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UFO on Mars? Curiosity images create a flutter..!!

UFO on Mars? Curiosity images create a flutter..!!

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has captured images that have raised claims of UFO sightings on Mars. The images include one showing a white light moving across the horizon and another showing four blob-like objects hovering in the sky.

Viewers have expressed different opinions about what the blobs might be. According to the Daily Mail, NASA has so far not commented on the blobs but of course, alien hunters claim that they are alien ships monitoring human activity on Mars.
According to YouTube user StephenHannardADGUK, who posted the images to YouTube, members of group called Alien Disclosure UK (ADUK), first spotted the four specks of light on images NASA made available to the public. The brought the images out in relief by applying a series of filters.
StephenHannardADGUK, commenting on the lights, said: "Four objects caught by Mars Curiosity, very difficult to make out on original image so I have used a few filters to highlight. What are these four objects? UFO

The Huffington Post reports that video analyst Marc Dantonia, said the lights are only "dead pixels" in the image. He said that "dead pixels" are a regular occurrence in the world of graphics. He explained that they appear commonly in many computers and mobiles phones as well as in digital cameras. He explained: "After watching the video, it is actually quite clear that these are one-pixel sized image anomalies. I fully concur at this point that these are dead pixels on the imager. All CCD [cameras] have them, and in a bland atmosphere like that at Mars, they would be very obvious as opposed to an active atmosphere like Earth, where they could end up hidden for a long time before anyone noticed them."
In another set of images (see below), a white light appears to be moving across the Martian horizon. Although, the images caused excitement among UFO enthusiasts, NASA experts say they are only blemishes.


Nasa's Curiosity rover has captured a strange white light dancing across the horizon of Mars and four blobs hovering in the sky, which UFO hunters claim are alien ships monitoring humans' baby steps into the universe.

While the images are certainly a curiosity, Nasa and photography experts insist they are nothing more than blemishes on the images , picked up by the camera lens sitting on the rover. UFO on Mars? Curiosity images create a flutterNow that Curiosity passed its driving test on Mars, the six-wheel Nasa rover set its sights on longer treks.The first test drive around the pebbly Martian crater where it landed was just that — a test drive. The rover edged forward about 15 feet, rotated to a right angle and reversed a short distance, leaving tracks in the rust-tinged soil.Mission managers were elated that Wednesday's maiden trek of the $2.5 billion mission was glitchfree . In several days, Curiosity was poised to drive farther to study whether the red planet's environment could have supported life.

Tallest rail bridge in making, Engineering marvel in INDIA

The world’s highest rail bridge on the Chenab, which will provide a direct rail link to Kashmir, is likely to be completed by the end of 2015.The bridge — lying 65 kilometres from Katra — will rise 359 meters over the river. When completed, the bridge will be five times the height of Qutub Minar and 35 metres taller than Eiffel Tower.The bridge will be a scenic beauty as the train will come out of a 5.9km long tunnel from the Katra-end and pass through other bridges before it crosses the Chenab.

The 1,315-metre bridge will use 25,000 million tonnes of steel and is likely to be completed by the end of 2015, he said. It is likely to cost around Rs 650 crore.

Presently the world’s tallest rail bridge lies over France’s Tarn river and its tallest pillar rises 340 metres. However, the actual height at which trains run on the bridge is 300 metres. now,The Chenab bridge will be the highest in the world.

The Jammu-Udhampur-Katra-Quazigund-Baramulla Railway line is the biggest mountain railway construction.From Jammu to Baramulla, the length of the new rail line is 345 km. It passes through the young Himalayas, tectonic thrusts and faults, officials said.The rail line, which was declared a national project in 2002, is an attempt to provide an alternative transportation system to Kashmir. It is also expected to boost tourist inflow into the valley.
Wind speed,which may go up to 266 kmph at the height of 359 metres, can, however, be an irritant to the construction of the bridge. It has been decided not to allow trains to cross the Chenab if the wind velocity is more than 90 kmph. 

International and national engineering agencies have also been roped in to facilitate the construction of the project, according to experts.

Leonardo da vinci ; Smartest person ever lived.!

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath, having been a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man", a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic.

As an engineer, Leonardo's ideas were vastly ahead of his time. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.[d] As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

The renaissance man of the renaissance. He could have lived to be 500 and still not lived up to his potential.

 

Is Death the End? 

Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.

Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the “I” feeling is just a fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t just go away at death.

One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the “many-worlds” interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the ‘multiverse’). A new scientific theory – called biocentrism – refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling – the ‘Who am I?’- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?

Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it’s still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.

According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air – if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, “Now Besso” (an old friend) “has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us…know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.

As Robert Lanza says ''This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine’s husband – Ed – started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn’t make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn’t make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine’s life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.“Ed,” she said “I can’t feel my leg.”She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.After the death of his son, Emerson wrote “Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.”Whether it’s flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it’s the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister’s dream house.Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It’s going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.''

 

Some Unexplained Mysteries of The World

The Pyramids of Egypt

As unexplained mysteries go, the pyramids of Giza in Egypt really are something special. We still don't really know how the Egyptians built the largest pyramid of all, known as the Great Pyramid of Cheops (or Khufu), some 5,000 years ago. Remember, this was even before the invention of the wheel. Unexplained MysteriesThe Pyramid of Cheops is the size of a 40-storey building and covers an area big enough to fit 10 football fields in it. More than 2 million stone blocks were used to make the pyramid, each weighing 2-5 tons and cut from a distant limestone quarry on the other side of the Nile. Experts reckon it took 400,000 men some 20 years to complete.Engineering feats aside, there are still some reported unexplained mysteries going on at the Pyramid of Cheops. In the 1940s, a French hardware dealer spotted some mummified animals exactly one-third up the height of the pyramid. The remarkable thing was they showed no signs of decomposition. He deducted that the pyramid shape was responsible for preserving these creatures.Later, a Czech radio engineer conducted a series of experiments in which he placed a brand new razor blade inside a 1:1,000 scale model of Cheops. He aligned his pyramid on a north-south axis exactly like the real thing. After getting 50 shaves from the razor, he was forced to conclude that it was only getting sharper from being inside the pyramid. It took him 10 years to obtain a patent for this device, which he claims still has no scientific explanation today.But is it a genuine unexplained mystery - or an embellishment of the truth? This is another way that stories become legends which, because they are so famous, people believe there simply must be something to it. If "Pyramid Power" were a real, observable effect, it would surely have been commercialized by now. (It hasn't.)

