Arunachal Photo Diary

We started from Chennai on the 22nd of December, flying to Dibrugarh via Kolkata. We reached Dibrugarh at 2 p.m. and were anxious to get out of that place due to the ensuing protests against the CAA. We entered Arunachal at around 4 and reached the Golden Pagoda at Namsai at around 1730 in the evening.

Route Taken: Namsai (Namsai District) (Day 1) -> Hawai (Anjaw District) (Day 2) -> Dong (Day 3) -> Kibithu (Day 4) -> Tezu (Lohit District) (Day 5) -> Roing (Lower Dibang Valley District) (Day 6) -> Pasighat (East Siang District) (Day 6)-> Dibrugarh (Day 8) -> Chennai

Golden Pagoda, Namsai

Golden Buddha

                                     

Bamboo Buddha inside!

                                               

Golden Pagoda in the morning

View from the Eco Resort of the Tengapani River

Tengapani River

Monastery by the Tengapani

Parashuram Kund by Lohit River

This was something we saw pretty often

Other more interesting captions include:

• If you drive like hell, soon you will be there
• Better be Mr Late than late Mr
• Safety on the road is safe tea at home
• After whiskey, driving risky
• Your hurry may cause your family worry
• This is not a race, drive with grace
• Keep your nerves on sharp curves; & many others

Lohit River at Dong, near Walong

First and safest looking hanging bridge of the trip

View from bridge

View from the bridge

War Memorial near Walong

The Easternmost Outposts

Army bunker

                                   

View on the road to Kibithu from Walong

Hanging bridge near Kibithu

                                     

Indo-China border (Maden Ridge),
perpendicular to it is the border with Burma

Hot Springs at Walong

Dong Resort, Walong

Bridge keeps getting washed away in the monsoon...

Sally Lake, Roing 

Siang River

Abor Country River Camp

Yamne River

View from the last hanging bridge of the trip

A broken hanging bridge, right next to the one we're on!

We went river rafting in Pasighat, and returned to Chennai on the 29th after one of our most memorable holidays, that included adventures like the car getting stuck on the ghat road in the night with rain pouring down and nowhere to go, with nobody on the road, to being forced to stop to wait for a landslide to get cleared !

The Tragedy of Daenerys and Thrones

[Spoilers for Game of Thrones, season 8 episode 5]

Daenerys, right from the beginning has been this god-like character who walks through fire multiple times (at least in the show) and brings mythical creatures back to life. She swears that she’ll take back what is hers with fire and blood and burn cities to the ground. 

But first, her dragons needed to grow and she needed to acquire armies and so she slowly started conquering Essos. She always had a tendency to turn to extreme violence, starting with locking up those who betrayed her in Qarth in a vault to die a horrible death after days of starvation, to burning the slave masters in Astapor after breaking the deal struck between them, to crucifying the masters in Meereen. She was forgiven for all this by the fans as, well, they were slavers who tortured innocent people and propagated a horrible culture, and hence it wasn’t wrong to give them what they gave others back.

Dany also wanted to conquer Westeros and take back her father’s throne. So, she quickly conquered and moved on from city to city, destroying slavery, but in the process leaving behind unstable governments governed by free men who knew nothing about ruling, and finally leaving the “Bay of Dragons” in the hands of an eccentric sell sword captain so that she could go back to Westeros and strike when her enemies are weak. 

Yes, Dany was eliminating slavers, but perhaps not for entirely the right reasons? She needed to acquire armies and navies before she could conquer Westeros. And then when she reached Westeros, only to discover that the people there didn’t love her as much as they did rulers like Jon Snow. Some even preferred Cersei, although they were being lied to by her. Lords like Randyll Tarly were still loyal to her, and it's not like the peasants who were under Randyll Tarly were suffering. He was a decent lord, and they didn’t really care about who sat on the Iron throne as it doesn’t matter to them. 

So perhaps, when Dany realised that she wasn’t receiving the same kind of love and affection that she did from the people of Essos, a wiser decision might have been to return to Essos, and help rebuild the continent there instead of leaving it in the hands of sellswords and unstable governments, especially given the huge societal changes she had just made there. Perhaps her place was in Essos after all, where she was most loved and where she could do the most good. 

