The Mystery of Force Fields!

The day was little breezy. Professor Govind was busy soldering the transistors on his new invention. The television was switched on and Sheela was there easing on the sofa, watching an episode of "Star Trek". It was indeed a nice episode. An asteroid was heading towards the small space ship in terribly high speed. The crew felt the danger of the asteroid hitting the space ship. Everyone was puzzled.

The captain shouted "Shields up!"

No sooner he shouted, than a thin bluish layer enclosed the space ship. It shattered up the asteroid into pieces then.

"Phew!, that's the end", exclaimed Sheela in amazement. "Professor, what actually is a force field?"Sheela's question attracted his attention. He started then, 

" Force fields are thin impenetrable barriers which could destroy or reflect everything that fell on them. Be it a stone, metal piece, water or even laser."

"Just have a look at this photograph. It looks like this", he showed her.

"The principle behind this force field is a simple theory. You might have seen your Plasma television screen. The same goes here- the principle of isolating air from vacuum", he paused to take out something from his junk box.

"Oh!, But Professor,what is that we call "plasma"? interrogated Sheela.

"I'll rather show you off", said Prof.Govind and took a hollow glass sphere, in which a metal electrode is inserted. He said, "Sheela, this glass bulb contains a mixture of Helium and Neon gases at very low pressure," while connecting its terminals to 5000V a.c. supply of high frequency(about 35 kHz). The bulb started glowing and violet streaks started appearing in it.

"Wow!" wondered Sheela.

He said, "Before the matter inside the bulb were in gaseous state. But, as soon as we started applying electric potential, the gases will be ionized completely. And this state in which gases are completely ionized is called "Plasma state" the forth state of matter" and touched the glass bulb. White streaks appeared from the filament to the point where he touched the bulb.
"Is there any chance that I get shock while touching this bulb, professor?" asked Sheela."Actually the glass here behaves are dielectric between the ionized air inside and my hand(both being a conductor, this setup behaves like a capacitor). 
Leaving this setup intact, he took a strong horseshoe magnet and placed it near iron filings. Sheela smiled and said, "I knew that magnets attract charged bodies already in my grade-5". 
"That's the matter. So we have ions that are charged, haven't we? Just imagine that this magnet attracts these ions completely to one side thereby creating vacuum at the center.We get a plane of ionized gases on the corner." 
The same principle is used in plasma windows.


"This plasma window can be used in combination with a series of laser curtains and carbon-nanotubes to generate a powerful force field around us. But to stop laser, one must deal with photochromatics", said Prof.Govind.
"Photochromatics?" interrogated Sheela.
"Yeah. It is the science based on the fact that certain materials can exist in two different forms. Say your sunglasses. How does it become black on exposure to the sun?" puzzled professor Govind.
"How?" asked Sheela. 
The glass is coated with a thin film of photochromatic materials which when exposed to radiations like UV rays becomes dark(colored) due to a change of state. Similarly, specially designed material has to be used to selectively stop lasers or else, you'll go blind on dark while you're in force fields."


"Hmm. That was interesting!" exclaimed Sheela. "Anyway, it's time for the dinner. Thank you professor. I must go now." 
"It's been a great time explaining you about this. Pleasure!" said the professor and got back to his workshop.

Anti-gravity

One day, Sheela wanted to ask some doubts on superconductors. She decided to approach prof.Govind in his laboratory. To her surprise, he was floating in mid-air defying gravity. She was astonished and ran out of words. She forgot why she'd come there and asked," Professor, How could you do that??!!!".

He jumped from mid-air and smiled at her. "Well, If a magician could do that, why can't I?"

"A magician performing anti-gravity trick"

"Super-conductive magnetic levitation is a wonder science which has made a remarkable mile-stone in the history of Science. There are two notable changes that occur when a material changes into a superconductor, namely

#1. Electrical resistance becomes zero.

#2. Magnetic lines of force are excluded from the material.

And these all happen for certain metals at low temperature only.Hope you might have heard about "Meissner effect".

When a superconductor is placed in a weak magnetic field, the field penetrates only a small part of the material(order of few micrometers). Just look at these pictures depicting Meissner effect", said Professor Govind.

"Meissner effect is a state of perfect diamagnetism in which, the magnetic field within the material of the superconductor is zero(B=0). This leads to the condition that the magnetic susceptibility is -1.

Whenever a magnet is brought near diamagnetic materials, they themselves become magnetized so as to oppose the external magnetic field. This is extreme in this case. You might be knowing that water is diamagnetic and this fact has helped scientists to levitate a frog applying a high magnetic field of "15 tesla", added him.

