Self-Driving Cars | What Kind Of Problem We Are Facing To Develop A Self-Driving Cars?

You have probably heard that self-driving cars are coming soon. But people have been saying that for at least a decade and still I can't buy a car that will drive me to work while I nap in the passenger seat.

Some cars already come with partial autonomy, systems like tesla's Autopilot, that assists drivers or sometimes even take control. But they still need a human driver who can grab the steering and pedals on short notice if things get capricious or unpredictable, which is why Bhavesh Patel from London gets arrested in April 2018 for trying the passenger seat thing. There are some fully driverless vehicles that might be released in next few years, but they are only meant for very specific uses like long-haul trucking or taxis confined to certain streets and neighbourhoods.

General purpose driving is hard. Because to do that the software has to work out a lot of really tricky questions to turn information from its sensors into commands for the steering and pedals. Despite all the money and brainpower that's being poured into research, there are still major challenges at every step along that path.

The first thing a self-driving car has to do is to figure out what's in its surrounding. It's called the PERCEPTION stage. Humans can do this at a glance, but a car needs a whole cornucopia of sensor data, like cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors and lidar (lidar is basically a detailed 3D radar that uses lasers instead of radio ). Today's autonomous vehicles do pretty well at interpreting all that data to get a 3D digital model of their surroundings i.e the lanes, cars, traffic lights and so on. But it's not always easy to figure out what is what. For example, if lots of objects are closed together in a big crowd of people it is hard for software to separate them. So to work properly in pedestrian-packed areas like major cities the car might have to consider not just the current image but also the past few milliseconds of context too. That way, it can group a smaller blob of points moving together into a distinct pedestrian about to step into the street. But this has not been done yet.

Some things are just inherently hard for computers to identify, think of a situation where a plastic bag drifting on air looks like as solid to the sensors as heavier and more dangerous bag full of trash. That particular mix-up would just lead to unnecessary braking, but mistaken identities can be fatal. In a deadly Tesla crash in 2016, the autopilot cameras mistook the side of a truck for a washed out sky. You also need to make sure the system is dependable, even if there are surprises. If a camera goes haywire, for example, the car has to be able to fall back on overlapping sources of information. It also needs enough experience to learn about dead skunks, conference bikes, backhoes sliding off trucks and all the other weird situations that might show up on the road.

Academics often resort to running simulations in Grand Theft Auto, yes, you heard it correct. Some companies have more sophisticated simulators, but even those are limited by the designer's imaginations. So there are still some cases where perception is tricky. The really stubborn problem, though, comes with the next stage PERDICATION.

It is not enough to know where the pedestrians and other drivers are right now. The car has to predict where they are going next before it can move on to stage three, PLANING its own moves. Sometimes prediction is straightforward like a car's right blinker suggests it's about to merge right. That's where planning is easy. But sometimes computers just don't get their human overlords. For Example, let's just say an oncoming car slows down and flashes its lights as you wait for left. It's probably safe to turn, but that's a subtle thing for a computer to realize. What makes prediction really complicated, though, is that the safety of the turn is not something you just recognize it's a negotiation. If you edge forward like you are about to make the left, the other driver will react. So there is this feedback loop between prediction and planning. In fact, researchers have found that when you are merging onto the highway, if you don't rely on other people to react to you, you might never be able to proceed safely. So if a self-driving car is not assertive enough, it can get stuck. This is called the freezing robot problem.

Freezing robot problem is just more than a problem it's a nightmare for consumers and researchers. But there is some solution to problems like this. There are two main ways programmers try to work around all this. One option is to have the car think of everyone else's actions as dependent on its own. But that can lead to overly aggressive behaviour, which is also dangerous. People who drive that way are ones who end up swerving all over the highway trying to weave between the cars. Another option is to have the car predict everyone's actions collectively treating itself as just one more car interacting like all the rest and then whatever fits the situation best. The Problem with that approach is that you have to oversimplify things to decide quickly.

Finding a better solution to prediction and planning is one of the biggest unsolved problems in autonomous driving. So between identifying what's around them then interpreting what other drivers will do and figuring out how to respond, there are a lot of scenarios self-driving cars are not totally prepared for yet.

That does not mean driverless cars won't hit some roads soon. There are plenty of more straightforward situations where you just don't encounter these type of problems.

Also Read:-MIT Researchers Have Developed A Completely Passive Solar-Powered Way Of Combating Ice Buildup

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AI | How AI Learn

When a newborn baby enters the world as a clean slate He/She learn and develop to be an adult. Babies have an innate knowledge that helps them to voraciously learn and rapidly adapt. But that's not what AI does. In case of AI, it's machine learning. That's when a computer learns everything it needs to know from a giant dataset using trial and error. As a human or babies, there are just somethings you can learn from trial and error. But many computers scientists argue that most human skills are learned and AI could learn them too, without the need for pre-loaded rules. Still, a growing number of researchers are attempting to encode AI with a bit of common sense.

The current craze in AI are neural networks, collections of simple computing elements, loosely modelled as neurons in the brain, that adjust their connections as they encounter more data. They have produced incredible achievements in the past few years, from facial recognition to beating humans at chess or poker games. But neural networks require thousands of training examples to reliable from associations. Even then they can produce some embarrassing blunders. Compare this to a child who can see an image just once and after that instantly recognize it in other contexts.

Some AI can play classic Atari games with superhuman skill, but when you remove all the aliens but one the player inexplicably become a sitting duck. Different labs are categorizing human instincts and then they try to encode them into AI. These systems sit somewhere between pure machine learning and completely programmed.




One team developed an AI called interaction network. They have embedded the rule that such a thing as objects and relationships between those objects exist. This is like a babby's innate parsing of the world into objects. In tests, once the AI learns the specifics properties and relationships, it is able to predict the behaviour of falling strings and bouncing balls in a box. Another group's " neural physics engine" beats less structured neural networks for predicting ball collisions in containers. A lab created an AI which has an embedded rule to treat letters as objects and separate them from their background. This allowed it to solve CAPTCHAs better than other neural networks that were trained with 50,000 times more data.

We are far away from AI that can truly think like humans, but with these latest attempts to reproduce a common sense artificially. Researchers believe they will get closer to creating robots that can fully interact with the world the way we do.

Machines that start like a baby and learn like a child. What Do You All Think The Science Thinkers, How You Will Feel In A World With AI, Tell Us In The Comment Box.

Also Read:-Self-Driving Cars | What Kind Of Problem We Are Facing To Develop A Self-Driving Cars?