Of course, nobody’s perfect and Dany’s a grey character. Dany wanted to go back to the place where she was born and rule there no matter the cost. She wanted to go back to Westeros though it didn’t want her. That might be the tragedy of her character. 

All that said, the way the TV show has handled her descent to madness is completely nonsensical and extremely rushed.  While it is possible for the writers to take Dany down the Mad Queen arc, it makes little sense to do so when she voluntarily lost half her armies, a dragon, and saved Jon Snow’s life twice in the same episode despite knowing that he was a possible threat to her claim to the throne, not two episodes ago. 

Again, it seems the writers just have an ending in mind and want to get to it somehow. It makes little sense for Dany and her fleet to be ambushed by Euron Greyjoy’s navy, given the fact that Daenerys was in the air on her dragon when it happened, and with an aerial view, she would definitely be able to scout and see an approaching enemy naval fleet. 

Sure, Dany has lost 2 dragons, her best friend, and been rejected by her lover, who’s also now her nephew and a threat to her claim, but it’s still difficult to understand why she would burn innocents and an entire city which she wants to rule when her army has already taken it. It even makes more sense for her to fly to the Red Keep and burn it down with Cersei in it. Sure, some of you might justify it from the prophetic scene in the House of the Undying, but it was SNOW there and referring to the Army of the Dead, as it should have been in the show.

George Martin talks about the Army of the Dead as a metaphor for climate change, but it makes little sense now as climate change is a global phenomenon which is going to affect everybody, regardless of class, caste or any other man made division in society, and here Cersei gets away with doing literally nothing. 

That’s just justifying poor writing with improper interpretation of prophecies. The next thing they’re going to say is if Arya Stark ends up killing Daenerys, that she was prophesied to do so and Daenerys was the green eyed part of the prophecy. But then, the prophecy comes from the books, and Dany is lilac eyed there and doesn’t have Emilia Clarke’s green ones, so again it makes little sense.

Sure, Dany going mad can be used as a plot device, but the writers have gotten to the destination without the journey and the journey IS the destination, something which they seem to have forgotten while compressing 3 seasons worth of content into 1 episode. 

I pity those who have named their kids after Daenerys.

STARS

So I'm going to be publishing a series of articles on stars starting now.

What is a Star?

Well,  according to Wikipedia,  the answer to that question is "A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity"

I would define it as an entity which is forced to consume itself in order to exist. Basically,  it cannot be a star if it doesn't undertake nuclear fusion using gases which it is composed of.

How do stars work?

Well, in the simplest of terms, due to the heavy mass, temperature and pressure in the core, the hydrogen atoms are ripped off their electrons, and are squeezed to such an extent, that their protons fuse forming Helium producing a LOT of heat and light in the process. Fusion continues to happen until they run out of Hydrogen to fuse, but if they are massive enough, they can fuse helium too and this goes on until they eventually 'die', we'll cover that soon. Now to understand this better, lets take the example of the sun.

The Sun:

How does the sun run?

The sun is massive -1.989 x 10^30 kg. That is such a massive number that you could very well fit a few million Earths in it! It contains 2 OCTILLION TONS of gas[mostly Hydrogen]. The pressure at the sun's core is a staggering 250 BILLION times the pressure on you in the Earth. In comparison to other stars, it's still in the top 10% of stars, classifying them by their populations, but if you look directly at the size, the sun is somewhere in the lower middle of the spectrum.

The innermost layer of the sun is the core. The pressure at its core is an immense 1 billion times the pressure on you in the Earth. This core is mainly composed of hydrogen gas. At this pressure,  the temperature in the suns core is a staggering 15 million degrees celsius!  At this temperature and pressure,  the electron is ripped off the hydrogen,  and the protons are squeezed so hard together that an event I would say is the root cause of all life happens-they fuse and form Helium. Every second, the sun converts 800 tons of hydrogen into 790 tons of Helium, the remaining 10 tons are released as energy. The energy released is enormous- enough to power a STAR. An unimaginable amount of energy is released in the form of heat and light,  enough even to supply and support life on a planet which is 149 million km away. The energy released is the equivalent of millions of times the entire nuclear arsenal present on Earth and this happens every single second, I repeat every single second. So much for the Tsar Bomba.

 The energy released heats up the gas above the core, however not enough to fuse Hydrogen above the core. Hot air rises due to convection. It then cools and sinks back to the core. This layer is known as the convective layer.

