Sunday 16 September 2012

Ye Mausam, Ye Samaa..: Weather Forecast

Heat is Source of ‘Pioneer Anomaly’: NASA

The unexpected slowing of NASA’s Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft – the so-called “Pioneer Anomaly” – turns out to be due to the slight, but detectable effect of heat pushing back on the spacecraft, according to a recent paper.

An artist's impression of Pioneer 10 heading out of the solar system towards the galactic center. Image credit: NASA AmesThe heat emanates from electrical current flowing through instruments and the thermoelectric power supply. The results were published on June 12 in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“The effect is something like when you’re driving a car and the photons from your headlights are pushing you backward,” said Slava Turyshev, the paper’s lead author at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “It is very subtle.”
Launched in 1972 and 1973, Pioneer 10 and 11 are on an outward trajectory from our sun. In the early 1980s, navigators saw a deceleration on the two spacecraft, in the direction back toward the sun, as the two spacecraft were approaching Saturn. They dismissed it as the effect of dribbles of leftover propellant still in the fuel lines after controllers had cut off the propellant.
But by 1998, as the spacecraft kept traveling on their journey and were over 8 billion miles (13 billion kilometers) away from the sun, a group of scientists led by John Anderson of JPL realized there was an actual deceleration of about 300 inches per day squared (0.9 nanometers per second squared). They raised the possibility that this could be some new type of physics that contradicted Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Pioneers 10 and 11 both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. Pioneer 10 is heading towards the star Aldebaran in the Taurus constellation and will take more than two million years to reach it. Image credit: NASA Ames
In 2004, Turyshev decided to start gathering records stored all over the country and analyze the data to see if he could definitively figure out the source of the deceleration. In part, he and colleagues were contemplating a deep space physics mission to investigate the anomaly, and he wanted to be sure there was one before asking NASA for a spacecraft.
He and colleagues went searching for Doppler data, the pattern of data communicated back to Earth from the spacecraft, and telemetry data, the housekeeping data sent back from the spacecraft. At the time these two Pioneers were launched, data were still being stored on punch cards. But Turyshev and colleagues were able to copy digitized files from the computer of JPL navigators who have helped steer the Pioneer spacecraft since the 1970s.
They also found over a dozen of boxes of magnetic tapes stored under a staircase at JPL and received files from the National Space Science Data Center at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and worked with NASA Ames Research Center to save some of their boxes of magnetic optical tapes.
He collected over 43 gigabytes of data, which may not seem like a lot now, but is quite a lot of data for the 1970s. He also managed to save a vintage tape machine that was about to be discarded so that he could play the magnetic tapes.
On December 4, 1973, excitement rose as the Pioneer 10 spacecraft sent back images of a Jupiter of ever-increasing size as it plunged at high speed toward its closest approach to the planet. PICS (Pioneer Image Converter System) began to show a few spots on the screens, which gradually built up into a very distorted crescent-shaped Jupiter. "Sunrise on Jupiter," exclaimed a scientist excitedly. Subsequent PICS images were of a crescent Jupiter gradually decreasing in size as the spacecraft sped away out of the Jovian system.
Image credit: NASA Ames
The effort was a labor of love for Turyshev and others. The Planetary Society sent out appeals to its members to help fund the data recovery effort. NASA later also provided funding. In the process, a programmer in Canada, Viktor Toth, contacted Turyshev because he heard about the effort. He helped Turyshev create a program that could read the telemetry tapes and clean up the old data.
They saw that what was happening to Pioneer wasn’t happening to other spacecraft, mostly because of the way the spacecraft were built. For example, the Voyager spacecraft are less sensitive to the effect seen on Pioneer because its thrusters align it along three axes, whereas the Pioneer spacecraft rely on spinning to stay stable.
With all the data newly available, Turyshev and colleagues were able to calculate the heat put out by the electrical subsystems and the decay of plutonium in the Pioneer power sources, which matched the anomalous acceleration seen on both Pioneers.
“The story is finding its conclusion because it turns out that standard physics prevail,” Turyshev said. “While of course it would’ve been exciting to discover a new kind of physics, we did solve a mystery.”
Pioneer 10 and 11 were managed by NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Pioneer 10's last signal was received on Earth in January 2003. Pioneer 11's last signal was received in November 1995. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
(NASA) July 19, 2012
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Exchange Market & Indian Economy