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Blood | A Brief History Of Blood

Do You Know Your Blood Type?

Most of us who have not been in any medical situations where blood type is important might have no idea what their blood type is. Anyway, I was in Red Cross when I was in HighSchool, That's where I got to know that I have O positive blood.  Tell us about your story in the comment box. How you got to know your blood group. If you don't know yours then get some time out of your life and go to the nearest hospital. Ok?

Well, We all know what is blood, But lets me brief you again. Blood is a mixture of cells suspended in a slightly yellowish liquid called plasma. Plasma is made up mostly of water, but it also contains proteins sugars hormones and salts, the three different types of cells you will find in plasma are RBC (Red blood cells or erythrocytes), WBC ( White blood cells or leukocytes) and Platelets or thrombocytes. Red blood cells give the blood its colour and makeup to 40% to 45% of your blood.

Anyway, There is a lot of mystery around blood. We know that there are eight main blood groups that make up most of the world's population A, B, AB, O, their positive and negative combine. But it turns out that scientists still don't know why we evolved different blood types. But for now, science can at least tell us a little bit.

If your blood type is	You can give to	You can receive from
0+	O+, A+, B+, AB+	GO+, O-
A+	A+, AB+	A+, A-, O+, O-
B+	B+, AB+	B+, B-, O+, O-
AB+	AB+	A+, A-,B +, B-, AB-, AB+, O+, O-
O-	A+, A-,B +, B-, AB-, AB+, O+, O-	O-
A-	A-, A+, AB-, AB+	A-, O-
B-	B-, B+, AB-, AB+	B-, O-
AB-	AB-, AB+	AB-, A-, B-, O-

What Will Happen If You Receive The Wrong Type Of Blood?

Well, some curious minds found that out the hard way. For thousands of years, nobody really understood blood. A Greek doctor from 200 CE believed that it was created from food and liver and This school of thought lived on for nearly 1500 years. It was not until the early 17th century that a British doctor named William Harvey discovered that actually circulated through the body. In 1665, an English physician, Richard Lower, successfully kept one dog alive by transfusing it with the blood of another dog.

After those things kind of kind got weird. Just two year after the Richard Lower's success doctors began experimenting with Xenotransfusions. That is transfusing human's blood with animal's blood such as sheep and those human patients died.

It was not until 1900 that we finally realized people and animals actually have different types of blood that determine whose blood can mix with whose. Among the humans also you can't take any one's blood.

If you are type A, your immune system will perceive type B blood as an intruder and trigger an auto-immune response that can cause kidney failure, extensive blood clotting and even shock. The reverse is true of type B blood. The immune system will attack type A. AB blood, however, can accept both A and B blood without triggering that auto-immune response. Things start to get a little more complicated when you introduce the rhesus factor or the negative and positive part of your blood types. Positive can't accept negatives, but the opposite is extremely dangerous.

To complicate things further, scientists have discovered dozens of more blood types, such as the Duffy blood group, which can determine your susceptibility to malaria and The Hh blood type, which 1 in 10,000 people in India have.

As for why human evolved this complicated system of blood type and compatibility, we don't really know. The original mutations are thought to date back nearly 20 million years. But look, whatever the biology is behind different blood type, it's a real, practical thing that matters and in many parts of the world, knowing your blood type is fairly common knowledge. In Japan, it's linked to your personality. In 2011, former Japanese minister of reconstruction Ryu Matsumoto blamed his irritable and impetuous behaviour on his blood type, Type B, after he was forced to step down from his seat.

Anyway, It's true that we don't know a lot about the Blood. But we all should know our blood Type. In some medical emergency, it could help to speed up the process. In case of any family relative or friend need any specific blood type then you might be able to help them if you know your blood type. If you are type O- then you are an extremely useful universal donor.

Also Read:- AI | How AI Learn

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Green Flash During A Sunset | Is It True?

The Mythical Green Flash during a sunset. It was first made popular by Jules Verne in an 1882 novel LE RAYON VERT(THE GREEN RAY) and it is still leaking into pop culture through an occasional pirate movie sequel. Except, it is not actually a myth.

That's weird right. usually, we are debunking things people think are true, not the other way around.
But the green flash is a real optical phenomenon and it doesn't just happen right after the sun sets. We can see it right before sunrise, too. We can see it from any altitude and from anywhere in the world. But the catch is You have to have the right conditions.

You might think that the Earth's air is pretty uniform, minus the occasional puffy cloud or two. But there are a bunch of invisible layers in the atmosphere, each with slightly different temperatures and densities. As sunlight might travels from one layer to another, the sunlight refracts or bends, just a little bit. It's the same principle that makes your straw look like it's bent below the water in your glass. But the amount of refracting depends on the wavelength and therefore, the colour of the light.

So the different colours end up separating out from the white sunlight that enters the atmosphere. The most obvious way to see this separation is in a rainbow, although that comes from a much more dramatic change in density from air to water droplet, so it is a much more obvious effect. The shorter the wavelength, the more the light is refracted. Bluer light has a shorter wavelength, so as the sun sets, those shades will stay visible longer because they can be bent further around the horizon.

It's kind of weird to think about, but basically, the red image of the sun sets first, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. There is a second or two delay between the last visible red sunlight and the violet. It's not a lot of time, but it is enough if you know when and where to look. It works exactly in the opposite direction too with sunrises.

But if the blue and violet shades of the sun are also above the horizon, why are these flashes green?

Well, shorter wavelengths of light are scattered more after colliding with molecules in the air that's why the sky is blue. But That also means violet and blue light are more likely to be scattered away from your line of sight, so you see the sun as green. If the air is super clear you can see blue flashes. If air is super hazy, enough green might be scattered to make the flash look yellow instead.

But there is a reason we don't see a flash with every sunrise and sunset is that this refraction is not enough for us to actually be able to see the flash with our own eyeballs. The physical separation between the different colours is not large enough. So we also need a mirage to magnify the effect.

Mirages are just multiple images formed by atmospheric refraction. You might think one of those images is real and the rest are fake, but that's not the case. They all come from a single source.

The Mirage, in this case, looks like a second sun. You know those pictures of sunsets where it looks like the sun grows a little stand at the bottom! That's actually two mirage images overlapping and it is what allows us to see green flashes. During sunsets, there is also a physiological component that can amplify the effect. When you look at a reddish sunset, the receptors in your eyes that detect red light get so used to being activated that when the source goes away, everything looks more green than it really is.





