3 Mistakes to be avoided by 2012 passouts

The year 2012 has been famous than any other year for the big reason of being considered as the end of the world.

Well, that’s not the only annoying thing about the year 2012. Students who have graduated have more reasons to complain about this year because of the economic state of the world & low placements across the industry.

When the whole world is suffering from economic slow down & job cuts , there is nothing that a 2012 pass out can do than cursing the year again

But you can avoid making some common mistakes and save your time & energy.

1. Don’t go & join a course just because you have some free time.
2. Undermining the importance of Aptitude & communication skills
3. Don’t think of back door jobs, no matter how much money you have

• 1) Don’t go & join a course just because you have some free time.

Time & Again in all the posts I write, I just talk about this thing. When there is no company which recruits freshers asking for some specific skill set, I wonder why people line up & go for classes.

Mostly it is Java & .net which are famous courses took by the job aspirants, but these are technologies used to build Enterprise software systems running on multiple servers with distributed architecture.

So no small company (well very few does) would handle Java & .Net projects and big companies do not take freshers with specific knowledge, they just ask for freshers.

This all being said, I don’t discourage people who try to learn , all I am trying to convey is that don’t just learn some thing because that you get a placement, instead learn if it is your passion & if you can solve(Implementation) even a smallest of the small problem using that technology.

Consider other alternative technologies before deciding upon learning like PHP, Ruby on Rails etc where there is huge demand in startup’s & mid size companies.

• Undermining the importance of Aptitude & communication skills

While many job aspirants spend a lot of their time preparing technical skills, many do undermine the need for Aptitude or communication skills. The need for analytical/problem solving skills is high in the industry than the technology.

I would put it this way, “Technologies may change over a period of time & it is the analytical/problem skills which are required to solve any problem you face irrespective of the technology”.

So start trying to improve your problem solving skills & analytical skills, you can solve sudoku , puzzles , rubik/magic cube etc to start with. Try to inculcate Out of box thinking rather than the conventional thinking. At times your idea may look crazy, but yeah you have to be crazy at times

Apart from this, you should be able to communicate your idea & this is considered as essential skill.

I often meet people who keep on learning on technology for months and when the opportunity knocks itself they end up failing in the Aptitude or group discussion & they end up not being considered for the Technical Interview. See how sad is all these?

Don’t regret later, make a plan & prepare.

• Don’t think of back door jobs, no matter how much money you have.

I also get queries about back door jobs & if you ask me I would say back door jobs as myth.

Some people are ready to pay any amount of money what ever it takes to get em a job, but they end up sitting in home for years.

Human resources are the key to any organization and so no company would make any kind of provision to let people enter just because that they have money.

If you know some one who entered like that, then you have seen one of the luckiest people in the world & guess what it is difficult for him to sustain.

So to make it simple, work hard with a great plan & who would stop from getting success.

All the very best for your future endeavors & drop in your comments about the article or if you have any queries.

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ARTIFICIAL LEAF TO PRODUCE FUEL FROM SUNLIGHT…?

Two teams of researchers in the US have taken important steps towards the creation of commercially viable”artificial leaf”– a hypothetical device that can turn sunlight into electrical energy or fuel by mimicking some aspects of photosynthesis.

Earlier this year, the chemist Daniel Nocera at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced artificial-leaf prototypes.

Now, working with two different teams of researchers, he has published two papers on different devices that represent progress towards effective and commercially viable versions of the artificial leaf.

Both teams made their devices from silicon wafers that are coated with catalytic metals and protective layers.

The prototype solar cells are about the size of a credit card and can capture
sunlight and then use the energy to split water into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen.

This is different to conventional photovoltaic cells, which convert light directly into electricity.

With these new devices, the ultimate plan is to recombine the two gases in an integrated fuel cell, thus converting the chemical energy to electrical energy.

Producing fuel rather than electricity has the advantage that the fuel can be easily stored until it is needed.

