Friday 29 July 2016

The Distraction Economy





Really cool video by Veratasium. GO CHECK IT OUT!



I know i haven't been posting often. With 12th I really dont get a lot of time to sit down and write or atleast thats what I think is happening.



Thank You Guys for 5.5 k hits!



-Sahil Bhatia

Thursday 5 May 2016

Could Vibranium be destroyed?

With Captain America Civil war released, Lets answer a burning question!
Could Vibranium be destroyed?



The answer is yes, if you follow the comics. Vibranium has been destroyed several times in the comics according to Wikipedia here are some of them:


1.In The Avengers #215–216, the Molecule Man used his total control over matter to disintegrate the shield, along with Thor's hammer, Iron Man's armor, and the Silver Surfer's board.

2.During the 1984-1985 Secret Wars limited series, the shield is partially destroyed by Doctor Doom, who has stolen the power of the godlike being known as the Beyonder.

3. During the 1991 miniseries The Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos shatters the shield with a blow of his fist while in combat with Captain America.



4.In Avengers Vol. 3 #63 (March 2003), an enraged Thor, wielding the Odin force, dents the shield. 

5.In Thor Vol. 2 #73 (January 2004) an enraged King Thor with Rune Magic, destroyed the shield, killing Steve Rogers with it.

6.During the 2011 miniseries Fear Itself, the Serpent, the Asgardian god of fear and brother to Odin, breaks it in half with his bare hands.

But wait, wasn't the answer just too easy? What if we actually had a metal that resembles Vibranium or has its properties. What if Vibranium existed in our universe with the same properties?


If Vibranium could act like an immovable body (On its own), so what does every immovable object need? An Unstoppable force! Just like the joker said! Even though this is a famous paradox, the Minute Physics video kind of gives a partial answer answer (Click here to see).
I'll spare you the trouble An Immovable object = An Unstoppable Force (a.k.a non acceleratable!)

 Vibranium is able to withstand all these blows due to the fact that it possess the ability to absorb all surrounding kinetic energy. 

This kinetic energy is then stored into the bonds that make it essentially make it tougher with every hit. There are limits to this but are not specified in the Marvel Universe.




If you are unfamiliar with how molecules are made here is a short explanation, the bond formed between any two atoms is through either the exchange of electrons (which most metals do) a.k.a "Ionic Bonds" or by sharing electrons (which most non metals do) a.k.a "Covalent Bonds".



Here is where it gets weird, in our world when any kind of energy is supplied to atomic/molecular bonds they break off when they reach a certain "Enthalpies" or Energy Levels. So in real life you would have to either supply enough energy to break the bonds or have the bonds dissipate energy in other ways like sound and heat. Which exactly happens in the Avengers when Thor hits Cap's shield leveling down an entire forest (Although this is much much much more bigger if an actual Thor hammer hit and actual Vibranium Shield, I am talking planetary scale destruction!). 



A back of the envelope calculation says that the shields temperature, depending upon the blow can rise from nothing to Absolute HOT, just like absolute zero but much much more hotter! Like 1.41 X 10^32 kelvin, at which point the laws of physics would cease to exist. (Check out Vsauce's video Here!). 


So to anyone holding this shield in hopes of saving yourself, be warned you might be vapourized!

Thanks for Reading!

Friday 8 April 2016

Amazing Facts to Blow your Mind! #8

Amazing Facts to Blow your Mind! #8


1. On Earth the only ice is frozen water, on Pluto Nitrogen, Methane and Carbon Monoxide also Freeze Solid!


2.In 6 hours, the deserts recieve more energy from the Sun than all of humanity consumes every year!




3.Youtube is the world 2nd biggest search engine. Its bigger than Yahoo, Bing and Ask combined!




4.Tigers have been declared extinct in Cambodia in 2016!


5.Uranus has its poles at the equator! this is because it has an axis of rotation of 90 Degrees!




6.White tigers are more prone to being cross eyed!




7.During the great depression buttons became so costly, it lead to the invention of the Zipper!




8.There is a SECRET swimming pool in the Mojave desert if found can be used by anyone!




9. There are 50 species of Shark that Glow-In-The-Dark!



10.Scientists can identify a Zebra by scanning their stripes like a Bar-Code!




Give this post a thumbs up  if you enjoyed! Follow me so You can never Miss a post!