UFOs and Area 51

The first reported UFO sighting happened in Texas in 1878, when a local farmer reported seeing a large, dark, circular flying object flying "at wonderful speed". Another famous early sighting occurred in the UK in 1916, when a pilot reported seeing a row of lights that rose and disappeared into the sky.After UFOs were popularized by science fiction in the 1950s, the number of sightings went through the roof. (About a decade before the first UFO-crop circle sighting was reported.) Theories to explain the paranormal phenomena range from the good old Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (aliens visiting us from another planet) to the Interdimensional Hypothesis (aliens popping over from a parallel universe).Although I do believe there is other life out there in the universe (and tons of it - the universe is so mind-bogglingly huge) I don't believe aliens are visiting us in flying saucers, nor making crop circles just to freak us out. The truth is that UFO sightings can be explained as airplanes, helicopters, weather balloons, comets, meteors and even the five planets which can be seen with the naked eye. In photos and videos they are usually deemed as dust on the camera lens or simply all-out hoaxes (which is ridiculously easy to do now with PhotoShop). Meanwhile, night-time alien abductions can be scientifically explained by the hallucinogenic effect of sleep paralysis.Meanwhile, UFO conspiracy theories center around Area 51 in Nevada, about 90 miles north of Las Vegas. The site houses a large air base that was selected in the 1950s for testing of a U-2 spy plane. It has since become America's testing ground for secret "black budget" aircraft before they go public.

The Belmez Faces

Paranormal PhenomenaIn 1971, in the small Spanish village of Belmez, Maria Pereira claimed a human face spontaneously appeared on her cement kitchen floor. It wasn't long before she destroyed the floor and replaced it - and a new face promptly appeared.More and more faces continued to appear on the floor of Maria Pereira's kitchen, attracting thousands of visitors every day. Some were male, some female, some large, and some small. In time, she discovered that the house, built around 1830, apparently stood above a graveyard used by the Romans, Spanish Muslims and then Medieval Christians.But did Maria Pereira just paint the faces herself?If so, she never benefited financially from all the attention. She lived a simple life in that same house and eventually died in 2004.Paranormal fans who just love these unexplained mysteries suggest that the faces were manifested on the floor by telekinesis. This notion was based on the claim that the expressions on their faces used to change with the mood of Maria Pereira.Of course, scientists have found it possible to analyze the molecular changes in the whitewash and prove that some fakery was involved. Many now believe that the paintings were actually created by Maria's son, Diego Pereira.

The Mayan 2012 Prophecy

According to many New Age believers, the 2012 prophecy states that the world as we know it will end on December 21, 2012. This is not a new phenomena; as landmark dates draw near, end-of-the-world theories creep out of the woodwork with astonishing popularity. People love this armageddon stuff.And yet, we're still here.I don't consider 2012 to be one of the true unexplained mysteries... far from it. Yet many people are really into this one. So let's look at the idea more closely.The theory is based on the idea that when the ancient Mayans plotted our position in the Milky Way, they created a special astrological calendar. And on the Winter Solstice (in the Northern hemisphere) in 2012, the Earth would pass into a new astrological phase and something dramatic would happen - ie the world ends.Unfortunately for Mayan fans, there is no real-life evidence to support the idea that the alignment of planets in relation to distant star constellations viewed from our Earthly perspective has anything to do with day-to-day changes in your personal life. It's about as scientifically reliable as reading your horoscope. (In my days as a freelance writer, I once turned down a job to write horoscopes for a magazine. When I asked how I was supposed to obtain the predictions - they simply told me to make it up.)Real Mayan scholars report that there is no evidence to show that the Mayans ever made any kind of doomsday prophecy. Merely, that calendars keep track of the passage of time - they do not predict the future. So, the Mayan calendar - like all calendars - simply had to end somewhere. Not only does it end, but it begins again in a new cycle, just as your calendar ends on December 31 and begins again on January 1.While your life may come to an abrupt end any time, any day, without warning, there is very little you can do about it. One thing is for sure: our society, like all civilizations before us, is geared to postulate over end-of-the-world mysteries.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is one of the greatest unexplained mysteries of the world. It's certainly no hoax (estimated to be more than 5,000 years old) and is probably the most important prehistoric monument in the whole of Britain.When you visit Stonehenge, you'll find yourself driving for miles through rolling hills and countryside until, suddenly, you catch sight of this bizarre structure. There's an eerie feel to the area around Stonehenge, and for thousands of years it has soon silently, giving away few clues as to the meaning of its existence.Excavations have revealed that Stonehenge was built in four stages:First a series of holes were dug around 3,100 BC for religious ceremony.Then, more than 1,000 years later, the most dramatic stage of building took place. Huge bluestones from mountains in Wales were lugged more than 240 miles to the Stonehenge site. Why would anyone do this in the age before the wheel? And how would they accomplish such a feat? These are true unexplained mysteries - because it really wouldn't have been hard to find rocks closer nearby. The stones were then set up to form an incomplete double circle, aligned perfectly with the midsummer sunrise.
The third stage in 2,000 BC saw the arrival of the more stones, transported by land from the Marlborough Downs some 25 miles away.Finally, after a further 500 years had passed, someone felt the need to rearrange the massive Welsh bluestones into the familiar horseshoe and circle we see today.One of the great unexplained mysteries of ancient man, the meaning of Stonehenge is still not clear today. Was it a temple, a burial ground, an observatory, or an ancient calendar? Without a time machine to go back and ask, we may never know...

 CAN WE GO BACK INTO PAST..?

We have always told you how can we go in future ..?

http://secretmessenger92.blogspot.in/2012/06/time-has-been-traveled-short-answer-is.html

http://secretmessenger92.blogspot.in/2012/06/time-machine-is-time-travel-possible.html

http://secretmessenger92.blogspot.in/2012/08/the-time-machine.html

Scientists have always showed up with different concepts about travelling in future but they have always denied the past travel.

So, is it impossible to go back in past..? Here we are with possible concepts.

A handful of proposals exist for time travel. The most developed of these approaches involves a wormhole—a hypothetical tunnel connecting two regions of space-time. The regions bridged could be two completely different universes or two parts of one universe. Matter can travel through either mouth of the wormhole to reach a destination on the other side.

“Wormholes are the future, wormholes are the past,” said Michio Kaku, author of “Hyperspace” and “Parallel Worlds” and a physicist at the City University of New York. “But we have to be very careful. The gasoline necessary to energize a time machine is far beyond anything that we can assemble with today’s technology.” (ya we had a post about this topic too here it is)

http://secretmessenger92.blogspot.in/2012/07/through-wormhole-beyond-darkness.html

To punch a hole into the fabric of space-time,would require the energy of a star or negative energy, an exotic entity with an energy of less than nothing.Greene, an expert on string theory—which views matter in a minimum of 10 dimensions and tries to bridge the gap between particle physics and nature's fundamental forces, questioned this scenario.“Many people who study the subject doubt that that approach has any chance of working,” Greene said in an interview . “But the basic idea if you’re very, very optimistic is that if you fiddle with the wormhole openings, you can make it not only a shortcut from a point in space to another point in space, but a shortcut from one moment in time to another moment in time.”

