Durga Prasad
Bio
My "spare" time is spent creating for myself and writing for others.
Stories (50/0)
Why Is Blue So Rare In Nature?
There are no blue tigers. No blue bats, blue squirrels, or blue dogs Even blue whales aren't that blue. Animals come in almost all colors, but blue seems to be the rarest. But the best part is that when we find a blue animal, it looks great. Nature can't handle blue. To understand why this is so, we go through evolution, chemistry, and beautiful physics. But first, we need to understand why animals have any color at all, and to do that, we need to go look at some butterflies. Because butterflies are amazing, and if you don't think so, you're wrong. This is Bob Robbins. He is the curator of butterflies at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. Butterflies are amazing. Make no mistake. They are a group of moths that have evolved to be active during the day, and being active during the day gives you an advantage: you can use light to communicate.
By Durga Prasad2 days ago in Earth
What's inside the Statue of Liberty?
Let's take a look inside the Statue of Liberty. Let's quickly go through the history of how the statue was built and where you can enter. The official name of the statue is Liberty Enlightening the World, but today it is known as the Statue of Liberty. It was a gift from the French to the United States in 1886. If we zoom in on Europe, here is France, and across the ocean is the United States. The Statue of Liberty is here on the east coast. If we zoom in on it, you can see the state of New York and the state of New Jersey. Between these two states lies the Upper Bay, often referred to as New York Harbor. The Statue of Liberty is here on Liberty Island. And if we zoom out again, you can see Manhattan with all the famous New York buildings. Here is Governor's Island, another popular tourist destination, and here is Ellis Island, where many immigrants arrived in the United States between 1892 and 1954. When the boats pulled into the harbor, the Statue of Liberty was one of the first sights that immigrants saw. Coming to the United States. The Statue of Liberty has become known as a symbol of freedom. In his right hand, he holds a torch, and in his left, a tablet bearing the date of the Declaration of Independence in Roman numerals. One thing you can't see from the ground are the broken shackles and chain. Its purpose is to symbolize the end of slavery. The statue is 46 meters high. If you count from the beginning, it is 93 meters high. It is about as tall as a 20-story building. Here, the size of a person is compared to the figure's big toe. When it was completed in 1886, it was the tallest statue in the world, but the Statue of Unity of India now holds the title. The Statue of Liberty is made of copper. That's right; originally, it was the color of a penny. It only took about 20 years for the air and rain to slowly oxidize and turn metallic green. The copper metal is only 2.4 millimeters thick. That's less than two US cents. The statue was built in pieces, and a statue this big requires a lot of planning. The statue was designed by the French sculptor Frederic August Bartholdi. First, he made an original clay sculpture. It was only 1.2 meters high. The average adult is slightly taller than that. The next larger version would be twice as large and made of plaster. The next version would be much bigger. This is 1/4 the size of the entire figure. At each stage of expansion, the details of Berthold's form could be further refined. For the full-size version, it had to be built in pieces to fit in the workshop. At one point, a finished version of the statue's head was presented in France, and the right arm and torch were presented in the United States to raise funds.