Above this, is the photosphere. The density here makes the layer transparent, completely allowing light to pass through. After this, it travels and reaches us!

Above the photosphere is the corona or the solar wind. This extends for millions of kilometers! This basically is like a torrent of subatomic particles flooding the nearby space. It travels on average at a speed which is around 0.01% the speed of light, and can reach even higher! And mind you that is NOT a small number. It is equivalent to 277777.778 m/s!

Also, the light which reaches you, has to make it's way from the sun's core. The way this works is, a photon of a certain energy moves and strikes the next photon, losing some energy in the process, until eventually it breaks free from the sun to roam into space. This is a LONG process, and recent calculations show this takes around 250,000 years, around the same time early men roamed the Earth!

Another key, key feature regarding the sun is magnetism. I mentioned earlier that conditions inside the sun are so hot, they rip the electrons from the Hydrogen atoms. This group of negatively charged particles is called plasma. By Maxwell's Theory of Electromagnetism[in simple terms, a charged particle generates a magnetic field], sun has a magnetic field. The sun's rotation, along with convection, moves around plasma and creates this magnetic field. When plasma reaches the sun's surface[the photosphere], it cools. Some of these multiple magnetic fields generated by plasma, may get tangled up, thus preventing it from sinking down the sun's core. Due to it cooling, it loses it shine, producing a dark spot on the surface of the sun, something which is known as a sunspot.

Plasma also moves along these magnetic fields, creating large arches known as a prominence. It still is a mystery, and we don't understand this fully, but will do so in the future. 

Magnetic fields can also get interlocked, and sometimes as they contain a LOT of energy, they can even snap. All the energy which is stored now expands outwards in an explosive way, an event that is perilous and is known as a solar flare. These are mind-blowingly powerful, with the stronger ones emitting even 5-15% the entire net energy the sun emits! 

The blast of debris ejected during a solar flare can even hit the Earth, causing immense effects. Our atmosphere, coupled with our magnetic field reduces the high intensity light along with deflecting the electrons ejected. In most cases that is. But sometimes, the Earth's magnetic field interacts with the magnetic field causing an aurora at the Northern and Southern Poles, also known as the Northern and Southern Lights. The exact details as to why this occurs is still a mystery though. And these lights form multiple shapes, depending on the magnetic field's shape. BUT, there are a lot of disadvantages.  As the magnetic fields interact, they produce an EMP[electromagnetic pulse] which overloads power grids, causiing blackouts in mass. In 2012, a huge such event was detected and luckily for us, it missed the Earth. Had this hit us, it would've caused blackouts in many areas, apart from frying circuits of most satellites.

Another type of a solar flare is a CME[Coronal Mass Ejection] and this well, is HUGE, and unlike a solar flare is not localised as they occur higher in the surface of the sun! 

So this is basically how the sun goes about its daily business, it eats itself and every now and then ejects a lot of subatomic particles!

Significance of the discovery of Gravitational Waves

It has been a bit of a hiatus for me. The extremely over hyped 10th board exams are coming up next month in March. I strongly believe exams must never have a role in deciding the capabilities of a person. Every person will have a field where they're brilliant, only exams won't identify those people. Extremely smart people might still fail to perform to the best of their abilities during examinations due to various reasons- from pressure to exam fear. One day, when I take humans to Mars, I will make sure that the first thing that is instituted is a proper education system. *Sighs and wakes up to realize I'm still a nobody and we're still on Earth with my Boards in a month.*

Now to get to the topic and the purpose of writing this article, which I just could not resist writing being a science fanatic, despite pressures from family, friends and teachers to seriously spend time studying.

Gravitational waves are basically ripples in the space-time continuum or the fabric of space and time, the existence of which was brilliantly predicted by Albert Einstein almost a century ago(98 years).

Mass bends space. In a more simple way, take space to be like a long piece of sponge. If you apply pressure on the sponge, it bends due to mass of your hand right? The harder you press, the more it bends. Similarly, due to the gravitational forces of various bodies, space gets 'bent' and disturbed from its original position.