The above phenomena do not happen in sunrises, because there is no red sun to look at, the green rises above the horizon first. While Green Flashes can theoretically be seen anywhere on Earth at any time of year, they are best spotted above an unobscured horizon where the air is clean and relatively stable. Which is probably why so many stories of them come from people on boats.

So if you find the right spot, you might just get a glimpse of what Jules Verne described as "The true green of Hope." So The Science Thinkers Do You Have Any Dought Regarding Above Topic? Then Ask Us On Comment Section And Always Stay Curious. 

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Machines That Are About The Size Of A Molecules

It is tricky to go more than a few minutes without running into any machine of some sort. Whether it was the toaster you made breakfast with, the train you took into town or the machine you are staring at now. The idea of machines taking over the world isn't post-apocalyptic friction, it already happened. They have transformed society and improved our quality of life. Advances in engineering have gotten us this far, from mass producing refrigerators to travelling to the moon. So What's Next?

Many chemists are actually thinking a lot about making very tiny small machines out of molecules. But how you can move a machine of microscopic scale, which you can barely touch. Well, you have to have some chemical knowledge to control motion on a microscopic scale machine. Thing is this tiny machines about the size of a molecule could revolutionize everything from medicine to materials science, where molecular processes play a big role.

Let's discuss first thing fast, What is a Machine?

A machine is basically any device that takes some Energy input into at least ONE MOVING PART each with DISTINCT FUNCTION. So, in the end, those parts come together to produce a useful motion as an output, called work.

Now, There are some obvious advantages to making machines smaller, like being able to transport them more easily and make them move more precisely. In 1959 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman talked about THE PROBLEM OF MANIPULATING AND CONTROLLING THINGS ON A SMALL SCALE. By small, we are talking about a few millionths of a millimetre small machines made up of one or few molecules.




Twenty years later, nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler came across a transcript of Feynman's lecture on the machine. Then he developed some of the ideas further and in 198, he published a paper called Molecular Engineering An Approach To The Development Of  General Capabilities For Molecular Manipulation.

Eric Drexler imagined molecule-sized machines that could manipulate the reactants of chemical processes on an atomic scale. Not only that he even imagined that those machines could build new materials from the molecules. If you ask me my opinion over that idea I would say That is ASTONISHING, But how to do that?

Engineers have managed to shrink electrical components over the last few decades, like turning computers that of the size of a building into cell phones. Shrinking mechanical components could unlock a similar kind of revolution. BUT building NANOSCALE machines come with totally different challenges than the ones that many engineers deal with.

For starters, when you get down to the size of molecules, objects don't act the way we are used to on everyday scales. Like without careful design, a molecular nut and bolt couldn't be twisted apart easily. The electrostatic forces between the molecules, known as Van Der Waals forces, would attract them together a lot more than frictions affects ordinary nuts and bolts. Another problem is that it is trickier to get the components of a molecular machine to move the way you want.




A tiny molecule of air bumping into a piston in your car engine doesn't really change the way it moves, But that same air molecule might send a machine flying or even destroy it. Even if the damage is not that extreme, the constant bombardment from nearby molecules, known as thermal noise, could make the components move around randomly. That could make controlling their motions pretty difficult even though that's what we need to do for molecular machines to be useful.

Finally, most molecules are linked together with chemical bonds, which form because of electrical attractions between molecules. There are different kinds of chemical bonds, but they tend to be fairly rigid and don't allow for free movement between the two parts and that my boy frustrating, because that the kind of moment every machine rely on! For example, imagine a bunch of water molecules locked into the crystal structure of an ice cube or even clumped together in liquid water. Each negatively charged oxygen atom is attracted to the positively charged hydrogen atoms of nearby water molecules forming hydrogen bonds between them. So to build molecular machines engineers have to figure out a way to utilize a mechanical bond, which our basic chemistry textbook maybe didn't mention.

In a mechanical bond, the shape of the molecules links them. The individual parts of each molecule are not strongly attracted to one another, but they can't separate entirely without breaking the chemical bonds between the atoms within one of the molecules. Kind of like how your key can't accidentally come off your keyring even though they are not physically connected. Scientists had created linked molecules like this in the early 1960s. They were called catenanes chains of two or more connected rings of atoms.

Researchers knew that catenanes existed, but they were rare and really difficult to produce for scientific studies. But in 1983 French chemist Jean Pierre Sauvage made an unexpected discovery.  Sauvage was originally studying chemical reactions that were driven by ultraviolet light and one of those processes involved C-shaped molecules that attached themselves to copper ions, While modelling the reaction, he realized that by tweaking the method, he could produce catenanes from those molecules in much larger numbers than ever before.




The whole process starts by getting a copper ion to bond to the inside of a ring-shaped molecule. Then, a C-shaped molecule can thread through the ring and attach to the same copper ion. In the right kind of environment, another C-shaped molecule can chemically bond to the first one creating a second interlocking ring. The final part of Sauvage's chemical process was to pop that copper ion out. And voila: two molecular ring in one mechanically bound structure. Those ring can freely rotate to one another, just like we want in a machine. Sauvage even extended the process to make knotted chemicals and more complicated chains.

To set things in motion, in 1994 Sauvage's team found a way to use that catenane with a sandwiched copper ion to rotate one of the rings around the other. Because the rings are not uniform they will adjust to more electrically stable positions if the charge of that ions changes. So when that copper ion gets an electron ripped off in a chemical reaction, one of the rings will rotate 180 degrees. It will twist back if the copper ion recaptures an electron. This motion is really important to master if we want to build molecular machines with rotating parts, like something with a molecular propeller that can swim through a liquid.

Around the same time, Chemist James Fraser Stoddart was making progress with a different chemical mechanism. James Fraser Stoddart was well acquainted with the laws of attraction, i.e Positively charged chemical structures are attracted to negatively charged ones. With that, Stoddart's team created a molecular machine called a rotaxane, a ring linked onto a thread. Back in 1991, Stoddart's group made a nearly closed ring of atoms with a lack of electrons. They also made a rod-shaped molecule with two electron-rich sites and bulky silicon-based end cap. When they were put together electrostatic attraction made the ring thread onto the axle, where it could be closed off to form a complete ring with a chemical reaction. Although the positively charged ring was attracted to the negatively charged ring was attracted to the negatively charged sites on the axle, it was not locked in place too tightly with chemical bonds. Because we are talking about molecules here, when the ring had a certain amount of heat energy then it had the energy to move around. So the researchers could make the ring hop between the two negatively charged spots on the axle, while those bulky group kept it from sliding off.

