Diwali without crackers

This year crackers have been banned in the two biggest metropolis of India; Delhi and Mumbai. I cannot imagine a Diwali without fire-crackers though I am the most fearful when it comes to those big laxmi and sutli bombs.
The joy over watching a rocket, lit by you, whirring into the sky (save through the windows) and bursting into a riot of colours, is a joy to behold. All those childhood past-times like putting a lid over the bomb and watch it fly after the ringing burst; locking a cracker into the washers of of a nut-bolt assembly and bringing the assembly down with a thud on the floor; friends lighting a paper with crackers rolled inside; unrolling a string of red and green lavangis on the road. Oh! All those noises and all those colours!! I cannot imagine a Diwali without crackers.
I can understand the pollution it causes, I can understand the wasteful expenditure, I can understand the poor and the destitute but still cannot cope with the fact that you don’t fire crackers. If you have to ban crackers you will have to ban automobiles, consumerism (which is the real bane in the world) and lots more.
I think you can have a cap over some things like discipline in timings or have confined areas like in some places where it is made into a public celebration.
I have a suggestion; why not manufacture pollution free noiseless electronic crackers that gift us all the joy and deduct all the negatives and make it a public pre-announced function in various nodes like I have seen being done in UAE during Independence day celebrations.

Carl Sagan...The history of Earth...Aliens

Carl Sagan, one of the greatest astronomers of our times, said there could be as many as 50,000 civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Imagine the number of civilizations in the millions of galaxies since time was born about 8.4 billion years ago. Strange, looking at the way the earth was born and evolved. The astronomers and scientists have put together the sequence of events that may have triggered life on earth beginning 4.5 billion years ago. They use rocks and fossils and conduct geotechnical investigation to weave this catalogue.
Some of the main events that are documented include accretion of matter in the space around the earth to form the planet 4.5 billion years ago. This was followed by the heating of the core of earth which spilled out molten lava to the surface of earth which formed a sea of churning hot mantle. The number of times the atmospheric composition the earth has undergone over the period due to geological happenings is amazing. Somewhere in between life evolved and underwent a phase of extinction. Then the ice age was followed by the age of the dinosaurs. The infinite fossil fuel we are consuming has formed over millions of years of the birth and death of animal and plant life embedded below in sedimentary rocks hundreds of feet below the earths crust and even under water.
To evolve the right kind of temperature and atmospheric composition and the tilt to the axis of earth so that seasons could have been made possible. To have water and fertile land for the nourishment of human life! To have an ozone cocoon above the atmosphere to protect the earth from obnoxious rays of the sun! And for the sun itself to be the harbinger of life on earth! There are umpteen factors that are a reason for running plant, animal and intelligent human life on earth beyond these. The composition of human body has an immune system that is compatible with its resources. The body make-up has a human form with male and female permutation with its capacity to repeat. There is an abundance of metals and minerals- recipes for the industrial revolution.
If evolution has really taken place in the order scientists believe and if parameters required for the survival of life are so complex it seems difficult for life to exist on other planets with the same parameter as exist now. Either there has to be a short-cut or another set of extremely similar parameters to be repeated which look difficult. Yes life can exist in a very different form with very different senses but then it could be very difficult for us to recognise those however well we use earthly telescopes or techniques known to astronomy.

