Black Holes

It took a long journey for scientists to prove that black holes exist. John Mitchell was the first person to come up with the idea that a black hole could exists in 1783, he developed the theory of black holes when he accepted Newton's theory that light consists of small material particles, called photons. He wondered how the movement of these light particles is impacted by the gravitational pull of the star they are escaping. He referred to them as "dark stars", however he doubted that such objects could exist and after publishing his information, he abandoned further research on the subject.

Mitchell’s research was further enhanced by Pierre Simon Laplace in 1795. Using Newton's Theory of gravity, Laplace calculated that if an object was compressed into a small enough radius, then the escape velocity of that object would be faster than the speed of light.

Then all this research took a turn of events as Einstein himself wrongly thought that black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius. This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years, and black holes were considered nothing more than abstract mathematical concepts.

But in 1915, Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted the existence of black holes, which ended up proving his previous statement wrong. And then in 1967 John Wheeler, an American theoretical physicist, applied the term "black hole" to these collapsed objects.

Now I'll get to the point and explain how black holes are created. To keep it as simple and straightforward as possible, we can say that black holes are created when a massive star dies.But I would like to go into a bit more detail because a one line definition isn't enough!

A common type of black hole is produced by certain dying stars. A star which has a mass greater than approximately 20 times the mass of our Sun may produce a black hole at the end of its life.

In the normal life of a star there is a constant tug of war between gravity pulling in and pressure pushing out. Nuclear reactions in the core of the star produce enough energy and pressure to push outward. For most of a star’s life, gravity and pressure balance each other exactly, and so the star is stable. However, when a star runs out of nuclear fuel, gravity gets the upper hand and the material in the core is compressed even further. The bigger the core of the star causes the greater the force of gravity that compresses the material, making it collapse under its own weight.

For small stars, when the nuclear fuel is exhausted and there are no more nuclear reactions to fight gravity, the repulsive forces among electrons within the star eventually create enough pressure to halt further gravitational collapse. The star then cools and dies peacefully. This type of star is called a "white dwarf."

When a very massive star exhausts its nuclear fuel it explodes as a supernova. The outer parts of the star are expelled violently into space, while the core completely collapses under its own weight. If the core remaining after the supernova is very massive (more than 2.5 times the mass of the Sun), no known repulsive force inside a star can push back hard enough to prevent gravity from completely collapsing the core into a black hole.

Rubik's Cube. The "toy" which amused 5 year old's yet inspired mathematicians!

Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik. The puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980. And as of January 2009, 350 million cubes have been sold worldwide making it the world's top selling puzzle game.

In the mid-1970's, Erno Rubik worked at the Department of Interior Design at the academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in the capital of Hungary, Budapest. In an interview with CNN he states that he planned to make it a teaching aid for his class of design students and he also had an interest himself in trying to build a structure that would permit individual blocks to move independently without the whole thing falling apart. It should be noted that there was no three-dimensional printing and CAD (computer-aided design) back then and he made the first Rubik Cube prototype with wood, elastic bands and other very simple things. He did not realize that he had made a puzzle until the first time he scrambled his Cube and then tried to restore it!

The Rubik's Cube is a cube consisting of 6 sides with 9 individual pieces on each side. The objective of this puzzle is to recreate its original position which is a solid colour for each side. Although it looks colourful and looks like a children's toy, an association by the name of The World Cube Association maintains a history of world records for the Rubik's Cube completion in different categories. For example the current world record for single time on a 3×3 Rubik's Cube was set by Mats Valk of the Netherlands in March 2013 with a time of 5.55 seconds and the record for blind solving is held by Marcin Zalewski of Poland, who solved a cube blindfolded in 23.80 seconds.


Math classes to this day study the complexity of the Cube. This is because the Cube can't be easily solved as it doesn't have a definite scrambled point. In simpler words, there's is only one completed solution, which is where all the sides have one colour each, and if the Cube is anything but that, it is considered scrambled. To put this into perspective, when the Cube is complete and one simple rotation is made it's scrambled even though it would be easy to undo that. Therefore, the Cube had an astonishing 43 Quintilian possible position and wait for it.... only one is right!!  And it has been calculated that if every person on earth randomly twisted a Cube once every seconds, about once every three centuries one Cube would return to its original state. So don't be too hard on yourself if you can't solve a Rubik's Cube.


The simple Rubik's Cube is a harder problem than most people realize. Using the currently provided best algorithm for solving the Cube, would take the computer you are reading this on now about 35 years to perform, and that's just for a basic 3x3 Rubik's Cube. However, mathematicians at MIT have found a breakthrough, they've developed a standard algorithm that can determine how many moves are needed to solve a Rubik's Cube and they've developed a more efficient algorithm for solving cubes that start out in their worst state.

Last August, nearly 40 years after the Rubik’s cube first appeared, an international team of researchers consisting of Erik Demaine, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at MIT; his father, Martin Demaine, a visiting scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; graduate student Sarah Eisenstat; Anna Lubiw, who was Demaine’s PhD thesis adviser at the University of Waterloo; and Tufts graduate student Andrew Winslow using computer time lent to them by Google have found every way the Rubik's Cube can be solved and on top of that they proved that no matter how scrambled a cube got, it could be solved in no more than 20 moves!