Both artificial leaves use a silicon n–p junction: a bilayer of n-type and p- type silicon. An incident photon is absorbed to create an electron–hole pair in the semiconductor. The electrons migrate to the n-side and the holes to the p-side.

The holes then drive the splitting of water in a process mediated by the outermost layer of the cell, which is a photocatalyst.

Legs- The Organs of your body

Keep Walking…..

The Organs of your body have their sensory touches at the bottom of your foot, if you massage these points you will find relief from aches and pains as you can see the heart is on the left foot. Typically they are shown as points and arrows to show which organ it connects to.

It is indeed correct since the nerves connected to these organs terminate here.
This is covered in great details in Acupressure studies or textbooks.
God created our body so well that he thought of even this. He made us walk so that we will always be pressing these pressure points and thus keeping these organs activated at all times…!!

A City that rely entirely on solar energy and other renewable energy sources.

A city is currently being built in dubai that will rely entirely on solar energy and other renewable energy sources.

It’s called Masdar City, and is currently a project in Abu Dhabi. It’s a planned city currently being built by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, with governmental aid. The city, which is designed by Foster and Partners, is going to rely completely on solar energy and other renew

able energy sources AND have a sustainable, zero-carbon, zero-waste ecology. Sounds pretty ambitious, don’t you think?

Masdar City will also be the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency, an organization whose name is pretty self explanatory. The first tenant of the city moved in back in 2010, which is the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. Though the city was to be completed by 2016, it was pushed back to 2025. Still, that’s not TOO far off for something so ambitious.

World’s most dangerous bird

Meet the world’s most dangerous bird; the Cassowary!

This bird lives in the rain forests of Australia and New Guinea and is actually pretty shy if undisturbed, but if you get to close and it thinks you’re a threat you could receive a bone-breaking kick or get sliced by its dagger-like sharp claws. The Cassowaries are very unpredictable, aggressive creatures, especially if wounded or cornered. During WWII, soldiers stationed in New Guinea were warned to stay away from these birds, but some of them still became victims.

It is important to note that the Cassowary is on the endangered species list.

INVISIBLE CAR

AMAZING THE INVISIBLE CAR –BENZ

1. Using optical camouflage, technology experts at Mercedez Benz have figured out how to make an entire car disappear.

2. The researchers created the illusion that their new zero emissions F-Cell Mercedes Benz is not even there at all, the Daily Mail reported.

3. Taking the principal that to see through something you need to see what’s behind it, they covered the driver’s side of the car in mats of LEDs, and mounted a digital SLR camera on the opposite side of the vehicle.

4. The camera shoots video on the passenger side of the car and the video is displayed in real time on the driver side of the automobile.

5. This ingenious approach, originally pioneered by scientists at the University of Tokyo, works on the same principles of the blue screen used by TV weather forecasters and Hollywood filmmakers

Plastic Blood becomes a lifesaver

Researchers in London announced plastic blood, their latest breakthrough, may turn out to be a life saver.
It’s not the kind of plastic that you usually think. It’s not like a plastic bowl or something. It’s a polymer, which means it’s a large molecule.While engineers are currently using plastics for everything from light transport vehicles to solar panels, it’s the idea of plastic blood that has particularly set researchers’ hearts racing.
Especially in situations of emergency,this could be a breakthrough, as it can be administered to anyone irrespective of blood type. But this will take another decade to fructify.
” It’s the Holy Grail in science and medicine to mimic blood. We’re at the very beginning of this. So, each step of the way we should get betterat it ,” said Lance Twyman of University of Sheffield.
For now, it remains on display at the Science Museum in London alongside other breakthroughs in plastic, whichcover the last 100 years of the man-made material.

Worlds Smallest Petrol Engine

Scientists have created the smallest petrol engine in the world (less than a centimeter long not even half an inch),small enough to power a watch or any small gadget.The mini-motor which runs for two years on a single squirt of lighter fuel is set to revolutionize technology associated with it. It generates 700 times more energy than a conventional battery. It could be used to operate laptops and mobile phones for months doing away with the need for charging.