"That sounds interesting", exclaimed Sheela.

"Just watch what I'm doing. I'm pouring liquid nitrogen which boils at -196 degree Celsius so as to bring this metal piece to its superconduction state. It's always pleasure to watch how it levitates.

By now you could have understood the secret of anti-gravity and how I was floating in mid-air earlier", asked professor Govind.

"Hmm..That's true..and interesting too."

Ghost Busted # 1

2nd Sunday, Houston, TN: 

"It was like a glimpse of fire; It was like the air fired around; see, we were very frightened and ran away home in a hurry", says two young students of the Houston High School who had witnessed an ANGEL ORB on a cloudy night. They seem to be frightened of the scene and never agree to come to the place again. They show their evidence, a photograph showing the angel orb in front of a statue with clear-cut image of that Orb that frightened them. The digital camera has been analyzed by specialists to check out the troubles, if any. "Perhaps it may be the spirit of the student who has just passed by", said the others.

Sheela was reading this news aloud and said, "Wow! Brilliant! What you say about this professor?"

Professor Govind said, "Well, Orbs caught in photographs! Might be some optical phenomenon".

Sheela, "What? Professor, But they have an evidence. See this photograph showing the angel orb. "

"Hmm. Am very sure that this is not an angel orb. Nor a devil spirit too! Just try to understand Sheela, this is just an optical phenomenon.

The human eye has the power of perceiving only a narrow range of the spectra of the Universe. So, we cannot see things which are transparent to visible spectra. But digital camera which perceives and records a wide range of spectra including Infra-red and ultra-violet. So, this picture must have been taken from such digital camera.

Orbs are nothing but some objects which are transparent completely to the visible spectra and so we humans cannot see such bodies. They are mostly gases and rarely liquids and solids. For instance, we cannot see the water vapors on the sky, which an Infra-red picture can show clearly those things with diverse colors shades so as to distinguish their density", said Professor Govind.

"So, you say it's not the angel orb. Yeah?" asked Sheela. 

"Well, even water drops on the lens, dust particles and stuff like these can even cause such abnormal perception. Hmm, to be more exact, it's paranormal. See, we have only witnessed optical phenomena like diffraction, interference and polarization of visible spectra. We should never forgot that even invisible spectra undergo these phenomena whose result , we cannot perceive with our eyes. Still digital IR cameras and other devices can record these patterns, which frightens us. To say that a terrible demon just now had a cup of coffee with me sounds more of a comedy than of a mystery."

"Hmm. Usually I've seen skeptical listeners who just argue that angels and demons never exists but they could not give a perfect scientific reason for the non-existence of the puzzling happenings like this one", said Sheela with inquisitive eyes.

That's what for I am here," said and smiled professor Govind.

A Seed to Strepulsion Physics

One fine evening, Professor Govind was enjoying the cool breeze on his sea side walk. He smiled at the young and charming students who were busy building their sand-castles on the coast. Every time when the tides washed away their feet, they rejoiced. It was a full moon day of the Spring. The professor wanted to caution them and said, "Children, enjoy the scenario; but never go into the coast. These Proxigean Spring tides are dangerous, you know? They occur once in every 1.5 years only and are dangerous; Be careful". 

"What? Proxigiiii?, well what’s that? " asked one of the children.

"Yes. Proxigean Spring tides are very high tides that arise when the moon is at its proxigee, i.e, the closest distance(perigee). The moon's gravitation pulls the ocean water to it’s direction which is counteracted by the earth's gravitation and rotation to give rise to these kind of high tides", said Professor and pointed out a high tide along the coast.

"So, are you saying that all these tides are the action of the moon's gravitational pull?" asked one of the students in an inquisitive voice. "Yes. Of course, every body in this universe attracts every other body, as given by Newton, isn't it my child?" asked the professor.

"If every object in this Universe attracts every other objects, then the universe would be a condensed mass of ball and there will never be any distribution of matter as now; there won't be any planets, any stars, any asteroids, blah, blah, blah. The entire matter(mass) of this universe would stick together making a pile of matter, isn't it?" asked a bright student.

Everyone laughed and made fun at him. "Do you mean, Newton is wrong? Or the entire scientific society which's been following his theories were fools? WTH!" asked a boy in a sarcastic undertone.

"Listen my boys. Don't laugh at him. His question makes a sense. Please don't disregard anyone's knowledge". The boys stopped laughing at him, obeying professor's words. They were all anxious to listen to what the professor is going to say.

"Your name, my boy?" asked Professor Govind.

