Higgs Boson

The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. It is known as God Particle. The higgs Boson ia an integral part of theoretical Higgs Mechanism.


Scientists say they have found hints of the existence of the Higgs Boson, anever before seen subatomic particle long thought to be a fundamental building block of the Universe. 


The standard Model of particle physics lays out the basic of how elementary particles interact in the universe. But the theory crucially fails to explain how particles actually get their mass.


Particles, or bits of matter, range in size and can be larger or smaler than atoms. Electrons, protons and neutrons, for instance are the subatomic particles that make up an atom.


Scientists belive that the Higgs Boson is the particle that gives all matter its mass.

TRAVANCORE KINGS

MARTHANDA VARMA - 1729-1758

DHARMA RAJA ( KARTHIKA THIRUNAL RAMA VARMA)- 1758-1798


BALARAMA VARMA- 1798- 1810


Maharani Ayilyom Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi - (1791–1814)

Maharani Uthrittathi Thirunal Gowri Parvati Bayi- (1815- 1829)

Sri Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma- (1829-1846)

UTHRAM THIRUNAL- ( 1846- 1860)

AYILYAM THIRUNAL- (1860-1880)

VISAKHAM THIRUNAL ( 1880- 1885)

MOOLAM THIRUNAL ( 1885- 1924)

SETHU LAKSHMI BAI ( 1924- 1931)

CHITHIRA THIRUNAL ( 1931- 1947)

KEPLER SPACECRAFT

The Kepler spacecraft is an American space observatory, the space-based portion of NASA's Kepler Mission to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. The spacecraft, named in honor of the 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler, was launched in March 2009with a planned mission lifetime of at least 3.5 years.

The Kepler mission is "specifically designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets." Kepler's only instrument is a photometer that continuously monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view. This data is analyzed to detect periodic fluctuations that indicate the presence of extrasolar planets that are in the process of crossing the face of other stars.


Mission Of Spacecraft

The centuries-old quest for other worlds like our Earth has been rejuvenated by the intense excitement and popular interest surrounding the discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other stars. There is now clear evidence for substantial numbers of three types of exoplanets; gas giants, hot-super-Earths in short period orbits, and ice giants. The challenge now is to find terrestrial planets (i.e., those one half to twice the size of the Earth), especially those in thehabitable zone→ of their stars where liquid water might exist on the surface of the planet.

The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone→ and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets. 

Instrument

The Kepler instrument is a specially designed 0.95-meter diameter telescope called a photometer or light meter. It has a very large field of view for an astronomical telescope — 105 square degrees, which is comparable to the area of your hand held at arm's length. It needs that large a field in order to observe the necessary large number of stars. It stares at the same star field for the entire mission and continuously and simultaneously monitors the brightnesses of more than 100,000 stars for the life of the mission—3.5 or more years.

The photometer must be spacebased to obtain the photometric precision needed to reliably see an Earth-like transit and to avoid interruptions caused by day-night cycles, seasonal cycles and atmospheric perturbations, such as, extinction associated with ground-based observing.

Results from the Kepler mission will allow us to place our solar system within the context of planetary systems in the Galaxy. 

Courtesy Wekipedia, NASA

Kepler 22b

WASHINGTON: In another step toward finding Earth-like planets that may hold life, NASA said on Monday the Kepler space telescope has confirmed its first-ever planet in a habitable zone outside our solar system.

French astronomers earlier this year confirmed the first rocky exoplanet to meet key requirements for sustaining life. But Kepler-22b, initially glimpsed in 2009, is the first the US space agency has been able to confirm.

Confirmation means that astronomers have seen it crossing in front of its star three times. But it doesn't mean that astronomers know whether life actually exists there, simply that the conditions are right.

Such planets have the right distance from their star to support water, plus a suitable temperature and atmosphere to support life.

"We have now got good planet confirmation with Kepler-22b," said Bill Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center.

"We are certain that it is in the habitable zone and if it has a surface, it ought to have a nice temperature," he told reporters.

Spinning around its star some 600 light years away, Kepler-22b is 2.4 times the size of the Earth, putting it in class known as "super-Earths," and orbits its Sun-like star every 290 days.

Its near-surface temperature is presumed to be about 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 Celsius). Scientists do not know, however, whether the planet is rocky, gaseous or liquid.

The planet's first "transit," or star crossover, was captured shortly after NASA launched its Kepler spacecraft in March 2009.

NASA also announced that Kepler has uncovered 1,094 more potential planets, twice the number it previously had been tracking, according to research being presented at a conference in California this week.

Kepler is NASA's first mission in search of Earth-like planets orbiting suns similar to ours, and cost the US space agency about $600 million.

It is equipped with the largest camera ever sent into space -- a 95-megapixel array of charge-coupled devices -- and is expected to continue sending information back to Earth until at least November 2012.

Kepler is searching for planets as small as Earth, including those orbiting stars in a warm, habitable zone where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet.

The latest confirmed exoplanet that could support life brings to three the total number confirmed by global astronomers.

In addition to French astronomers' confirmed finding of Gliese 581d in May, Swiss astronomers reported in August that another planet, HD 85512 b, about 36 light years away seemed to be in the habitable zone of its star.

However, those two planets are "orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our Sun," NASA said in a statement, noting that Kepler-22b "is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our Sun."

"The Europeans have also been very active, actively working on confirming our candidates," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University.

"They have already confirmed two that are published and they have got another batch that are on the preprint servers so those will be, I'm sure, in the published literature soon," she added.

"So we are just thrilled about this. We need all telescopes observing these candidates so we can confirm as many as possible."

