Category: Electromagnetism

The Origin of Life Upon Earth

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Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is most likely not the first building block of life because of its complicated double helix pattern. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is also statistically unlikely because although it is only half as complex as deoxyribonucleic acid being that it does not resemble a double helix structure, but rather a single helix structure, it would have required 5 specific sugar molecules to spontaneously bind together, one by one, in a very specific order. Threose nucleic acid (TNA) however, would only require 4 identical simple sugar molecules to spontaneously, come together. This is theoretically the most probable candidate for being the first spark of life. Threose nucleic acid can easily base pair and exchange genetic information with ribonucleic acid making it the best blueprint which would have shown up long before the complex cellular machinery, which is found within all living cells today

The Reason WD-40 Was Developed

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The WD-40 formula was developed by 3 scientists who succeeded in their goal upon the 40th design attempt, with the name WD-40 being an acronym meaning “Water Displacement: 40th Formula”. WD-40 was created in 1953 by the Rocket Chemical Company located in San Diego, United States of America. The formula was originally researched and developed as a means to protect the outer skin and thin tanks (e.g. lightweight pressurized tanks which provide structural support when filled saving weight overall) of SM-65 Atlas intercontinental ballistic missiles from rust and corrosion during the manufacturing, handling, and storage process(es) of missile silos. This proprietary mixture resolved for the aerospace industry the need for a dependable water displacing solvent which prevented moisture and other related damage. Early use of WD-40 upon Atlas SM-65 missiles demonstrated the solutions superior effectiveness in comparison to analogs. This prompted a handful of employees to take canisters of WD-40 home which inadvertently inspired the projects founder, Norm Larsen, to package WD-40 in an aerosol form designed specifically for consumer use. WD-40 first appeared on store shelves in 1958 and developed applications in spacecraft maintenance, disaster recovery, and countless home and industrial tasks (eg. lubricating stuck hinges of seized doors, displacing moisture upon electrical contacts, loosening rusted and/or seized bolts etc.)

The Hottest Natural and Artificial Temperature in the Universe

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The hottest temperature ever measured and/or observed was within the Large Hadron Collider located on the border of Switzerland and France. When lead particles are smashed together within this particle accelerator, for a split second the temperature reaches 4,000,000,000,000 (4 trillion) degrees Celsius which is hotter than a supernova explosion, albeit the theoretical maximum possible temperature of the universe is believed to be 20 orders of magnitude greater. Contemporary models of physical cosmology postulate that the highest possible temperature is the Planck temperature, which has a value of 1.416785(71)×1032 kelvin. Temperatures above this are believed to be physically impossible because as particle energies become larger and larger, the gravitational forces between them inevitably become as strong as the other 3 fundamental forces which essentially boils and breaks down both the universe and space time. Outside of laboratory conditions however, the hottest naturally occurring place within the universe is the quasar 3C273 (the 273rd entry in the Third Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources), a blazing region surrounding a supermassive black hole approximately 2,400,000,000 (2.4 billion) light years away from the Earth, with matter within its accretion disk being measured at temperatures of approximately 10,000,000,000,000 (10 trillion) kelvin, making it far hotter than the core of any star, and 400,000x hotter than the core of the sun, rivaling the conditions of the universe right after the Big Bang

The Coldest Natural and Artificial Temperature in the Universe

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The coldest temperature ever measured and/or observed was within a controlled laboratory experiment in Germany; an experiment entitled “Time‑Domain Matter‑Wave Lens System for Atomic Clouds”. During this experiment, physicists cooled a cloud of rubidium atoms to 0.000000000038 (38 trillionths) of 1 degree above absolute zero which is -273.15 degrees Celsius, colder than the vacuum of space, slowing these atoms to a near motionless state for a very short period of time which created a fleeting state of matter existing closer to perfect stillness than anywhere or anything else within the universe. This experiment was the closest scientists have come to achieving complete absence of motion within a controlled setting. Contemporary models of physical cosmology postulate that the theoretical minimum possible temperature is absolute zero, which has a value of 0 kelvin. Temperatures below this are believed to be physically impossible because particle energies become so tiny that all molecular motion ceases to continue functioning, allowing quantum effects to dominate, and producing exotic states of matter (e.g. Bose-Einstein condensates in which matter behaves as a single quantum entity etc.). The coldest naturally occurring place within the universe is the Boomerang Nebula, a dying star cloud located approximately 5,000 light years away from the Earth. The Boomerang Nebula has been measured at 1 degree above absolute zero, making it even colder than the faint afterglow of the Big Bang itself, yet the Time‑Domain Matter‑Wave Lens System for Atomic Cloud experiment is 26,000,000,000x (26 billion) colder and closer to absolute zero than the Boomerang Nebula or any other naturally occurring region with low heat