Dont forget to check out my vlog channel! : Sahil Bhatia Vlogs




Sunday 3 April 2016

We HIT 3K !

Hey guys! I know I haven posted in awhile, but look what all of you awesome people did!

We hit 3K views on my blog!

In addition to that we hit 300+ views in both February and March which was a new high!

Thank you all who visit here regularly!

If you would like check out my Vlog Channel too! : Sahil Bhatia Vlogs.

Your normal blogposts will resume shortly, sorry for the delay... exams!

Saturday 27 February 2016

Super Conductors!

Introduction


Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic fields occurring in certain materials when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature. It was discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911 in Leiden. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. It is characterized by the Meissner effect. The occurrence of the Meissner effect indicates that superconductivity cannot be understood simply as the idealization of perfect conductivity in classical physics.

The electrical resistivity of a metallic conductor decreases gradually as temperature is lowered. In ordinary conductors, such as copper or silver, this decrease is limited by impurities and other defects. Even near absolute zero, a real sample of a normal conductor shows some resistance. In a superconductor, the resistance drops abruptly to zero when the material is cooled below its critical temperature. An electric current flowing through a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.

There are many criteria by which superconductors are classified. The most common are:

  1. Response to a magnetic field: A superconductor can be Type I, meaning it has a single critical field, above which all superconductivity is lost; or Type II, meaning it has two critical fields, between which it allows partial penetration of the magnetic field.
  2. By critical temperature: A superconductor is generally considered high temperature if it reaches a superconducting state when cooled using liquid nitrogen – that is, at only Tc > 77 K) – or low temperature if more aggressive cooling techniques are required to reach its critical temperature.
  3. By material: Superconductor material classes include chemical elements (e.g. mercury or lead), alloys or organic superconductors.




History of superconductivity.

Superconductivity was discovered on April 8, 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who was studying the resistance of solid mercury at cryogenic temperatures using the recently produced liquid helium as a refrigerant.
At the temperature of 4.2 K, he observed that the resistance abruptly disappeared. In the same experiment, he also observed the superfluid transition of helium at 2.2 K, without recognizing its significance. The precise date and circumstances of the discovery were only reconstructed a century later, when Onnes's notebook was found. In subsequent decades, superconductivity was observed in several other materials. In 1913, lead was found to superconduct at 7 K, and in 1941 niobium nitride was found to superconduct at 16 K.

Great efforts have been devoted to finding out how and why superconductivity works; the important step occurred in 1933, when Meissner and Ochsenfeld discovered that superconductors expelled applied magnetic fields, a phenomenon which has come to be known as the Meissner effect. In 1935, Fritz and Heinz London showed that the Meissner effect was a consequence of the minimization of the electromagnetic free energy carried by superconducting current.


Properties.


Zero electrical DC resistance

The resistance of the sample is given by Ohm's law as R = V / I. If the voltage is zero, this means that the resistance is zero.

Superconductors are also able to maintain a current with no applied voltage whatsoever, a property exploited in superconducting electromagnets such as those found in MRI machines. Experiments have demonstrated that currents in superconducting coils can persist for years without any measurable degradation. Experimental evidence points to a current lifetime of at least 100,000 years. Theoretical estimates for the lifetime of a persistent current can exceed the estimated lifetime of the universe.

In a normal conductor, an electric current may be visualized as a fluid of electrons moving across a heavy ionic lattice. The electrons are constantly colliding with the ions in the lattice, and during each collision some of the energy carried by the current is absorbed by the lattice and converted into heat, which is essentially the kinetic energy of the lattice ions. As a result, the energy carried by the current is constantly being dissipated. This is the phenomenon of electrical resistance.

The situation is different in a superconductor. In a conventional superconductor, the electronic fluid cannot be resolved into individual electrons. Instead, it consists of bound pairs of electrons known as Cooper pairs.


In a class of superconductors known as type II superconductors an extremely small amount of resistivity appears at temperatures not too far below the nominal superconducting transition when an electric current is applied in conjunction with a strong magnetic field, which may be caused by the electric current.