Gravity doesn't act as a force, in fact there are no 'forces' in the gravitational pull, it is actually because due to the mass of both the objects, space bends due to which the objects move closer to each other. Now, imagine two ends of a paper sheet. Mark an edge as 'A' and it's opposite side as 'B'. Now to go from an edge to the other, you need to go via the diagonal right? Now, what happens if you fold the sheet via the other diagonal. This reduces the distance and now A is literally on B right? This is exactly what happens when celestial bodies attract each other due to a bend in space time caused by the mass of their bodies(gravity), only there is more space between them unlike when A is on top of B(LOL).

ANYTHING with MASS and ENERGY can create gravitational force(even me and you). If you run around, even then you cause ripples in the fabric of space-time, although it will be undetectable and very, very, very small. Now, to cause such a massive distortion, you need something very very big moving very, very fast for us to detect it. This is why gravitational waves were possible to be detected only from 2 massive black holes moving at incredible speeds

And yes coming to it now, there is only one way to detect gravitational waves which bend space and time. Take a guess. And before taking one, let me give you the facts. Say you want to measure the distance between A and B which is originally 10 cm. Even if you make markings equally spaced between each other, you wouldn't be able to notice and detect any change, as a bend in the space-time continuum say which causes A and B to come closer will also cause the markings to come closer, so you wouldn't be able to identify any difference.

The only thing which doesn't get stretched is light(the speed). Say due to the disturbances, the distance between A and B gets stretched further, then light will take more speed to reach B and if it gets bent and becomes smaller, then light will take lesser time to reach B. This is exactly how they detected the existence of gravitational waves at LIGO(Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory). There are 2 tunnels there, perpendicular to each other, When a gravitational wave is detected, one of the tunnels stretches while the other contracts. The interference of the lasers as the waves bounce between the different points in the vertex is measured to check whether space-time has been bent or not. It is super mega ultra giga difficult to do this and successfully measure the differences. Like say measuring a difference of 50 cm from the original size of a rod which is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 m long. I bet you can't even read the number correctly! Adding to the difficulties is the extra noise which heightens the difficulty of successfully detecting a gravitational wave. This is done by comparing the ripples gotten in experiments to the ones in actual space-time ripples. It's like a 10000 different songs being played at the same time and you're trying to identify a melody whose volume is the lowest.

The significance of this achievement is well, SIGNIFICANT as it provides a completely different view and perception of the universe. Until today, gravity was thought of as a normal force. But now, it has been clearly proven that space and time can be bent. You can now look at things from a totally different angle. Like say, you initially were only able to see 2 dimensions, but now you're able to see the 3rd and this completely changes your understanding of the world, nothing is flat anymore. It is absolutely incredible how a man who lived almost a century ago, was able to see with such foresight and predict such an 'absurd' thing as this. Maybe he was born in a future world and he traveled back in time and unfortunately lost his time machine and enlightened the world earlier than when it was supposed to understand various stuffs. If he did that, the consequences would possibly only be known to him and could affect the world adversely. Oh hell, only the worst critic of Einstein would put forth such a theory and somehow manage to criticize him. For all we know, Einstein was a great man, a fabulous human being who has made the world a more knowledgeable one.

And now that it has been proven that space time is like a sheet which can be bent, I just can't wait for the sheet to become 3 dimensional! That'll deepen further our understanding of the research able
universe.
This is one great step in the quest for knowledge and understanding of the universe and the physics behind it.

Dreams

We dream about 2-6 times almost every night(or day), but we never wonder what they actually are and most of the time, you forget what you dreamt of when you wake up and even sometimes when you remember, you just put it aside and focus on more worldy thoughts. None of us realize though, that our  brains can think the clearest and deepest while we're dreaming. So here's how I understand dreaming. 

I would define a dream as ideas, emotions and thoughts that converge to form a sort of a movie in your head which you sometimes can, but sometimes can't control. Although I''m no oneirologist or a psychoanalyst, this is my view about dreams.

For me, dreams usually materialize based on my last thought before falling asleep. So, therefore before going to bed, I think about stuff which I like and stuff which I wonder a lot about, like Chelsea winning, rebelling against your genetic composition etc, and sometimes when I'm in my dream I command the world and can therefore try different scenarios to put to bed my curiosities.