Experts believe it could be phasing out batteries in such items within just six years. The engine, minute enough to be balanced on a fingertip, has been produced by engineers at the University of Birmingham. At present, charging an ordinary battery to deliver one unit of energy involves putting 2,000 units into it. The little engine, because energy is produced locally, is far more effective.

One of the main problems faced by engineers who have tried to produce micro motors in the past has been the levels of heat produced. The engines got so hot they burned themselves out and could not be re-used. The Birmingham team overcame this by using heat-resistant materials such as ceramic and silicon carbide.

India

The official Sanskrit name for India is Bharat.

INDIA has been called Bharat even in Satya yuga ( Golden Age )

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT India

The name `India’ is derived from the River Indus, the valleys around which were the home of the early settlers. The Aryan worshippers referred to the river Indus as the Sindhu.

The Persian invaders converted it into Hindu. The name `Hindustan’ combines Sindhu and Hindu and thus refers to the land of the Hindus.

The number system was invented by India. Aryabhatta was the scientist who invented the digit zero.

Sanskrit is considered as the mother of all higher languages. This is because it is the most precise, and therefore suitable language for computer software. ( a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987 ).

Chess was invented in India.

Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus are studies which originated in India.

The’ place value system’ and the ‘decimal system’ were developed in 100 BC in India.

The first six Mogul Emperor’s of India ruled in an unbroken succession from father to son for two hundred years, from 1526 to 1707.

The World’s First Granite Temple is the Brihadeswara temple at Tanjavur in Tamil Nadu. The shikhara is made from a single ‘ 80-tonne ‘ piece of granite. Also, this magnificient temple was built in just five years, (between 1004 AD and 1009 AD) during the reign of Rajaraja Chola

India is…….the Largest democracy in the world, the 6th largest country in the world AND one of the most ancient and living civilizations (at least 10, 000 years old).

The game of snakes & ladders was created by the 13th century poet saint Gyandev. It was originally called ‘Mokshapat.’ The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes indicated vices. The game was played with cowrie shells and dices. Later through time, the game underwent several modifications but the meaning is the same i.e good deeds take us to heaven and evil to a cycle of re-births.

The world’s highest cricket ground is in Chail, Himachal Pradesh.
Built in 1893 after levelling a hilltop, this cricket pitch is 2444 meters above sea level.
India also celebrates the birthday of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President and Vice-President and great statesman, as “Teachers’ Day”.

India has the most post offices in the world !

The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing over a million people !.

The World’s first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to mankind. The father of medicine, Charaka, consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago.

Although modern images & descriptions of India often show poverty, India was one of the richest countries till the time of British in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by India’s wealth and was looking for route to India when he discovered America by mistake.

The art of Navigation & Navigating was born in the river Sindh 6000 over years ago. The very word ‘Navigation’ is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Nou’.

Bhaskaracharya rightly calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. His calculations was – Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: ( 5th century ) 365.258756484 days.

The value of “pi” was first calculated by the Indian Mathematician Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century, which was long before the European mathematicians.

Algebra, trigonometry and calculus also orignated from India. Quadratic equations were used by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10*53 ( i.e 10 to the power of 53 ) with specific names as early as 5000 B.C. during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera: 10*12( 10 to the power of 12 ).

Until 1896, India was the only source for diamonds to the world. ( Source . Gemological Institute of America )

The Baily Bridge is the highest bridge in the world. It is located in the Ladakh valley between the Dras and Suru rivers in the Himalayan mountains. It was built by the Indian Army in August 1982.

Sushruta is regarded as the father of surgery. Over 2600 years ago Sushrata & his team conducted complicated surgeries like cataract, artificial limbs, cesareans, fractures, urinary stones and also plastic surgery and brain surgeries.

Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India medicine. Detailed knowledge of anatomy, embryology, digestion, metabolism, physiology, etiology, genetics and immunity is also found in many ancient Indian texts.

Did you know ?

Born on September 5, 1888, at Tiruttani, 40 miles to the north-east of Madras, Radhakrishnan grew to become the most famous Indian teacher and philosopher of all times. In his honour, this day is celebrated as Teacher’s Day.

He was also the Vice-President of India from 1952-1962. He held the office of the Chancellor, University of Delhi, before taking over as the President of India in May 1962.

“What makes a nation, is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past”, says the noted historian Eric Hobsbawm.

Hence, when talking of a nation, it becomes very imperative that the past should also be talked about. And the past of India is as fascinating and interesting as it is momentous.

Proud to be Indian !

Auras, “the real MYSTERIES”

WHAT IS THE AURA ?

The aura is the electromagnetic field that surrounds the human body (Human Energy Field-HEF) and every organism and object in the Universe.The Human Energy Field as a collection of electro – magnetic energies of varying densities that permeate through and emit or exit from the physical body of  a living  person. These particles of energy are suspended around the healthy  human body in an oval shaped field. This “auric egg” emits out from the body approximately 2-3 feet (1 metre on average) on all sides. It extends above the head and below the feet into the ground.

WHAT DOES AN AURA CONSIST OF?

The aura consist of seven levels/layers/auric bodies . Each one of the subtle bodies that exist around the physical body, has its own unique frequency. They are interrelated, and affect one another and the person’s feelings, emotions, thinking, behaviour, and health as well. Therefore a state of imbalance in one of the bodies leads to a state of imbalance in the others.  

Some aura colors and their meaning are:
“Silver:  Intelligence
Ruby Red:  Vitality
Violet:   gentleness
Rose Pink:  Love
Sapphire Blue:   Healing, spirituality
Gray:   Illness, fear
Brown:   Cruelty Stubbornness”
— From the book Healing Powers Of your Aura by Barbara Martin

There are some great websites that can help you see auras and understand their meanings, hear are some of them.
http://www.thiaoouba.com/seeau.htm
http://www.reiki-for-holistic-health.com…
http://www.worldtrans.org/spir/aura.html

The Mystery:

The one thing that connects every new-age guru from numerologists to palm readers is that they all think that auras are a thing. And why not? We have photographs of them.

Generally speaking, auras are, you know, the manifestation of universal energy that, like, surrounds us all, man. And for a fee, professional aura readers who butcher the Papyrus font can take a look at your aura and tell you exactly what your spiritual malaise is based upon their handy color chart.

“I see sadness, and also that you need to replace your camera lens.”

Those aura photographs can be taken with a kind of device that runs a current through your body. Not strong enough to kill you usually, just enough to bring out that spiritual energy. And for years, scientists didn’t know what the hell it was. Maybe it was magic.

The Solution:

Turns out it’s regular, old-fashioned sweat.

The electrical photographic method actually just brings out the outline of whatever it’s observing in a beautiful neon glow. In the case of human beings, it also captures the cloud of sweat floating around the filthy, filthy hippie in question. The effect is much more dramatic if the subject is keen and nervous about, well, having an electric current shot through his body.

“Huh. Looks like you’re feeling very apple today.”

But there are some other explanations for why auras have featured prominently in iconography even before this neat camera trick.Visions of Auras can be caused by defects in your own eye, brought to you by medical conditions such as migraines, epilepsy and eye burns. This is something even aura believers admit.

It also works if you rub your eyes really hard for about four minutes.

Still, there’s something to be taken home from all this — if you’re into that sort of thing, you now have a way to know exactly what color your sweat is.