Superconducting phase transition 

In superconducting materials, the characteristics of superconductivity appear when the temperature T is lowered below a critical temperature Tc. The value of this critical temperature varies from material to material. Conventional superconductors usually have critical temperatures ranging from around 20 K to less than 1 K. 
Solid mercury, for example, has a critical temperature of 4.2 K. As of 2009, the highest critical temperature found for a conventional superconductor is 39 K for magnesium diboride (MgB2), although this material displays enough exotic properties that there is some doubt about classifying it as a "conventional" superconductor.
Cuprate superconductors can have much higher critical temperatures: YBa2Cu3O7, one of the first Cuprate superconductors to be discovered, has a critical temperature of 92 K, and mercury-based Cuprates have been found with critical temperatures in excess of 130 K. The explanation for these high critical temperatures remains unknown. Electron pairing due to phonon exchanges explains superconductivity in conventional superconductors, but it does not explain superconductivity in the newer superconductors that have a very high critical temperature.


Meissner effect

In a weak applied field, a superconductor "expels" nearly all magnetic flux. It does this by setting up electric currents near its surface. The magnetic field of these surface currents cancels the applied magnetic field within the bulk of the superconductor. As the field expulsion, does not change with time, the currents producing this effect (called persistent currents) do not decay with time. Therefore the conductivity can be thought of as infinite: a superconductor.

Near the surface, within a distance called the London penetration depth, the magnetic field is not completely cancelled. Each superconducting material has its own characteristic penetration depth.

Any perfect conductor will prevent any change to magnetic flux passing through its surface due to ordinary electromagnetic induction at zero resistance. The Meissner effect is distinct from this: when an ordinary conductor is cooled so that it makes the transition to a superconducting state in the presence of a constant applied magnetic field, the magnetic flux is expelled during the transition. This effect cannot be explained by infinite conductivity alone. Its explanation is more complex and was first given in the London equations by the brothers Fritz and Heinz London. It should thus be noted that the placement and subsequent levitation of a magnet above an already superconducting material does not demonstrate the Meissner effect, while an initially stationary magnet later being repelled by a superconductor as it is cooled through its critical temperature does.

 London moment

The London moment is a quantum-mechanical phenomenon whereby a spinning superconductor generates a magnetic field whose axis lines up exactly with the spin axis. The term may also refer to the magnetic moment of any rotation of any superconductor, caused by the electrons lagging behind the rotation of the object, although the field strength is independent of the charge carrier density (Charge-carrier density denotes the number of charge carriers per volume. It is measured in m−3. ) in the superconductor.



Applications.


Superconducting magnets are some of the most powerful electromagnets known. They are used in MRI/NMR machines, mass spectrometers, and the beam-steering magnets used in particle accelerators. They can also be used for magnetic separation, where weakly magnetic particles are extracted from a background of less or non-magnetic particles, as in the pigment industries.


MRI Machines



MRI scanners vary in size and shape, and some newer models have a greater degree of openness around the sides. Still, the basic design is the same, and the patient is pushed into a tube that's only about 24 inches in diameter
The biggest and most important component of an MRI system is the magnet. There is a horizontal tube the same one the patient enters running through the magnet from front to back. This tube is known as the bore. But this isn't just any magnet we're dealing with an incredibly strong system here, one capable of producing a large, stable magnetic field.

The strength of a magnet in an MRI system is rated using a unit of measure known as a tesla. Another unit of measure commonly used with magnets is the gauss (1 tesla = 10,000 gauss). The magnets in use today in MRI systems create a magnetic field of 0.5-tesla to 2.0-tesla, or 5,000 to 20,000 gauss. When you realize that the Earth's magnetic field measures 0.5 gauss, you can see how powerful these magnets are.

Most MRI systems use a superconducting magnet, which consists of many coils or windings of wire through which a current of electricity is passed, creating a magnetic field of up to 2.0 tesla. Maintaining such a large magnetic field requires a good deal of energy, which is accomplished by superconductivity, or reducing the resistance in the wires to almost zero. To do this, the wires are continually bathed in liquid helium at 452.4 degrees below zero. This cold is insulated by a vacuum. While superconductive magnets are expensive, the strong magnetic field allows for the highest-quality imaging, and superconductivity keeps the system economical to operate.







Friday 12 February 2016

GRAVITATIONAL WAVES! The MOST Expensive Musical Recording made!


Gravitational Waves.


The Idea of a Gravitational wave. 

Consider the following situation, you and a friend are standing on a trampoline at the edges, if you look down you see that you form sort of a depression in the area around your feet and the same goes for your friend. Now you both hold each others hand and start hopping around on the trampoline in a circle, you would notice that the trampoline would produce some sort of a wave motion. The same goes for Gravity.