While you're fully conscious, there are stuff which are highly impossible to successfully recreate in the conscious world. In a dream, even the sky is not the limit. You can achieve ANYTHING in a dream. The world belongs to you. All you need to do is know how to control it. They can help you get creative and give a sense of inspiration and ideas. You can actually solve problems better in your dreams than in a conscious state.

Dreams can also be re-visualizations of good or scary moments of the past which affect you emotionally, either causing anxieties and fears or happiness and nostalgia. You dream about happy moments of the past which you wish to relive or about repressed memories and phobias during which you fathom about what would happen if such a thing were to occur in real life. You go through different possibilities, of how you could've made a good moment better, or of how you'd react were to be placed in an unpleasant situation which you fear while conscious. You get ideas on how to tackle such situations and to beat your fears.

Sometimes, in rare cases, you will come to understand that you're dreaming. How you do varies from person to person. Like for me, during rare instances when I suspect that I'm dreaming, a door with a sunflower on it suddenly appears which makes realization dawn on me. I have absolutely no idea why it's a sunflower door nor can I change it. It has been the same from when I was young and is probably because of my experiences then. If I choose to stay, I can sort of influence the events in the world of dreams, but I also wake up if I open the door and walk through it. I have no idea why this is so and find it incredibly bizarre. This is basically known as lucid dreaming. You are aware that you're dreaming and sometimes, can even control and influence the events occurring in the process.

Dreams consolidate newer memories and reinforce older ones combining them with your thoughts to provide you a better view and ideas to sate your curiosities and abate your deepest desires which widely vary from person to person. They help in enlightening you and broadening your view on subjects. They also serve as reminders for things which you should do in the future or bring back visions of people who were in your life in the past who you dearly miss.

Sometimes, they also serve as warnings for future occurrences which may probably take place due to a series of events culminating into one big showdown. Sometimes, people get premonitions or visions about future events that are going to take place. Many put forth a religious and spiritual point of view to these 'premonitions' like astrology, divination, necromancy etc but this is my view on this. Some people have a very good IQ(Intelligence Quotient). Usually, these are the ones who get these visions about the future in their dreams. I would say this is because their mind is sharp enough to analyse certain small and seemingly insignificant events, but all of which might have possible consequences. There are people who have 'predicted' future disasters and are being called 'Oracles' or so but they are probably those whose minds are intelligent enough to put together a few factors which might cause a disaster in which man might have had a role to play. Like say, in EM Forster's, the Machine Stops, although he wrote it as science fiction, he was able to successfully predict a world which is highly dependent on machines and the Internet and instant messaging services back in 1909. He had such good foresight, that it almost seems as if he travelled through time and wrote the book back in 1909. These kinds of people have incredible IQs and could possibly be able to put together events which may culminate with them predicting the final event in the future subconsciously. They are basically the ones we revere and call Oracles. At least, that is my opinion

The most difficult part I face is that about 90% of the time, when I realize that I'm dreaming, I wake up and am unable to continue the dream. It is very difficult to maintain a subconscious state once you realize that what you're experiencing isn't real and has no effect on you. But after a while, sometimes you master it, and for sometime you control the world of dreams where the Laws of Physics don't apply and you can try out different things which you'd have always wanted to do in real life. You can also gain answers to questions and be inspired by the happenings of a dream. But, sometimes, instead of being affected by the outside environment and waking up, the brain incorporates this as a part of the dream resulting in continued sleep.

The toughest part though is to recall and remember a dream, and even when you do it is extremely unreliable as most of the time, you mix reality with the dreamscape and get an altered version of the dream. But, that said, if you awake while in the middle of the dream, you'll be able to fully recall and remember it, but what use is it when you wake up while in the middle of solving something. Mostly, you'll be able to recall dreams which are vivid and interesting in content making you curious.

So yeah, this is my interpretation of dreams. If your dreams don't scare you, they aren't big enough, so dream big!

PS: Not taking anything away from EM Forster for he was one of the best science fiction writers in the world. Plus, this is just my view of a dream, you may not agree with this, but this is what I believe.

Happy New Year!

Well, first off, Happy New Year to y'all! From the point of view of a 10th grader, I hardly see anything worthwhile in celebrating the new year, in fact, it actually reminded me that I have just about a month left with my friends in school after which the exams begin and everybody goes their own separate ways. It's pretty horrible when you think forward and realize that you aren't going to be seeing the faces of your chums very often.