Amazing Information About Stonefish

It’s not a stone; it is a live creature resembling a stone and can hurt beyond anybody’s expectations. As its name suggests, it’s a fish, a stonefish to be exact, which camouflages itself, resembling a greyish or brownish stone. People, while swimming in open seas, often mistake it to be just another pebble and step on it, more often than not, leading to life-threatening situations. What they don’t know is stepping on this fish, disguised as a stone, is dangerous business as because of the pressure applied by one’s foot causes it to release a poisonous substance from its gland. This toxin is very powerful and causes unbearable pain and paralysis which, if neglected, can lead to the death of the individual. So, when you go on your next adventurous swimming session, beware! Also go through the next sub-sections to know more about several inconceivable and matchless facts about stonefish.

Fast Facts

Scientific Name: Synanceia
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Scorpaeniformes
Family: Synanceiidae
Genus: Synanceia
Species: Synanceia alula, Synanceia horrid, Synanceia nana, Synanceia platyrhyncha, and Synanceia verrucosa
Length: Up to 50 cm
Weight: nearly 5 pounds or 2400 grams
Diet: Carnivorous, primarily small fishes and shrimps
Life Span: 5 to 10 years
Nature: Venomous, dangerous and even fatal to humans
Habitat: Coral reef, near and about rocks, mud or sand in tidal inlets
Range: Coastal regions of Indo-Pacific oceans and northern Australian waters

Interesting And Amazing Facts About Stonefish 

• Stonefish is the most venomous fish the world. It is also known as dornorn, rockfish, and reef stonefish.
• Though primarily a marine creature, some of the species of stonefish are also found dwelling in rivers as well.
• A stonefish, on average is around 30 to 40 cm long. Some stonefish are also known to grow to 50 cm, though the number of such cases is very low.
• A stonefish has two pelvic and three anal spines buried in its shell. The grey and brown coloured fishes have red, orange or yellow patches on their skin.
• Its name, ‘stonefish’, reflects its ability to camouflage itself with the help of its grey and mottled colour similar to a stone.
• Due to its camouflage properties, many a time swimmers, unable to differentiate between a stonefish and a stone, accidentally step on them, often leading to fatal situations.
• The only prevention that swimmers can take to avoid such poisonous encounters with stonefish is to wear thick-soled shoes and stepping very lightly in water.
• Its glands have neurotoxins at the base of its needle-like dorsal fin spines, 13 of them. The stonefish emits toxins when it feels threatened or is disturbed.
• The amount of injected poison, usually, is directly proportional to the pressure applied on it by an external object. It is an involuntary activity of the stonefish and serves as its defence mechanism.
• Depending on the depth of the penetration of its poisonous spines, the poison takes as less as 2 hours to kill a human being after driving him into severe pain, tissue death and paralysis.
• Once attacked by the stonefish, the individual is advised to seek a medical aid as soon as possible. Temporary relief from severe pain can be attained by immersing the stung area in hot water.
• Traditional approach of restricting the movement of injected toxin by tying a cloth or bandage is not recommended. The treatment involves intravenous narcotic analgesia, local anaesthetic infiltration and administration of stonefish antivenin.
• Once the venom is discharged by the glands it takes a few weeks to refill the glands back with the toxin.
• The venom of a stonefish is made of a mixture of proteins, like the haemolytic stonustoxin, the protinaceous verrucotoxin and the cardioactive cardioleputin.
• In order to reproduce, a stonefish lays as many as a million eggs. In the initial stage of pregnancy, the unfertilized eggs remain inside female stonefish’s body. It then releases these eggs on the sea floor, and the male stonefish fertilizes the eggs by releasing its sperm all over them.
• Once hatched, baby stonefish are released in water where many other fish prey on them. Out of this huge number, only a few survive to maturity.
• Major preys of a stonefish are small fish and shrimps. When they come across, it slowly opens its mouth and swallows them immediately. It just takes about 0.015 seconds to perform the entire attack.
• Bottom-feeding sharks and rays are its predators against whose attacks a stonefish is susceptible. The string of 13 poisonous spines then helps it defend itself in such encounters.
• The conservation status of a stonefish is that of a ‘Non-threatened Creature’.
• Indo-pacific regions have around 20 subspecies of stonefish.
• A stonefish can live for nearly 24 hours outside water.
• A stonefish has a very low swimming speed.
• One weird fact about a stonefish is that it spits water.
• Stonefish is an attraction for aquarists. It is commercially sold on a large scale as an aquarium pet.
• Japanese are known to consume stonefish as a part of their expensive sashimi cuisine.