By Durga Prasad2 days ago in FYI
Why the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans Don't Mix
When you look at seas and oceans on a map, you might think they just flow into each other. It seems that there is only one big ocean, and people have just given different names to parts of it. Well, you'll be surprised how bright the lines are between them! The border between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans is like a border between two worlds. The two oceans seem to meet in an invisible wall that prevents them from flowing into each other and mixing their waters. Why the hell is this happening? We know for sure that there is no invisible wall inside, and water is water. What could prevent its mixing? The point is that water can also be different. The Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean have different densities, chemical compositions, salinities, and other characteristics. Their color shows that they are far from the same. Boundaries between two bodies of water with different physical and biological characteristics are known as ocean lines. Haloclines—the boundaries of waters of different salinities—are the most spectacular, and this is what we see at the meeting of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The famous explorer Jacques Cousteau discovered it while diving deep in the Strait of Gibraltar. The different layers of salt water seemed to be divided by a transparent membrane, and each layer had its own flora and fauna. Haloclines occur when the water in one ocean or sea is at least five times saltier than the other. You can create a halocline at home by pouring a glass of sea or colored salt water and adding fresh water. The only difference is that your haloclines are horizontal and oceanic haloclines are vertical. If you remember a few basic things about physics, you can argue that a denser fluid should eventually fall lower and a less dense fluid should eventually fall higher. If this were true, the boundary between the two oceans would not appear as a vertical but a horizontal line, and the difference in salinity between them would become less noticeable the closer they got to each other. So why isn't it happening here? First, the difference in water density between the two oceans is not so great that one sinks and the other rises. And yet it is enough not to let them mix. However, another reason is slowness. One inertial force, known as the Coriolis force, acts on objects as they move around a system of axes that, in turn, are also moving. Simply put, the Earth is moving, and the Coriolis force affects any object moving on it that is deflected. As a result, objects on the Earth's surface do not move straight ahead but tend to go clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere. But the Earth moves slowly; it takes a whole day for the planet to make a circle around its axis. That is why the Coriolis effect occurs only at long intervals, in connection with cyclones or ocean currents. And therefore, the direction of currents in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is different. It also prevents them from mixing. Another important difference between the two oceans is the strength of the molecular bond, or surface tension. Thanks to this force, the molecules of the substance stick to each other. Both oceans have completely different surface tensions, which prevents them from mixing as well. Perhaps they could gradually begin to mix over time, but since their currents are opposite, they simply do not have time to do so. In both oceans, we think it's just water, but its separate molecules only momentarily meet and then drift away with the ocean currents. But don't think that only the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans don't get along well! There are many places on the planet where the waters of two seas or rivers do not mix. There are also thermoclines—boundaries between waters of different temperatures, such as the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the much colder North Atlantic. Chemoclines are the most amazing. These are the boundaries between waters with different microclimates and chemical compositions. The Sargassum Sea is the largest and best-known chemocline. It's a coastal sea within the Atlantic, but you can't miss it. Let's take a look at the most amazing features of the planet.
By Durga Prasad3 days ago in Earth
19 Simple Psychological Tricks That Actually Work
19 easy psychological techniques that are effective There are a tone of expensive books on neuro-linguistic programming and psychology that may assist professionals in getting what they want from people, but there are also a lot of far easier but equally efficient techniques that anybody can apply on a regular basis. Here are 19 of them.
By Durga Prasad3 days ago in Families
A Plane Disappeared And Landed 37 Years Later
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. Welcome to Flight 914! Fasten your seat belts and obey the no smoking policy - we'll be leaving in 5 minutes. When we are at cruising altitude, you will be served refreshments. Our flight lasts 37 years. I wish you a good trip. What would you do if you went on vacation to another city and suddenly found yourself in a completely different country? I think the more adventurous types would even enjoy such a change of plans, but most of us would be confused. Anyway, I bet even the most reckless adventurers raise an eyebrow when told they've been flying for nearly half a century. On July 2, 1955, Pan American Flight 914 departed New York for Miami, Florida. It was a beautiful sunny day and the 57 passengers on board were impatiently waiting for the warm beaches and palm trees of Florida. The plane took off without a problem, but 3 hours later, when it should have landed at the destination airport, it was nowhere to be seen. The radars of the Miami air traffic control tower showed no approaching aircraft and no distress signals were received. When the controller contacted the tower in New York, they received a confusing response: Flight 914 had disappeared from radar in mid-air. Everything indicated the disappearance of the plane: after it disappeared from the radars, air traffic control could not reach the pilots by radio. The DC-4 simply vanished into thin air, leaving no trace of itself or its occupants. An investigation was immediately launched. The flight path took the plane over part of the Atlantic Ocean, and it seemed that the only explanation for its disappearance was that it had crashed somewhere along the way. Rescue teams were dispatched, the Coast Guard monitored the waters, but still no luck. Not a single piece of the missing plane was found. Scientists could only shrug their shoulders in amazement: 61 people (passengers and crew) only blinked at the huge flying machine.
