Clocking your Time-- Globally

Daylight saving is the practice of temporarily advancing clocks during the summertime so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in autumn.

The following video nicely explains all you need to know about the daylight savings time.


Back in the days, daylight saving time was thought as an innovative way to schedule people's work hours around the availability of the sun. The questions are "Does it really save the money?", and "Does it make people more productive, or rather less?" It has been highly debated (there goes ideas for few more correlation studies!).

Personally, for me, even though the DST says it is lunch time, my biological clock says it is otherwise. It takes time to get used to the DST changes, and that happens every time DST changes are made. In general, there might be people who are sleep deprived because of DST. To catch a sudden change is another pressure the body is subjected to, which might in turn increase the health related risks.
Thats why I think DST might not be effective in "saving" anything (cry out for more research!!).

Moreover, I would argue that in the age of internet, the whole idea of local time shall be removed. We all shall globally adopt the UTC. So, instead of referring to the local time and then going plus minus x hours for intercontinental communication/scheduling, one could simply refer to UTC. That means in USA east coast, a person who wakes up at about 7 AM will say, "I woke up at about 12PM (UTC) today". Everyone will adapt to the same clock, but will manage to sleep/work according to the local sunrise/sunset with reference to the UTC. It may sound weird to say that the sun will rise at 10PM (UTC) in USA east coast, or  12AM (UTC) in south asia, but it will be OK after some practice. We will all enter into the new year at the same time around the globe. Since UTC would be the only standard, it would be very simplified to, "meeting at 9PM"-- no need to worry about the country, place, or whatever. Simply pick your universal time!

You can see how complex it becomes for each region.
If UTC were to be the only time, one could say meet @ 6PM UTC! 

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Physics in Alphabet

A = 6.02x10^23 -- Avagadro's constant

B = E/c -- Magnetic field equals the electric field divided by the speed of light

C = 299792458 m/s -- The speed of light

D = sqrt[(X-x)^2+(Y-y)^2)] -- The distance between points (x,y) and (X,Y)

E = mc^2 -- Mass-Energy relation

F = ma -- Force equals mass times acceleration

G = 6.67x10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 Gravitational constant

H = 6.626x10^-34 J s -- Planck's constant

I = V/R -- Current equals voltage divided by resistance

J = Newton*meter -- Joule (unit of energy)

K = 8.9875*10^9 N*m^2/c^2 -- Boltzmann's constant

L = m(v x r) -- Angular momentum equals mass times the cross product of the velocity and radius

M = (Y-y)/(X-x) -- Slope equals the rise over the run

N = kg*m/s^2 -- A Newton (N) is a kilogram meter per second squared

O = (0,0,0) -- The origin is usually designated as an "O"

P = mv -- Momentum equals mass times velocity

Q = c*m*(delta)T -- Heat loss/gained equals the specific heat times the mass times the change in Temperature

R = v/w -- Radius equals velocity divided by angular velocity

S = E x B -- The Poynting vector

T = 2(pi)*sqrt(L/g) -- The period of a simple harmonic oscillator

U = mgh -- Potential energy equals mass times gravitational acceleration times height

V = dx/dt -- Velocity equals the change in position over time

W = F*d -- Work equals force times distance

X = [-b / sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)]/2a -- The quadratic equation

Y = F(x) -- Y is a function of X

Z = (delta)(lambda)/(lambda) -- Redshift (the change in wavelength divided by the rest wavelength)

Source: internet

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Nobel Prize in Physics 2011

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae" with one half to Saul Perlmutter and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess. 

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/press.html

What are type Ia supernova and how they help?
Answer is here...

Saul Perlmutter, U.S. citizen. Born 1959 in Champaign-Urbana, IL, USA. Ph.D. 1986 from University of California, Berkeley, USA. Head of the Supernova Cosmology Project, Professor of Astrophysics, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/faculty/perlmutter.html

Brian P. Schmidt, U.S. and Australian citizen. Born 1967 in Missoula, MT, USA. Ph.D. 1993 from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Head of the High-z Supernova Search Team, Distinguished Professor, Australian National University, Weston Creek, Australia.
msowww.anu.edu.au/~brian/
@twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/cosmicpinot

Adam G. Riess, U.S. citizen. Born 1969 in Washington, DC, USA. Ph.D. 1996 from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Professor of Astronomy and Physics, Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
www.stsci.edu/~ariess/

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Simulated Moon Landing Compared with the Eagle's descend to Moon

An   enthusiastic  Apollo fan created a footage using Google Moon and matched it with the video from the Eagle's camera.

Watch the video... it is awe-mazing!



You can download the Google Moon KMZ file for import into Google Moon from:
http://www.mem-tek.com/apollo/Google_Moon_KMZ_files/Apollo_11.kmz
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I'll leave you something to imagine

Symphonyofscience has brought quite an interesting music video (made with the auto tunes).
The latest video is named "The Quantum World".
It examines the nature of the atoms and subatomic particles that make up everything we know. Watch the video, have fun!




They feature the followings:
Richard Feynman - Fun to Imagine
BBC Visions of the Future - the Quantum Revolution
Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman
Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking
Brian Cox TED Talk
BBC What Time is it
BBC Wonders of the Universe
BBC Horizon - What Is Reality

I loved the last punch line...

The Lyrics:

[Morgan Freeman]
So, what are we really made of?
Dig deep inside the atom
and you'll find tiny particles
Held together by invisible forces

Everything is made up
Of tiny packets of energy
Born in cosmic furnaces

[Frank Close]
The atoms that we're made of have
Negatively charged electrons
Whirling around a big bulky nucleus

[Michio Kaku]
The Quantum Theory
Offers a very different explanation
Of our world

[Brian Cox]
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature

That's a wonderful and significant story

[Richard Feynman]
Suppose that little things
Behaved very differently
Than anything big

Nothing's really as it seems
It's so wonderfully different
Than anything big

The world is a dynamic mess
Of jiggling things
It's hard to believe

[Kaku]
The quantum theory
Is so strange and bizarre
Even Einstein couldn't get his head around it

[Cox]
In the quantum world
The world of particles
Nothing is certain
It's a world of probabilities

(refrain)

[Feynman]
It's very hard to imagine
All the crazy things
That things really are like

Electrons act like waves
No they don't exactly
They act like particles
No they don't exactly

[Stephen Hawking]
We need a theory of everything
Which is still just beyond our grasp
We need a theory of everything, perhaps
The ultimate triumph of science

(refrain)

[Feynman]
I gotta stop somewhere
I'll leave you something to imagine

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