Lead me from darkness to light (तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय)

We failed our self in passed years:

We all had a glowing wish for the year 2013 (1)* and for enlightened days ahead in 2014.

pic credit: Reuters

But in all those numerous days passed, we failed our self badly.

Some Anja (2)*, Jason (3)*, Luke (4)* tried to show us pictures of our bloody nature.

In these passed months and days we have killed our own kind with ruthless parallel no where, massacred children, burned books and teachers alive.

Sometimes it indicates of a plausible clue for the failure of our own civilizations in the past !!
We humans might have been the cause behind extinction of our past glorious civilizations, while we search factors outside with nature (Mayan (5)*, Andean (6)*, Nazca (7)* Indus valley (8)*.

Are we humans are a killer and devastator species or else?So far, 66 journalists were killed, 119 journalists were kidnapped and 178 journalists were imprisoned worldwide because of their line of work, and the year has not ended yet (as of 22nd December 2014). According to the report, almost half of those killed died in Syria (15), Palestine (7), Iraq (4), and Libya (4) – making the top deadliest five countries for journalists this year in addition to Ukraine (6). 
In our all 200,000 years of earthly existence, about 77,000 years ago we traveled out of the Africa continent on our global journey (9)* to settle in other parts of the earth.
But proven for sure that we are  failed global citizens.(graphic courtesy:http://www.politicalforum.com/current-events/206817-hints-earlier-human-exit-africa.html)


Lead me from darkness to light (तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय):
We all need that light which shall lead us in all our darkness.

That light is a universal unbiased education for all, irrespective to the caste, color, creed, race, religion, sex, socio-economic levels and all that kind of every prejudices we humans have created.


Let there be light: The UN’s 68th general assembly proclaimed 2015 an official “International Year of Light” (10)* that will focus on the science and applications of light, and seek to raise global awareness of how optics and photonics can have a positive impact in fields as diverse as energy, education, agriculture and health.

New light to illuminate the world: The Royal Swdish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 (11)* “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources” 

Scientist have tried quantum teleportation (12)*, converting light into matter (13)* reading and writing brain with light (14)* successfully so recently.
 
Fireflies (15)* used rapid light flashes to communicate. Scientist have planned to take this "bioluminescence", an intriguing phenomenon, for many potential applications, from drug testing and monitoring water contamination, and even lighting up streets using glow-in-dark trees and plants.

A prayer for all: As our old seers have sought the well being of all, that is the call of the day, with a prayer to move from darkness into light.

pic credihttp://www.survivalinternational.

org/tribes/pygmies

Universality in our approach, that is the Mantra of the day, to survive and grow together with all our beauty to which we ignorantly call our differences.

A verse from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 

which beautifully captures the goal of both 

science and spirituality.

pic courtesy:http://www.spiritualbee.com

असतो मा सद्गमय |
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय ||
मृत्योर् मा अमृतं गमय |
ॐ शांति शांति शांति ||




Asato maa Sat gamaya
Tamaso maa Jyotir gamaya
Mrityor maa Amritam gamaya
Om Shaanti Shaanti Shaanti

Lead me from the Unreal to Real,
Lead me from Darkness to Light,
Lead me from Death to Immortality,
OM Peace, Peace, Peace.
(This shloka is extracted from Brihad-aaranyaka-upanishad (1.3.28), contained within Shatapatha-braahmana, belonging to shukla-Yajur-Veda)
*reference of related blog post of the same author.

Image of pulsing motion of the electron pair in a helium atom.

Electronic pas de deux

 

The motion of the two electrons in the helium atom can be imaged and controlled with attosecond-timed laser flashes

Physicists in Heidelberg have filmed the pulsing motion of the electron pair 
in a helium atom.
At 15.3 femtoseconds (fs) the two electrons are close to the nucleus (centre of image) 
and then move away from it. 
The colour indicates the probability of finding one electron at position A (vertical axis) 
and the second electron at position B (horizontal axis) 
on a line drawn through the atom (along the polarisation direction of the laser). 
At 16.3 femtoseconds they arrive back at their original position again; 
they thus move with a beat of around one femtosecond.