Shape of things in the coming decades

My father got my horoscope done in those days from a well known astrologer. He had carefully noted the time of my birth and other details. The astrologer in his predictions highlighted that I would be somewhat of a learned person and I had the fortune to make a foreign trip in my lifetime. Little he may have known or predicted about the technological developments that I would witness in my life. From a radio to TV and from a land-line to a smart phone and from a telegraphic communication to an email there have been far reaching advancements. In astronomy man is running robotised mission on Mars and has almost reached the edge of the solar system 1.2 light years in space just in a matter of 50 years. He has also peeked deeply into the cosmic set-up with sophisticated telescopes.
Then I started wondering what our children and grand-children would witness in their lifetimes. How would the future of mankind be let us say in the coming few decades and in the next hundred years to come although it may have been true that predictions made 50 years ago have not exactly fallen through. We definitely make what advancements are possible based on what exists now and what the thinkers of our times envisage mankind to be in the coming 50/100 years.
Future Living:
When it comes to constructing residences we can be sure that algorithms fed into a computer shall deliver 3D Printouts of villas with swarms of drones capable of lifting them anywhere, and placing them on new locations, by the end of next decade. Our young grandsons will see sensors in these houses almost for everything governed by internet to control temperature and shades of colour on walls through lighting to suit your mood. High strength carbon nano-tubes will be used to construct immense arcologies (very huge structures which will dwarf todays skyscrapers) around 2030’s. There will be sub-aqueous structures that will split water into oxygen and hydrogen for breathing and energy requirements in the decade thereafter.

The Food You Eat
In the thirties cultured meat will replace animal meat and served with an ipod that emanates music increasing the taste-buds of the person eating (certain frequency makes food tastier). Algae farming shall be carried out for use as alternative fuel. Vegetarian meat will be manufactured by separating proteins from starch and bran by rinsing wheat and then used as a burger product. A refrigerator may not just tell you what it contents, it may even tell you what all can be cooked out of it.
In the 40’s cost of raising cattle will be very high. 1400 species of edible insects (sold not as insects but as mini-livestock) could become staple diet in the form of burgers and sausages. I see our sons and grandsons eating these burgers in their college canteens over a conversation of what’s happening on Mars.
By the 50’s the quantity of food required would increase by 70%. Cereals should rise from 2.1 billion tonnes to 3 billion today. Meat production needs will rise from the present 270 million tonnes to 470 mllion tonnes.
Health
By the end of the next decade homes will come with standard walk in medical capsules capable of multispectral scanning for disease or damage. Complicated surgeries will be carried out by robots with precision with robots and humans forming a team. There will be epatients who are constantly connected with their doctors through sensors attached to their bodies and monitored through smartphones for treatment and care..
In the decade after that 3D printers will manufacture medical equipment, prostheses, or even drugs. They will also play a vital role in regenerative medicine, to create tissues with blood vessels, bone, heart valves, ear cartilage, synthetic skin, and even organs. This will further increase the life-spans of our great grandsons and they may survive on an average a 100 year life.
The decade of the 2060’s will see a disease free world coming forth where no one ever dies from an adverse drug reaction; where physicians have an entire range of medicines to choose from to treat a deadly disease.
Transport
Magnetic levitation trains will operate in the next decade and in the decade of the thirties battery operated driverless cars and buses along-with hyperloop trains at 800 miles per hour will be routine transport in megacities.
In the 40’s flying cars will rule the air borne roads. Accidents in the air will see debris falling on the less congested roads below creating a hazard. Sub-orbital space flight may reduce flying time ridiculously requiring special spacecraft and travellers requiring space suits when travelling in space.
In the 70’s Carbon nano-tubes will connect the surface of earth with space.

Robotised Life
Using the Web as a communication tool, people with aspirations may be able to find an audience more easily than ever before. It may not be long until a relatively unknown person uses the Internet social media to win enough support to be able to create a cliché for him.
By the 30’s difference between man and machine will seize to exist. Gradually robots will replace humans in many fields especially in services sector in malls and restaurants. By 2040’s robots will outsmart humans.
Communication
Mobile apps will take over human life and machine to machine communication will start.
Not long thereafter you may wear a wrist-watch that produces a 3D image right in front of your eyes to watch a movie.

Astronautics
By the end of 2030’s robots will be used in space.
By the mid 40’s there would be a Mars base. Huge telescopes more than 100 mtr diameter will see clearly in space, may be life on exoplanets.
In the late 50’s advanced propulsion systems are expected to increase speed of space travel. The speed would be to the tune of 1000 kms per second (3600000 kmph). We will land on Jupiters moons Enceladus and Europa and on Saturns moon Titan.
By the 60’s we should see the colonisation of Mars. Later in another decades time we should see terraforming on Mars to make its environment Earth-like.
In a hundred years from now we could see orbital colonies.