In 1994, Stoddart got even more precise and created two chemically different sites on the axle structure based on molecules called benzidine and biphenol group. Those groups have different electric and chemical properties depending on the acidity or the pH of the surrounding environment. In an acidic environment, the benzidine group becomes positively charged, repelling a ring so it sits on the biphenol group.




So basically, this researchers figured out how to control a ring's movement on an axle in multiple ways. Stoddart's group also used the principle behind these axles to make a molecular elevator that can raise itself a few nanometers and even a molecular muscle that can stretch and contract like our muscle cells.

Now lots of components in normal machines like the cogs in a watch or wheels on a car rely on continuously rotating elements. Sauvage's ring could rotate in response to an input, but couldn't provide a continuous controlled output like a motor.

In 1999, the organic chemist Ben Feringa and his group in the Netherlands achieved just that a continuously rotating machine. They developed a double-sided molecule that acted a bit like motor blades. As we have mentioned thermal noise makes it tricky to control how a molecular component moves. But Feringa's molecule was based on two methyl groups that were designed to only rotate one way around. Every time a pulse of UV light hits one of the methyl groups, it absorbs the light and converts it into kinetic energy. The hit methyl group then rotates around an axis and bends over the other methyl group until it snaps past, so it is blocked from spinning backwards. And You Got The World's First Molecular Motor. As if that was not cool enough, in 2011 Feringa and his group took it even further and used this technique to build a nano car with four rotating wheels.

 Fraser Stoddart, Jean-Pierre, Sauvage and Ben Feringa used clever designs and special environment to solve some of the problems we were having with very basic molecular machines. In 2016, Fraser Stoddart, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Ben Feringa collectively awarded The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work.




We have just begun exploring other machines, we might be able to make on the nanoscale and we know there are plenty of options because nature has been building them for billions of years. Like right now in your body, supper complex molecular machines made of proteins are doing all kinds of things to keep you going. Like your myosins walk along tracks of muscle fibre pulling them to help you contract your muscles. In other cells like sperms or certain bacteria have built-in molecular motors to make their flagella spin around, so they can move through fluids. Those are two of many examples, so scientists have plenty of inspiration for future inventions.



Some researchers have proposed that molecular machines could be used to deliver drugs in the body. For Example, mesoporous particles have lots of little holes that release their contents in response to ultrasound waves. Filled with the right drugs, we could load these particles onto a molecular transport machine to dose tumour with cancer-fighting molecules.

Other researchers have developed a gel with those molecular motors we mentioned, by attaching them to a tangle of long chains of molecules called polymers. When you shine a light on the material or heat it up, the motors reel in the fibres like fishing line, which shrinks the volume of the gel. Because those motors are storing energy in the form of those bundled up molecules, if we could find a way to extract the energy back out, this could be a step towards a new kind of Solar battery.

All that said, we have a long way to go before we were building molecular machine factories or anything beyond these basic experiments. It's still tricky to make these tiny machines in large quantities and there may be other problems with making a bunch of individually developed components work together. But after more research and with more science thinkers, we might have molecular mechanics in our scientific toolkits and machines to help us at every scale of life.
Also Read:-Diagnose Of SEDs In Clustered Environments Unraveling The Stellar Content Of Young Clusters 

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ASMR | Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response

You may have seen videos on the internet where people whisper and tap on things or crinkle things. These strange delicate noises can cause some people to get "brain tingles". This tingling sensation can start across the skull and down to the spine and it's usually paired with an intense feeling of relaxation. It's been called "brain tingles" or "brain orgasms" but, as of now, it goes by ASMR which stand for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.

Awareness of ASMR has been growing since early 2010. Its reputation has piqued the interest of science researchers who want know what's going on behind this phenomenon. To be honest, we don't know a lot. The term, ASMR is not even defined in the scientific literature. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response sounds like a scientific term, but it was coined on an online forum, not by the scientist. ASMR could be linked to Synesthesia, which is the ability to hear colour or taste words.

What tingle heads are trying to describe is the body's involuntary response based on what it is seeing and hearing. A 2015 study took the responses of 475 participants who experience ASMR and found consistent visual and auditory stimuli across the board. Participants experienced tingles to slow movement, soft whispering or crisp sounds like tapping. Of course, different people react differently to the tingles for some it is a stress reliever and for other, it makes them so relaxed that it helps them sleep.




The thing is this is all self-reported by ASMR enthusiasts. So another study tried to get some concrete evidence right at the source. Researchers used fMRI scans to study brains of a small group of people half of whom had ASMR. They focused on the resting state network or Default Mode Network (DMN). The Default Mode Network (DMN) is a system of interacting regions of the brain that light up when the individual is not focused on external factors like when you are daydreaming. All they looked for was a difference in brain structures not what the tingles did to the brain Though it was not a large sample size what they found was interesting.

Normally, certain regions of the brain fire up together or talk to one another this is called be functionally connected. But in people who experience ASMR researchers noted some of these regions were talking LESS to one another and some regions were talking more. So, we still don't have concrete answers yet, but these fMRIs are showing that these tingle heads have definitely something going on. But so far, that's about all we could find in the hard science literature on ASMR.

We can't talk ASMR without mentioning Dr Craig Richard, a professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and ASMR experiencer, who created a whole platform to interview other ASMR scientists and keep it in the news He has a hypothesis that this brain tingles creating sounds or videos have one thing in common that is their ability to elicit intimacy through the idea of sensory function. Things are being touched, voices are soothing and comforting, He believes all of these factors trigger a similar response to the experience of being loved. But we have no scientific evidence to back this up with ASMR.

It might seem like silly internet thing knowing more about this could help us treat serious conditions like insomnia, anxiety and chronic pain. More research is definitely needed, but it is a good reminder that even when you feel alone, you can always count on the people of the internet to have your back and also your tingly head.

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Bacteriophage | The Super Bugs Killer And The Savior Of Human Beings

A war has been raging for billions of years, while we don't even notice. The war is fought by the single deadliest entity on our planet the bacteriophage or phage in short. A bacteriophage is a virus that made up of proteins that encapsulate a DNA or RNA genome. They have mainly two parts Head and a Tail. The head is an icosahedron( a short of dice with 20faces and 30 edges), which contain Phage DNA inside it that is the genetic material of the virus. The head sits on top of a tail that has leg-like fibres.