(Christian Ott, Andreas Kaldun, Luca Argenti, Philipp Raith, Kristina Meyer, Martin Laux, Yizhu Zhang, Alexander Blättermann, Steffen Hagstotz, Thomas Ding, Robert Heck, Javier Madroñero, Fernando Martín, Thomas Pfeifer. Reconstruction and control of a time-dependent two-electron wave packet.) 

Nature, 2014; 516 (7531): 374 DOI: 10.1038/nature14026

Credit: © MPI for Nuclear Physics

Electrons are hard to get a hold of. Physicists cannot determine their precise location in an atom, but they can narrow down the region where the charge carriers are most probably located. When electrons move, this brings about a change to the regions where the electrons have the highest probability of being located. In some electronic states -- physicists call them superposition states -- this motion manifests itself as a pulsing with a regular beat.

"Although we do not directly image where the electrons are," explains Thomas Pfeifer, "the visible pulse provides us with the relative phase of the superposition state." The phase describes the to and fro of an oscillation, and hence the rhythmic motion of the electron pair. In this case it tells the physicists at which point of their natural pas de deux around the helium atom the electrons are at a given moment.

At this point, at the latest, attosecond physics would create new tools for chemistry as well.

#thankfully shared and cited:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141218103219.htm 

Light of fireflies

Bioluminescence in fireflies: Fireflies used rapid light flashes to communicate. This "bioluminescence" is an intriguing phenomenon that has many potential applications, from drug testing and monitoring water contamination, and even lighting up streets using glow-in-dark trees and plants.

Mechanism: Fireflies emit light when a compound called luciferin breaks down. We know that this reaction needs oxygen, but what we don't know is how fireflies actually supply oxygen to their light-emitting cells.

The firefly's light-producing organ is called the "lantern," and it is located in the insect's abdomen. It looks like a series of tubes progressing into smaller ones and so one, like a tree's branches growing into twigs. The function of these tubes, called, is to supply oxygen to the cells of the lantern, which contain luciferase and can produce light.

Latest studies: Scientists from Switzerland and Taiwan have determined how fireflies control oxygen distribution to light up their cells.

The imaging showed that the firefly diverts oxygen from other cellular functions and puts it into the reaction that breaks up luciferin. Specifically, the researchers found that oxygen consumption in the cell decreased, slowing down energy production. At the same time, oxygen supply switched to light-emission.

This detailed microimage shows 

larger channels branching into smaller ones, 

supplying oxygen for the firefly's light emission. 

The smallest channels are ten thousand times smaller than a millimeter 

and therefore invisible to other experimental probes.

Credit: Giorgio Margaritondo/EPFL

#Yueh-Lin Tsai, Chia-Wei Li, Tzay-Ming Hong, Jen-Zon Ho, En-Cheng Yang, Wen-Yen Wu, G. Margaritondo, Su-Ting Hsu, Edwin B. L. Ong, and Y. Hwu. Firefly light flashing: Oxygen supply mechanism. Physical Review Letters, 2014 [link]
#thankfully cited and shared from:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141217074508.htm

International Year of Light 2015

Let there be light

The UN’s 68th general assembly proclaimed an official “International Year” that will focus on the science and applications of light, and seek to raise global awareness of how optics and photonics can have a positive impact in fields as diverse as energy, education, agriculture and health.(courtesy:http://optics.org/)

The Year was endorsed by UNESCO’s Executive Board in 2012 before being proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2013.
The International Year will be marked by the commemoration of a series of important milestones in the history of the science of light dating back 1,000, 200, 150, 100 and 50 years:

• In 2015, it will be 1000 years since Ibn al-Haytham published his seminal work on optics, during a period of heightened creativity and innovation known as the Islamic Golden Age. (Read the article on The Miracle of Light);
• Leaping forward to 1815, the next milestone is Augustin-Jean Fresnel’s theory of light as a wave;
• Then comes James Clerk Maxwell’s description of the electromagnetic theory of light, in 1865;
• Albert Einstein joins the Hall of Fame for his general theory of relativity in 1916, which confirmed the centrality of light in both space and time;
• Last but not least, we shall pay tribute to Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson for their 1965 discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, an echo of the origin of the Universe which enables us to ‘map’ the Universe as it would have appeared shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, using sophisticated technologies.(courtesy:http://www.unesco.org)