Cosmic strings

Another popular theory for potential time travelers involves something called cosmic strings—narrow tubes of energy stretched across the entire length of the ever-expanding universe. These skinny regions, leftover from the early cosmos, are predicted to contain huge amounts of mass and therefore could warp the space-time around them.Cosmic strings are either infinite or they’re in loops, with no ends, said J. Richard Gott, author of “Time Travel in Einstein's Universe” and an astrophysicist at Princeton University. “So they are either like spaghetti or SpaghettiO’s.”The approach of two such strings parallel to each other, said Gott, will bend space-time so vigorously and in such a particular configuration that might make time travel possible, in theory.“This is a project that a super civilization might attempt. It’s far beyond what we can do. We’re a civilization that’s not even controlling the energy resources of our planet.”

Impossible, for now.? Ya ofcourse..!!

Mathematically, you can certainly say something is traveling to the past. But it is not possible for you and me to travel backward in time.However, some scientists believe that traveling to the past is, in fact, theoretically possible, though impractical.

Maybe if there were a theory of everything, one could solve all of Einstein’s equations through a wormhole, and see whether time travel is really possible, Kaku said. “But that would require a technology far more advanced than anything we can muster," he said. "Don’t expect any young inventor to announce tomorrow in a press release that he or she has invented a time machine in their basement.”For now, the only definitive part of travel in the fourth dimension is that we’re stepping further into the future with each passing moment. So for those hoping to see Earth a million years from now, scientists have good news.“If you want to know what the Earth is like one million years from now, I’ll tell you how to do that,” said Greene, a consultant for “Déjà Vu,” a recent movie that dealt with time travel. “Build a spaceship. Go near the speed of light for a length of time—that I could calculate. Come back to Earth, and when you step out of your ship you will have aged perhaps one year while the Earth would have aged one million years. You would have traveled to Earth’s future.”

THE TIME MACHINE....! POSSIBLE...? YES IT IS...!!

British cosmologist Stephen Hawking outlined not one, but three, theoretically realistic ideas for traveling through time, one of which he says is even practical.

Here is the First one.

The Fourth Dimension

First, though, you have to get your head around the notion that time is a dimension, just like width, height and length.

Hawking uses the example of driving in your car: You go forward. That's one direction. You turn left or right, that's a second. You journey up a mountain road, that's a third. The fourth dimension is time.

The laws of physics actually accommodate the notion of time travel, through portals known as wormholes.

"The truth is wormholes are all around us, only they're too small to see. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time," Hawking writes. "Nothing is flat or solid. If you look closely enough at anything you'll find holes and wrinkles in it. It's a basic physical principle, and it even applies to time. Even something as smooth as a pool ball has tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids.

Quantum Foam and Tiny Wormholes

"Down at the smallest of scales, smaller even than molecules, smaller than atoms, we get to a place called the quantum foam. This is where wormholes exist. Tiny tunnels or shortcuts through space and time constantly form, disappear, and reform within this quantum world. And they actually link two separate places and two different times."

The tunnels, unfortunately, are far too small for people to pass through -- just a billion-trillion-trillionths of a centimeter -- but physicists believe it may be possible to catch a wormhole and make it big enough for people, or spaceships, to enter, Hawking writes.

"Theoretically, a time tunnel or wormhole could do even more than take us to other planets. If both ends were in the same place, and separated by time instead of distance, a ship could fly in and come out still near Earth, but in the distant past. Maybe dinosaurs would witness the ship coming in for a landing," Hawking writes.

Ultimately, scientists may find that only travel into the future is possible, as the laws of nature may make travel to the past impossible so the relationship between cause and effect is maintained. For example, if you could travel in the past and do something that prevents yourself from being born, how could you exist in the future to travel back in time?

The Sailing Stones of Death valley..!!

The Racetrack Playa is a place in Death Valley National Park in California USA. It is a dry lake bed 1130 metres above sea level and some 4.5 Km long. The bed is also incredibly flat with the height differential between the north and south ends being a mere 4cm.When it rains, the dark Dolomite mountains that surround the Racetrack funnel the water onto the lake bed, creating a shallow lake. The incredibly hot temperatures of the area quickly evaporate the lake and cracking the mud to leave a fascinatingly regular mosaic type pattern on the dried lake bed floor.

The track lengths of some of the "Sailing Stones" are incredible.
(Source: wikipedia)


What are "Sailing Stones"?

The lake bed is also home to some rocks - But these aren't just ordinary rocks - These rocks move. Nobody has ever seen them move, and nobody knows how or why they move - but move they do.
They are known as "Sailing Stones", and when they move, they leave trails and tracks behind them, sometimes hundreds of metres long. Occasionally the tracks take the form of furrows which have been gouged out of the surface mud. Sometimes they will move with other rocks in parallel. Sometimes one or more will change direction abruptly and for no apparent reason. Sometimes the lines are as straight as a rule, other times they curve in large majestic sweeps.The rocks are not all tiny tiddlers either. Some Sailing Stones can weigh as much as a man. the weight of the individual rocks, or the resistance of the surface they are travelling on seems to have no effect on the Sailing Stones ability to move, or the distance they can cover.


"Sailing Stones" Movements

Sailing Stones seem to move only every couple of years, and the courses of the individual tracks can take a number of years to develop. The tracks have no standard direction or length, and the paths of different rocks often cross.Occasionally Sailing Stones will even turn over during their travels, as evidenced by the changes in the tracks they leave behind. Sometimes, two rocks that are similar in weight and size will travel together as "companions" before one rock inexplicably stops and lets it's companion travel on alone.


"Sailing Stones" Theories

One theory suggested by geologists was that Sailing Stones moved by the action of the wind when the ground was still muddy after a deluge. But this does not take into account the fact that the rocks do not all travel in the same direction (which one would assume to be the case if they being pushed by wind), and that they also travel at the height of summer when the ground is baking dry.One of the largest "Sailing Stones" to be studied by geologists was given the name "Karen". This was a 29 by 19 by 20 inch lump of Dolomite weighing 700 pounds that had created a straight track 570 feet long on the dry lake bed. When geologists went to check on Karen in May 1974, they were surprised to discover that the rock had just disappeared!There was no way that the rock could have been stolen or moved artificially because the truck needed to do so would have left it's marks in the soft lakebed surface.A sighting of Karen was claimed to have been made in 1994 some 800 metres away from the playa. The stone was eventually found in 1996 by San Jose Geologist Paul Messina.