Even after annoying and making jokes at my expense, I cannot fathom what I would do without these weird faces with whom I've had such messed up talks and fun that an outsider would think that we were born mentally retarded and need psychiatric help. From tolerating my pathetic 'yo momma' jokes and my non-stop drone about football about why every club apart from Chelsea suck to playing FIFA and Call of Duty, at which, I admittedly suck, and to those who've actually had the patience to debate with me and help me see logic, I owe you guys one. Y'all have stood by me through everything, consoling me when I got bad grades, resisting the urge to slap me when I annoy you guys when I'm bored to actually listening to me on the phone when I drone on and speak about things which are scientifically impossible, you guys are friends which I will never find in the future, and no matter what I will never forget y'all and I thank you dudes for all you've done for me.

Looking with foresight into the future and assuming I will live another 50 years, I probably have very little to do with my life. I have maybe a 100 reunions with my friends left, a size able amount of scientific advancement which I will witness and hopefully, I will be alive the day we become an inter-plantery species, I really hope I will not die on this planet and that I will be lucky enough to witness another world. I probably will have 100 hours in the future to look back at the past with nostalgia and hopefully I will be satisfied with what I've achieved in my life.

So well, in my opinion, the new year is not something we should celebrate, instead it is something which we should mourn as we are getting a year older and have a year less to live. But let's not dwell on that, instead we should make the year such that in the next we can look back at the past year with pride and nostalgia and be happy.


For me personally, this could be a year to rejoice if the hyperloop is tested, Chelsea win trophies, SpaceX perfects the vertical liftoff and landing. Although, this has no effect on me directly, it will make me proud of the world and be happy that the future is secure. I will aspire to play a role though, in conquering space and colonising Mars.

But well, according to everybody, the biggest event of this year is my board exams which I will face in a couple of months. Although I don't believe an exam is going to shape my future in any way, I still will have to study to please those who support me.

So, best of luck to everybody this year and may technology's advancement to save mankind continue!

SpaceX Lands Falcon 9

Six months after a dramatic first failure in 21 launches, SpaceX recently achieved something which will revolutionise the Rocket and Space Industry. They managed to land the first stage of a rocket. It's a remarkable achievement and it will make potential Inter-plantery travel in the future much easier as you can reuse rockets and don't need to dispose one off after a launch and will also greatly reduce the cost of Space Travel. It's a huge step in ensuring the survival and longevity of the human species and in making it an interplanetary species in the future. Just think of how bad it would be if you could use a car only once and you'd have to buy another one for every ride.

To achieve this, you would have to be able to land a rocket vertically and that is something which is very difficult and the technology to do such a thing has been researched for for a long time without much success which is why this is such an amazing achievement as SpaceX not only did it, but did it with an actual payload of 11 satellites with not much space for extra fuel. The technology required for vertical liftoff and vertical landing should be such that the thrust should be greater than the body's weight and the thrust has to be vectored with some throttling. The base must be capable of calculating the rockets position and altitude with precision as even slight deviations will result in a mission failure. The entire rocket first flies off from the Earth after which the rocket booster seperates from the rocket, takes a U-turn and then comes back to a landing zone a few miles away from its launchpad. 

A rocket booster costs roughly about $50 million and you need to build one everytime before you launch a rocket. Now that SpaceX has successfully managed to land it, all it needs is the money for repairs, and refurbishing and fuel which is what will greatly reduce the cost of sending a rocket to space. 

This is like a much more amplified version of what Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin did. They took a rocket to the beginning of space and came back. Here they had to take a huge payload, take 11 satellites to their orbits and land a vehicle which is going at a much greater speed than the one which Blue Origin landed. This makes it a historic feat and a day that should be marked in the history of human civilization. 

The very fact that Elon Musk actually postponed the launch by a day after reviewing the mission parameters as better weather was predicted and a better chance of a successful landing, 10% higher as he tweeted shows the scale of what SpaceX tried and achieved. According to him, this'll reduce the cost of space travel by a factor of 1/100 which is great

But it's also a big challenge to see if the rocket can actually withstand a second reentry. Escaping from Earth's velocity and successfully reentering would've taken a toll on the rocket's body and it remains to be seen if it has it in itself to do it again. 

It's a one small flip for a rocket, but one giant leap for mankind.