Environmental
This is the most critical aspect environmentalists are bother today at the rate at which the temperature of the Earth is increasing we start to see a bleak future. By the 50’s some of them predict famines. By the 60’s we could see depletion of resources unless and until we tap the resources on the asteroids and other moons.
In another 90 years global warming magnitude will catch up like never before. 30% species will be extinct due to human population encroaching and climate change.
In the beginning of the next century there could be a nuclear war as there would be a resource crunch. Predict some futurologists.

Population Menace
The world population as of July 2017 is 7.3 billion. Out of this 36% is populated in China and India alone. The population would be 8.5 billion in 2030. It would be 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100 a 53% rise by 2017 figures. Does the Earth have the resources to sustain such a population over time. The answer is difficult unless and until we have alternate resources.
Behavorial patterns will be impersonal in the coming decades and as urbanisation and technology takes over people will lose contact with nature. New viruses will arrive and diseases will increase.

Evolution of Space Technology

The Universe is about 13.4 billion years in time and space. It is also multi-dimensional evolving from a billion points on the surface of Earth and protruding in every directing we can think of. It is very different viewed from within the gravitational and atmospheric peripheries 0f the Earth. Out of it is a strange different world. For that matter the dimensions of space besides being vast are perceived as harsh from the human point of view. We are humans belonging to the Earth and we are brought up clinging to parameters that exist on Earth. Our body is made up of bone, muscle and tissue capable of living and exalting to these environs. But beyond I wouldn’t say is harsh but are parameters your physical abilities are not able to cope up with eg say our body is used to a gravity of 9.8 g/cm2 whereas in empty space it could be almost zero and that would make you float. It would not root you to the ground. This affects our bones, muscles and blood flow and many other aspects.eg There is almost 18% oxygen in our atmosphere and very negligible on Mars. What would you breathe? You are forced to carry oxygen with you. Add to this the pressure on Earth and the presence of water and this makes life very difficult for humans out of the spheres of Earth.
This also makes our movement difficult with respect to the space ships you are flying. It require a tremendous amount of fuel to get out of the Earths atmosphere and requires a lot of heat shields to be removed and discarded as you criss-cross the outer layers of the stratosphere of Earth. Thus putting a space probe of the size of a car requires a delta rocket that can churn tremendous amount of energy and thrust to get out of the Earths atmosphere and to navigate in space.
Thus space-faring is a slow game to adjust to new environs and it also is very expensive requiring millions of dollars just to get to our nearest planets and their moons in the solar system. The vastness of it makes it more complicated on account of their distances counted in light years.
As it has happened first humans sent a bitch (named Lyka) to space before putting up Yuri Gagarin in Low Earth Orbit. With Apollo inspiration missions we could walk on our Moon just 2,85,000 kms away. But we learned a little bit about the outer space. With the International Space Station we are learning to smother the hardships of leaving in space. We have sent robotic missions to Mercury and Venus and Mars and fly-by missions like the Voyager and The New Horizons that are still flying to the outer echelons of the solar system.
It has taken us almost 60years to achieve this. But the humans are dreamers and sometimes we think very fast under challenging circumstances when Kennedy asked NASA to put up humans within a decade in the sixties. Since building a rocket to fly in space we may have achieved a lot but we have also spent a lot many years. To fly in leaps and bonds we need to make revolutionary technology leaps. But for the time being it looks like mining helium from the Moon, Capturing an asteroid and putting it up on a Moons orbit and milking its minerals and metals and or taking a human flight to Mars and landings on Jupiters Moon Enceladus or touching down on Saturns Moon Titan seem to be our nearest objectives.