And so the mystery of the "Sailing Stones" continues. While theories and guesses about this strange phenomenon abound, it is safe to say that nobody really knows - because nobody has ever seen them move.

Taj Mahal Historical Contraversy : Decoding the mystery of TAJ MAHAL..!!

A series of facebook share’s from my friends about the “TAJ CONSPIRACY” made me to actually write an article about the conspiracy surrounding one of the WONDER of the world The TAJ MAHAL.
We all have learnt that Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan as a token of remembrance for his wife Mumtaz Mahal death. It took 22 years to build this momentous structure at a cost of many human lives, still it is one of the wonders in the world! We didn’t question the history. But one did, P.N OAK who believes that the whole world has been duped. He wrote a book “ Taj Mahal:The True Story.”Probably there is no one who has been duped at least once in a lifetime. But can the whole world be duped? This may seem impossible. But in the matter of Indian and world history the world can be duped in many respects for hundreds of years and still continues to be duped. The world famous Tajmahal is a glaring instance. For all the time, money and energy that people over the world spend in visiting the Tajmahal, they are dished out of concoction. Contrary to what visitors are made to believe the Taj Mahal is not a Islamic mausoleum but an ancient Shiva Temple known as Tejo Mahalaya which the 5th generation Moghul Emperor Shahjahan commandeered from the then Maharaja of Jaipur.

Taj is an Undoubted Master Piece in India .
However, in our continuous effort to get to the truth , we have recently acquired some very important documents and information. There are evidences that the Taj Mahal was never built by Shah Jahan. Some say the Taj Mahal pre-dates Shah Jahan by several centuries and was originally built as a Hindu or Vedic temple/palace complex. Shah Jahan merely acquired it from its previous owner, the Hindu King Jai Singh.

Fact Sheet by ASI :
Archaeology Survey of India (ASI) has been researching the evidence that proves the Taj Mahal and many other buildings were not of Muslim origin, and that they know this information but remain silent about it.It also shows that in spite of this evidence they refuse to open up further research that would reveal the true nature and originality of the buildings, and lead to understanding another part of the real history and glory of India. Here are the eye brow raising findings from a man who questioned the history P N oak’s book. These are the brief and main points with which he argued about the taj being a temple.

*The term Tajmahal itself never occurs in any mogul court paper or chronicle even in Aurangzeb's time. The attempt to explain it away as Taj-i-mahal is therefore, ridiculous.

*The ending "Mahal"is never Muslim because in none of the Muslim countries around the world from Afghanistan to Algeria is there a building known as "Mahal".

*The unusual explanation of the term Tajmahal derives from Mumtaz Mahal, who is buried in it, is illogical in at least two respects viz., firstly her name was never Mumtaj Mahal but Mumtaz-ul-Zamani and secondly one cannot omit the first three letters "Mum" from a woman’s name to derive the remainder as the name of the building.Since the lady's name was Mumtaz (ending with 'Z') the name of the building derived from her should have been Taz Mahal, if at all,and not Taj (spelled with a 'J')

*Several European visitors of Shahjahan's time allude to the building as Taj-e-Mahal is almost the correct tradition, age old Sanskrit name Tej-o-Mahalaya, signifying a Shiva temple. Contrarily Shahjahan and Aurangzeb scrupulously avoid using the Sanskrit term and call it just a holy grave.

*The tomb should be understood to signify NOT A BUILDING but only the grave or cenotaph inside it. This would help people to realize that all dead Muslim courtiers and royalty including Humayun, Akbar, Mumtaz, Etmad-ud-Daula and Safdarjang have been buried in capture Hindu mansions and temples.

*Moreover, if the Taj is believed to be a burial place, how can the term Mahal, i.e., mansion apply to it?

While visiting the Taj Mahal many years ago, P.N. Oak noticed that the ornament atop the roof of this world-famous "Muslim" structure not only had the crescent moon, which he later decided the Muslims had appropriated from the Hindus, but also at the top, the Lotus flower, which has never been a Muslim symbol, but which Hindus use extensively.....Associatin

g it with Lord Shiva, and many more of the gods and goddesses that supposedly Islam is totally against.Oak writes: "This is the Dhatura flower essential for Hindu Shiva worship.The flower is depicted in the shape of the sacred esoteric Hindu incantation 'OM'. Embossed designs of this blooming 'OM' are drawn over the exterior of the octagonal central sanctum of Shiva where now a fake grave in Mumtaz's name, has been planted. ....While perambulating around the central chamber [ofTaj Mahal] one may see such 'OM' designs all along the exterior surface of the marble wall." [from Oak's web site]

Trivia: Book that MR OAK has written was forbidden from publish by then…Indira gandhi’s government, who feared political backlash.

Whoever constructed it..what ever is the history.. it doesn't matter. Taj is Truly a wonder and pride of INDIA!

This train will launch you into space ..!!

Getting into space via shuttle is difficult and expensive. So why not take a train? Startram is a magnetic levitation train that could — theoretically — launch people into orbit for a fraction of the cost.

Startram was developed in part by James Powell, one of the inventors of maglev technology. Maglev, if you’re not familiar, is some freaking stupendous train tech — maglev bullet trains can hit speeds of more than 350 miles per hour, making even the HOV lane look pretty silly. Using it for space launches wouldn’t save emissions like most train infrastructure, because it’s not like people are regularly commuting in space shuttles. But it could promote science by slashing the cost of space exploration.

Basically the Startram is a super-long maglev track inside a vacuum tube, which has one end magnetically raised so that a shuttle that shoots from the tube’s end gets fired right into orbit. Because the track is 1,000 miles long, the shuttle has plenty of taxiing time to accelerate to escape velocity, as opposed to a traditional shuttle launch where it has to get all the necessary momentum in one explosive hit

A journey through our Solar system

Know our solar system

So friends many of you already know much about our Solar system, but for those who don't know much we will explain you.

The Solar System is located in the Milky Way galaxy, a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 100,000 light-years containing about 200 billion stars. The Sun resides in one of the Milky Way's outer spiral arms, known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm or Local Spur. The Sun lies between 25,000 and 28,000 light years from the Galactic Center, and its speed within the galaxy is about 220 kilometres per second, so that it completes one revolution every 225–250 million years. This revolution is known as the Solar System's galactic year. 
The Solar System consists of the Sun and other astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it. The principle object in our solar system is the sun and countaining 99.89 % mass of the solar system.our sun is G2 main-sequence star{we will explain it later}. the 99% of the remaining masss is dominated by for lasgest planets als called gas giants. and leave rest of the mass for inner planets and other objects.
The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, also called the terrestrial planets, are primarily composed of rock and metal then comes the outer planets, also called the gas giants, are substantially more massive than the terrestrials. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, The Solar System is also home to a number of regions populated by smaller objects. The asteroid belt, which lies between Mars and Jupiter, is similar to the terrestrial planets as it is composed mainly of rock and metal. Beyond Neptune's orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc.

