Black Holes: Stripped

Black holes, pulsars, energy, gravity, general relativity, nudity amongst singularity (ies)… <more on that later>

focus, need to focus on one.

The thing with Astrophysics is, there is no ‘ONE ‘starting point to start with. Each and every topic meshes together so perfectly, it seems like a toroidal hot dog with you having no idea where to start from. Thus, I shall sprinkle sparsely over them like sugar on donuts, whilst ye few who art interested; look it up on Google.

Okay then. Black holes.

One of the misconceptions about Black holes is that it’s unnatural: Considered often like Agent Smith from The Matrix, it’s believed to be “an exile program that manifests itself as a computer virus”, swallowing and subjugating everything within its infinite reach for its inestimable existence.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Any star greater than three solar masses (three times the mass of our sun), near it’s end, collapses on its own gravitational pull to form a supposed ‘tear’ through the time-space continuum.  There are a hundred thousand misunderstandings on the difference between the formation of black holes, supernovas, neutron stars, white dwarfs (no racism or discrimination intended), quasars and pulsars, but for someone with my penchant of digressing from the topic, I’d rather not go there.

Now, some questions and misconceptions-

·         Black holes are ‘hungry pigs’ defy the laws of thermodynamics

Au contraire, Black holes are the embodiment of “give more than you get” (more on that later). Matter gets sucked in, matter converts to energy, and energy gets spewed out. This energy is known as ‘Hawking Radiation’.

He might be tiny but...Omnomnomnom

·         Diamonds aren’t forever. Black holes are.

Well diamonds do get converted into the much more stable form of carbon, namely graphite, but that is not the discussion here. Come close and let me whisper the age old secret in your ear. Black holes actually dissipate! As I said, the “give more than they get”, The energy they give out through hawking radiation is much more than the equivalent matter they take in (This rate of dissipation is inversely proportional to the black hole’s size). Thus, generous pigs these black holes are, chopping themselves up as bacon to “feed us with energy”.

·         We can’t see a black hole. Does this mean it’s just an old wives tale?

One of the ‘axioms’ in theoretical astrophysics is that “Nature abhors a naked singularity”. What it means is that the gravitational effects of a black hole, bound by the inverse square law, are observable only within its ‘event horizon’. A black hole is detected by its effect on the luminous particles in its vicinity.

·         If photons don’t have mass, light shouldn’t get sucked in by black holes.

Look up your physics, child. By the law of General Relativity, It’s not the mass; it’s the energy itself that gravitates. By the time the light off the objects located within reaches the horizon, it has lost all its energy, and the earlier rebellious photons fall right “back to their places”.

These poor, misunderstood, supposed “freaks of nature” are not so different from the other…”freaks of nature”. Just like us humans on Earth, We’re all unique, each and every one of us. Each and every one.

How oxymoron-ic.

Psych Out

What is Psychology?

Psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour. Its immediate goal is*yawn* to understand individuals and *BIG yawn* groups by both establishing general principles and researching *snore….*.

Psychology has always interested me. No seriously, I’m not being contemptuous or sarcastic. As for my reaction to the above lines, I’ll explain that later, But yes, psychology.

I’ll lay it out clear and simple. I honestly do not see it as an individual subject. Psychology is… how to define it, it’s like reading; reading other people and yourself. How the eyes of a person close to you betray when he/she’s actually faking a laugh to hide something, how a particular behaviour on part of a person actually might hide a deep-rooted insecurity and how a seemingly insignificant reaction on someone’s part betrays something of colossal importance (and how you later realize that most of what they said on the show “Lie to Me” was basically nonsense). At a certain level, it is essential for a sound social life. Unless you are one of those reclusive millionaires raking in the dough by sitting at home and typing a couple million words worth of humanely undecipherable text per day on your laptop. In that case, you’re doing it perfectly fine. Say hi to your imaginary girlfriend from me.

You know what psychologist do for the 200$ an hour therapy? They ask you incredibly obvious questions that you ought to be asking yourself; and when they aren’t doing that, they ask you questions whose unpredictability and relevance borders on stupidity.  When asked to comment on this, a budding psychologist from our esteemed school replied, “Why?”

YOU SEE?

Allow me to explain my very first lines now. Covering the school’s psychology week event, mosaic, I glimpsed through their quiz question. Knowing myself to be adept at reading people (no false modesty here), It was… annoying how everything was about mugging up the various whacko terminology and spewing it out. When the human BRAIN is not constant, how can the therapy for it be? If every person is different, why is their psychological evaluation based upon the studies and theories, and more (un)importantly, perceptions of some ancient shrinks who believed they understood the human behaviour more than anyone ever did and ever could? Psychology’s supposed to be an art, how you slip in through the patient’s denial and defence and make him/her realize what he/she’s doing wrong. Actually, the way I am, they’ve probably got terms in psychology that I could be an epitome of, namely attention deficit disorder, ADHD, and a major dollop of self-obsession; but the way we’re learning it as a subject, it’s only got three phases. Yawn, BIG yawn, and Snore.

Playing with Fire

A while back, for this very magazine, I was writing about how amazing carbon nanotubes are, and how strong and light grapheme is, and all other scientific details that would greatly please the teachers and the nerds when I threw the article in the trash.