"Venkat Ram" said the inquisitive fellow with a shivering voice of guilty and shame.

"Good. I should appreciate you first. See, although we have everything established by our preceding society, the observations made by some of us are constantly offering some new concepts and corrections to the preceding theories. And one such is the "Strepulsion Physics" the branch of physics that's popped to explain the question that you put forth."

It was Dr.NavinChandra Shah and his associates who have proposed a new theory called "Stellar Repulsion Force Theory" in 2003. It is yet to be accepted world-wide. According to their postulates, it is repulsion and not gravitation(attraction) that dominates the Stellar Universe.

Two stellar bodies(stars) never attract each other. Newton's law of gravitation is bound to non-stellar bodies(planets, satellites, asteroids, celestial bodies other than stars) alone. No wonder, his apple fell down due to the earth's attraction, but his concepts aren't applicable in case of stars.

If not the stellar repulsive force exists, the whole world would be a condensed mass as you said. The universe is balanced by both attraction and repulsion, and the planets revolve due to retraction force which is the resultant of stellar repulsion and non-stellar attraction. Two planets attract, two asteroids attract, even a star attracts planets, but two stars never attract, but repel. He's put forth some argument which correct Newton's theory of Gravitation, Galileo's astronomical concepts and Einstein's General Theory of Relativity", said Professor Govind.

"Interesting.." said Venkat Ram, the one who initiated the talk. "Where can I get the further information about this Sterpulsion Physics, sir?" asked him.

"Hmm. I've a book with me. Also you can try downloading the e-books from either of the sites, http://strepulsion.org/index.htm or http://www.strepulsion.com/theory.htm " said the professor.

"Oh! It's time. See I forgot that I got some work in my laboratory. Feel free to ask whatever you need, children. Bye. Take care", said the professor and got back to his lab.

Time Travel -Proven by Relativity

"Is time travel possible?" - the most perplexing question that annoys every physicist. 

Is time travel really possible,huh? 

Yeah, of course. According to quantum theory and Einstein's relativity, time travel could be possible! Let me explain how certain physical theories claim that it could be possible, in a nutshell.


Einstein's Special Relativity:

Einstein's theory of Special Relativity unfolds a bundle of concepts, that were weird and puzzling to his generation. Some of them are the mass-energy equivalence, Lorentz contraction, relativity of simultaneity, invariance of the velocity of light and time-dilation.

In this context, his concepts on "Time-dilation" is going to help us figure out "Time-Travel"

According to Time-dilation, clocks that are moving with respect to an inertial system of observation are measured to be running slower. In other words, for a stationary observer, moving clocks appear to go slower than stationary clocks. This thing can be represented mathematically as 

Where,   is called "Lorentz factor"                 

is the time interval as measured from a stationary clock,

is the time interval as measured from a moving clock,

    is the velocity of the moving clock and 

    is the speed of light in vacuum.

So, if the velocity of a body approaches the speed of light in vacuum(c), then the time interval between two events increases appreciably.

If our velocity(v) equals the speed of light in vacuum(c), then the denominator becomes zero and the measured time becomes infinity. That is, Time stands still! 

Thus, this theory explains that it is possible to travel time! We can project ourself to the space and travel at the velocity of light(c) for several centuries and return back. But the problem is that one cannot attain the speed of light in vacuum.

But there has been a group of scientists who say that this "time-travel" concept of Einstein is just a theoretical and hypothetical crap and has no significance in reality. If you are one among them, the you must read this example.

Proof:

You might not know, but every second, a bunch of tiny nuclear particles called "cosmic ray muons" passes through your body. They are too small to detect and causes a very little damage to your body cells. Most of the time your body repairs the cells that has encountered this cosmic ray attack. These particles are formed in the atmosphere due to the collision of stable nuclear particles from the sun and stars and the atmospheric molecules. They are unstable and they travel at the speed of light(300,000 km/s). They arise from the atmosphere which is at a distance of 20 km from the surface of the earth. Also, they travel at the speed of light. 

So they must take roughly 7 millionth of a second to reach the earth's surface. The problem is they are unstable and live for only 2 millionth of a second. After that time, they vanish. So they should have been vanished in the atmosphere itself. But how do they manage to reach the earth's surface, even after their life-time?

Einstein's special relativity claims that they should have travelled across time and thus they've managed to reach the earth's surface. Their high velocity which is comparable to the speed of light in vacuum enables them to travel across time and reach the earth!

Well, exemplified by this case, Einstein's time-travel concept has been proved to have significance in reality. Cheers!