 Birth of our Solar System

The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model explaining the formation and evolution of the Solar System. According to this theory it all 4.568 billion years ago when an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, approximately 50,000 AU in diameter, began to collapse gravitationally. Its mass may have been a few thousand solar masses. The cloud fragmented and one area with at least 1.1 to 2.0 solar masses, continued to collapse. Several mechanisms could have initiated such an event.

A shock wave from a supernova may have triggered the formation of the Sun by creating regions of over-density within the cloud, causing these regions to collapse. Because only massive, short-lived stars produce supernovae, the Sun must have formed in a large star-forming region that produced massive stars.

The cloud formed a disk about 60 AU across and about one AU thick. Temperatures rose more rapidly near the center where the density and opacity were greatest. The center of the cloud may have been about 2000 K (3000 °F), while the edge remained cold at about 100 K (-300 °F). Dust vaporized near the center, and atoms became ionized creating a magnetic field which permeated the contracting mass.

Because of the conservation of angular momentum, the nebula spun faster as it collapsed. As the material within the nebula condensed, the atoms within it began to collide with increasing frequency, converting their kinetic energy into heat. The centre, where most of the mass collected, became increasingly hotter than the surrounding disc. Over about 100,000 years, the competing forces of gravity, gas pressure, magnetic fields, and rotation caused the contracting nebula to flatten into a spinning Protoplanetary disc with a diameter of ~200 AU and form a hot, dense protostar (a star in which hydrogen fusion has not yet begun) at the center.

The Evolution

At this point in its evolution, the Sun is thought to have been a T Tauri star. Studies of T Tauri stars show that they are often accompanied by discs of pre-planetary matter with masses of 0.001–0.1 solar masses. These discs extend to several hundred AU. The Hubble Space Telescope has observed protoplanetary discs of up to 1000 AU in diameter in star-forming regions such as the Orion Nebula and are rather cool, reaching only one thousand Kelvin at their hottest. Within 50 million years, the temperature and pressure at the core of the Sun became so great that its hydrogen began to fuse, creating an internal source of energy that countered gravitational contraction until hydro static equilibrium was achieved. This marked the Sun's entry into the prime phase of its life, known as the main sequence. Main sequence stars derive energy from the fusion of hydrogen into helium in their cores. The Sun remains a main sequence star today.

The various planets are thought to have formed from the solar nebula, the disc-shaped cloud of gas and dust left over from the Sun's formation. The currently accepted method by which the planets formed is known as accretion, in which the planets began as dust grains in orbit around the central protostar. Through direct contact, these grains formed into clumps up to 200 meters in diameter, which in turn collided to form larger bodies, At the end of the planetary formation epoch the inner Solar System was populated by 50–100 Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos. Further growth was possible only because these bodies collided and merged, which took less than 100 million years. These objects would have gravitationally interacted with one another, tugging at each other's orbits until they collided, growing larger until the four terrestrial planets we know today (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) took shape.

When the terrestrial planets were forming, they remained immersed in a disk of gas and dust. The gas was partially supported by pressure and so did not orbit the Sun as rapidly as the planets. The resulting drag caused a transfer of angular momentum, and as a result the planets gradually migrated to new orbits. Models show that temperature variations in the disk governed this rate of migration, but the net trend was for the inner planets to migrate inward as the disk dissipated, leaving the planets in their current orbits.

After the formation of the Solar System, the orbits of all the giant planets continued to change slowly, influenced by their interaction with the large number of remaining planetesimals. After 500–600 million years (about 4 billion years ago) Jupiter and Saturn fell into a 2:1 resonance: Saturn orbited the Sun once for every two Jupiter orbits. This resonance created a gravitational push against the outer planets, causing Neptune to surge past Uranus and plough into the ancient Kuiper belt. The planets scattered the majority of the small icy bodies inwards, while themselves moving outwards. These planetesimals then scattered off the next planet they encountered in a similar manner, moving the planets' orbits outwards while they moved inwards. This process continued until the planetesimals interacted with Jupiter, whose immense gravity sent them into highly elliptical orbits or even ejected them outright from the Solar System. This caused Jupiter to move slightly inward. Those objects scattered by Jupiter into highly elliptical orbits formed the Oort cloud, those objects scattered to a lesser degree by the migrating Neptune formed the current Kuiper belt and scattered disc. This scenario explains the Kuiper belt's and scattered disc's present low mass. Some of the scattered objects, including Pluto, became gravitationally tied to Neptune's orbit, forcing them into mean-motion resonances. Eventually, friction within the planetesimal disc made the orbits of Uranus and Neptune circular again.

The evolution of the asteroid belt after Late Heavy Bombardment was mainly governed by collisions. Objects with large mass have enough gravity to retain any material ejected by a violent collision. In the asteroid belt this usually is not the case. As a result, many larger objects have been broken apart, and sometimes newer objects have been forged from the remnants in less violent collisions. Moons around some asteroids currently can only be explained as consolidations of material flung away from the parent object without enough energy to entirely escape its gravity.

 A Burning Fireball, "The Sun"

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields. It has a diameter of about 1,392,684 km, about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass (about 2×1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Chemically, about three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, while the rest is mostly helium. The remainder (1.69%, which nonetheless equals 5,628 times the mass of Earth) consists of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron, among others.

The Sun's stellar classification, based on spectral class, is G2V, and is informally designated as a yellow dwarf, because its visible radiation is most intense in the yellow-green portion of the spectrum and although its color is white, from the surface of the Earth it may appear yellow because of atmospheric scattering of blue light. In the spectral class label, G2 indicates its surface temperature of approximately 5778 K (5505 °C), and V indicates that the Sun, like most stars, is a main-sequence star, and thus generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen each second. Once regarded by astronomers as a small and relatively insignificant star, the Sun is now thought to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy, most of which are red dwarfs. The absolute magnitude of the Sun is +4.83; however, as the star closest to Earth, the Sun is the brightest object in the sky with an apparent magnitude of −26.74. The Sun's hot corona continuously expands in space creating the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that extends to the heliopause at roughly 100 astronomical units. The bubble in the interstellar medium formed by the solar wind, the heliosphere, is the largest continuous structure in the Solar System.

The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way at a distance of approximately 24,000–26,000 light-years from the galactic center, completing one clockwise orbit, as viewed from the galactic north pole, in about 225–250 million years. Since our galaxy is moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in the direction of the constellation Hydra with a speed of 550 km/s, the Sun's resultant velocity with respect to the CMB is about 370 km/s in the direction of Crater or Leo.