The Origin of Google’s Name

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Google’s original name was “BackRub”, a reference to its early algorithm which analyzed backlinks to assess their importance. Backlinks are the hyperlinks pointing to webpages on the internet (e.g. navigation from one website to another etc.). Developed at Stanford University in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, BackRub laid the foundation for PageRank, the ranking system which would later power the Google search engine. As the project matured, Page and Brin began to recognize and understand that the name BackRub did not reflect the vast scope of their ambitions for the company as the duo wanted a name that could capture the enormity of the data their engine could and eventually would process. This is why the name “Google” was chosen in 1997. Interestingly, during a domain search for “googol.com”, a mathematical term which represents 10¹⁰⁰ (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 with 100 0’s after it) the friend who registered the domain name for Page and Brin accidentally typed “google.com” instead of “googol.com”. Originally this was an error but Page and Brin believed the misspelling to be simpler, more memorable, and visually cleaner therefore deciding to keep the name as it was

The First Assassination With a Firearm

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The first assassination using a firearm was of James Stewart the Earl of Moray, in 1570, who was assassinated by James Hamilton. Hamilton stalked Stewart for weeks, following him from Perth, Scotland to Stirling, Scotland, and finally pouncing when in Linlithgow, Scotland. Hamilton was well prepared, hanging a black cloth textile behind him so that his shadow could not been seen upon the street and putting down bird feathers to muffle the sound of his movements. As Stewart rode by, Hamilton raised up his weapon, a short barreled hunting carbine, and fired, hitting Stewart in the stomach. This shot caused much confusion but by the time Stewart and his entourage had figured out what occurred, Hamilton was long gone, as his escape route was pre-planned. Stewart managed to stumble to the home he was staying but died later that same evening. Hamilton was never caught for this crime but the entire act is immortalized in stained glass at Saint Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland. This assassination caused chaos in Scotland and made the English court immensely nervous as bodyguards were no match for a distant assassin within the shadows who could pick off their target and vanish without a trace. Firearms were deemed during this era a threat to national security in Europe, especially after the advent of the wheel lock mechanism in 1515 which was a mechanized method of igniting gunpowder, allowing for the design of the pistol to work in practice for the very first time

The Problem With Super Massive Black Holes

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Super massive black holes have a fundamental problem in that not enough time has passed since the creation of the universe to account for their massive size. This acute time crunch is because the universe has a finite value of only 13,700,000,000 (13.7 billion) years. It is theorized that the reason super massive black holes can become larger than what time permits is because they have a colossal head start due to the fact that they may be birthed directly from a cloud of gas, a phenomena referred to as “direct collapse”. These molecular clouds collapse under their own gravity, and as they collapse, fragmentation occurs as more densely packed areas collapse more quickly. Nuclear fusion begins next and a star is thus created. If a giant gas cloud collapses without making a star, it would form a gas disc instead, allowing the mass to flow into the center very rapidly, creating a black hole instead which is essentially a vortex upon an immense scale

Inventions and Discoveries Developed Simultaneously Throughout History

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In 1922, a pair of Columbia University sociologists named William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas published a paper entitled “Are Inventions Inevitable?” which stated that Ogburn and Thomas discovered 148 examples of documented simultaneous invention. This phenomena occurred in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray filed for a patent for the telephone on the same day with Bell’s unit having a separated listening and talking piece whilst Gray’s unit having a single listening and talking unit built into a conical structure. Other notable examples include Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace who came up with the Theory of Evolution simultaneously, Carl Scheele and Joseph Priestly who discovered oxygen at the same time, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz who discovered and developed calculus at the same time, Dmitri Mendeleev and Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois who discovered and developed the periodic table at the same time, and Orville and Wilbur Wright and Samuel Langley who invented the airplane during the same period of time. Knowing this, it would seem that the phenomena of simultaneous invention and discovery seems to be exceedingly common for human beings throughout history

Scientists Who Studied the Sun by Looking Directly at it

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Thomas Harriot observed sunspots in 1610 but did not publish his work. In 1612 Harriot recorded that after having viewed the sun, his sight was “dim for an hour”. Oxford University astronomer John Greaves is quoted as stating that after sun observations, he would see afterimages which looked like a flock of crows within his field of vision. Sir Isaac Newton attempted to look at the sun in a mirror, which blinded him for 3 days and caused him to experience afterimages for months

The Industries Disrupted by U.S. Entrepreneur Steve Jobs and U.S. Inventor Thomas Edison

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Steve Jobs affected and subsequently disrupted the computer industry, the motion picture industry, the music industry, and the telecommunucations industry, all within a single lifespan. This achievement places Jobs at the status of a world renowned icon, a person like Thomas Edison who affected all of the same industries as well, swapping only the computer industry for the electric industry. Edison invented the incandescent light bulb for the electric industry, the phonograph for the music industry, and the motion picture camera for the film industry, and improved the telegraph and telephone for the telecommunications industry. Jobs developed the Macintosh computer for the computer industry, the animation studio Pixar for the film industry, the iPod and iTunes for the music industry, and the iPhone for the telecommunications industry