Category: Astronomy

The Agama Texts of Hinduism

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Hinduism is not a religion of the book as there is no central source of authority like the Christian Bible or the Islamic Quran to refer to, however there is no shortage of scripture. The whole canon of Hindu philosophy thrives upon debate and spiritual inquiry, much of it contradictory. Collected all together, these texts would fill many, many volumes of text. The Agamas were created to be a set of rules to guide those who subscribe to Hinduism and its ideological principles. The Agamas are incredibly vast in their range of topics offering instructions upon temple construction, the intricacies of the guru and disciple relationship, and meditation practices, covering every moment of life from waking to sleeping, from birth to death. The agamas originated in Tamil Nadu and are written in the Tamil language. The agamas provided Hinduism a formal structure which are still considered cornerstones in the practice of Hinduism during the modern day

The Ability of Quantum Theory to Explain the Existence of All Matter

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The theory of quantum mechanics is the most accurate and powerful description of the natural world which scientists have at their disposal. Quantum fluctuations are written into the stars as modern day theories explain that as the universe sprang from a vacuum, it expanded very rapidly, which means that the rules of the quantum world, should have contributed to the large scale structure of the entire universe. The universe is shaped by quantum reality, essentially the quantum world inflated many, many times in that nothingness has shaped everything, with this concept now being definitively proven as fact. Quantum physics provides a natural mechanism through quantum fluctuations to see into the early universe with small irregularities that would later grow to create galaxies. The idea that a cluster of gas and dust like the Milky Way Galaxy, a collection of billions of stars, could begin life simply because of small quantum fluctuations, is absolutely mind boggling, as these tiny fluctuations within the vacuum of space were only present upon a submicroscopic scale, yet had the ability to grow into some of the largest objects in the universe. This is possible because the Big Bang produced equal amounts of matter and anti-matter but as the universe cooled down, matter and anti-matter annihilated almost perfectly, but not quite, as every 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) annihilations will lead to 1 particle of matter being left behind and this is what has built the matter of the physical world, everything from stars to the Earth to the smallest life forms and inanimate objects. Everything within the universe which is physical to the touch is simply debris of an enormous collision between matter and anti-matter at the beginning of time

The Usage of 5D Crystals as a Means of Computational Storage

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Quartz is being used to create the most powerful data storage device ever developed, the 5D Superman Memory Crystal, a technology which could store data for up to 13,800,000,000 (13.8 billion) years, the calculated age of the universe. The 5D quartz crystal is a method of ensuring a large density of data can be saved within a relatively small object. This is an incredibly secure and long lasting method of saving data as the information is physically encoded into the crystal itself, remaining indefinitely until the quartz itself is destroyed, a very difficult task in and of itself. In 2018, technology entrepreneur Nova Spivack used a 5D crystal to create a permanent space library, sending it to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Heavy Falcon rocket. Quartz is highly stable because it is a crystal, remaining unchanged for billions of years meaning if data is inserted, theoretically it could survive for billions of years. For a quartz crystal approximately 2.5 centimeters by 2.5 centimeters in diameter and 5 millimeters thick, 30 terabytes of data can be held, which is 30,000 gigabytes or 800 Blu-ray discs or 600 smartphones worth of information. This means that the entire British library could be fit into 1000 5D crystal slides, a small enough volume to fit within a single shoebox. A traditional storage medium like a compact disc, stores data in individual pixels, with 1 pixel able to hold the equivalent of 1 bit or 8 bytes of information. In a quartz drive however, each voxel can hold 8 bits or 64 bytes of information. The technology required to achieve this feat however is still in its infancy with scientists still discovering new ways to refine manufacturing, the writing and reading of data, and storage capabilities

Ancient Roman Emperor Julius Caesar’s Contribution to Time Keeping

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The month of July is a derivation of the name, “Julius Caesar”. The ancient Romans opted to rename “Quintilis”, the original name for July which means “fifth month” in Latin, to “July” after Caesars death because this was the same month that he was born. The Julian calendar, a western calendar used until 1582 when the Gregorian calendar supplanted it, is also attributed to Caesar as the Roman year had only 355 days and required an extra month be added, every 3 years. The ancient Romans repeatedly made the same calculation errors and continually found seasons out of synchronization with the actual calendar date observed. With the help of a few Roman scientists, Caesar removed the pre-Etruscan 10 month solar calendar in favor of the 365 day year calendar named after himself. The Roman calendar started on March 25, but was moved to January 1 with the advent of the Gregorian calendar

The Invention of Star Luminosity Mapping to Measure Immense Distances in Space

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Henrietta Leavitt, a brilliant scientist who worked at the Harvard Observatory discovered the true size of the universe because of her ability to objectively measure the true brightness of stars. Leavitt became enamored and fascinated by a type of star referred to as a “cepheid variable” which means a “star which pulses within the night sky”. Leavitt’s revolutionary breakthrough occurred when she realized that the intensity of brightness is precisely linked to how quick or slow at which the star blinks. If 2 points of light blink at the same rate but with different intensities, it would stand to reason that the brighter star is closer to the observer than the dimmer one. This allowed Leavitts to measure the distance to stars which lay far beyond the reaches of parallax distance

The Mathematics Behind Why Rockets Can Escape The Gravitational Pull of the Earth