I hate chemistry.

Until tenth, it was JUST fine. Perfect grades, perfect life. Then, well, I passed. Biggest mistake of my life. And now, surviving on barely 70% grades, chemistry is synonymous with an assassin who slowly lulls you into that shroud of a false sense of security, before mutilating you.

And I end up writing for the chemistry magazine.

I only hate theoretical chemistry to be precise. Practical chemistry is awesome. So here I share with you some amazing instances of practical chemistry which, if you do try at home, please refrain from naming me if caught.

BURNIng money

Here is what you need to perform the burning money demonstration:

·         dollar bill (higher denomination if you're brave)

·         tongs

·         matches or a lighter

·         salt

·         solution of 50% alcohol and 50% water (you can mix 95% alcohol with water in a 1:1 ratio, if desired)

Have you gathered your materials? Let's burn money...

1.      Prepare the alcohol and water solution. You can mix 50 ml of water with 50 ml of 95-100% alcohol.

2.      Add a pinch salt or other colorant to the alcohol/water solution, to help produce a visible flame.

3.      Soak a dollar bill in the alcohol/water solution so that it is thoroughly wet.

4.      Use tongs to pick up the bill. Allow any excess liquid to drain. Move the damp bill away from the alcohol-water solution.

5.      Light the bill on fire and allow it to burn until the flame goes out.

6.      Let out an evil laugh (MWAHAHAHAHA!) as you watch your parents call up the mental hospital.

GREEN FIRE

It's easy to make brilliant green fire. This cool chemistry project requires only two household chemicals.

Green Fire Materials

·         Boric Acid
Medical grade boric acid can be found in the pharmacy sections of some stores for use as a disinfectant. It is a white powder. It's not the same chemical as borax. I used a cockroach repellent. Any will do.

·         Heet™ Gas Line Antifreeze and Water Remover
Heet™ is sold with automotive chemicals.

·         Metal or Stoneware Container

·         Lighter

Instructions for Making Green Fire

1.    Pour some Heet™ into the container. How much you use will determine how long your fire will burn. I used about a half cup of Heet™ for approximately 10 minutes of fire.

2.    Sprinkle some boric acid into the liquid and swirl it around to mix it up. I used 1-2 teaspoons of powder. It won't all dissolve, so don't worry about some powder at the bottom of the container.

3.    Set the container on a heat-safe surface and ignite it with a lighter.

Green Fire Tips & Safety Information

·         Boric acid is a relatively safe household chemical. You can rinse the residue remaining in the container down the drain.

·         This is an outdoor project. There isn't a lot of smoke produced, nor is it particularly toxic, but the heat is intense. It will set off your smoke alarm.

·         Be sure to set your container on a heat-safe surface. Do not follow my extremely bad example and set it on your wooden dining table. Similarly, don't use any container that might shatter dangerously. Use metal or possibly stoneware, not glass, wood, or plastic.

·         Heet™ primarily is methanol (methyl alcohol). You could try this project with other types of alcohol. Possibilities include ethanol, such as vodka (please don’t waste your Russian vodka) or isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol). You might also try other common household metal salts for different flame colours.

·         The green fire could be used as a stunning Halloween decoration in a cauldron or possibly inside a jack-o-lantern.

Quantum tunneling for Dummies

Quantum tunneling is the kind of phenomenon which practically defies everything you’ve ever believed in. well, not practically, theoretically. The very basic fundamental principle of a solid is its…solidness? Precisely. If there’s a wall in front of you, you can’t go through it, you need a door. According to quantum tunneling, if you hit a tennis ball for long enough at a wall, sooner or (most probably) later, it’ll finally pass through the wall without damaging it.

Yes folks, this is the time you look at me in a weird ways and say, “yeah right, I believe that”, but BELIEVE it! Well, maybe not for such macroscopic particles, but this is happening every day. Technically speaking, the sun doesn’t have enough heat or energy to fuse two hydrogen molecules into an alpha particle (yes, 6000®C isn’t enough and we dream of nuclear fusion. What a joke), yet it does. And the reason? It’s the miniscule possibility that a particle will appear where it is not supposed to, or rather, where the possibility of its being is negligible AND create what is the basis of life on earth (bringing us to a lot of philosophical if life is all but a coincidence and if this coincidence has a chance of being repeated somewhere else in our cosmos and blah blah).

Consider a ball rolling off into a valley, bound on the other side by a higher hill. Classic physics states that the ball cannot have sufficient energy to roll over from the other side of the higher hill unless an external velocity is imparted on this ball, but according to quantum tunneling, there is the minute possibility that this ball will turn out to be that one coincidence out of a million and DIG THROUGH the hill instead of rolling over.

 This brings us onto a whole new dimension to explore. Owing to the wave motion of particles, we could be TELEPORTING matter through solids! Electrons are, through this principle, occasionally calculated to be INSIDE the nucleus of an atom, trapped among the protons and neutrons! They stand stilled a beam of light by passing it through Bose-Einstein condensate, old story. But passing photons through cesium gas at sub zero temperatures, it was noticed that some particles passed through BEFORE they’d been released! THAT’S quantum tunneling to you.