The mean distance of the Sun from the Earth is approximately 149.6 million kilometers (1 AU), though the distance varies as the Earth moves from perihelion in January to aphelion in July. At this average distance, light travels from the Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes and 19 seconds.

The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star comprising about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. It is a near-perfect sphere, with an oblateness estimated at about 9 millionths, which means that its polar diameter differs from its equatorial diameter by only 10 km. As the Sun consists of a plasma and is not solid, it rotates faster at its equator than at its poles. This behavior is known as differential rotation, and is caused by convection in the Sun and the movement of mass, due to steep temperature gradients from the core outwards. This mass carries a portion of the Sun’s counter-clockwise angular momentum, as viewed from the ecliptic north pole, thus redistributing the angular velocity. The period of this actual rotation is approximately 25.6 days at the equator and 33.5 days at the poles. However, due to our constantly changing vantage point from the Earth as it orbits the Sun, the apparent rotation of the star at its equator is about 28 days. The centrifugal effect of this slow rotation is 18 million times weaker than the surface gravity at the Sun's equator. The tidal effect of the planets is even weaker, and does not significantly affect the shape of the Sun.

The Sun is a Population I, or heavy element-rich, star. The formation of the Sun may have been triggered by shockwaves from one or more nearby supernovae. This is suggested by a high abundance of heavy elements in the Solar System, such as gold and uranium, relative to the abundances of these elements in so-called Population II (heavy element-poor) stars. These elements could most plausibly have been produced by endergonic nuclear reactions during a supernova, or by transmutation through neutron absorption inside a massive second-generation star.

Core - The core of the Sun is considered to extend from the center to about 20–25% of the solar radius. It has a density of up to 150 g/cm3 (about 150 times the density of water) and a temperature of close to 15.7 million kelvin (K). By contrast, the Sun's surface temperature is approximately 5,800 K. Recent analysis of SOHO mission data favors a faster rotation rate in the core than in the rest of the radiative zone. Through most of the Sun's life, energy is produced by nuclear fusion through a series of steps called the p–p (proton–proton) chain; this process converts hydrogen into helium. The proton–proton chain occurs around 9.2×1037 times each second in the core of the Sun. Since this reaction uses four free protons (hydrogen nuclei), it converts about 3.7×1038 protons to alpha particles (helium nuclei) every second (out of a total of ~8.9×1056 free protons in the Sun), or about 6.2×1011 kg per second. Since fusing hydrogen into helium releases around 0.7% of the fused mass as energy, the Sun releases energy at the mass-energy conversion rate of 4.26 million metric tons per second, 384.6 yotta watts (3.846×1026 W),[1] or 9.192×1010 megatons of TNT per second. This mass is not destroyed to create the energy, rather, the mass is carried away in the radiated energy, as described by the concept of mass-energy equivalence.

Radiative zone - Below about 0.7 solar radii, solar material is hot and dense enough that thermal radiation is sufficient to transfer the intense heat of the core outward. This zone is free of thermal convection; while the material gets cooler from 7 to about 2 million kelvin with increasing altitude, this temperature gradient is less than the value of the adiabatic lapse rate and hence cannot drive convection. The density drops a hundredfold (from 20 g/cm3 to only 0.2 g/cm3) from 0.25 solar radii to the top of the radiative zone. The fluid motions found in the convection zone above, slowly disappear from the top of this layer to its bottom, matching the calm characteristics of the radiative zone on the bottom. Presently, it is hypothesized (see Solar dynamo), that a magnetic dynamo within this layer generates the Sun's magnetic field.

Convective zone - In the Sun's outer layer, from its surface down to approximately 200,000 km (or 70% of the solar radius), the solar plasma is not dense enough or hot enough to transfer the thermal energy of the interior outward through radiation; in other words it is opaque enough. As a result, thermal convection occurs as thermal columns carry hot material to the surface (photosphere) of the Sun. Once the material cools off at the surface, it plunges downward to the base of the convection zone, to receive more heat from the top of the radiative zone. At the visible surface of the Sun, the temperature has dropped to 5,700 K and the density to only 0.2 g/m3 (about 1/6,000th the density of air at sea level).

Photosphere - The visible surface of the Sun, the photosphere, is the layer below which the Sun becomes opaque to visible light. Above the photosphere visible sunlight is free to propagate into space, and its energy escapes the Sun entirely. Sunlight has approximately a black-body spectrum that indicates its temperature is about 6,000 K, interspersed with atomic absorption lines from the tenuous layers above the photosphere. The photosphere has a particle density of ~1023 m−3 (this is about 0.37% of the particle number per volume of Earth's atmosphere at sea level; however, photosphere particles are electrons and protons, so the average particle in air is 58 times as heavy).

Atmosphere or Corona - The parts of the Sun above the photosphere are referred to collectively as the solar atmosphere. They can be viewed with telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio through visible light to gamma rays, and comprise five principal zones: the temperature minimum, the chromosphere, the transition region, the corona, and the heliosphere. The heliosphere, which may be considered the tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun, extends outward past the orbit of Pluto to the heliopause, where it forms a sharp shock front boundary with the interstellar medium.

The coolest layer of the Sun is a temperature minimum region about 500 km above the photosphere, with a temperature of about 4,100 K.[59] This part of the Sun is cool enough to support simple molecules such as carbon monoxide and water, which can be detected by their absorption spectra.

Above the temperature minimum layer is a layer about 2,000 km thick, dominated by a spectrum of emission and absorption lines. It is called the chromosphere from the Greek root chroma, meaning color, because the chromosphere is visible as a colored flash at the beginning and end of total eclipses of the Sun. The temperature in the chromosphere increases gradually with altitude, ranging up to around 20,000 K near the top. In the upper part of chromosphere helium becomes partially ionized.

The corona is the extended outer atmosphere of the Sun, which is much larger in volume than the Sun itself. The corona continuously expands into space forming the solar wind, which fills all the Solar System. The low corona, near the surface of the Sun, has a particle density around 1015–1016 m−3. The average temperature of the corona and solar wind is about 1,000,000–2,000,000 K; however, in the hottest regions it is 8,000,000–20,000,000 K. While no complete theory yet exists to account for the temperature of the corona, at least some of its heat is known to be from magnetic reconnection.

First in line, "Mercury"

Mercury is the innermost of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the smallest, and its orbit has the highest eccentricity of the eight. It orbits the Sun once in about 88 Earth days, completing three rotations about its axis for every two orbits. Mercury has the smallest axial tilt of the Solar System planets. Mercury, being an inferior planet, appears as a morning star and an evening star, but is much more difficult to see than the other inferior planet, Venus. At its brightest, Mercury is technically a very bright object when viewed from Earth, but it is not easily seen in practice because of its proximity in the sky to the Sun.