Except that you would be a planet or any other massive object which would distort space around you. This depression would actually attract more bodies towards you. Lets say that one of the bodies tries to move in a straight line around you, what would you get? A circle or an ellipse which explains how planets move around the sun.



When you get two really massive bodies orbiting each other like a binary system of a black holes, the fabric of space time would also move in a similar fashion to you and your friend on a trampoline, only on a much much larger scale.

So these waves caused by the motion of the bodies in the fabric of Space-Time due to gravity are called GRAVITATIONAL WAVES! Its is basically a ripple in Space Time.



There is more to this though....Einstein said this in his principle of General Relativity That gravity acted as a warp of space time around the object. Any two bodies in the fabric of space time would create a wave like disturbance which would create a Gravitational wave.

However there is one catch, gravitation is on of the weakest forces compared to forces like the strong nuclear force which holds atoms together. So you need really massive objects to create DETECTABLE Gravitational Waves like Collision of two Neutron Stars (Check out my Post on Some of the Universes Weirdest stars HERE)






How Do You Even Detect a Gravitational Wave?

That's is the tricky part, unlike the trampoline where you and your friend can feel the disturbance, Gravitational Waves don't behave the same way. Gravitational Waves ripple back and forth thus increasing the distance and decreasing the distance between two bodies. 


Just imagine you trying to measure the distance between you and your friend in the water in a Swimming pool. Since the water is mostly still,  given that you don't move much you can measure the distance between you and your friend with no problems.




But measuring Gravitational waves is a different story.

 Imagine that now you and your friend are standing in the ocean. Since the water forms waves now you and your friend would be  moving back and forth between each other. Measuring the distance between you two with the surface of the water is stupid!







Even if you guys were on dry land and you stood 5 meters or 16 feet away from each other and placed 5 rocks on the ground at a distance of one meter or 3.26 feet from each other, you wouldn't notice the distance between the rocks changing!

Gravitational waves work in a similar way because the expand and contract the space around you and your friend. They are usually caused by two massive bodies slamming into each other.

How did the Scientists at LIGO measure it then? 

If you cant measure the distance between 2 places because the ground/space between them shrinks and expands due to some Funky Gravitational Waves, How do you measure it? Simple use another wave and lucky for us this wave or Electro-magnetic Pulse travels at the same speed where ever you go! LIGHT!

















Since light travels at the same speed everywhere in the Universe you can measure the change in the distance of two places in space.
Lets say I stand at on corner of a room and you stand at the other holding a mirror. I keep flashing a laser pointer at the mirror and record how much time it takes for the light to reach back to me.

If the space between us were to increase due to a disturbance caused by a gravitational wave, light from my pointer would take a little bit longer to reach me. If the distance decreased however the time taken for the light to reach me would be less. 



How Does The LIGO work?

The LIGO stands for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, which by the way you can call GIANT LASER RULER (Cool, eh?). As I explained above the LIGO measures these tiny tiny intervals of time for light to be emitted and reflected back to the source. It has 2 long arms stretching 4 kilometers / 2.4 miles on each side at right angles.



 The lasers measure the changes in the length of these 2 tunnels. Now when a Gravitational wave passes through it squeezes space in one direction and expands it in the other. By measuring the interference between the two points using the lasers we can measure whether  the space in between stretched or compressed.

How accurate is this AWESOME LASER ruler I hear you ask?

This Detector is so accurate that it could measure a change in the length of a stick 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters (1 SEXTILLION : One followed by 21 Zeroes) by 5 millimetres! 

Since Gravity is pretty weak and the waves caused by it are even more, these waves can often be masked by other random noises in the universe such as cosmic radiation and other microwave background. So to over come this problem, we had to have a smart data analysing software which separated these "random" noises. 





They compared all these waves to a theoretical model of what a Gravitational wave looked like and they indeed found one.

Two black holes orbiting each other collided resulting in a Gravitational Wave! On September 14 2015 9:50 UTC LIGO caught such a wave and after a lot of analysis we found the first Gravitational Wave! (Watch Doc Schuster's video on it)

This is a completely new way of studying general relativity and whenever science finds a new way of doing something, we discover something new.....


Click HERE to listen to the Chirp made by the collision of two black holes! 
Leave a comment below telling me how you liked this topic! Any suggestions and new topics are welcome too!