science and Technology blog: December 2016

IceCube Neutrino Observatory

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a neutrino telescope constructed at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Its thousands of sensors are distributed over a cubic kilometre of volume under the Antarctic ice. Similar to its predecessor, the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array, IceCube consists of spherical optical sensors called Digital Optical Modules, each with a photomultiplier tube and a single board data acquisition computer which sends digital data to the counting house on the surface above the array. IceCube was completed on 18 December 2010.

IceCube is a particle detector at the South Pole that records the interactions of a nearly massless subatomic particle called the neutrino. IceCube searches for neutrinos from the most violent astrophysical sources: events like exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars.

The IceCube telescope is a powerful tool to search for dark matter and could reveal the physical processes associated with the enigmatic origin of the highest energy particles in nature. In addition, exploring the background of neutrinos produced in the atmosphere, IceCube studies the neutrinos themselves; their energies far exceed those produced by accelerator beams. IceCube is the world’s largest neutrino detector, encompassing a cubic kilometre of ice.

India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)

INO (India-based Neutrino Observatory) is a particle physics research project under construction to primarily study atmospheric neutrinos in a 1,300 meters (4,300 ft) deep cave under Ino Peak near Theni, Tamil Nadu, India. This project is notable in that it is anticipated to provide a precise measurement of neutrino mixing parameters. The project is a multi-institute collaboration and one of the biggest experimental particle physics projects undertaken in India.

The project was originally to be completed in 2015 at an estimated cost of ₹1,500 crores has been cleared by the Ministry of Environment (India) for construction in the Bodi West Hills Reserved Forest in the Theni district of Tamil Nadu. Although delayed, the project is underway When completed, the main magnetised iron calorimeter (ICAL) experiment include the world's most massive magnet, four times larger than the 12,500-tonne magnet in the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland

Neutrino Observatories Around The World

Subatomic particles called neutrinos permeate the universe. In fact every second, trillions of neutrinos from cosmic sources will pass through your body with no effect. Like visible light from stars, radio waves from galaxies, and X-rays from matter spiralling down black holes, neutrinos can also reveal something of the cosmos.

Neutrino research is just heating up and here are some of neutrino observatories that are in operation around the world.

The Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory in Japan, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada, Gran-Sasso Lab in Italy, IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the South Pole are some of the existing neutrino laboratories.

Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained In A Nutshell

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency or digital currency and a payment system. These transactions are verified by network nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called the blockchain which uses bitcoin as its unit of account.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger which is a consensus of replicated, shared and synchronized digital data geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, and/or institutions.

The Bitcoin network is a decentralized peer-to-peer network that, ideally, is both distributed and diverse. Bitcoin Miners are rewarded bitcoins for processing transactions into blocks. Mined blocks are typically appended to the blockchain, and become part of the public ledger.

Besides being obtained by mining, bitcoins can be exchanged for other currencies products, and services . However, these coins can be divided into smaller parts the smallest divisible amount is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin and is called a ‘Satoshi’, after the founder of bitcoin. Bitcoin uses public-private key pairs to secure transactions. A Bitcoin address is a public key generated from a private key held in a user’s wallet.

A Bitcoin transaction destined for an address generated by a wallet is signed with that address’s public key, and can only be unlocked (or spent) with the matching private key. Hence, Bitcoin transactions are secured against theft.

Bitcoin Price Index Chart

USD 1.53%▲ CNY 10.45%▲ EUR GBP

$945.33 ¥ 6,855.64 €903.35 £769.25

Matter And Antimatter Conundrum

Why matter dominated over antimatter and what caused the imbalance
One of the great mysteries in physics .

May be there exists a process that favours matter over antimatter a CP violation which means that nature treats a particle and its oppositely charged mirror-image version differently.

Some scientists think Higgs Boson could be the reason .

Water Exhibits Fourth state of Matter

Scientists discovered fourth state of water between 50℃ and 60℃ they saw some properties of water displaying a kink particularly in surface tension and its refractive index .

Normally water has 3 states Solid, liquid and vapour gas . Liquid water has two different states . This happens because of different molecular structures at different temperatures .

Nuclues Accumbens

Nucleus accumbens has an important role in reward, pleasure, reinforcement learning, laughter, addiction, aggression, fear, impulsivity and the placebo effect.

The nucleus accumbens is involved in controlling our motivations. Also, the frequent consumption of a drug is known to tremendously increase the amount of the main neurotransmitter in this part of the brain, dopamine. We can therefore better understand the drug addict’s obsessive drive to keep seeking more of the drug.