Monday 10 September 2012

DESH KI HALAT AUR HALAAT

Click Here if You cant see Images
I think a man can be judged to some extend by the way he walks or drives on the road. In the same fashion a society can also be judged by its usage of the road. If so the Indian roads mirror the values of the Indian society and it is mayhem.
                        Everyone wants to rush ahead with scant respect for others and in the process everyone everyone gets bogged down on the roads whereas a disciplined traffic could take us to our destination much faster. In the same way corruption may look attractive in the short run. But in the long run the society suffers and even the bribe takers and nepotists lose out.
                                                                         There is no doubt exaggeration in this gossip. But there is also an underlying piece of truth in it. They say that in democracies people get the government they deserve. May be the same applies to our roads too - we get the roads and traffic we deserve.

Monday 3 September 2012

NATURE & IT's COLORS EVOLVING BEAUTY!


Amazing Rock Formations in China


These incredible landscapes look as if they have been painted in the sweeping pastel brush strokes of an impressionistic artwork. But in fact these remarkable pictures show the actual scenery of Danxia Landform at Nantaizi village of Nijiaying town, in Linzhe county of Zhangye, Gansu province of China. Formed of layers of reddish sandstone, the terrain has over time been eroded into a series of mountains surrounded by curvaceous cliffs and unusual rock formations. 







Ye haseen wadiyaan; ye khula aasmaan

WORLD'S FAMOUS BEACHES: SKY TOP VIEW
Venice Beach California 


Secret Beach St. Tropez 

Pampelonne Beach St. Tropez 




Beach of San Francisco 

Miami Beach Florida 

Manhattan Beach California

Malibu California


Costa de Caprica Portugal 

Coogee Beach Australia

Cascais Portugal

Caribbean Sea Central America 


Ritemail: The First McDonald's Service Station

McDONALD'S FAMOUS HAMBURGER: The First Service station of McDONALDS


The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald at 1398 North E Street at West 14th Street in San Bernardino, California. Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 furthered the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant that the White Castle hamburger chain had already put into practice more than two decades earlier. The original mascot of McDonald's was a man with a chef's hat on top of a hamburger shaped head whose name was "Speedee". Speedee was eventually replaced with Ronald McDonald by 1967 when the company first filed a U.S. trademark on a clown shaped man having puffed out costume legs. 13 more images after the break...

McDonald's first filed for a U.S. trademark on the name "McDonald's" on May 4, 1961, with the description "Drive-In Restaurant Services", which continues to be renewed through the end of December 2009. In the same year, on September 13, 1961, the company filed a logo trademark on an overlapping, double arched "M" symbol. The overlapping double arched "M" symbol logo was temporarily disfavored by September 6, 1962, when a trademark was filed for a single arch, shaped over many of the early McDonald's restaurants in the early years. Although the "Golden Arches" appeared in various forms, the present form as a letter "M" did not appear until November 18, 1968, when the company applied for a U.S. trademark.


The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois, on April 15, 1955, the ninth McDonald's restaurant overall. Kroc later purchased the McDonald brothers' equity in the company and led its worldwide expansion, and the company became listed on the public stock markets in 1965. Kroc was also noted for aggressive business practices, compelling the McDonald brothers to leave the fast food industry. 



The McDonald brothers and Kroc feuded over control of the business, as documented in both Kroc's autobiography and in the McDonald brothers' autobiography. The San Bernardino store was demolished in 1976 (or 1971, according to Juan Pollo) and the site was sold to the Juan Pollo restaurant chain. It now serves as headquarters for the Juan Pollo chain, as well as a McDonald's and Route 66 museum. With the expansion of McDonald's into many international markets, the company has become a symbol of globalization and the spread of the American way of life. Its prominence has also made it a frequent topic of public debates about obesity, corporate ethics and consumer responsibility.