking or even before it may divide into a large number of splinter paths. If you are slightly afar from a target, even then you are vulnerable. People even 25 metres away may be vulnerable.


7. Rarely its has been seen to come as a balloon of bright light. Though lots of eye-witness reports are there, but there has never been a scientific confimtion of this.


8. More lightning is seen in rains after a particularly dry spell.


9. Mostly the lightning is negative charged. But rarely it is positively charged - which is more damaging - travels larger distances before striking. So even area not having clouds may get struck - really bolts from blue!


10. Lightning is the deadliest weather phenomenon, 24,000 people get killed and 2,40,000 are injured by it each year


11. Safest place is to be inside a strong house, but stay away from anything that can conduct electricity - phones, TV, Computer, plumbing, Metal doors/windows.


12. Car's tyres are ineffective as insulation. Its metal body of car that conducts away the charge that saves the ocuupants - if they are not touching any metallic part at that time.

No! No! I didn't want to infect you with my panic. Honest. Being forewarned isn't being forearmed always.

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