EldwinSchrodinger @
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking floated free in zero gravity Thursday, becoming the first person with a disability to have the experience.
The zero-gravity flight in a modified jet creates the experience of microgravity during 25-second plunges -- called parabolas -- over the Atlantic Ocean.
"It was amazing," Hawking, paralyzed by a progressive neurological disorder, said afterward through an electronic device. (Go on a zero-gravity flight)
"The zero-G part was wonderful and the full-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. (Watch Hawking float around in zero-G 
)
"Space, here I come."
Hawking, a mathematics professor at the University of Cambridge who has done groundbreaking work on black holes and the origins of the universe, has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He cannot speak or move.
He is one of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation and also wrote the book "A Brief History of Time."
A doctor and three nurses monitored Hawking throughout the Zero Gravity Corp. flight. The scientist floated in the air, free of his wheelchair and electronic communication gear for the first time in 40 years.
The jet's interior is padded to protect the weightless fliers and is equipped with cameras to record their adventure. Normally, the plane conducts 10 to 15 plunges for its passengers who pay $3,750 for the ride, although that fee was waived for Hawking.
After the jet reached its proper altitude, Hawking's assistants lifted him out of his seat and laid him on his back in the front of the cabin for the first plunge.
"We consider ... having him weightless for 25 seconds is a successful mission," Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of Zero Gravity, said before the flight. "If we do more than one, fantastic."
Urged on by Hawking's smiles after the first parabola, they did seven more, Diamandis said afterward.
"He was doing gold-medalist gymnastics in zero G," Diamandis said.
Hawking has an ulterior motive for going on the flight other than the personal thrill of weightlessness -- he believes in the importance of private space ventures and the need to reduce the cost of space tourism so that it is accessible to more people.
"Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons," he said before the flight. "First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."
Diamandis put it more poetically afterward:
"Professor Hawking reached for the sky and touched the heavens today."
Labels: Stephen Hawking Biography
EldwinSchrodinger @ CNN - Hawking: Zero-gravity flight will be 'bliss'
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who has been confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, expects weightlessness to feel like "bliss" when he goes on a "zero-gravity" flight Thursday aboard a refitted jet.
"For someone like me whose muscles don't work very well, it will be bliss to be weightless," Hawking told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
Hawking, 65, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, will be the first person with a disability to fly on one of the flights offered by Zero Gravity Corp., a space tourism company.
Flying from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the jet creates the experience of microgravity in 25-second bursts of steep plunges over the Atlantic Ocean. Normally, the plane conducts 10 to 15 plunges for its passengers who pay $3,750 for the ride, although that fee has been waived for Hawking.
On Hawking's trip, the jet will make a single plunge. Other plunges will be made only after doctors and nurses who are accompanying the astrophysicist on the ride have made sure that he is enjoying it.
"We consider ... having him weightless for 25 seconds is a successful mission," said Peter Diamandis, the chairman and CEO of Zero Gravity. "If we do more than one, fantastic."
Unable to use his hands, legs or voice, Hawking can only use his facial expressions using the muscles around his eyes, eye brows and mouth to communicate. Otherwise, he relies on a computer to talk for him in a synthesized voice. The computer is attached to his wheelchair and allows him to choose words on a computer screen via a sensor that detects motion in his cheek.
He won't have his wheelchair and talking computer on the jet with him, although his assistant will bring a laptop in case he wants to communicate beyond facial expressions.
"I hope it goes OK," Hawking said. "But there's always a chance things can go wrong."
Labels: Stephen Hawking Biography
EldwinSchrodinger @ New Habitable planets found
an earthlike planet Gliese 581c under libra constellation: Astronomers have discovered a planet (or exoplanet) 5 times as massive as the Earth orbiting a dim red star known as Gliese 581 which is located about 120 trillion miles away from planet earth.
Plants growing on other planets are likely to be coloured the whole spectrum of the rainbow except for blue, researchers have concluded.
Two studies carried out on the likely appearance of extra-terrestrial undergrowth suggest that it is as likely to be red or yellow as green.
Astrobiologists said that the colour of the plants, if they exist, will be dependent on the quality of light available from their local sun. The studies were carried out to help to guide the search for life on other planets by identifying the colours that astronomers should search for.
On Earth the commonest colour of foliage is green because it is the shade that is of least use to the plants from the spectrum of light emitted by the sun when they photo-synthesise. The spectrum of light from other stars will differ, and plants growing on other planets are expected to evolve to take advantage of the best available light.
discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, the planet is circling a red dwarf star, that goes by the name Gliese 581. the star is much cooler than our sun of course.
these stars are low-energy, and last longer than other stars as they fuse lesser hydrogen, obviously because they are low energy and should "last" longer than our sun.
hopefully more exoplanets could be discovered to support our human population after 8 billion years.
now for the bad news.. Gravity on planet 581c is 1.6 times stronger than earth's so you are going to walk a little slower and need a good pair of lightweight shoes. and those who have problems with fitness. i'll rather we stick to earth for the time being.
Labels: Astronomy
EldwinSchrodinger @
this post is to remember my hamster, stuart, passed away on april 23, 2007 at 11.32pm. thank you for entertaining and accompanying us for 2 years. rest in peace . i miss you dearly.
Eldwin and Family.