By Durga Prasad3 days ago in FYI
Here's Why You Should Never Use a Stopped Escalator as a Stairway
You're shopping at your favorite mall, and it's time to take it to the next level. You noticed that the escalator stopped, so it's probably broken. You can go on it anyway, or look for stairs or an elevator. So what happens if you choose option A and bravely step onto the blocked escalator? I have bad news for you. You are at your own risk because escalators are not designed to be used like normal stairs. If an escalator is stopped due to a mechanical failure—for example, the brakes suddenly stopped working—it can roll away at any time under load. You never know when it will start moving again, so you might fall. The rise of the stairs is usually higher on escalators than on regular stairs, so depending on where the moving stairs stop, some of them are not there, and it can be easy to trip, especially when walking down. In addition, escalators are designed to carry only a certain load at a time, like a conveyor belt, when people are moving. There is never too much weight, but if the conveyor belt stops, the weight can exceed the limit, and the escalator can collapse if you choose to walk on the non-working escalator anyway. Be prepared to experience something called the broken escalator phenomenon." Every time you ride or walk on a properly functioning escalator, your brain marks it as a moving object. It fine-tunes the motor control of the legs and the balance mechanisms of the ear to accommodate this movement. Even when you see the escalator, your unconscious brain still recognizes it as a moving staircase, so if you walk up or down a stationary escalator, it feels strange and unnatural that it's not moving. In 2015, the London Underground conducted a study to determine whether it would be more efficient to stand or walk on moving escalators. Holborn station escalators were found to be able to carry up to 30 percent more people during peak hours than escalators that allowed people to walk on higher escalators. Most people prefer to stand rather than walk, leaving unused space on the left side. Once all those spaces were filled, the wait time for the escalators was drastically reduced. As a result, the station filled up only once, compared to several times a week. The Metro took these results into account but did not completely ban escalator walking because many still wanted to do it. Have you ever tried to clean your shoes against the escalator brushes? Well, they are there for safety. These brushes are also called skirt guides. The skirt is the difference between the stairs and the sun; brushes keep shoes, legs, and loose clothing away. When you go up the escalator, you mostly focus on keeping your balance and don't pay much attention to the little things. If everything is in order, you will not notice the gap, but if the escalator malfunctions, it can make things difficult for you. A slot leads down to the mechanism that moves the escalator. If something like a bag, jacket, or even your toes gets caught in it, it can stop the engine and cause an accident. Escalator brushes prevent objects from entering or turning the slot.
By Durga Prasad3 days ago in Humans
No One Talks About the Shipwreck More Tragic Than the Titanic
They said it was the most technologically advanced; they said it was unsinkable; and when it sank in, it became a movie. These were the main reasons why the Titanic disaster became world famous, but unfortunately it is not the only large-scale shipwreck, and unfortunately there were many worse cases than the Titanic tragedy; one of them took place on April 27, 1865. The Sultan Steamboat carried passengers and goods every day between St. Louis and New Orleans. It was a rather large wooden boat with three decks, 260 feet long and 70 feet wide, almost twice the size of a basketball court. The ship had a capacity of about 350 passengers, but on that fateful day, there were more than 2,000 people on board. On April 23, it was making a routine trip from New Orleans when it broke down. Something was wrong with the boiler, so the ship docked in Vicksburg to be repaired in port. Mason found out about a great opportunity to make a lot of money. He just had to lead a large group of ex-prisoners north. The captain agreed to do it, but the problem was that the repair of the boiler required a lot of time. Fearing that competitors would take over the job, Mason decided to sail on despite the ship's malfunctions. Instead of overhauling, he patched holes in the boiler and called all the ex-prisoners on board, so the boiler was broken, there were too many passengers, no lifeboats, and the river conditions were not the best. The captain also refused to send the ex-prisoners into the hold, so they were all with the regular passengers. The possibility of a shipwreck was high, but the greedy desire to earn more money was stronger. Sultana sailed down the river for two days. At this time began one of the greatest floods in the history of the Mississippi; the river overflowed its banks, and because of the flood, when the water level rose several feet, all the trees on the banks were gone, and only the tops stood out of the water. The ship sailed against that strong current, causing the boiler to start on April 26 because it was too strong to operate in the evening. The Sultana arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, and loaded even more than 120 tones of sugar and 200 passengers, who changed. incredibly difficult. Around midnight, the ship continued its dangerous journey. The captain went to the barges to load cargo at 1:00 a.m. The ship left the barge at 2:00 a.m. The broken boiler could not hold the cargo when it suddenly exploded. Sultana was only seven miles north of Memphis. The Sultan disaster is considered the most tragic shipwreck in American history. The exact number of those who did not survive is still unknown, according to various sources. This number varied from 961 to 1800. Do not be surprised that almost no one knows this history. There were many more survivors of the Titanic tragedy, and everyone heard about it, but the Sultan sank in a high-profile incident 12 days before the shipwreck. The country lost Abraham Lincoln, and people still haven't recovered from this news, so nobody paid much attention to the Sultan tragedy. Many disasters have happened very recently in historical terms.
