Inertia - Science for You

Stars are beautiful. But their explosions are even more beautiful. And the remnants of that, further more beautiful. Beautiful, beautifuller, beautifullest! When a massive star collapses, it implodes. That's its death. A core collapse supernova. These explosions are extremely luminous and can outshine an entire galaxy. But long after this catastrophic death, the legacy of the star continues. The remnants of these explosions can be seen for another tens of thousands of years; telling the lore of the star to the generations yet to live. Shaping the rest of the universe, by cosmic rays, shocks and radiations. Research proves that even distant explosions have influenced the atmosphere on Earth ( see article ).  What if the star wasn't massive? Then they end up as White Dwarfs. But these White Dwarfs may accrete more mass to it from its companion, and thus explode due to 'over-mass'.  This detonation is a Type Ia supernova.  These explosions enrich the universe with light an...

Hydrogen (he/him) sees a UV photon. He is excited. So excited that his electron jumps up two levels. Being far from home, the electron cries. So, the Hydrogen lets the electron come one level closer, still keeping a bit of the excitement. H II regions are cool. I mean, temperature-wise. It could be seven thousand to fifteen thousand kelvin.  And this depends on what's in there and what causes it. So, what causes the temperature? Photoionisation. And who causes the photoionisation? A star! A massive central star.  So, let me introduce to you, an H II region. An H II region is a region of photoionised gas surrounding a massive star. A sweet help by the star to its surrounding region. So, what really happens? There's a big star. There's gas around it. The star radiates UV rays. And what does UV do? They ionise the ambient medium. i.e., the UV photons are absorbed by the gas, and hence a spherical region is formed. This is a Str ömgren sphere. The most abundant...

Life outside Earth We have been thinking of life outside earth since time immemorial. And when it comes to the scientific search of extraterrestrial life, what and where are we searching for? The primary question - what , is thought worthy.  We assume that the Life outside Earth is like the Life on Earth. We assume the life to be water-based and to share many such similarities. Why so? Life outside could be of any form. It really need not be water based. It really need not have the needs of the terrestrial life, say, oxygen. But, it is easier to look for life with this assumption, for, as the old joke goes, the old man who lost his keys at night will search for it under the streetlights. So, although we know that life on Earth could not be representative of life elsewhere, we take up the assumption while we scout for extraterrestrial life. A similar approach is also usually taken while we decide where to hunt for life. We look for Sun-like stars and Earth-like orbits and temperatu...

  Order from Chaos - The Cosmic Web Imagining the universe we have known about would be a picture of innumerous galaxies sprinkled randomly all around like air bubbles suspended in a gel. Chaos . That one word would describe it. However, as we zoom out, in reality, we conceive order from chaos; we would observe that all those galaxies which we envisioned to be spread out randomly are actually existing together along paths of gases. The image is exactly like motor vehicles moving through tarred roads alone, avoiding the land amidst the roads - galaxies are only present along the filaments and these filaments are linked together to form a structure like a spider’s web and we call it the cosmic web, which is a term coined by Richard Bond in 1996 to describe a tangled structure of clumps and filaments naturally formed by dark matter left to experience the pull of gravity. The area enclosed between the roads are analogous to dark matter present as voids among the cosmic web and accounts...

 People have thought about the existence of particles smaller than the smallest sensible particles of matter from time immemorial. Moreover, a similar philosophy of ' anu ' is mentioned in the ancient Indian texts. However, this suspicion had no scientific grounds until one or two centuries ago. Now, we know that matter is composed of atoms, atoms of nucleons and electrons, and nucleons of quarks. The concept of an atom was first scientifically proposed by John Dalton, which was further developed by Ernest Rutherford and Neils Bohr, although J J Thomson was the first to propose a model after Dalton. While Thomson presented a model of atom in which the electrons are distributed in a positive space as if seeds in a watermelon or plums in a pudding, Rutherford's famous gold foil experiment proved that most of the space inside an atom is empty and that the positive charge is concentrated in a centre called nucleus, and thus proved Thomson to be incorrect. An interesting thing w...

Black Holes are always considered as reapers of life. So, here's a twist! LIFE AROUND A BLACK HOLE! Black Hole A black hole is a point in space-time fabric with extremely high density. The gravitational pull of a black hole isa so high that not even light can  escape its gravity.  AGN - Active Galactic Nucleus Simply, the nucleus or centre of an active galaxy.  This galaxy would be having a blacl hole at its centre. Around the black hole would be a disc of stars and gas, spiraling into the black hole, called the accretion disk. Let us see the possibility of life in this accretion disk, powered by the black hole.  Life Around It AGN emit different radiations. UV rays are also emitted. UV rays have the potential to power reactions for prebiotic chemistry. i.e, if prebiotic elements are available,  which are commonly available in and around a star, the UV rays can mediate the reactions between them,  synthesizing the simple biomolecular build...