NON-NEWTONIAN FLUID

Sir Isaac Newton, the same physicist who — at least according to legend — figured out gravity because of an apple, also described how liquids behave. Today, we call this description Newton’s Law of Viscosity, and it describes how fluids move in response to stress. Take a straw in a glass of water as an example. Suck on the straw, and you pull water from the glass. Suck harder, and the water moves faster. Its viscosity, or resistance to flow, doesn’t change: Everything’s in proportion.

Fluids that follow the law of viscosity are Newtonian fluids, and the ones that break the rules — the non-Newtonian fluids — don’t act the way you might expect them to. Yet you see examples around you every day. There’s gravy, which gets thicker as you stir it. Ketchup is a lot more willing to coat your french fries once you smack the bottle to get it moving.

An example you might not see every day is a mixture of cornstarch and water. At rest, it acts like a liquid you can stir and pour. But smack the surface of such a mixture, and, for a brief moment, it acts like a solid. You can run or hop across a pool of it, but hold still, and you’ll sink like a stone — it changes from a swimming pool to a sidewalk and back again. Spread a thin layer of cornstarch and water on a speaker, and its vibrations will cause the liquid to bunch up in eerily lifelike, moving shapes.

The secret to this particular non-Newtonian fluid is that it’s a colloid of cornstarch particles floating in water. At rest, these particles keep their distance from each other, so everything moves freely. But if you hit the surface of the liquid, or apply shearing stress, the particles bunch together, creating a temporary solid. As soon as the force goes away, the particles spread out again, and the fluid is back to being a liquid. For this reason, a mix of cornstarch and water is known as a shear-thickening fluid.

Tips To Lose Weight

Weight Loss : How to burn belly fat

How to lose belly fat is a question that is asked by hundreds of visitors daily. Belly fat or abdominal fat not only de-shapes an otherwise beautiful person but also raises the risk of many metabolic life-threatening diseases like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease etc. It adds an extra burden to the body causing joint pain.

Belly fat is masking the muscle definition. It won't go away by any amount of ab crunches. spot exercises will not burn spot fat. You should do cardio exercise like cycling, jogging or swimming and most importantly, you should cut down carbs and fat and totally avoid junk food. Here are some tips:

• Eat several small meals

instead of two or three big meals, eating several (5 to 6) smaller meals will help you get rid of belly fat easily and improve your metabolism Start the day with large breakfast and end the day with smallest dinner (may be a cup of milk plus half fruit

• Eat More Protein. Eat egg whites.

Cut down calories in terms of junk food, carbs and fat, add 5 to 10 egg whites and 1 whole egg

• Eat fat burning food

Add peeled cucumbers, tomatoes in place of white bread or pasta in your plate. Most veg salads consume more energy to digest than the energy the provide. They are fat burning foods.

• Eat healthy fat

Healthy fat doesn't make you fat. Eating moderate amounts of healthy fat actually helps fat loss. You should not eat zero fat foods. You should eat natural fat containing foods like peanuts, almonds, cashew nuts, flax seed chutni (Indian flax seed powder with garlic, red chilli, pepper, salt etc.). These nuts and oil seeds have essential fatty acids and flax has omega-6 fatty acid.

• Drink more water

Drink plenty of water everyday, because the body works most efficiently when it is sufficiently hydrated. Bodys energy (fat) is used to filter water in the kidneys, thereby burning fat.

• Limit Alcohol Consumption

Alcohol in any form is empty calories. Zero nutrition, or rather, negative nutrition. If at allyou should drink, consider wine consumption in moderation. (Resveratrol!)

