| |
|
 |
EYE
SPY NEWS |
Remember the 27 km long tunnel near Geneva called the Large Hadron Collider ruling headlines last year? The one which claimed to be the most spectacular human experiment to study evolution of life, as per theory of Big Bang and identify new smaller than the smallest particles of Physics. Skeptics had alleged it would create a black hole and suck up the Earth. Well, it had to halt its research after a faulty electrical connection knocked the Hadron machine offline.
After being under repair for a whole year, it is now fully functional. And within just 10 days of operation, it has created a world record, accelerating twin beams of protons to energy of 1.18 teraelectronvolts (TeV). The previous record was for 0.98 TeVs, set by the U.S. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Tevatron collider, which held it since 2001. Back with a bang we must say!
|
When Dalai lama visited Tibet recently, he made a very unique appeal to China. No, he did not ask for a political solution(for Tibet). This was going to take time, and “we can wait”, said the patient peace protagonist. But damaging the fragile but immensely valuable ecology of the region has to stop now. The Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yellow, Yangtze and so many of Asia’s great rivers originate in Tibet. That is why the environment here is crucial for the well-being of a billion people living in Asia.”
Temperatures here have risen by an average of 0.32°C every 10 years since 1961, about six times as fast as in the rest of China. Thus in Tibet, it is hotter than at any time in the past half century, while in the south and west of Tibet there is between 30 per cent and 80 per cent less rainfall. Also the plateau’s 36,000 glaciers, which once extended for 18,000 square miles, could vanish before mid-century if present rates of warming persist. No wonder the Buddha is not laughing any longer!
|
|
 With innumerable satellites orbiting around the Earth, a clutter of debri rings has surfaced in space, says a study conducted by Hugh Lewis of the University of Southampton, the US. Lewis says “close encounters”, that is a flying junk passing closer than 5 km of a satellite, will rise by 50 per cent in the next 10 years, and by 250 per cent by 2059, pushing it to more than 50,000 a week. Lewis predicts the main effect would not necessarily be an increase in crashes, but a hike in the frequency and costs of steps to avoid them.
The two main incidents cited in the study are the collision of two satellites of North American and Russian origin earlier this year, and the missile destruction of a defunct Chinese satellite in 2007. “These contribute to 40 per cent of total number of objects in orbit right now”, says Lewis. The small debris have the effect of constant sandblasting on any spacecraft, while the ones weighing more than 1 kg can destroy it completely. In a separate study, the total weight of debris has been estimated to be 4 million pounds, or 18 lakh kg which has more than 110,000 total objects larger than one centimetre. Out of the total counted 8,927 man-made objects in the orbit, 2,671 were satellites (some not operating at all), 90 were space probes. Phew! We humans have now created a junkyard up there.
|
|
| |
Illustrations: Arundyuti |
|
|
|
|