Dreams and Fantasies

The Pioneer O was flown by the US on Aug 17th, 1958 to the Moon. After scores of missions by US and Soviet Union NASAs manned mission Apollo 11 landed successfully on the Moon on July 16, 1969. It took 11 yrs to land on the Moon which is just 340000 kms away, a two day manoeuvre. Oct 10,1960 The Soviet Union flew 1M No 1 to Mars. Viking 1 unmanned spaceship landed on Mars in 1976 16 years hence. 40 years into the Viking lander mission we are still far away to send a manned spaceship to Mars the next most in-hostile planet . Venus at the closest opposition is 38 million kms but is a very hostile planet. We do not know how to stay in microgravity conditions for almost 18 months just to travel back and forth to Mars and what fuel we will use. We have not still built a colony on the Moon since our first landing in 1969. The Mars is at a distance of about 75 million kms. Jupiter is at the closest distance of 668 million kms. How long would it take to reach Io or Europa or Encedalus the moons of Jupiter. It is not possible to travel these distances with prevailing technologies. New Horizons was launched by NASA in 2004 and will make a flyby to an object MU69 in the Kuiper Belt on new years day 2019 fifteen years into the mission. It has travelled 5.7 billion kms approximately 380 million kms per year. How do we travel to Proxima B our nearest exoplanet of the Alpha Centauri system located 4.24 light years away. If we travel at the speed of light ie 300000km/sec it will take 4.24 years to reach Proxima B exoplanet. The cosmos is billions of years in space. If we have to go anywhere in our neighbourhood we need to travel at the speed of light years if we have to cover a voyage in a life time.
If we have to peep into space we cannot do it at this rate although we can say we have achieved a lot. We have had fantastic dreamers in the past and all the fantasy stories have been converted into realities. We need a mega-fantasiser who can peel off the Oort clouds and swim rapidly into the dark cosmos as if it were our close neighbourhood.
Someone has to think out of the box and beyond rockets and conventional spaceships. May be we need to ride some waves or travel through hyper-holes and or in vacuum as some astronomers suggest.

Extra-terrestrial Ownership of Land

Asgardia the first space nation has been created by globally renowned scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and legal experts and anyone can be its citizen. It will be a member of the United Nations. Its aim will be prevention of Earth’s conflicts being transferred into space. It hopes to regulate space activities and its ownership.
I hope the community of Asgardia is select from all space faring and non-space faring countries of the Earth. I also hope some aliens have already not taken charge of this country and we are oblivious to this fact.
By 2030 China plans to mine Helium 3 from moon. 50 kgs of Helium 3 can light up the whole of America for one year. We don’t need dams, penstocks and turbines to manufacture power, we don’t need thermal plants, we don’t need nuclear power. We just need a few kgs of Helium 3 for our daily needs. Now imagine the race when America , European Union, China and other countries including India have technology to either produce Helium 3 from mining and separating and processing on the moon itself or alternatively transporting the lunar regolith to earth (this looks difficult in view of the huge quantity required to process a few kgs of Helium 3). Who can mine which location? How much any country can mine? Does America have an upper hand since it will have conducted many more missions comparatively and lay siege on more land to other countries! What if China goes far ahead and invests too much and equals in technology at a faster rate?
Asteroids are believed to have lots of metals and minerals. Platinum, Diamond, Gold is believed to exist in many asteroids. There are too many natural resources to be exploited. Asteroids are small. From a few meters to a few kilometres in length and breadth. If a space probe can grab and tag an asteroid what will be the reaction of other countries? There are billions of asteroids in the asteroid Belt located between planets Mars and Jupiter and millions between Sun and Mars which have gone astray due to gravitational pulls and tugs.
Since mythological times people and nations have claimed their proprietory of the Moon and Mars. Individuals and Organisations have sold land on Moon and Mars by making Lunar and Martian deeds. United Nations drafted a Outer Space Treaty and was signed by 102 countries. The International Moon Treaty was finalised in 1979 and enforced in 1984 yet only 15 non-space faring countries signed it until 2013.
There are disputes and no authority has come to a Universal solution acceptable to the entire globe.