The total number of Bacteriophages are more than the total number of every other organism combined. We can say that they are probably everywhere, countless number of Bacteriophage are on your hand and in your intestines even in your mouth right now. Which might make your nervous since phages are responsible for the majority of deaths on earth. But there is no need to worry as they do commit genocide for living, they only kill bacteria.

Up to 40% of all bacteria in the oceans are killed by the bacteriophage every single day. Anyway, phages also have some major flaws like any other virus, The Bacteriophage need a host to survive and reproduce. Usually, a phage has chosen one specifics bacteria and maybe some of its very close relatives as their prey.

When a bacteriophage finds it's prey bacteria, it connects its tail fibres with receptors and uses a sort of syringe to puncture a surface. In a weird motion, the phage squeezes its tail and injects its DNA, the genetic information of itself. Within minutes, The bacteria is taken over by the predator bacteriophage. After that, the bacteriophage starts to make its clone inside the bacteria. In the final stage, they produce 'endolysin', a powerful enzyme that punches a hole in the bacteria and causes the death of bacteria releasing all thousands of newly made bacteriophage to repeat the process with other bacteria.

In the last few years, many research has been done to understand and study bacteriophage and to use them for our benefits. Recently, we have started looking into injecting millions of them into our bodies to understand more. In past, a single cut or a sip from the wrong puddle could kill you because of Bacterias as they cause infections that lead to death. We can say Bacteria were our phages. But then, about 100 years ago. we found a solution in nature that is "FUNGI". Fungi produce antibiotics, these compounds can kill bacteria.

Suddenly we had a powerful superweapon. Antibiotics were so effective that we stopped thinking of bacteria as our problem like they are nothing. We start to use antibiotic more and more for less and less serious causes. Bacteria are living things means they evolve due to that they started to become immune against Antibiotics. This evolution process of bacteria continued and in the end "Superbugs" come into existence.

Superbug is a bacteria that immune to almost everything we have. That means the days when a cut or an infection could kill you or your beloved one are coming back. It is estimated that by 2050 superbugs could kill more humans a year than cancer. So what we are going to do about it?

The Bacteriophage, Yes, The Bacteriophage could save us all, the tiny killer virus robots. We can inject them into our bodies to help cure infections. But the millions dollar question is How could injecting millions of viruses into an infection be a good idea?

Bacteriophages are very very specialized killers of bacteria, so specialized that humans are completely immune to them, actually, we encounter billions of Bacteriophages every day. Antibiotics are like carpet bombing, killing everything even the good bacteria in our intestines that we don't want to harm. But Bacteriophages are like guided missiles that only attack what they are supposed to. This makes Bacteriophages smart weapons against the bad bacterias.

This has already been successfully tested with a patient. The bacteria " Pseudomonas Aeruginosa", one of the most feared bacteria, infected the man's chest cavity. They are mostly resistant to most antibiotics and can even survive an alcoholic hand gel. A few thousand Bacteriophages were directly inserted into his chest cavity together with antibiotics the bacteria were immune to. After a few weeks, the patient was cured, the infractions had completely disappeared.

Unfortunately, this treatment is still experimental and pharma companies are still reluctant to invest the necessary money required in a treatment that has no official approval yet. But things are finally changing. In 2016, the largest Bacteriophage clinical trial to date began and Bacteriophages are getting more and more attention. It might be a weird concept but injecting the deadliest being on the planet Earth directly into our bodies could save millions of lives.

WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT IT TELL US DOWN IN THE COMMENT.

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Why Are There More Species Near The Equator?

In Tambopata, Peru EO Wilson once found more species of ant in a single tree than there are in all of the British Isles. Scientists have seen this pattern all over the world, More species exist near the tropics. Why is that? 

Tropical rainforests are some of the most biodiverse places on Earth. There are more numbers of birds, mammals, plants, insects in regions like this. It is not just abundance of it, it is how many different species we find in a given area. But why is that?

It might seem obvious or even like a silly question, but more you think about it the weirder it gets. Because life has shown it can succeed pretty much anywhere, from the top of highest mountains to the bottom of the ocean. But Eart's most biodiverse places are always regions like this, tropical rainforests.

One reason why is that rectangular projection of Earth (AKA normal map) lies to us. Rectangular projections are distortions of a sphere that make the poles look bigger and the tropics look smaller than they really are. When in reality, the tropics contain about 40% of the area on earth. Unsurprisingly, a large area usually have more species. In less than half a square kilometre in the Amazon, we can find as many tree species as we find in four million square kilometres of temperate forest. Species here are at a higher density, there must be something special about tropical ecosystems.



Climate is one factor. When we look at plant fossils and where they are found at different times in Earth's natural climate history, tropical forests are older than temperate forests, they had more time to become rich. But just because tropical regions don't have cold winter and they survive the last ice age does not mean it's easy to survive here. There are dry and wet seasons, there is competition for the resource, no matter what kind of organism you are, there is a lot of stuff that wants to eat you.

On average the tropics are warm and they get plenty of water. This part of the Earth gets average solar radiation through the year. Which means that plants and the animals they support get more energy, they are more productive. 

But this still only explains why there is more life, not why so many different kinds of life.

If you have got a pizza, more people can get a slice if you cut it up into a thousand tiny ones vs just a few. In an ecosystem, we call it NICHES, the habitat and condition that one organism needs to flourish and here in the rainforest, there is a lot of slices. Organisms that live at higher latitudes have to be more adaptable and be able to handle lots of different conditions.

Life is more stable in the tropics. Near the equator, there is essentially the same number of hours in day and night no matter what month it is. Let's say you are a bard that eat insects or you are a bat. You got the same number of hours to do your feeding. The birds get the day shift, the bats get the night shift. You get that niche evenly. That wouldn't work at higher latitudes and more temperate climates. There is simply just too much change, too much disruption for these species to keep track of. This might explain a reason why more species coexist near the equator.



The Tropics are crowded, so the competition for resources is extreme. That competition drives organisms to specialize. But because climate and seasons are more stable that specialization isn't as risky more species less area.

Above theories are really good at explaining why there are so many species in the rainforest. But there is one more question which above Theory has not answered.   Question is Beginning of our Story, where those species come from? It's might be possible that evolution is actually working on overdrive here near the equator, the speciation, the creation of new species by various natural forces, actually happens faster near the equator.  

Each generation of living things gather changes, mutations, some are good, some are bad, some are nither. But it isn't until those changes are passed on to next generation that natural selection and time can do their thing. The reason that bacteria are so good at adapting is that they reproduce quickly, They have more generations in less time.

