Try to think way, way, way, way outside the box for a minute, try to squeeze the 4,500 million years of the Earth’s history into a single day, twenty-four little hours. Difficult isn’t it? But if you can, this is how the world has progressed – the first signs of life began creeping around just after four o’clock in the morning, it consisted of simple, single-celled organisms and that was it for the next sixteen hours! The day was almost completely wasted until just before eight-thirty in the evening when the first sea plants made a belated appearance. At ten minutes to nine that night the jellyfish pops up it’s bizarre head along with many of it’s diploblastic (only two layers of tissue, as opposed to the more streamlined three layers which all of us ((humans and animals)) bear today) Ediacaran buddies. Just after nine o’clock, the Alien resembling (the Sigourney Weaver type, not the extra-terrestrial sort) trilobites emerged onto the scene. In a comparative glut of activity, the very odd and very diverse creatures of the Burgess Shale followed close on their heels. There was no stopping life now, just before 22:00, plant life began to flourish, encouraging at long, long last the first land creatures to make their debut. They were blessed, as there followed a warming of planet Earth which accommodated them and others – there followed a proliferation of the great carboniferous forests, as well as the emergence of winged insects. The famous dinosaurs materialised at 23:00 and held sway for three-quarters of an hour, vanishing in an instant, being replaced by mammals. Then, in the dying gasp of the day, humans rocked onto the scene with just one minute and seventeen seconds left!
Posts Tagged ‘Planet Earth’
The History of the Earth Crammed into One Day
December 30th, 2009Can we Heal the Injury of Planet Earth?
December 24th, 2009Planet Earth is facing a multitude of problems. They are: water shortage, climate change, melting ice- caps and global warming to name a few. The root of all her problems can be traced to the injury caused to her by the enormous population of the human species. The problem has arisen because Man is successfully defeating her efforts to reduce the population. Till the nineteenth century, she had a huge mortality of infants and children with hardly a few of them surviving to become adults. Adults faced epidemic diseases and famines which killed millions of them. She occasionally caused natural calamities like floods to wipe out hundreds of villages. She created illnesses that caused most of the people to die at an early age. This effectively limited the population on the planet. The consumption of her resources by the small population did not challenge her in any way. US Census estimates that the population of the World in 1 AD was about 170 million and after 1804 years it had grown to about 1 billion. The second billion was added in about 123 years and the population had grown to 2 billion in 1927. The next billion was added in only 32 years and the population had grown to 3 billion in 1959. Thereafter its growth accelerated and the planet added a billion people in each of the 3 periods of 15, 13 and 12 years. Thus by 1999 the population had grown to 6 billion people. We are now 6. 8 billion in 2009, projected to grow to 9. 4 billion by 2050. As against average yearly addition of less than half a million prior to 1804 AD, the World population is now growing at an alarming rate of 80 million per year! As you can see from the above figures, planet Earth was doing a pretty good job at controlling the population growth until Man began to defeat her in her efforts in the twentieth century. He built dams to control floods, developed medical science and produced medicines to reduce infant and child mortality and to cure diseases. This resulted in more infants becoming adults and in more adults living a long life. Life expectancy thereby increased rapidly and has gone over 75 years in most of the countries of the World. Japan leads with a life expectancy of 82 years! That means the children born 82 years ago are still alive as grandparents! World population, with its present growth rate, will more than double to reach 14 billion people by 2100. At that level of population, the resources of the planet, particularly rain water and arable land area would have to be worked twice as efficiently. If we do not succeed, the quality of life would be compromised. Let’s look at it in another way. There is a popular belief that if a couple produces 2 children, there will not be any growth in population. But this is a fallacy as before the parents are dead; their children are producing grand-children for them! Thus 2 have produced 4! Now with further increase in life span, most couples will see their great-grand-children which mean that 2 parents have produced 6 offspring in all! The population of 2 has now gone up to 8! The truth is that increasing lifespan results in increasing the number of generations that are alive and thereby the population size increases steeply. Some scientists believe that the population will stop growing with increased literacy and prosperity and will stabilize at about 10 billion. But this reminds me of the Ostrich who buried his head in the sand and believed that the storm had gone away. Population size will stabilize only when the number of births during the year equals the number of deaths in that year. It is true that the number of births per thousand people from year 2000 has reduced from 22 to 20 in year 2009, but on the other hand, the death rate has gone down from 9 to 8. 