Mercury is one of four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, and is a rocky body like the Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an equatorial radius of 2,439.7 km. Mercury is even smaller—albeit more massive—than the largest natural satellites in the Solar System, Ganymede and Titan. Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% silicate material. Mercury's density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427 g/cm3, only slightly less than Earth’s density of 5.515 g/cm3. If the effect of gravitational compression were to be factored out, the materials of which Mercury is made would be denser, with an uncompressed density of 5.3 g/cm3 versus Earth’s 4.4 g/cm3.

Geologists estimate that Mercury’s core occupies about 42% of its volume; for Earth this proportion is 17%. Recent research strongly suggests that Mercury has a molten core. Surrounding the core is a 500–700 km mantle consisting of silicates. Based on data from the Mariner 10 mission and Earth-based observation, Mercury’s crust is believed to be 100–300 km thick. One distinctive feature of Mercury’s surface is the presence of numerous narrow ridges, extending up to several hundred kilometers in length. It is believed that these were formed as Mercury’s core and mantle cooled and contracted at a time when the crust had already solidified.

The surface temperature of Mercury ranges from 100 K to 700 K due to the absence of an atmosphere and a steep temperature gradient between the equator and the poles. The subsolar point reaches about 700 K during perihelion then drops to 550 K at aphelion. On the dark side of the planet, temperatures average 110 K. The intensity of sunlight on Mercury’s surface ranges between 4.59 and 10.61 times the solar constant (1,370 W·m−2).

Although the daylight temperature at the surface of Mercury is generally extremely high, observations strongly suggest that ice (frozen water) exists on Mercury. The floors of deep craters at the poles are never exposed to direct sunlight, and temperatures there remain below 102 K; far lower than the global average. Water ice strongly reflects radar, and observations by the 70 m Goldstone telescope and the VLA in the early 1990s revealed that there are patches of very high radar reflection near the poles. While ice is not the only possible cause of these reflective regions, astronomers believe it is the most likely.

The icy regions are believed to contain about 1014–1015 kg of ice, and may be covered by a layer of regolith that inhibits sublimation. By comparison, the Antarctic ice sheet on Earth has a mass of about 4×1018 kg, and Mars' south polar cap contains about 1016 kg of water. The origin of the ice on Mercury is not yet known, but the two most likely sources are from outgassing of water from the planet’s interior or deposition by impacts of comets.

Mercury is too small and hot for its gravity to retain any significant atmosphere over long periods of time; it does have a "tenuous surface-bounded exosphere" containing hydrogen, helium, oxygen, sodium, calcium, potassium and others. This exosphere is not stable—atoms are continuously lost and replenished from a variety of sources. Hydrogen and helium atoms probably come from the solar wind, diffusing into Mercury’s magnetosphere before later escaping back into space. Radioactive decay of elements within Mercury’s crust is another source of helium, as well as sodium and potassium. MESSENGER found high proportions of calcium, helium, hydroxide, magnesium, oxygen, potassium, silicon and sodium. Water vapor is present, released by a combination of processes such as: comets striking its surface, sputtering creating water out of hydrogen from the solar wind and oxygen from rock, and sublimation from reservoirs of water ice in the permanently shadowed polar craters. The detection of high amounts of water-related ions like O+, OH-, and H2O+ was a surprise. Because of the quantities of these ions that were detected in Mercury's space environment, scientists surmise that these molecules were blasted from the surface or exosphere by the solar wind.

Mercury’s surface is very similar in appearance to that of the Moon, showing extensive mare-like plains and heavy cratering, indicating that it has been geologically inactive for billions of years. Since our knowledge of Mercury's geology has been based on the 1975 Mariner flyby and terrestrial observations, it is the least understood of the terrestrial planets. As data from the recent MESSENGER flyby is processed this knowledge will increase. For example, an unusual crater with radiating troughs has been discovered which scientists called "the spider." It later received the name Apollodorus.

There are two geologically distinct plains regions on Mercury. Gently rolling, hilly plains in the regions between craters are Mercury's oldest visible surfaces, predating the heavily cratered terrain. These inter-crater plains appear to have obliterated many earlier craters, and show a general paucity of smaller craters below about 30 km in diameter. It is not clear whether they are of volcanic or impact origin. The inter-crater plains are distributed roughly uniformly over the entire surface of the planet.

The largest known crater is Caloris Basin, with a diameter of 1,550 km. The impact that created the Caloris Basin was so powerful that it caused lava eruptions and left a concentric ring over 2 km tall surrounding the impact crater. At the antipode of the Caloris Basin is a large region of unusual, hilly terrain known as the "Weird Terrain". One hypothesis for its origin is that shock waves generated during the Caloris impact traveled around the planet, converging at the basin’s antipode (180 degrees away). The resulting high stresses fractured the surface. Alternatively, it has been suggested that this terrain formed as a result of the convergence of ejecta at this basin’s antipode.

Overall, about 15 impact basins have been identified on the imaged part of Mercury. A notable basin is the 400 km wide, multi-ring Tolstoj Basin which has an ejecta blanket extending up to 500 km from its rim and a floor that has been filled by smooth plains materials. Beethoven Basin has a similar-sized ejecta blanket and a 625 km diameter rim. Like the Moon, the surface of Mercury has likely incurred the effects of space weathering processes, including Solar wind and micrometeorite impacts.

Bright Queen of The Sky, "Venus"

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows. Because Venus is an inferior planet from Earth, it never appears to venture far from the Sun: its elongation reaches a maximum of 47.8°. Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, for which reason it has been known in ancient time as the Morning Star or Evening Star. It was not until the Hellenistic era (300-200 BC) astronomers realised it was one object and gave it the name it has today.

Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72 AU (108,000,000 km; 67,000,000 mi), and completes an orbit every 224.65 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical, Venus's orbit is the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01. When Venus lies between the Earth and the Sun, a position known as inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of 41 million km. The planet reaches inferior conjunction every 584 days, on average. Owing to the decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit, the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years. From the year 1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than 40 million km; then there are none for about 60,158 years. During periods of greater eccentricity, Venus can come as close as 38.2 million km.

Venus is classified as a terrestrial planet and it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" owing to their similar size, gravity, and bulk composition (Venus is both the closest planet to Earth and the planet closest in size to Earth). It is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. Venus has the most dense atmosphere of all the terrestrial planets in the Solar System, consisting of mostly carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of the Earth. Venus has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor does it seem to have any organic life to absorb it in biomass. Venus is believed to have previously possessed oceans, but these evaporated as the temperature rose owing to the runaway greenhouse effect. The water has most probably photodissociated, and, because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field, the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind. Venus' surface is a dry desertscape with many slab-like rocks, periodically refreshed by volcanism.