The Nucleus accumbens is based on two essential neurotransmitters Dopamine, which promotes desire, and serotonin, whose effects include satiety and inhibition. Many animal studies have shown that all drugs increase the production of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, while reducing that of serotonin

Typhoon Turbine

One Typhoon could power Japan for 50 years

Gene Editing using CRISPR

Scientists plan to modify the immune system "T cells" in patients, helping them better fight off several kinds of cancer using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique.

Scientists from Western University have created an even more effective version of CRISPR by adding an engineered enzyme called TevCas9.

Water Chemical Name

What is the Chemical name for water ?

Fifth Force In Nature

Has a New, Fifth Force of Nature Been Found?

Imaging The Braing In Real-Time

Imaging technology that would enhance the understanding of brain function

China Has more Supercomputers than US

China leads in number of Super Computers as well as the fastest supercomputer.

China's Sunway TaihuLight with 93 Pflops/sec (1Pfloap=one million billion floating-point operations per second.) tops the list. It has overtaken another Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-2 with 33.9 Pflops.

Now China has 167 Supercomputer systems ahead of the U.S. with 165 ,Japan 29,Gemany 26 and India 9

Supercomputers are extensively used in weather forecasting, mapping DNA and simulating nuclear explosions.

Scotland Tidal Energy Project MeyGen

World’s first tidal energy farm could power 175,000 homes

Dark Matter Actually Pretty Smooth

ESO Survey Shows Dark Matter to be Pretty Smooth

Elon Musk a tour de force in the worlds of business, futurism and invention.

5 Times Elon Musk Won the Human Race

Anomalous Expansion of water

Why does water expand when it freezes which we call Anomalous expansion of water.

Generally liquids expand on heating and contracts on cooling. Water however shows an exceptional behaviour below 4^oC .If we cool water at room temperature we find that it goes on contracting but as the temperature falls below 4^oC it begins to expand instead of contracting, conversely if water is heated from 0^oC to 4^oC instead of expanding it contracts.

Water has maximum density at 4^oC this is because of hydrogen bonding , In water, each hydrogen nucleus is covalently bound to the central oxygen atom by a pair of electrons that are shared between them and thus act as a electric dipole and the negatively charged Oxygen of one molecule gets attracted to positively charged hydrogen atom of another water molecule to form a hydrogen bond.

These hydrogen bonds are compact at 4^oC and hence maximum density ,but as we freeze further to 0^oC water expands and at 0^oC Ice forms crystals having a hexagonal lattice structure with long bonds and space which are less compact. Therefore water expands as it cools towards 0^oC

Great Potential Of Fusion Energy

Fusion energy: A time of transition and potential

Transistors to use photons instead of electrons

Photonic integrated circuits use light rather than electrons to perform a wide variety of optical functions.

The future of electronics is light

US New Weapon MOKV

US 'Multi-Object Kill Vehicle' to Blast Enemy Nukes with Multiple warheads

A hard rain's a-gonna fall

Scientists expect intense bursts of rain to become more frequent in a warming world

Heard of Flying Robotic Ambulance

Flying Robotic Ambulance Completes First Solo Test Flight

How AI Identifies Suicidal Behavior

Machine Learning Automatically Identifies Suicidal Behavior Using Patient’s Own Words

Future Cars to have 16 High-tech features

16 high-tech features you need in your next car

100% fossil free energy Countries 47

The 47 countries moving to 100% fossil free energy

End of Hubble Era

What Will We Do When Hubble Dies

Transuranium elements

Transuranium elements are radioactive elements having atomic number greater than 92
that is elements after uranium ,they are also called Transuranic. These are not naturally
occurring except two neptunium and plutonium and those only in trace amounts.

Transuranic elements can be artificially generated synthetic elements, via nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. The half lives of these elements show a general trend of decreasing as atomic numbers increase.

Heavy transuranic elements are difficult and expensive to produce, and their prices increase rapidly with atomic number. weapons-grade plutonium cost around $4,000/gram, and californium cost $60,000,000/gram. Einsteinium is the heaviest transuranic element that has ever been produced in macroscopic quantities.

Element name	Symbol	Atomic no.
Neptunium	Np	93
Plutonium	Pu	94
Americium	Am	95
Curium	Cm	96
Berkelium	Bk	97
Californium	Cf	98
Einsteinium	Es	99
Fermium	Fm	100
Mendelevium	Md	101
Nobelium	No	102
Lawrencium	Lw	103
Rutherfordium	Rf	104
Dubnium	Db	105
Seaborgium	Sb	106
Bohrium	Bh	107
Hassium	Hs	108
Meitnerium	Mt	109
Darmstadtium	Ds	110
Roentgenium	Rg	111
Copernicium	Cn	112
Nihonium	Nh	113
Flerovium	Fl	114
Moscovium	MC	115
Livermorium	Lv	116
Tennessine	Ts	117
Oganesson	Og	118