A total of 48 exoplanets and exomoons are potential habitable candidates, among a total of 2,326 possibilities that Kepler has identified so far.

 courtesy NASA

Buffett’s firm buys more than 5% of IBM

Investor Warren Buffett says his company bought $10.7 billion of IBM stock this year, about a 5.6 per cent stake.

Mr. Buffett revealed the new investment during an interview on CNBC on Monday. Mr. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, will file a full quarterly update on its U.S. stock portfolio on Monday afternoon.

Mr. Buffett has long refused to invest in high-tech companies because he has said it’s too difficult to predict which technology businesses will prosper in the long run.

But he said he recently changed his view of IBM based on what he read in the company’s annual reports. He said he should have realised years sooner that the heart of IBM’s business is providing service and equipment to information technology departments.

“There’s a fair amount of presumption in many places that if you’re with IBM, you stay with them,” Mr. Buffett said.

So Berkshire bought about 64 million shares since March, or about 5.6 per cent of IBM. Mr. Buffett says he believes IBM has a sound plan for the future.

IBM shares rose $1.39 to $188.77 in premarket trading after rising as high as $190.55 earlier.

Berkshire’s investments are closely watched in the market because of Mr. Buffett’s successful record. Mr. Buffett has said that Berkshire has been buying aggressively during the recent market turmoil.

Mr. Buffett said on Monday that Berkshire had been adding to its already sizable stake in Wells Fargo, but he didn’t say how many more shares had been bought recently. At the end of June, Berkshire held 352.3 million Wells Fargo shares. That was up from 342.6 million shares Berkshire held at the end of March.

Monday afternoon’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission may not reveal a full picture of Berkshire’s investments because regulators often allow the Omaha-based company to conceal new investments for a time while building a position.

Mr. Buffett said that the third-quarter report that will be filed on Monday won’t show all of Berkshire’s new IBM stake because some of the shares were bought in the fourth quarter.

Besides investments, Berkshire owns roughly 80 subsidiaries including insurance, railroad and utility firms.

Courtesy The Hindu

Does Nuclear Power Plants are Nuclear Arms

The study happen in Germany and other nuclear weapon production countries has answered to this questions. The Nuclear Power Plants are equivalent to 100 Nuclear bombs and 1000 atom bombs. We have seen the bad conditions of Japan durng the second world war.

IF WE CANT CONTROL THE FUSION (Collision of atoms ) PROCESS WE CANT COUNT THE LOSS HAPPEN TO THAT. 

Disadvantages of Nuclear power plants
1) Waste management
2) Accidents
3) Proliferation
4) Fuel

Nasa announce 2014 test flight of its Orion deep space capsule

Nasa will launch a test flight in 2014 of a new deep-space capsule designed to send astronauts to asteroids, the Moon, Mars.

The Orion capsule, which is being developed by Lockheed Martin Corp, would fly aboard a Delta 4 or Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, said Nasa spokesman Josh Byerly.

The test capsule would be launched into an orbit that soars as high as 5,000 miles (8,000 km) above the planet.

Courtesy Dailymail

Space Station Astronauts Connect Live With D.C. Students

Washington- To highlight International Education Week (IEW), NASA and the U.S Department Education will host a live, long-distance call for students with international Space Station resident and Expedition 29 Commander Mike Fossum. Schools and students Participating have strong military connections and were selected in collaboration with the U.S Department Defense Education Activity.


Courtesy NASA 

Huge asteroid headed for close encounter with Earth

Cape Canaveral: A huge asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the moon on Wednesday morning, giving scientists a rare chance for study without having to go through the time and expense of launching a probe, officials said.

Earth's close encounter with Asteroid 2005 YU 55 will occur at 8:28 AM IST on Wednesday November 8 (6:28 PM EST Tuesday), as the space rock sails about 201,000 miles from the planet.

"It is the first time since 1976 that an object of this size has passed this closely to the Earth. It gives us a great - and rare - chance to study a near-Earth object like this," astronomer Scott Fisher, a program director with the National Science Foundation, said Thursday during a Web chat with reporters.

The orbit and position of the asteroid, which is about 1,312 feet in diameter, is well known, added senior research scientist Don Yeomans, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"There is no chance that this object will collide with the Earth or moon," Yeomans said.

Thousands of amateur and professional astronomers are expected to track YU 55's approach, which will be visible from the planet's northern hemisphere. It will be too dim to be seen with the naked eye, however, and it will be moving too fast for viewing by the Hubble Space Telescope.

"The best time to observe it would be in the early evening on November 8 from the East Coast of the United States," Yeomans said. "It is going to be very faint, even at its closest approach. You will need a decent-sized telescope to be able to actually see the object as it flies by."

Scientists suspect YU 55 has been visiting Earth for thousands of years, but because gravitational tugs from the planets occasionally tweak its path, they cannot tell for sure how long the asteroid has been in its present orbit.

"These sorts of events have been happening for most of the lifetime of the Earth, about 4.5 billion years," Fisher said.

Computer models showing the asteroid's path for the next 100 years show there is no chance it will hit Earth during that time, added Yeomans.

"We do not think that it will ever impact the Earth or moon (but) we only have its orbit calculated for the next 100 years," he said.

Previous studies show the asteroid, which is blacker than charcoal, is what is called a C-type asteroid that is likely made of carbon-based materials and some silicate rock.

More information about its composition and structure are expected from radar images and chemical studies of its light as the asteroid passes by the planet.

"I've read that we will be able to see details down to a size of about 15 feet across on the surface of the asteroid," Fisher said.

NASA is working on a mission to return soil samples from an asteroid known as 1999 RQ36 in 2020, followed by a human mission to another asteroid in the mid-2020s.

Japan also plans to launch an asteroid sample return mission in 2018.

Courtesy IBN live