Venus is one of the four solar terrestrial planets, meaning that, like the Earth, it is a rocky body. In size and mass, it is similar to the Earth, and is often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin". The diameter of Venus is 12,092 km (only 650 km less than the Earth's) and its mass is 81.5% of the Earth's. Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth, owing to its dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. The mass of the atmosphere of Venus is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen.

Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it possesses some 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii. This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years, while the Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600 million years old.

Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. During the Soviet Venera program, the Venera 11 and Venera 12 probes detected a constant stream of lightning, and Venera 12 recorded a powerful clap of thunder soon after it landed. The European Space Agency's Venus Express recorded abundant lightning in the high atmosphere. While rainfall drives thunderstorms on Earth, there is no rainfall on the surface of Venus (though it does rain sulfuric acid, in the upper atmosphere, which evaporates around 25 km above the surface). One possibility is ash from a volcanic eruption was generating the lightning. Another piece of evidence comes from measurements of sulfur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, which were found to drop by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986. This may imply the levels had earlier been boosted by a large volcanic eruption.

Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as the Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, while on Earth, it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates the planet underwent a global resurfacing event about 300–600 million years ago, followed by a decay in volcanism. Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust. Then, over a period of about 100 million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust.

Venusian craters range from 3 km to 280 km in diameter. No craters are smaller than 3 km, because of the effects of the dense atmosphere on incoming objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed down so much by the atmosphere, they do not create an impact crater. Incoming projectiles less than 50 meters in diameter will fragment and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.

Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth's atmosphere, while the pressure at the planet's surface is about 92 times that at Earth's surface—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m³ (6.5% that of water). The CO2-rich atmosphere, along with thick clouds of sulfur dioxide, generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of over 460 °C (860 °F). This makes the Venusian surface hotter than Mercury's, which has a minimum surface temperature of −220 °C and maximum surface temperature of 420 °C, even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. The surface of Venus is often described as hellish. This temperature is even higher than temperatures used to achieve sterilization.

Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, the Venusian atmosphere was much more like Earth's than it is now, and that there were probably substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but, after a period of 600 million to several billion years, a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere. Although the surface conditions on the planet are no longer hospitable to any Earthlike life that may have formed prior to this event, the possibility that a habitable niche still exists in the lower and middle cloud layers of Venus can not yet be excluded.

Above the dense CO2 layer are thick clouds consisting mainly of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid droplets. These clouds reflect and scatter about 90% of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent visual observation of the Venusian surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, the Venusian surface is not as well lit. Strong 300 km/h winds at the cloud tops circle the planet about every four to five earth days. Venusian winds move at up to 60 times the speed of the planet's rotation, while Earth's fastest winds are only 10% to 20% rotation speed.

The clouds of Venus are capable of producing lightning much like the clouds on Earth. The existence of lightning had been controversial since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes. In 2006–07 Venus Express clearly detected whistler mode waves, the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. The lightning rate is at least half of that on Earth. In 2007 the Venus Express probe discovered that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the south pole of the planet.

Another discovery made by the Venus Express probe in 2011 is that an ozone layer exists high in the atmosphere of Venus.

Our Home, "Terra"

Earth (or Terra or Gaia) is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets. It is sometimes referred to as the world, the Blue Planet, or by its Latin name, Terra.

Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface within one billion years. The planet is home to millions of species, including humans. Earth's biosphere has significantly altered the atmosphere and other abiotic conditions on the planet, enabling the proliferation of aerobic organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer which, together with Earth's magnetic field, blocks harmful solar radiation, permitting life on land. The physical properties of the Earth, as well as its geological history and orbit, have allowed life to persist during this period. Estimates on how much longer the planet will to be able to continue to support life range from a mere 500 million years, to as long as 2.3 billion years.

Earth's outer surface is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered by salt water oceans, with the remainder consisting of continents and islands which together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. Earth's poles are mostly covered with solid ice (Antarctic ice sheet) or sea ice (Arctic ice cap). The planet's interior remains active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.

Earth interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon. At present, Earth orbits the Sun once every 366.26 times it rotates about its own axis, which is equal to 365.26 solar days, or one sidereal year. The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). Earth's only known natural satellite, the Moon, which began orbiting it about 4.53 billion years ago, provides ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt, and gradually slows the planet's rotation. Between approximately 3.8 billion and 4.1 billion years ago, numerous asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the greater surface environment.

Both the mineral resources of the planet and the products of the biosphere contribute resources that are used to support a global human population. These inhabitants are grouped into about 200 independent sovereign states, which interact through diplomacy, travel, trade, and military action. Human cultures have developed many views of the planet, including personification as a deity, a belief in a flat Earth or in the Earth as the center of the universe, and a modern perspective of the world as an integrated environment that requires stewardship.

History of the Earth

The earliest dated Solar System material was formed 4.5672 ± 0.0006 billion years ago, and by 4.54 billion years ago (within an uncertainty of 1%) the Earth and the other planets in the Solar System had formed out of the solar nebula—a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun. This assembly of the Earth through accretion was thus largely completed within 10–20 million years. Initially molten, the outer layer of the planet Earth cooled to form a solid crust when water began accumulating in the atmosphere. The Moon formed shortly thereafter, 4.53 billion years ago.

The current consensus model for the formation of the Moon is the giant impact hypothesis, in which the Moon was created when a Mars-sized object (sometimes called Theia) with about 10% of the Earth's mass impacted the Earth in a glancing blow. In this model, some of this object's mass would have merged with the Earth and a portion would have been ejected into space, but enough material would have been sent into orbit to coalesce into the Moon.

Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere of the Earth. Condensing water vapor, augmented by ice and liquid water delivered by asteroids and the larger proto-planets, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects produced the oceans. The newly formed Sun was only 70% of its present luminosity, yet evidence shows that the early oceans remained liquid—a contradiction dubbed the faint young Sun paradox. A combination of greenhouse gases and higher levels of solar activity served to raise the Earth's surface temperature, preventing the oceans from freezing over. By 3.5 billion years ago, the Earth's magnetic field was established, which helped prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind.

Two major models have been proposed for the rate of continental growth: steady growth to the present-day and rapid growth early in Earth history. Current research shows that the second option is most likely, with rapid initial growth of continental crust followed by a long-term steady continental area. On time scales lasting hundreds of millions of years, the surface continually reshaped as continents formed and broke up. The continents migrated across the surface, occasionally combining to form a supercontinent. Roughly 750 million years ago (Ma), one of the earliest known supercontinents, Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia, 600–540 Ma, then finally Pangaea, which broke apart 180 Ma.