The same thing happens here in the rainforest. Plants and Animals grow up faster, they can have more generations. This drives competition, this is what forces plants and animals to specialize in all of the amazing ways that we have seen. This theory that evolution happens faster near the equator, finally ties together ideas of time, area and energy to explain the origin of biodiversity.

There is an idea that says the tropics are so well suited to the creation of new species that it is like an engine for biodiversity. There is another idea say that this area so rich and productive for plants and animal and the climate is so stable that species don't go extinct so fast. More species are born here and species live longer here, the tropics are both a cradle and a museum. 




Scientists even think that over many many years species from places like this go and seed biodiversity throughout the rest of the world. This is why it is so important to protect the rainforest to preserve life's cradle and museum. We should keep it from being cut up because more area means more species. To keep the climate from changing to keep this place stable and rich for life.

Biology still has not answered one of it's most basic questions How Many Species Are There?

EO Wilson once wrote that "unlike the rest of science, the study of biodiversity has a time limit." If species begin to go extinct faster than we can describe them then we might never know how much life Earth has to offer.

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Questions | Why There Is No Answer To Some Questions

On a typical day at school, endless hours are spent learning the answers to questions. But right now let's do the opposite, let's focus on questions where you can't learn the answers because they are unknown. I used to puzzle about a lot of things as a boy, for example, What would it feel like to be a snake? Do fish talk? Was the Big Bang just an accident? Is there a God? If so then how are we so sure that it's a He and not a She? Why do so many innocent people and animal suffer terrible things? Is there really a plan for my life? Is the future yet to be written or is it already written and we just can't see it? But then, do I have free will? I mean, who am I anyway? Am I just a biological machine? But then, why am I conscious? What is consciousness? Will robots become conscious one day?

I mean, I kind of assumed that someday I would be told the answers to all these questions. Someone must know, right? Guess what? No one knows. Most of those questions puzzle me more now than ever. But diving into them is exciting because it takes you to the edge of knowledge and you will never know what you will find there.

So, two question that no one on Earth knows the answer to.

1. HOW MANY UNIVERSES ARE THERE?

Sometimes when I am on roof-top just to look at stars and I start thinking How vast our universe is? Our own planet is also very big, The Sun that would literally fit one million Earth inside it seems impossibly big. In the great scheme of things, it's a pinprick, right? One of about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which you can see on a clear night as a pale white mist stretched across the sky and it gets worse there are maybe 100 billion galaxies detectable by our telescopes. So if each star was the size of a single grain of sand, just the Milky Way has enough stars to fil a 30-foot by 30-foot stretch of beach three feet deep with sand. The entire Earth does not have enough beaches to represent the stars in the overall universe.

Stephen Hawking and some other physicists believe in a reality that is unimaginably still. I mean, first of all, the 100 billion galaxies within range of our telescopes are probably a minuscule fraction of the total. Space itself is expanding at an accelerating pace. The vast majority of the galaxies are separating from us so fast that light from them may never reach us. Still, our physical reality here on Earth is intimately connected to those distant, invisible galaxies. We can think of them as part of our universe. They make up a single, giant edifice obeying the same physical laws and all made from the same physical laws and all made from the same types of atoms, electrons, protons, quarks, neutrinos that makeup you and me.

However, recent theories in physics, including one called string theory, are now telling us there could be countless other universes built on different types of particles, with different properties, obeying different laws. Most of these universes could never support life and might flash in and out of existence in a nanosecond. But they all combined make up a vast multiverse of possible universes in up to 11 dimensions featuring wonders beyond our wildest imagination. 

The leading version of string theory predicts a multiverse made up of 10 to the 500( 10⁵⁰⁰ ) universes. That many universes are far beyond your imagination right? But what about infinite? There are some physicists think the space-time continuum is literally infinite and that it contains an infinite number of pocket universes with varying properties.

Quantum theory adds a whole new wrinkle. I mean, the theory's been proven true beyond all doubt, but interpreting it is baffling and some physicists think you can only un-baffle it if you imagine that huge numbers of parallel universes are being spawned every moment and many of these universes would actually be very like the world we are in, would include multiple copies of you. In one such universe, you do graduate with honours and solve the theory of everything and in another not so much. Well, we may argue that there is only one universe and that is ours or these all are illusion including ours, As you can see there is no sold answer not even close to one. All we know is somewhere between Zero and infinity. One thing for sure this is to understand all this you need to get high on physics.

2. WHY CAN'T WE SEE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE OF ALIEN LIFE?

Somewhere out there in that vast universe, there must surely be countless other planets teeming with life. But why don't we see any evidence of it? Well, this is the famous question asked by Enrico Fermi in 1950. Conspiracy theorists claim that UFOs are visiting all the time and the report are just being covered up, but honestly, they are not very convincing. But that leaves a real riddle.

In past year the Kepler Space Observatory has found hundreds of planets just around nearby stars and if you extrapolate that data, it looks like there could be half a trillion planets just in our own galaxy. If anyone in 10,000 has conditions that might support a form of life, that's still 50 million possible life-harbouring planets right here in the Milky Way. 

Here's the riddle: Our Earth didn't form until about nine billion years after the Big Bang. Countless other planets in our galaxy should have formed earlier and given life a chance to get underway billions or certainly many millions of year earlier than happened on Earth. If just a few of them had spawned intelligent life and started creating technologies those technologies would have had millions of years to grow in complexity and power. 

On Earth, we have seen how dramatically technology can accelerate in just 100 years. In millions of years, an intelligent alien civilization could easily have spread out across the galaxy, perhaps creating giant energy-harvesting artefacts or fleets of colonizing spaceships or glorious work of art that fill the night sky. At the very least, you may think may be revealing their presence deliberately or otherwise through electromagnetic signals of one kind or another and yet we see no convincing evidence of any of it. Why?

Well, there are numerous possible answers some of them quite dark. Maybe a single superintelligent civilization has indeed taken over the galaxy and has imposed strict radio silence because it is paranoid of any potential competitors. It's just sitting there ready to obliterate anything that becomes a threat or maybe they are not that intelligent or perhaps the evolution of an intelligence capable of creating sophisticated technology is far rare than we have assumed. After all, it's only happened once on Earth in four billion years.