• Exercise regularly

Cardio workouts burn fat. Some good workouts for burning fat include brisk walking, jogging or running, dancing, swimming and outdoor cycling.

• Exercise helps lose fat effectively and permanently
• Exercise boosts metabolic rate
• Exercise brings out the feel good factor in you by causing the body secrete certain hormones like endorphin
• If you can do exercise for a period of 30 to 40 minutes continuously, your body will continue to burn calories for hours even after you have stopped exercise.
• Exercise boosts your immune response, meaning that you visit your doctor less frequently

Why are Bubbles round shaped ?

Bubbles are round because they want to be — thanks to cohesion.

Well, actually, bubbles are not always perfectly round all the time, as you probably have noticed if you’ve ever used one of those toy thingies to blow soap bubbles. But bubbles want to be spherical, and if you blow one that’s more cigar-shaped initially, it struggles to reshape itself. That’s because bubbles basically are thin layers of liquid whose molecules stick together because they are attracted to one another, a phenomenon called cohesion. This creates what we think of as surface tension — that is, a barrier that resists objects trying to move through it. Inside the layer, air molecules that are trapped can’t get out, even though they’re pushing against the water. But that’s not the only force acting on that layer. On the outside, more air is pushing inward at them. The most efficient way for the liquid layer to resist those forces is to assume the most compact shape, which happens to be a sphere, in terms of ratio of volume to surface area.

Interestingly, scientists have figured out ways to make bubbles that aren’t round, so they can study the geometry of the surfaces. They’re able to create bubbles that are cubical and even rectangular, by suspending a thin layer of liquid on a wire frame that that is molded into the desired shape.

GAMMA RAYS: THE MOST POWERFUL EXPLOSIONS IN THE UNIVERSE

If human eyes could detect gamma rays, the bursts would be so brilliant that they would momentarily outshine the sun. These gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful singular eve
nts in the universe: messages from the beginning of time when the most massive stars in existence violently collapsed. It was only with the advent of more advanced telescopes that GRBs started to reveal more about themselves.

The Compton X-Ray Observatory found that GRBs came from all over the sky and astronomers realized they must be extragalactic. Advanced telescopes which quickly pinpointed the precise location of a GRB led to the detection of faint afterglows all across the electromagnetic range. In every case, the GRB came from the same direction
as a very distant galaxy.

But extensive observations revealed a lot more. By measuring how much the light had been red-shifted by the expansion of the universe, astronomers could estimate their distances. They concluded that the light from GRBs had been traveling for over half the age of the universe; they were among the most distant objects ever seen. But to be so far away and remain the brightest thing in the sky meant an unimaginable amount of energy had to be producing these flashes.

An exceptionally massive dying star can collapse into a black hole without triggering a supernova. With the sudden removal of the stellar core, the upper layers of the star collapse down to fill in the cavity. If the star is spinning rapidly, the falling matter is whipped up into a spinning fury. In the ensuing vortex, superheated plasma is entangled by highly twisted magnetic fields. Like an electromagnetic cannon, jets of gas blast through the poles of the star and erupt into space. The tunnel through the star forces the plasma streams into narrow cones, tightly focusing the energy of the collapse.

If one of these jets is pointed towards Earth, we see it as a brilliant flash of gamma ray light that fades after only a few seconds. Fortunately, all the GRBs detected have been at safe distances from Earth. The closest, detected about a decade ago, is still over a billion light-years away. If a GRB were to erupt in our own galaxy it could be very troubling for humanity. Directed right at Earth, it could quite possibly trigger a mass extinction or sterilization of the planet. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that GRBs could very well be responsible for one extinction event 450 million years ago.

Gamma ray bursts call out to us from deep within the cosmos. They are echoes from the beginning of time, faint beacons from the furious implosion of stellar giants. Thanks to advancements in detectors and telescopes, these galactic lighthouses are no more a stranger to us.