Stranger things in our world

 There are strange things, and then there are stranger things that exists or happen in this world and universe that is not known commonly. Over so many years, we have came across so many things , ideas and processes that have made me re-think my notion of the environment we live in. It includes many everyday concepts which we believed but I was surprised to know the complete truth. In addition, there are trivial questions we ask that have interesting if we look at them objectively. 

Light that travels faster than light!

Did you know that in some cases, light can travel faster than the accepted speed of light? Light travels 300 million meters in a second, but this is in a vacuum. When light travels in another medium, it's speed differs. Based on the medium, it can be slower or faster. Because space is a vacuum, the speed of light is constant , but apart from that , it depends on the environment it is travelling in and the speed of light will become a very rough estimate. For example, light will travel slower than diamond as compared to air. And in plasma, like ionosphere , light will travel faster. Basically, it is the refractive index which will tell how much the speed of light will differ because of the medium as compared to air. 

Idea for a parallel universe 

Quantum entanglement is a very strange concept to me , to be very honest. I have always wondered why such strange concepts exist? In a simple layman's concept, it essentially means that the two particles are linked in a way that they can exchange information or interact even when they are not physically connected. In simple terms, if me and my friend are two particles are two particles , we can exchange information with each other even without any technical or physical aid. The phenomenon has boggled scientists for decades, because although the basic premise is clear, the questions that arise beyond the basic idea makes the concept tough to understand. But the idea that two particles maybe undergoing the same effects even if they are separated by a galaxy does pushes the idea of  parallel universe close to understanding, i.e. there maybe another you in another universe in the same or different setup , but what you do here affects the other you and vice-versa. 

Is water wet? 

Sometimes we ask trivial question, which sounds stupid at first , but they are insightful. For example, how wet is water? For example, water wets things, but is water itself wet? And how can we quantify such a thing? A simple experiment can answer questions like this. Take a dry tissue ( it will definitely have 0% water). If we slightly dab this tissue with water , it will have less than 0.0001% water, and if we pour a jug of water , the percentage of water in tissue will increase and if we drop the tissue paper in swimming pool , it would be more than 99% wet. But, even if you drop the paper in teh ocean it will never be 100% wet , because the system still contains the tissue paper. This means that the water was still able to wet the paper. By chemistry, water is wet because water molecules interact with each other. The only arguments against this are in the semantics of the term “wet”, i.e. something along the lines of fire burning things but not burning itself. But if we are here to discuss science, getting caught in semantics will definitely get us nowhere. Hence, in short, water is wet.

Can black get blacker? 

Let's talk about colors. There's black and then there's Musou black and then there's vanta black. They are all black but they get blacker. What does this means?  If a room is painted black inside completely and a bulb is placed , we will still be able to see the inside contours of the room vaguely. But if it is painted with vantablack, only bulb can be seen. This is because black will absorb everything. Therefore, if the black component is increased , more and more light can be absorbed. Vantablack absorbs 99.965% of light . However, researchers around the globe are aiming to develop a perfect black body which can absorb 100% of light. Let's see , how much blacker can a black become eventually. 

Your brain can store entire internet and even more!

Neurons in the brain can make about 15000 connections each.

Although a final word on this is a long way off, it is estimated that the human brain can store over 1000 terabytes of information. This kind of estimate can be larger or smaller than the actual value, but it a rough estimate. Scientists have found that the human mind can store information in 26 different ways to code “bits”, unlike only 0s and 1s (binary) in a computer. This estimate can vary largely from person to person, but compared to technology, our brain is an underutilized superpower. Our brain has over 85 billion neurons, each of which can form about 15000 connections with other neurons. Formation of these connections implies creation of memories or information in the brain. So, to put it simply, human brain can make 1275 trillion memories! It would take much more than 300 years of continuous TV as well as the internet to fill up that space! In order to run a computer having this capability, over 1 gigawatt of power would be required, while our brain does the same on just 20 watt of power. Did your mind just blow your mind?

Science defying wonders of the world. 

There are some truly unbelievable places in the world where the phenomenon seems like magic, but is actually not. For example, if you pour water down on the Hoover Dam, Nevada, USA, the water will splash up instead of go down. This gravity defying water is because the very strong updraft from the dam. Similar phenomenon happens in reverse waterfalls where the draft of wind is so high that water is forced to flow up, creating a reverse waterfall. Such waterfalls can be seen in Faroe Islands and Naneghat, Maharashtra, India. Another wonder that exists is a magnetic hill, and many such hills are recognized in the world. One such hill exists in Leh, India, where the hill appears to go up and if you leave your car in neutral, it will automatically start moving “uphill”. This is nothing but optical illusion where the surroundings themselves are skewed due to the absence of the visibility of the horizon. So a slope going downhill will appear to go uphill due to optical illusion.

How much time is 1 second?

I know this is not a strange or fascinating new piece of information. But I still add it to this list because not many people know about it. The measurement of time has seen several methods throughout history. Sundials measured time in degrees. The earliest mechanical clocks divided an hour into parts (quarters, halves, thirds or even 12), but it wasn’t uniform. Then pendulum clocks were developed, followed by quartz crystal-based clocks. But the problem with these clocks was that they were subject to mechanical, environmental or other geographical problems, which would make time non-uniform for different people. For example, we know that pendulum clocks slowed down over time and needed to be powered with key every now and then, which would make time non-uniform for two people in the same city. Hence, atomic clocks are used as a standard since 1967. According to it, one second is precisely “the time of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom” (at a temperature of 0 K). This line basically means that a particular atom is excited under very specific conditions and the resulting time is noted for a fixed period of radiation. Such atomic clocks are highly precise and are not affected by environmental or geographical changes. There are laboratories that maintain the standard of these clocks in different countries. For example, the Indian Standard Time (IST) is maintained by the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, India.
Did you know that in the Vedic units of time, truti is given as the smallest unit of time? Although different metrics were defined for different purposes, one truti is the time taken by light to travel through three tresarenus (combination of 6 atoms each).
There are a lot of things within you, in this world and even outside of it. You just have to keep your mind open to inputs and knowledge. Everything has a reason. So, search for the truth behind the illusion. Once you see the reality, you cannot see the illusion anymore. Point to ponder?