2 per thousand within the same period. Death rate includes infant and child deaths which are bound to go down rapidly thanks to Government efforts. As the numbers of death reduce, the numbers of birth may not match their reduction. There is a limit to reduction births as every year about 40 million marriages take place and there are at least 200 million couples within the population who are potential baby makers. In 2009 the number of babies born would probably end up above 140 million. There were several remarkable advances in medicine in the last century that has resulted in increasing the length of life from 30 years to 80 years. It seems now that life expectancy is beginning to level off. But the next phase of Man’s efforts for increasing longevity has begun. Rapid scientific progress is taking place in growing new organs and body parts from stem cell culture biotechnology which will lead to quantum jump in the length of life span of people. It is said that the generation which will live for 200 years is already born on the planet. But even though a woman may live 200 years, her child bearing age cannot change significantly and she will probably be having her first child around 30 years of age. Therefore when the lifespan increases to 200 years, there will be at least 7 generations alive at any one time leading to vast increase in the number of people surviving on the Earth! We have to concede that a steady state situation where the number of deaths matches the number of births is a long way off, much beyond this century. Till such steady state is achieved, the population will continue to grow. The short and bitter truth is that the population problem is far bigger than one would like to face. Governments do not appear to have any effective legal measures to control population growth as enacting harsh laws is not politically possible. On the citizen’s level, however, “Green Earth” consciousness does exist and there are voluntary organizations devoted to reducing consumption of fossil fuels and planting trees. Whether population control will come up on their agenda is anybody’s guess. For all we know we might have a Green Movement advocating abortion liberation, one-child family, same-sex marriages and childless co-habitation! These efforts must continue to be made to create awareness about family planning which eventually and hopefully stabilize the population sometime in the distant future. But is the increasing number of people a bane or a boon? Is it a problem or an advantage? Economists tell us that we will face an economic disaster if the numbers of births reduce drastically! Demand would fall and profits will disappear in the industry. We need to produce babies to keep our economies going. We need a growing population for sound financial health of any country. But on the other hand food production may not be enough to feed the increased population and people may starve. Therefore, “to grow or not to grow”, is the question for the population. The answer to this enigma is for us to surrender and accept the fact that growth of population is unavoidable and inevitable for the next hundred years. We should look at it positively as a boon and gear up our efforts to manage the supply of food and water for the ever expanding future population. We have to simultaneously control and reduce the effect of this increasing population on the functioning of planet Earth. We must not disturb the delicate balance of the planet which may trigger drastic changes in rainfall and climate which in turn will affect the life on Earth. Governments must work on war footing to support, subsidize and promote non-fossil-fuel energy generation, augment water supply by rainwater harvesting and seawater desalination, and fund research to find innovative ways to increase our food production. Many of these basic infrastructure projects may take several years and some of them perhaps several decades to become productive and the earlier our Governments initiate focused attention on them the better are the chances of avoiding shortages in future years and prevent food prices from sky-rocketing. Let us all hope that they are successful to increase the food production and we do not face famine as the population grows. And at our individual and collective level, we must make every effort to heal the injury caused to planet Earth by Global warming and help her to cope with her inundation with us human beings.
Will the Large Hadron Collider Endanger the Earth?
December 8th, 2009The Worldwide General News (WGN) TV channel was inundated with questions about the danger from the LHC which was commissioned. They decided to devote their next ‘Space Talk’ program to this subject. For the purpose, they invited Albert Burman and Kalpa, the experts to their Studio.
