Amazing Facts!!!!!!, Chennai (2026)

15/09/2015

The neutrino and the anti neutrino, are the tiniest subatomic particles known to science. These particles are byproducts of nuclear reactions within stars, supernovae, black holes and human-made nuclear reactors. They also result from radioactive decay processes deep within the Earth, where radioactive heat and the heat left over from the planet's formation fuels plate tectonics, volcanoes and Earth's magnetic field.

Now, a team of geologists and physicists has generated the world's first global map of anti neutrino emissions. The map, published online in the journal Scientific Reports on September 1, 2015, provides an important baseline image of the energy budget of Earth's interior and could help scientists monitor new and existing human-made sources of radiation. The study was led by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency with contributions from researchers at the University of Maryland, the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University and Ultralytics, LLC.

Image Description : The first-ever global map of antineutrino flux, which accounts for natural and human-made sources of antineutrinos, with the latter making up less than 1 percent of the total flux.

Source: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-global-antineutrino-emission-highlights-earth.html

Here is the link to the online published paper : www.nature.com/articles/srep13945

08/06/2015

Let your creative juices flow!

Be wacky and let your mind carry you to realms beyond ours. Interpret the world in your own way and be free of the rules.
All that we require is that you pen such thoughts down and send it to us. Festember presents to you Exercises for Grey Matter where we give you free reign on your imagination and creativity. Throw away the reins of conformism and embrace the unknown.

Exercises for Grey Matter shall present a different challenge every week with different rules.

The judges are:
1. Lance Rubin
2. Falguni Kothari
3. Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

Prizes include a six month subscription of The Paris Review, one of the world's best English literary magazines based in New York.

14/04/2015

The Government of India grants a License to companies to lay pipes and pump water to peoples houses. The companies do not own the water. They just lay the pipes and pump the water into the pipes. People pay the company a fee based on the size of the pipe they want and the quantity of water they consume as the company needs to spend more to pump more water or provide a larger pipe. So far so good.
Now the Companies want to control the water and the use it is put to even though they do not own it. Now they say that if you use the water for gardening you will pay me X but if you use it for cooking you will pay me twice as much. Do the companies incur extra cost if you use the water for cooking instead of gardening? No, they do not.
Wait a minute, if the companies do not own the water, then how can they control its flow or charge for it ? This is what the Net Neutrality debate is all about.
How can companies that do not own the applications or content on the Internet control access to them or decide how much we should pay for accessing them? All that they are providing are the pipes and the pumps for pumping the water for which the users are already paying them a fee. The content itself (the water in the analogy) is not owned by them at all. If they want to charge more for data access they can, but they cannot be allowed to differentiate or control access to applications or websites.
If the founder of Whatsapp or Viber or Skype wants to offer the service free who is Airtel or Reliance to charge for their use as long as they are getting their data access fee? If they have not kept pace with technology and have not innovated is it the fault of the Indian consumer?
The mere fact that the Government is considering allowing the Telecom companies to control the access to the internet is outrageous and disgraceful.This is the height of crony capitalism. To benefit a few business tycoons the Internet freedom of hundreds of millions of Indians is on the verge of being surrendered.
Please visit www.savetheinternet.in and follow the instructions to send an e-mail to TRAI to voice your protest. This has to be done before 24th April so please do it now.

The Internet needs YOU YOU need to act now! Telecom operators/ISPs are access services providers, and can control either how much you access, what you access, how fast you access and how much you pay to access content and services on the Internet.

09/03/2015

Science \m/

Cafe Scientifique Trichy

Neil Degrasse Tyson. Name rings a bell? If you're a person who love stars (and thought of the beautiful stars in the night sky and not the movie ones), then you most certainly know him.
He is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, popularizer of science and the director of Hayden Planetorium. Quite a lot of roles he has on his hand.

If everyone else is drinking beer, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson orders a milkshake. If he’s in a boardroom full of people in suits, he spins around in the swivel chairs. And when it snows, he still catches snowflakes. These are some of the ways, Dr. Tyson says, that he has remained childlike at the age of 56. Which is important, because, after all, a scientist “is just a kid who never grew up.”

Though he has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City since 1996, Dr. Tyson is now more widely known as the charismatic star of the new version of “Cosmos,” the television series originally hosted by Carl Sagan.

Here is an interview of him where he tells us the latest science projects which he has set his mind on: http://www.wsj.com/articles/neil-degrasse-tysons-latest-science-projects-1425678020