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Normally
we discuss what goes into making a good
administration. We discuss what inputs should go
into administering Bihar better. To break the
monotony, here is a little bit of scientific
information I collected as I browsed the net
today about what goes into making matter of
which every thing is made.
Do you know there exists an anti matter for all
the matter you see around yourself, the trees,
the buildings and your very own body? If that
anti matter is brought close to it’s
corresponding matter both will disappear into a
flash of energy. A large amount of energy will
be generated in that flash.
The history of antimatter begins in 1928 with a
young physicist named Paul Dirac and a strange
mathematical equation... The equation, in some
way, predicted the existence of an antiworld
identical to ours but made out of antimatter.
Imagine a hot metal sheet in a coin factory
('energy'). When you stamp out a coin from a
metal sheet, you are left with a coin and a hole
in the sheet. You could call this hole an "anticoin".
This is similar to what happens when energy
transforms into matter. Many experiments have
shown that you can only produce a pair of
particle and its mirror image, called
'antiparticle', at the same time. Nobody has
ever observed the production of only particles,
or only antiparticles.
That example also shows another feature observed
with particles and antiparticles. To create
them, it takes energy, and when you bring them
back together this energy is released. The
process is called 'annihilation' because they
disappear into a flash of energy. It is like
putting the coin back into the hole, leaving the
original metal sheet.
Remember, matter is created from energy and,
given the right conditions, matter will convert
back to energy. Albert Einstein, in 1905, wrote
down the famous equation E=mc2. It says that
mass is a very concentrated form of energy.
Energy is like the 'money' of nature; it comes
in two different currencies, and with an
enormous exchange rate - the square of the speed
of light .
If you could convert all of the energy contained
in 1 kg of sugar, or 1 kg of water, or 1 kg of
any other stuff, you could drive a car for about
100,000 years without stopping! 1 kg corresponds
to 25,000,000,000 kWh of energy; 1 gram would be
enough to supply energy to a medium-sized town
for a whole day!
Conversely, If a particle moving with the speed
of light (300,000 km/sec) hits a block of
material, its energy is transformed, producing
'temperatures' of 10,000,000,000,000° C or more.
Under these extreme circumstances, the energy
set free in the collision will transform into
matter.
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Comments: |
This is an interesting and
fascinating topic. I used to be very
attracted to these topics in my
physics class. If matter has
antimatter then what would be the
anti of antimatter ? Matter or
Anti-antimatter ? If everything is
"energy" and has an anti, then will
there be something like anti-Christ
or anti-Krishna like entity too ?
Even being the student of science, I
find it hard to believe that there
could be so much energy out there.
But then who knows the end of
universe, beginning of time, end of
time? - Ravindra Kumar - Nov. 14,
2006
On
a lighter note, recently I was in
Israel and on the menu were two
dishes:
1. Pasta
2. Antipasti
Maybe if we eat both of them - we
get zero calorie. - Naveen Kumar
Sharma - Nov. 16, 2006 |
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