Maybe we are first civilization in our galaxy. But for a start, we are not looking that hard and we are spending a pitiful amount of money on it. Only a tiny fraction of the stars in our galaxy have really been looked at closely for signs of interesting signals or perhaps we are not looking the right way. Maybe as civilization develop, they quickly discover communication technologies far more sophisticated and useful than electromagnetic waves or maybe we are looking at the wrong scale. Perhaps intelligent civilization comes to realize that life is ultimately just complex patterns of information interacting with each other in a beautiful way and that can happen more efficiently on a small scale. Solar system might be timing with alien and we are just not noticing them.

Well, within next 15 years, We could start seeing real spectroscopic information from promising nearby planets that will reveal just how life-friendly they might be. The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence is now releasing it's data to the public so that millions of citizen scientists maybe including you can bring the power of the crowd to join the search. Here on Earth, amazing experiments are being done to create life from scratch, the life that might be very different from DNA forms we know. ALL OF THIS WILL HELP US UNDERSTAND WHETHER THE UNIVERSE IS TEEMING WITH LIFE OR WHETHER IT'S JUST US.

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List Of Food To Strengthen Your Bones

The Bones of our body maybe sturdy enough to transport us all day every day but, they are vulnerable too. Bones may lose their strength if neglected.

We have listed this 11 foods that can strengthen your bones and put that spring back. So Let's get Down to it.

1.Eggs

Scrambled or boiled, eggs can provide you with a bountiful supply of Vitamin D. This vitamin plays a key role in how well a man can sustain a normal level of testosterone in his blood. It’s recommended that you eat one egg per day, but those who have trouble with cholesterol should skip the yolk.

2. Garlic -

With its powerful antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial properties, this anti ageing superfood can help you fight off illness and infections. Just add it to any of your favourite foods for a flavour boost. it's like win-win moment two in one package deal. 

3. Honey-

Who doesn't love Honey, As it can strengthen your body instead of reaching for sugar choose a small spoonful of honey OK?  As a substitute add it to your tea, oats meal or for pancakes. Honey's antioxidants can strengthen your immune system and help you win the battle when infections Strike. That's why honey is so important and bees, The species who create this.

4. Watermelon-

 A juicy watermelon is a great summer treat, but it can improve blood circulation and your entire circulatory system. Eat it as a snack add to the salad or whip up a sorbet.

5. Cabbage-

Men who eat cabbage ingest the chemical indole-3-carbinol or IC3 which eliminates female hormones. A Rockefeller University study noted that man who consumed 500 mg daily for 7 days get their estrogen levels cut in half which is great not only for bones also for your entire Physical and Psychological Health 

6. Grapes-

 By eating a handful of grapes a day, a man's testosterone levels will rise, and sperm activity will also increase. Additionally, the nutrients in grace can Slow Down The ageing process Hence your Bone Meru stay healthy for a long period.

7.Oysters-

Oysters are little vaults stuffed full of vitamins and minerals that enhance your heart's health and boost Your immune system. Just sprinkle a little lemon juice and salt to preserve their nutrients.

8. Meat-

Too much meat isn't beneficial for your health, but it does play a significant role in increasing testosterone levels. Just be sure to eat meat that's organic and has come from a grass-fed source.

9.Beans-

Beans can be added to most any side dishes, soup or salad. This heart-healthy food also helps men to maintain normal testosterone levels.

10. Tuna-

Vitamin D rich Tuna is good for your heart, but just remember to buy tuna that has not been exposed to Mercury.

11.Pomegranates-

Pomegranate juice is an excellent source of potent antioxidants, which can tackle free radicals before they can disrupt circulatory function. Also, the  International Journal of impotence research states that nearly 50% of impotent men noticed their condition improved after drinking only one glass of pomegranate juice.

So what you are looking now remember the stuff you need to eat every day and look for good exercise tips. Yes, you need minimum 20 minutes of exercise for good Health, No food can help you to achieve good health if you never exercise, Because foods only help you maintain Good Health. So Get your Mind Set and Start Building Good Habits. 

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Space Submarine to Saturn's Moon Titan To Explore Its Oceans

Scientists are sending a submarine to Saturn's moon Titan to explore its alien oceans in search of life and to possibly understand how life began on our own planet? Researchers are studying two main ocean on Titan The Kraken Mare and Ligeia Mare. Both were discovered fairly recently by the Cassini Space Probe. Ligeia Mare is less than 200 meters deep, but the Kraken Mare's depth is still unknown. 

Sending this Submarine could answer a lot of question including the depth. Titan might also answer a lot of geological questions of our planet because Titan is composed of a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, It also has seasonal cycles, ocean waves, possible ice water, landscape erosions and a hot rocky core. These all sound very familiar as it has a lot in common with our own planet Earth.

The goal is to have the submarine dive deep into the oceans and look at heavy metals that might have settled down to the bottom. They will use a mass spectrometer to measure the elements and see what they are made of. 

In order to gather data, the submarine will have to be prepared for these mysterious and icy cold oceans on the moon and also there are a few obstacles to that. The pressure on Titan, for example, is about 60% more than on Earth. 



So researchers at Washington State University partnered with NASA to try and re-create the oceans of Titan, but in a lab here on Earth. They did this by making a pressurized chamber and filling it with liquid Methane, liquid Ethane and Nitrogen gas to simulate the environment on Titan. Then they cooled it to about - 150-degree c and boom a mini-Titan ocean. 

Inside they were able to test the equipment that they are going to use in space. For example, they engineered a borescope and a video camera that could withstand the super cold temperature and high pressures on Titan. But unlike other probes, we can't rely on solar power for this mission, So they are planning on installing an RTG i.e Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator. Basically, this is unclear.

The challenges of engineering a submarine which will be headed to another moon is just astronomical. But hopefully, we are going to answer a lot of unanswered questions about how life began on our own planet and possibly life in our solar system.

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Muscles | How Our Muscles Grow?

We have over 600 types of muscles, which make up between 1/3 one third and 1/2 one half of our body weight. Along with connective tissue, they bind us together, holds us up and help us move. Whether or not bodybuilding is your hobby muscles need your constant attention, because the way you treat them on a daily basis determines whether they will wither or grow.

How your muscles work?
let's think that you are standing in front of a door ready to pull it open. Your brain and muscles are perfectly poised to help you achieve this goal. First, your brain sends a signal to the motor neurons inside your arm. When they receive this message, they fire, causing muscles to contract and relax, which pull on the bones in your arms and generate the needed movement.

The bigger the challenge like the above becomes the bigger the brain signal grows and the more motor units rallies to help you achieve your task. 