Labels: Personal Stuff
EldwinSchrodinger @ Quantum Theory - Thermodynamics
to understand paradoxes in the universe, we would first need some background in thermodynamics and of course statistics which are important to the development of quantum theory.
first of all, when i first started on quantum theory, i would ask myself. what the heck is thermodynamics and entropy? its actually not as tough as you would think :) it actually means the movement of heat from a body with higher temperature
to a body with lower temperature. till the temperatures of the two bodies are the same. and thats called thermal equilibrium.
here's a simple example. this particular girl leaves her seat after sitting for about 10 minutes, and you sit on that same sit. you'll find that the seat is warm. now why? its because the molecules in the seat are still vibrating at the same rate as in that girl's body. which is apparently faster than that yours. hence, the seat feels warm to you. and when it doesn't feel warm, it reaches thermal equilibrium! =)
here' the first law of thermodynamics - law of the conservation of energy. " the quantity of heat can be equated to a certain amount of mechanical work ". thus. heat can be converted into work and must be a form of energy. and when a certain amount of energy disappears somewhere, an equal amount must appear elsewhere in the same system.
for the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it is said that when time is elapsed, all energy would eventually be transformed into heat at a uniform temperature and all natural process would stop. this is also based on the principle of the dissipation of energy or just entropy. "the total entropy of a system always increases whenever heat flows from a hot body to a cold body" AND, it also increases whenever mechanical energy is changed into thermal energy in certain collision and frictional processes.
according to physicist ludwig boltzmann, entropy dependson the probabilities of molecular arrangements. for eg, if a state has a very large number of different ways its molecules could be arranged, then it has a very large entropy. thats why, if an egg were to fall on the floor and breaks, it is very unlikely to reform into its original shape.
if the entropy of an isolated system increase, what does that mean? it actually means that heat does not flow on its own from the cold body to the hot body. like a ball cannot bounce higher than its original position by converting heat to mechanical energy. likewise an egg cannot unscramble itself. if that happens, that would not violate the newtonian mechanics. but to instead, decrease the entropy of a system and thus forbidden by this 2nd law of thermodynamics. and this law tells time which way to go! =D
Labels: Quantum Mechanics
EldwinSchrodinger @ Back to the discussion of black holes.
today i was rather explaining to my friends on the destruction of physical information. when bodies reach thermal equilibrium, they have a temperature and therefore must emit thermal radiation. exchanging energy with their surroundings. but everyone knows black holes emit a constant flow of x rays no matter how mush matter is poured in. black hole isn't as simple as everyone could think. imagining me explaining schwarzschild's and oppenheimer's solution to einstein's equation. and then revealing how nature squeezes these stuff until space folds up around them and poof! they disappear.. lol as earlier i've mentioned about the destruction of information, which is impossible in nature. that would bring us to thermodynamics and entropy which i'll talk about it later again.
Hawking's Law of Area Increase: The surface area of the blackhole can only stay the same or increase. but can never decrease.
Labels: Blackholes
EldwinSchrodinger @ the fundamentals of particle physics
according to physics, the world is made from 12 fundamental particles called fermions: six quarks and 6 leptons, all the hundred of known particles are actually combination of these! in out everyday life, we will see only what we termed them as err generation I fermions. these are electrons and only up and down quarks combines to form protons and neutrons.
fermions in generation II and III tend to decay into lower generations, and when a heavy lepton (probably a electron, a muon or a tau) decays. and whats the by product is what we actually call them neutrinos
matter particles interact by exchanging force particles, collectively called bosons. at present, the model can explain how force particles carry the strong electromagnetic, and uh week forces. but it cant explain gravity..
by right, all particles have a particular mass, electric charge and spins. and each particle also has a corresponding antimatter particle with the same mass and spins but then it has different electric charge. and when an antiparticle meets a particle, the 2 will annihilate in a flash of energy.
Labels: Elementary Particles
EldwinSchrodinger @ just before i sleep..
just before bed maybe i should spend some time sharing with you guys what cosmic strings mean or how would they exist. first of all, they're long and curvy, with a complex assortment of wiggles or fragmented into smaller loops that looks like taut rubber bands.
although they are thinner than the subatomic particles, these cosmic strings are are boundless in length, stretched by the cosmic expansion of the universe. and they're physically characterized by their mass per unit length, or tension, a parameter that reflects the gravitational heft. this linear density can reach incredibly high values. imagining about 1 million megatons per centimeter for strings formed at the so called "grand unification" energies (10^16 billion electron volts and higher) , corresponding to a time when all 4 fundamental forces in nature were combined as one. lol
so far according to my own knowledge, neutron stars are considered one of the most denses compact object we know of, even if we could squeeze one billion neutron star into the size of an electron, that would hardly reach the matter energy density characteristics if the grand unified cosmic strings. information contributed from Alejandro Gangui
Labels: String Theory
EldwinSchrodinger @ My theory and random stuff
i tried mapping out the universe based on the cosmic microwave background image, i realize that the universe expands randomly in all direction and dimension as light has been redshifted in all direction. that means that the universe is expanding and the other galaxy's are moving further and further . and based on the hypothesis that the universe will collapse upon itself after its expansion stops might not be what it'll will turn out to be. taking law of motion, the universe will keep expanding unless theres and opposite force acting against the expansion. but then again. there's no resistance in space at all! so how could the big crunch be possible? and the source of x-ray emission from cygnus x-1 isn't a neutron star.. it has 10 solar mass and way too big to be one. i think its a massive black hole.
the second fact is that i think the more massive the star is, the more fuel it needs to burn in its core, the more it'll die soon. say uh, 10-20 solar mass>? sun probable last less than 10 billion years before it inflates?
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oh i just love 30th march. and the next day was the stomp study outing organized by seng leng. met up with asevinge, missgrins, zombified, xsb, seng leng, maring, chilly, devil, jensen, monkey , ash and friend. as usual got my next set of books. 2 books on stephen hawkings, one on einstein's relativity and last but not least, introducing quantum theory. and guess what! i'm so addicted to outrun2 sp now and drifting!
Labels: Personal Stuff