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Robert Goddard’s liquid rocket never reached the 3 kilometer mark because of Tsiolkovsky’s Rocket Equation named after Soviet scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (pronounced “con-stan-tyin tsel-kov-skee”). This equation states that as fuel increases for faster and further voyages, so too does the weight, becoming increasingly heavy as more and more fuel is added. Tsiolkovsky took into account the velocity of a rocket alongside its mass of payload, mass of fuel, and the mass of the rocket itself. The longer the engine burns, the more velocity the rocket will have, however longer burning means more fuel which adds weight and makes it more difficult to push upwards. To travel fast enough to deliver a rocket to space, most of the craft must be fuel. Scientists have battled with this question for decades and although mathematical constructs have been developed to explain the relationship between weight and thrust, no one has yet to develop an idea to get around this problem with currently available technologies. The equation developed to explain this limitation of space travel is â–łV^R = V^E x log^e (M^P + M^F + M^R / M^P + M^R). This effectively states that only a tiny portion of a rocket can be used to deliver payload, with notable cases being the Apollo missions which employed enormous rockets to carry just a few small astronauts and the things they needed into space. Tsiolkovsky theorized this in the beginning of the 20th century as his calculations demonstrated that kerosine wouldn’t be enough to go from the Earth to the moon with a single craft

The Advent of Parallax Distance to Measure Immense Distances in Space

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Stellar parallax is a measurement technique developed by Friedrich Bessel to measure far away objects in deep space. The process of stellar parallax involves measuring an object from two separate vantage points hinging upon the fact that the object being observed will appear to move a lot more than objects further behind it (e.g. if an observer closes one eye and views their finger in front of a building, and then repeats this act with their second eye closed and the first eye open, the observers finger will appear as though it has moved much further left or right, relative to the other objects behind it). Because Bessel developed a method of calculation to take advantage of this phenomena, astronomers now have the ability to map grand distances with relative accuracy. Bessel worked out that if an observer took an image of a star when the Earth was at either side of its orbit around the sun, it would be possible to observe the star shifting in its position. By knowing how much a star shifts, it is possible to calculate the distance the star is from its observation point on Earth. Bessel surmised that the relatively close star 61 Cygni must be 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) kilometers away from the Earth because of his parallax distance method. This technique unfortunately is severely limited as the diameter of the Earth’s orbit is only 300,000,000 (300 million) kilometers which means that the parallax method can only measure objects up to a factor of 1,000,000x (1 million) the Earths orbital rotation, allowing for a maximum distance of 300,000,000,000,000 (300 trillion) kilometers which is only a tiny fraction of the size of the Milky Way Galaxy or the universe as a whole

The End of the Universe and the Big Crunch Theory

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The likelihood of a Big Crunch in which the universe expands to the point that it then collapses inward upon itself is not very probable as mathematical calculations demonstrate that there simply isn’t enough mass in the entire universe to be able to revert into into an enormous compaction. The idea of the universe folding in upon itself can be visualized by imagining a person throwing a ball in the air. The Earth has enough mass to bring a thrown ball back down to the ground but if thrown faster than the speed of escape velocity which is 11.186 kilometers per second, a thrown ball would never come back down, in fact, it would travel an infinite distance over an infinite timespan before the Earth mathematically had enough time and mass to pull the ball back to its starting position. The universe is represented by the Earth in that it acts as a force upon other objects and the ball represents all matter throughout the universe in this thought experiment

Mathematical Evidence of the Observable Universe Actually Being Part of a Multiverse

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There are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1080 or 100 quinquavigintillion subatomic particles in the universe, often referred to as the “Eddington number” which means that mathematically speaking, eventually after shuffling these particles over and over, the same result is bound to occur. This is precisely why the theory of the multiverse appears to be valid. These particles cannot be rearranged an infinite amount of times and therefore identical copies of the observable universe surely must show up in other parallel universes, as well as countless variations of the universe in which conditions are similar to the observable universe, but still different in some significant or insignificant manner. In a multiverse scenario, every single possible outcome is played out. After an estimated 1010^100 or 1 googolplex (1 googol being 10 with 100 zeros behind it and a googolplex being 10 with 1 googol zeros behind it) meters away from the observable universe in terms of linear measurable distance in space, another universe should theoretically be in existence already, a universe which is identical to the observable universe in every way imaginable. Because nearly every universe is uniquely different, the laws of physics could and should be vastly contrasting to what an observer within the observable universe experiences. It is estimated that there are between 1010^16 – 1010^10^7 or 100 septentrigintillion – 100 trecenquattuortrigintillion different universes. This estimate is predicated upon the fact that the amount of information which a single individual can absorb is 10,000,000,000,000,000 or 1016 or 10 quadrillion bits of data within their lifetime, which is equivalent to 1010^16 or 100 septentrigintillion configurations, and this means that the human brain is physically incapable of distinguishing more than 1010^16 or 100 septentrigintillion universes

Robert Goddard’s Liquid Fueled Rocket Concept

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Robert Goddard devised the idea of liquid kerosene and liquid oxygen being mixed together to create a fierce, but most importantly, a controllable flame for propulsion. When kerosine reacts with oxygen, the result is an incredibly hot, rapidly expanding gas which when channeled through a nozzle, creates enormous thrust. On March 16, 1926, Goddard launched the world’s first liquid fuel rocket bearing this concept. This rocket did not travel fast nor far but it did demonstrate a proof of concept making space flight theoretically possible for the first time in human history