By Durga Prasad3 days ago in FYI
Top 10 Unsettling Historical Evidence for Parallel Universes That We Can't Ignore
We really don't understand everything in the universe that means there can be so many possibilities hello everyone and welcome to our channel. I'm your host, and today we're running through our list of the ten biggest amazing signs of parallelism in the universe throughout history that we can't deny, so get ready to have an existential crisis, I'm sure.
By Durga Prasad4 days ago in Futurism
The 10 Evil Disney Pixar Theories That Will Have You Doubting Everything
Whether it's a classic like Toy Story or a newer addition to the universe, Disney and Pixar fans have a way of conjuring up the craziest theories that will make you seriously question everything. Welcome, my name is Kennedy, and if you thought you wouldn't get it, may have worse or more confusing theories than your childhood classics, and then think again because today we are back with some of the most terrifying theories, so get ready because these are the 10 best Disney Pixar theories that will make you question the third part. First of all, let's start with
By Durga Prasad6 days ago in Fiction
The CEO of Toyota said, "This New Engine Will Destroy the Entire EV Industry!"
Toyota is doing something new in its garage! And this is no ordinary vehicle. We are talking about a brand new, revolutionary hydrogen vehicle! So you may have heard of the Mirai, Toyota's hydrogen vehicle that uses fuel cells to generate electricity. But now Toyota has come up with something completely different. They call it the new hydrogen combustion engine. This technology can change the automotive industry! Unlike other all-electric automakers, Toyota is taking a different path. But it's not just about being different—it's about being better. So, let's dive in! Let's talk about Toyota's new hydrogen combustion engine, how it works, and what it means for the industry! We all know the planet is in trouble somewhere, and according to globalcitizen.org, the transportation industry is responsible for a whopping 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. And it's no secret that traditional internal combustion engines have significantly contributed to the pollution problem, and while electric cars are certainly gaining in popularity, they're not the only solution, as some might argue. Enter Toyota's new branch in its versatile model of carbon neutrality: the hydrogen internal combustion engine. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and has the highest specific energy density of any non-nuclear energy source. It is emission-free and non-toxic, and it can be generated from multiple sources, stored indefinitely, and delivered relatively easily. Millions of metric tones of hydrogen are produced and used every year, and it is already used as an energy source in buildings, electric cars, trucks, ships, and trains. So what's wrong with hydrogen engines? Well, they have a longer range and don't need to be charged like electric cars. And the only byproduct that comes out of the exhaust is water! That's right, no harmful additives. Now you may be wondering how all this works. All hydrogen engines use a fuel cell that converts hydrogen into electricity. It's like magic, but with science. And did you know that Toyota began reducing the use of fossil fuel vehicles in 1997 when it introduced the Prius? They have been on the environmental bandwagon for some time now. But they are not the only ones. Automakers around the world are working to create environmentally friendly solar, electric, and hydrogen cars. It's not just about saving the planet; it's about ensuring energy security, improving air quality, and minimizing environmental impacts. And once hydrogen is produced, its distribution is efficient and cost-effective. Most hydrogen fueling stations for new vehicles produce hydrogen on site by electrolysis using 100% surplus renewable energy. And the best part? These plants are in tanks and only need water and electricity to operate. Electricity is supplied through green tariffs or, in some stations, directly from on-site solar or wind power. Toyota now claims to have created a new way to harness the power of hydrogen. Their design team recently unveiled the Corolla Cross H2 concept, a prototype of a new hydrogen-powered car. Toyota has been working on a new hydrogen-electric car that differs from the fuel cell technology that powers its latest hydrogen car, the Toyota Mirai. The idea of using a hydrogen internal combustion engine is not new. One of the pioneers in the game was German automaker BMW, which launched the 750HL in 2002, followed by the Hydrogen 7 in 2005. The BMW Hydrogen 7 was based on the traditional gasoline-powered 6.0-litre V-12, but with some modifications. It burns hydrogen and gasoline. It's a dual-fuel engine! And to make it even cooler, only 100 of these bad guys were made.