On the appointed day and hour, Larry Newton the presenter of the show appeared on the screen. “Good Evening viewers. I am happy to welcome our distinguished guests Albert and Kalpa for the show to our studio today. Let me begin with a short introduction about them. Albert and Kalpa are space beings written about in the Science Fiction book ‘Alien Man.’ They have explored the satellites of Saturn and discovered Steel, Gold and Plutonium! Albert and Kalpa share their experiences in space on TV from time to time. They are well known all over the World as Space Celebrities. Welcome to you both!” Larry began the session. He continued after a short pause, “The subject of our discussion is the danger of extinction from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the World’s largest and the most powerful particle accelerator. Our channel has received hundreds of messages mainly about the possibility of the Collider destroying the entire planet by converting it into a black hole. We want our viewers to hear your analysis on this subject.” Larry opened the topic for the day.
“Good Evening Larry. We are happy to be here with you today to enlighten all of you about black holes which might emerge from the LHC. At the outset I want to allay all your fears and assure you all that the LHC functioning will not result in the destruction of our beloved planet Earth.” Albert gave his unconditional assurance to the viewers.
“Albert is absolutely right. All fears that the black hole generated by the Collider will eat up the Earth are based on misinformation and have no scientific foundation.” Kalpa endorsed the assurance given by Albert.
“But the Collider will form the black hole. Isn’t that correct?” Larry asked pointedly.
“We don’t know for sure, the scientists are saying that it is highly improbable. But I sincerely hope that a black hole does form. It will advance our knowledge about the fundamental forces in the Universe.” Said Albert.
“But once the black hole is formed, however minute, it will gobble up matter and grow and grow till the whole Earth becomes a black hole. This is what people fear.” Said Larry.
“This fear has arisen out the simplistic view that the black holes that are formed when a star collapses into a dense ball which pulls everything inside and not even light can escape it. This was the view at the very beginning when scientists discovered the black hole in the Universe. But since then science has progressed further and we now have a far greater understanding of the properties of the black hole. It follows the same basic laws of gravity as other objects in space.” Kalpa put the knowledge of black holes in the right perspective.
“What is the power of its tremendous gravitational pull?” Larry asked.
“The gravitational force that a black hole exerts on another body depends on only 2 factors: mass and distance between them. The more the mass of the black hole the greater is its gravity, and conversely, the smaller is its mass, the smaller is its pull. Similarly, the closer the center-to-center distance between the black hole and the object, the stronger is the pull between them. In fact pull increases exponentially as the distance reduces. The actual gravitation attraction between the 2 bodies is dependent on the product of their masses, and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.” Kalpa explained the basic theory.
“The black Hole does not have a unilateral force pulling the object. The black hole itself can be pulled by the gravity of other more massive objects. In the case of the LHC, if the black hole is formed, it will be hardly be made of 100 protons and will be very small indeed. In absolute terms is that the mass of the black hole will be one hundred times the mass of a single proton, about 100 x 16 E-26 kg. If you divide 1 kg. into 10 raised to 26 parts (1 followed by 26 zeros) and take just 16 of them you will get the mass of the black hole. As against that, the mass of the Earth is 6 E24 kg, which means 6 followed by 24 zeros, in kg units. This shows that the Earth is so much larger than the incumbent black hole by a factor of 10 raised to 50! (1 followed by 50 zeros). The difference is stupendous! The small mass of the black hole is truly insignificant as compared to Earth, and consequently it will be pulled by the Earth rather than vice-a-versa.” Albert explained the relative size of the black hole.
“But since it is a black hole, its size will be less than a millionth of that of the 100 protons! It’s so small that it can penetrate everything and anything. It will be pulled by Earth’s gravity and will travel through to the Earth accelerating with its gravity till it reaches the centre of the Earth and the decelerating as it goes out on the other side, to be pulled back in again. It will swing back and forth like a pendulum!” explained Albert.
“No hope of that! The black hole will just evaporate in a fraction of a nanosecond! Stephan Hawkings of the Cambridge University says that the black hole creates new energy particles on its surface which escape. This results in shrinking the black hole. He calls it ‘evaporation.’ He says the smaller the black hole the hotter it is and the faster is the rate of evaporation! I do not know why he looks at the black hole as a liquid which evaporates. I would rather look at the black hole as a solid which sublimes. But no matter how you describe it, the fact is that a small black hole of a few protons mass will evaporate and disappear faster than we can measure the time!” Kalpa explained why the black hole will not last.