Has Astronomy surpassed Astrology

A few hundred years ago the Earth was considered to be flat. Then came a day when it was known to be a sphere. It was also understood that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Then it was Sun’s turn to be at the centre of the universe. Until now when we have come to know that the Universe began with a Big-Bang 13.4 billion years ago and since then it has evolved billions of galaxies which move farther and farther away as time elapses. These galaxies have various shapes and sizes and sizes and have billions of stars in them.
In the mean time Copernicus was defied his theory of the Earth moving around the Sun and Galileo did not attend an inquisition motion in Rome citing health reasons. He carried forward and showed that the earth did move around the Sun. In the year 1600 when Galileo was still working on the Copernican theory Giordano Bruno was burnt alive with his tongue tied by the Roman church since he too was of the opinion that the Earth moved around the Sun in the Solar system.
How do planets and stars influence humans? First it was the Moon’s influence on tides and waves. Then it was the position of groups of stars heralding seasons that brought drought and floods. These were generic in nature. A logic was applied to arrive at linkages to affect humans and hence the term Astrology.
In the 20th century calendars were the source of horoscopes. The western calendars were based on the Sun’s position throughout the year whereas the Arabs, Chinese and the Indians based their horoscope based on movements of the basic 12 constellations in the sky with respect to the Moon. Good and bad days, marriage days, house warming ceremonies, festivals etc were decided by the church and pundits based on almanacs and astrology.
Today we know that the Sun is positioned in the spur of the Orion arm of our Milky Way Galaxy in the Local Group. The Hubble Space Telescope positioned in Low Earth Orbit sends undistorted high resolution pictures of the observable universe. We are thus able to see 1000 of light years in space and that is how we came to the conclusion that the universe is expanding. Chandra Xray observatory, Spitzer Space Telescopes, Compton Gama Observatory all have contributed to make this Earth a very small place in the cosmic set-up. We have now geographically plotted all the Planets and their Moon’s. We know that there is summer on the planet Mars and it is raining Methane on Titan, the beautiful Saturn’s Moon.
In such a milieu has Astronomy overtaken Astrology? Scientifically the mind is a mish-mash of mythology and our own perception of modern living. It suggests we do not have total control of ourself. We may set up colonies on the Moon and have settlements on Mars . We may go beyond the solar system but uncertainty will drive us back to horoscopes. Today there is no newspaper in India that doesn’t publish weekly/monthly horoscopes. As long as we are groping in the darkness and in search of the truth Astrology is here to stay!

Virtual Realism and Mind Over Matter

If you can control an activity with your mind you can work wonders. This is what exactly Ukrainian scientist Nataliya Kosmyna has done. She has developed software that can recognize and interpret brains electrical impulses. She may have evolved such software for the sake of disabled people. Yet this may have very strong repercussions if able people were to use it without somebody knowing who the user is. Here instead of the fingers in your two hands you use your mind to move the drone. The drone is the means to achieve a function like switching a light on or fetching a towel for you. Drones are installed with camera to shoot a live match for sky vision or enemy launch pads to detect movement closely.
Scientists elsewhere have tracked human thought by imaging rapidly fluctuating brain activity using fast fMRI. This can map the brain function and then you would be in a position to control actions and dementia the most hazardous disease on earth.
Imagine a conference sitting around a table with one flipping pages with a gadget, another controlling air-conditioning and another drone adding insufficient chairs to the room. Another drone fetches a file the Managing Director wants, and yet another adjusts the venetian blinds.
I see a further development gradually these gadgets would be reduced to size micro and in the next stage would completely vanish. Then I see mind completely taking over and instead mind games happening. May be you will then reach the Moon and Mars and beyond with your mind physically remaining immobile. This would prove virtual reality like never before. The western ‘’ matrix’’ would be proved and the eastern ‘’maya’’ (illusion) would be proved and we will get back in time and begin again.