What if the door is made of solid iron? 
At this point, your arm muscles alone won't be able to generate enough tension to pull it open. So your brain appeals to other muscles for help. You plant your feet, tighten your belly and tense your back generating enough force to yank it open. Your nervous system has just leveraged the resources you already have other muscles to meet the demand.

While all this is happening, your muscle fibres undergo another kind of cellular change. As you expose our muscle to stress they experience microscopic damage which in this context is a good thing. In response to this, the injured cells release inflammatory molecules called cytokines that activate the immune system to repair the injury. This is when the muscle building magic happens.
The greater the damage to the muscle tissue the more your body will need to repair itself. The resulting cycle of damage and repair eventually make muscles bigger and stronger as they adapt to progressively greater demands.

As our bodies have already adapted to most everyday activities, those generally don't produce enough stress to stimulate new muscles growth. So to build new muscle, a process called hypertrophy, our cells need to be exposed to higher workloads than they are used to. In fact, if you don't continuously expose your muscles o some resistance they will shrink, a process known as muscular atrophy. In contrast, exposing the muscle to a high degree of tension especially while the muscle is lengthening, also called an eccentric contraction, generates an effective condition for new muscles growth.

However, muscles rely on more than just activity to grow, without proper nutrition hormones and rest, your body would never be able to repair damaged muscle fibres. Protein in our diet preserves muscle mass by providing the building blocks for new tissue in the form of amino acids. Adequate protein intake along with naturally occurring hormones like insulin-like growth factor and testosterone help shift the body into a state where tissue is repaired and grown. This vital repair process mainly occurs when we are resting especially at night while sleeping. 

Gender and age affect this repair mechanism which is why young men with more testosterone have a leg up in muscle building game. Genetic factors also play a role in one's ability to grow muscle. Some people have more robust immune reactions to muscle damage and are better able to repair and replace damaged muscle fibres increasing their muscle building potential. The body responds to the demands you place on it. 

If you tear your muscles up, eat right, rest and repeat you will create the condition to make your muscles as big and strong as possible. It is with muscles as it is with life meaningful growth requires challenge and stress.

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Antimatter | Only Place Where Antimatter Can Survive

The whole world, Actually my bad. The whole Universe is made of matter. Everything is made up of matter, you, me, smartphones, PC, Pizza, Puppies, Black-Holes everything you can possibly think of. But there is also this thing called antimatter. Around the turn of the last century, Einstein was working on the theory of relativity and other physicists were trying to figure out how the tiniest parts of universe worked called Quantum Theory. This was all done with mathematics lots of lots of math.

At one point a physicist named Paul Dirac realized X² = 4 has two answers. 2²=4 &-2²=4  so Answers are 2 and -2, this means if a matter is the positive two, there must be some kind of opposite to fit the negative two - 2. Physicists called this opposit antimatter.

The reason you don't see antimatter around is that at the beginning of the universe matter and anti-matter pop into each other and disappear in a burst of energy. But somehow matter lived through that annihilation. you probably know that all matter is made of protons and electron. Well, the antimatter is made up of antiprotons and positrons. A proton is a positive heavy particle and an antiproton is a negative heavy particle.  Like that Electrons are light and negative where positrons are light and positive. Because of their oppositeness when they touch BOOM energy burst.

Even though they have these opposite charges, in theory, antimatter should be exactly the same as matter. After the Big Bang, the universe should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter according to physicists. But there is not really any antimatter around. Because, in the first second after the Big Bang, all the matter and antimatter in the newborn universe found each other and Bam annihilation. All the antimatter disappeared in bursts of energy, leaving behind just matter. No one knows why the Big Bang made more matter than antimatter.

But there are scientists who are making antimatter to find out more about it. ALPHA Collaboration group at CERN create antimatter using the particles beams at CERN we convert protons into antiprotons.

 CERN is the Center For European Nuclear Research, It's where the Large Hadron Collider lives. This Antimatter Factory takes protons shooting along the LHS and converts them to antihydrogen, the antimatter version of hydrogen. Then Dr Bertsche and his team trap the antihydrogen to study it.

We know a lot about hydrogen, so we wanna see how antihydrogen might be different. But remember, you can't let antimatter touch matter, ever. No air, no fancy containers nothing that's made of matter. So, the scientists use magnetic fields to hold the antihydrogen inside this trap. They behave like little tiny refrigerator magnets, it looks like a bathtub. but to do so the magnetic field has to arrange. The antihydrogen atoms basically sit in a magnetic bathtub or magnetic bottle. But it's really actually physically shaped like a bathtub and it's about the size of sort of a two-litre coke bottle.

The magnetic bathtub is called a Penning-Malmberg trap. The magnetic field keeps the antihydrogen from hitting the walls of the trap and annihilating. Powerful magnets and leaser force the antihydrogen to get stuck inside the magnetic field like a piece of candy in a bowl. Once they have trapped the antimatter the scientists at the Factory can learn things about this mysterious mirror of our universe.

Disappointingly antimatter is not any kind of miracle form of antimatter it does not have antigravity property. It does not do anything different at all.  If you could build an antimatter table, it would just be a table. That's weird, right?

What if in those few hot moments after the Big Bang the universe was completely made of antimatter? Would it feel exactly the same to us? I mean think about it if antimatter and matter are exactly the same Then what is the difference? If the whole universe was made of antimatter we do call that matter and what we think of as matter would be called antimatter. All the things we call positive are just relative to our experience. Physics get really weird when you get right down to it.

In the end, an antimatter universe based on everything we know would look and feel exactly the same as our own. But more research is needed. Scientists trapped antimatter for the first time in 2010. Now just a few short years later they have learnt to trap more than a dozen antiatoms at a time over and over again. But still, after a bit they have to let the antimatter go then it annihilates and disappears. But even though annihilation sounds like a big, violent, terrible, thing it's actually kind of like a nothing. The scientists see some gamma radiation and that's all it shows.

Practically speaking CERN has only made 10 nanograms of antimatter. All the energy from annihilating it could only power one light bulb for 4 Hours and to make that antimatter takes a billion times more energy than what we get back from annihilating it. There's not a lot of practical application for this antimatter research yet, but antimatter is actually commonly used in a lot of medical techniques such as a Positron Emission Tomography AKA PET scan, it's used for cancer diagnoses.

There are lots of potential application of it. But based on what we know of antihydrogen whether we could do that in future is a big old shrug. At the moment, almost a century after it was first theorized, antimatter research is still in its infancy, but with more research someday we will know more.

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