“A black hole is made of very dense matter. Our Sun for instance, with its diameter of 1.4 million kilometers will shrink in size to just about 4 km to convert to a black hole. But its mass will be the same, and its gravity will remain the same. If the Sun becomes a black hole, it will not change any of the orbits of its planets in the Solar System. It will not pull the Earth and gobble it up.” Albert outlined the limitation of the black hole.
“If this is so then why do the scientists describe the black star with as a region of space with tremendous gravity forceful enough to prevent even light from escaping!” asked Larry.
“This is because for a given mass, an object can go much closer to the centre of the black hole than a star or a planet of the same mass. For example the radius of the sun is about 700,000 km. An object close to the Sun is stopped by its surface which is 700,000 km from its centre. But if the Sun converts itself to a black hole of 4km diameter, an object can go as near as 2km. from its centre. Since the distance from such a heavy mass is now reduced so drastically, that the gravity just near the centre increases by 700,000 x 700,000 = 490 billion times! But the effect of this incredible gravity is felt only in a region very close to the black hole. Such close distances are not achieved in a normal object like a star or a planet due to limitations of its comparatively large size. The difference in gravity vanishes as the object moves beyond a certain distance. Further away from a distance equal to the radius of normal star of the same mass, there is no difference in the gravity of the black hole and the star.” Kalpa was clear in her thinking.
“What you are saying is that the black hole can only stop light in a certain range beyond which it has no effect.” Larry summarized.
“That is correct. If the black holes could suck everything from everywhere, and prevent light from transmission, how could see the billions of stars in the sky? Their light could have vanished in the black holes!” said Albert.
“In the case of our LHC, the black hole generated will be of the size of about 100 protons. The protons will form into a ball and shrink about one millionth of their normal size. The diameter of a proton in units of a meter, is 10 raised to minus 15 (1 divided by 10 followed by 15 zeros). The diameter of the black hole is likely to be one ten-thousandth of this value. And the extraordinary gravity that the black hole can exert is only with a range of say 10 raised to minus 18 meter; which is a billion-billionth part of a meter! There is no possibility that any matter in the form of any protons or atomic nuclei coming so close to the minute black hole ball particularly in the extremely short duration of its existence. So for all practical purposes, there is no scope of the black hole expanding if at all it is formed.” Asserted Kalpa.
“There is another argument put forth by Steve Giddings of the University of California (Santa Barbara) and Michelangelo Mangano of LHC’s parent lab CERN. They point out that there are minute black holes being generated by cosmic rays hitting a neutron star, But these microsized black holes do not seem to grow inside the body of the star which is more than a trillion times denser than the rocks on Earth. From the observations made of the cosmos, the scientists infer that as black holes do not exist inside dense stars, they couldn’t exist inside the body of the Earth. And in case the black hole does exist it will probably take a billion years to grow to the size of a golf ball! They conclude therefore that there is no danger of the small black hole from snowballing into an Earth gobbler.” Albert brought out an authority on the subject.
“Anyway, coming back to our topic, whether the LHC will create a black hole which will destroy the Earth, the answer is an unequivocal ‘NO’! The LHC was switched on the 10th September but only for checking the functioning of the beams. There was no collision attempted. Now it is down for repairs and will be ready early in 2009. But rest assured that there is nothing going to happen to the Earth and to you when the LHC is switched on and the particle beams are made to colloid face to face at 99.9999% of the speed of light! No fears!” Albert spoke emphatically as Kalpa nodded in agreement.
“I am happy to hear that. To be frank, I was fretting too. But now I am fully relaxed. I have to thank you Albert and Kalpa for explaining the concept in simple language for the benefit of our viewers. The back office has informed me that their phone is constantly ringing with viewers giving appreciative thanks to you both. Now we can all sleep peacefully. Thank you again.” Larry wound up the discussion.
And with that the Space Talk show ended.
By: Dilip Dahanukar
