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courtesy IPCC

New researches by a group of 100 international scientists show that the sea levels will increase to atleast 1.4 metres before the 21st century comes to an end. “We can see the west Antarctic glaciers are shrinking at a rate fast enough to contribute to a sea level rise of 1.4 m by 2100, but it will be no more than that,” SCAR executive director Colin Summerhayes told reporters in a press meet.

This report, released by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) throws a new light on the figures of sea-level increase set previously by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) based on the melting of Antarctica and Greenland glaciers owing to the global warming. The IPCC’s 2007  reports stated that sea-levels could rise by 18cm to 59cm by 2099. IPCC also stated reasons-

“New scientific projections show at least a three foot (one meter) rise in ocean levels by the end of this century, part of which is also due to the expansion of warming sea water. This will inundate rice fields and estuaries that feed billions, and push into the heart of the worlds largest cities — and make each storm a threat of more devastating waves and surges.”

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India is proud, yes proud and feeling lucky. The tests concerning nuclear-capable surface-to-surface Prithvi-II missiles, fired consecutively with a time interval of 3 minutes from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur in Balasore district, (approx. 230 kms from Bhubaneshwar) conducted in the presence of V K Saraswat, Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister and other important officials have concluded with a success story. Fired at 10.28 a.m. and 10.33 a.m. consecutively, these two test missiles form a part of the brilliance of India’s indigenous ballistic missiles and were launched from mobile launchers as part of “user trials” by the army. The tests were described as part of an “user trial”.

“It was basically tested by army people. It was an user trial. The test was fantastic. It was a text book launch,” ITR director S.P. Dash told the media.

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A neutron star is a type of remnant that can result from the gravitational collapse of a massive star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type Ic supernova event. Such stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles without electrical charge and roughly the same mass as protons. Neutron stars are very hot and are supported against further collapse because of the Pauli exclusion principle. This principle states that no two neutrons (or any other fermionic particle) can occupy the same place and quantum state simultaneously.A typical neutron star has a mass between 1.35 and about 2.1 solar masses, with a corresponding radius of about 12 km if the Akmal-Pandharipande-Ravenhall (APR) Equation of state (EOS) is used- wikipedia

It may now be possible to measure the size of  neutron stars now, as claimed by Sudip Bhattacharjee and his team from Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. There are billions of neutron stars in the galaxy. Most of these have diameters of approx. 10 kms and are more than 10,000 light years away from Earth. The Earth’s dense atmosphere prevents the X-rays emitted by these stars from reaching us.This team of elite scientists claims that by observing the behavioral pattern of the X-rays by these dying stars collected by Nasa satellites(900 bursts from43 neutron stars), it may be possible to size them up!

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Clearing the air off every possible doubt regarding the failure of the Pokhran-II tests, India’s ambitious space project, Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and R. Chidambaram, AEC Chairman in 1998 and now Principal Scientific Adviser to the Union government, revealed that there is absolutely no need for “peer review. It’s an unnecessary controversy.”

Owing to the “proliferation sensitivity”, the details of the tests were not made public. Refuting such demands as peer review made by their colleagues P.N. Iyengar (former AEC chief) and A.N. Prasad, former Bhabha Atomic Research Centre director, Chidambaram said that the issue is sensitive and it has grieved both him and Kakodkar. Meanwhile, former Defence Minister Jaswant Singh has asked  (more…

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