Luminiferous Ether

 By hearing the word 'Ether' the most common thing come to us that it is a functional group in organic chemistry. A few people percieve ether in a different way. Actually in Theory of relativity ether or aether is a space filling substance. It was assumed that ether will act as transmission medium for the transmission of electromagnetic or gravitational forces. In General theory of relativity Albert Einstein called gravitational fields as aether. According to theorist like Einstein, de broglie, Maxwell and others there might be a medium with physical properties filling empty space, an ether.

Physicist at the end of 19th century defined ether as quasi-rigid solid. It was called quasi rigid because it had all properties of solid except that it can vibrate. It is also called luminiferous ether which means light carrying.Two American scientists Mischelson and Morley build a device called Interferometer to detect the presence of ether. They done their experiment several times but was not able to prove the existence of ether. In 1905 after the acceptance of Albert einstein's special theory of relativity, the ether hypothesis was discarded. It was thought unnecessary in terms of Einstein's assumption that speed of any electromagnetic wave is a universal constant. Now ether theory is not accepted. The electromagnetic fields are independent which are not reducible to anything else. Electromagnetic waves are non-mechanical waves which does not require any medium to travel.

Super Highways in Space

There are super highways all around the world for superfast travel but what if there will be a super highway in space! Now this 'will be' is changed to 'is'. Astronomers from Serbia have discovered a new super highway network to travel through the solar system. Now deep space mission will become easier because of this new network of routes that would let probes to travel at quicker pace. The super highway route between Jupiter and Neptune can cut down the travel time to one decade and 100 astronomical units in less than a century.

Due to this discovery it will become easier for different space organisations to have deep space missions. Now many probe can be send to Jovian planets for detailed research. These super highways are linked to the gravitational forces at work and are known as celestial autobahn or celestial highway. These routes are arch like structure that extends from asteroid belt to Uranus and beyond. In order to understand how these archs are interconnected, a team of researchers are examining the orbits of various celestial bodies including comets, meteorides, moons and planets.

If scientists successfully send probe and spacecrafts through these highways it will not only save time but also the fuels which are used in these spacecrafts. Indeed it will take time to fully understand these space manifolds but I am sure that the great minds on earth will solve every mystry about it. Space and knowledge both are endless!😃

Hyperloop

 We live in a busy world where everyone want to finish all the work as fast as possible. Most of the time we have to travel different place to accomplish our work. With globalisation we not only have to travel in our country but sometimes we have to go to other countries as well. Till now the fastest mode of transport we use is aeroplane. But science and technology is endless, the more we explore, the more things we discover. The fastest mode of transport that we know is aeroplane but if every thing goes well we will have faster mode of transportation and this is the idea of HYPERLOOP. 

 Hyperloop is a proposed mode of ground transport which can travel at over 700 miles an hour. The idea was first given by Rober goddard but it was first publicly mentioned by Elon musk and the design is released by joint efforts of Tesla and SpaceX. Like trains run on tracks, hyperloop technology will use low pressure pods to run on. As the speed increases frictional force will also increase therefore concept of evacuated or partially evacuated tubes was proposed. Instead of tracks these will be magnetically levitating trains. Because of these features it can easily achieve hypersonic speed.

If the idea will be successful it will hardly take 30 minutes to travel from chennai to Bengaluru and one can reach Pune from Mumbai in just 20 minutes! A number of roots have been proposed for hyperloop system in the countries like USA, India, UK, Russia etc. Vrgin hyperloop came to India in 2017 and has been working with Maharashtra Government to build hyperloop pod between Mumbai and pune. 

The Smallest Particle: Quarks

 We have heard that electron, proton and neutrons are the smallest or fundamental particles which constitutes the building blocks of every element. But there exist still smaller particles which makes up  neutron and proton. These smallest particles of the universe discovered till date are known as quarks.

The word quarks  was first used by James Joyce as 'Three quarks for Muster Mark! ' Quarks come in three kinds of colour charge red, green and blue. Quarks are not actually of these colours. It is just a way of categorizing them. Therefore the quantum field threory which deals with quarks is known as Quantum Chromodynamics(QCD). There are six types of quarks- up(u), down(d), top(t), bottom(b), charm(c), and strange (s). Protons are made up of 2 up and 1 down quark whereas neutrons are made up of 1 up and 2 down quarks. Up quark has a charge of +2/3 and down quark has a charge of -1/3.

Quarks always sticks together as the attraction between quarks strengthens as they are pulled apart unlike the EM force which weakens when pulled apart. As EM force is mediated by photons, the strong nuclear force is mediated by Gluons. Hence the strong nuclear force is generated by exchange of gluons between quarks of different color charge. The quantum physics is becoming more complicated due to discoveries of so many particles and there are many more to be discovered!