By Durga Prasad6 days ago in Wheel
The World's Ten Strangest Graves
The 10 strangest tombs in the world: each tomb is unique and has a fascinating story behind it that has captured the imagination of people around the world, so get ready to explore together and discover the secrets behind these incredible tombs. Let's get started.
By Durga Prasad6 days ago in Humans
What If You Came Across a Time Traveler?
If time travel is possible, why haven't we met time travelers yet? And if we did, how would we know they weren't faking it? What would their time machine look like, and how would it work? Do time travelers have to follow the rules? And what would happen if they decided to break them? This is what would happen if you met a time traveler in 1998 and did so. Mr. John Titor arrived from the future, or so he said in his timeline, because he claimed that General Electric succeeded in inventing time travel in the year 2034. He even introduced and described his time travel device in great detail, and then Tito disappeared as suddenly as he appeared. Did he complete his mission, or was he even real? How would we know? If we could prove that someone travelled from another time, that would be really cool for science, even if it replaced Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein approached time as a fourth dimension; space is a three-dimensional spectrum that gives us length, width, and height. Time gives direction; together they form a space-time continuum that can be affected by gravity according to Einstein's theory of relativity. Gravity is a curve in space-time, and technically, since space and time are one, gravity can bend both time and space, but it takes something really big to detect changes in the movement of time. If you somehow managed to get close to a black hole like Sagittarius, you would experience time half as fast as humans on Earth. That's because Sagittarius packs the mass of four million suns into an unspecified dense point, creating a very strong gravitational field around itself. Another way to travel through time is to move very fast. The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time passes for you. If you were a passenger on a train that could somehow travel at 99% of the speed of light, for every year spent on the train, 223 years would have passed back at the station. That would make you a time traveler from the future. But how about travelling back in time, just like John Titor said he would? Titor claims that this machine makes time travel possible in any direction. C 204, as he called it, allowed him to manipulate gravity using two micro-solar singularities packed inside. It also had gravity sensors that locked the machine and the time traveler to a specific location in space. Tito put this machine in a car almost like in the old days, travelling in a DeLorean, but it only needs 60 years of its time. How do you know Titus actually travelled back in time and didn't just make it up? Proving that someone is actually a time traveler can be even more difficult than time travel itself. Time travelers could make future predictions, show off their futuristic technology, or even take a genetic test to back up their story. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate time travel is to take yourself on your next adventure. Of course, there are simpler ways to demonstrate the possibility of time travel. In 2009, world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking threw a party — not just any party, but one where only future time travelers were invited. Hawking did not send the invitations until after the party because he believed that if future travelers arrived before the invitation was issued, it would prove time travel possible. One day he sat there and waited for hours, but no one showed up. This does not mean that time travel is impossible. It is possible that future time travelers will learn to use wormholes or bridges in space and time. We haven't seen any of them yet, but general relativity predicts their existence. The main problem with wormholes is that they are microscopic and collapse too quickly for a human traveler to pass through them, but perhaps the reason no one attended Hawking's party is that time travel isn't necessarily that precise. Maybe the guests arrived from the future but were late to the party, or going back in time is strictly forbidden for time travelers because if they do, they can completely change their timeline. Perhaps they are simply trying to avoid the risk of disease spreading to us from afar, or perhaps the knowledge of time travel is so advanced that few trust it. Perhaps travelling back in time is not possible; perhaps time can only move forward and never backward. Maybe John Titor told a big lie. There are still a few years left until 2034 to find out that there are already time travelers in our lives. Astronauts on the International Space Station travel at eight kilometers per second, so they age more slowly, although the difference is measured in hundreds of seconds. If you listen, you will be invited to a time-travelling reception hosted by Stephen Hawking. The celebration will take place at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain on June 28, 2009. No RSVP is required, and hey, if you have the chance to hop on a spaceship and enjoy the time travel effects of a black hole, do it. Make sure you don't run into that gravity monster, but that's a story for another day.
By Durga Prasad6 days ago in Futurism