Mathematicians have tried to find the shortest method of unscrambling the Rubik's Cube, which became known as God's algorithm. The way God's algorithm works is by drawing up a tree structure of all possible scrambles position. The root of the tree is the single initial position where the cube is solved. The algorithm searches for the matching scrambled position from the root of the tree and a solution is found by going over the actions leading to the path found. 


This international team of researchers showed that the maximum number of moves required to a Cube with N squares per row is proportional to N^2 / log. The research published online, ends a 30 year search for the most efficient way to correctly align the Rubik's Cube. "It took 15 years after the introduction of the Cube to find the position that provably requires 20 moves to solve" the team said, "it is appropriate that 15 years after that, we can prove that 20 moves suffice for all positions." The team crunched through billions of Cube positions, solving each one over a period of "just a few weeks."

In an interview online about his time trying to solve the Rubik's Cube Demaine says "The aesthetic is not just to look at things that are fun but also look at problems that are simple. I think the simpler the mathematical problem, the more likely that it’s going to arise in some important practical application in the future. And the Rubik’s cube is kind of the epitome of simplicity.”

What's the leading cause of death that's preventable?? Smoking.

A cigarette is a paper-wrapped roll of delicately cut tobacco, which had been smoked by humans for centuries and it has become the leading cause of premature, preventable death in the world. 

Before we go into how cigarettes affect the humans body, I want to state some facts about the consequences of smoking, just so that for those who have any doubts on whether smoking is good or bad will definitely understand that it’s a misconception to think that smoking is good!

From 2002 onwards approximately 5.5 trillion cigarettes are produced globally each year and are smoked by an outrageous number of people as over 1.1 billion people or greater than one seventh of the world population smoke. Since the US has the most number of people smoking in one country alone, we’ll have a look at the statistics in the US.  In the United States alone, 25.2 million men, 23.2 million women, and 4.1 million teens between 12 and 17 years of age, smoke. Every day, more than three million youths under the age of 18 begin smoking. The gruesome statistics show that nationally, one in five of all deaths are related to tobacco use meaning it kills more than 430,000 people every year which is more than AIDS, alcohol, drugs abuse, automobile accidents, murders, suicides, and fires combined!! Five million years of potential life is lost every year due to premature death caused by tobacco use, medical costs total more than $50 billion annually, and indirect cost another $50 billion. A chemical compound that is a major component in urine called Urea is used to add “flavor" to cigarettes, so don’t think for one second that the cigarette companies care about you and your health, the only thing they care about is the money they’re making and not  the millions of people they are killing.

OK, so now that those people who had any doubt have woken up we can get to the real stuff which is how smoking actually affects us and our body. The chemical in tobacco smoke harm blood cells and can damage the function of the heart and the structure and function of blood vessels. This damage highly increases your risk of a disease called atherosclerosis and peripheral arterial disease(P.A.D), which are diseases in which a fatty substance called plaque builds up in the arteries, which is located in the heart(for more information check out my post on the heart below).  Over time, plaque hardens and narrows your arteries and this limits the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your head, organs, limbs and other parts of your body and this limitation makes it extremely hard to breath and after a while it will be difficult to continue living. People who have P.A.D are at increased risk of heart attacks, heart disease and stroke. Almost 20% of all deaths from heart disease in the U.S. are directly related to cigarette smoking. That's because smoking is a major cause of atherosclerosis and peripheral arterial disease (P.A.D). A person's risk of heart disease and heart attack greatly increases with the number of cigarettes he or she smokes. People who smoke have two to four times’ higher chance of having heart disease. And smokers continue to increase their risk of heart attack the longer they smoke.

Of the 4,000 or more different chemicals present in cigarette smoke, 60 are known to cause cancer and others to cause cellular genetic mutations that can lead to cancer. Cigarette smoke contains nicotine tars, nitrosamines, and polycyclic hydrocarbons, all of which are carcinogenic. It also contains carbon monoxide which, when inhaled, interferes with transportation and utilization of oxygen throughout the body. Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical which is a drug that is naturally present in the tobacco plant and is primarily responsible for a person’s addiction to tobacco products. During smoking, nicotine enters the lungs and is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream and travels to the brain in a matter of seconds. Nicotine causes addiction to cigarettes and other tobacco products and it’s horrible to know that is similar to the addiction produced by using drugs such as heroin or cocaine.

A disgusting effect of smoking is that it stains the teeth yellow or sometimes even brown. Since this effect is long term, most people are not aware of it when they begin smoking. The truth is that a cigarette stain is very hard to eliminate from the teeth and it will probably end up costing a considerable amount of money. Yellow are disgusting since they give an unhygienic image and make people look older.

There are 2 very critical effects smoking has that most people forget about and don’t mention. One of those is that affect smoking has on the smokers personal economy since the average prices for a 20 pack of cigarettes in first world countries is about $12-15, and since regular smokers smoke on average half a pack a day this would mean they would spend $47.25 on average a week therefore if that smoker continues this awful habit it would result in spending $2457 annually on average! And one could imagine what someone could do with that money instead of spending it on a useless pack of cigarettes.

The second effect which is just as important as the health effect smoking has is that cigarette smoke not only affects smokers but when you smoke, the people around you are also at risk for developing health problems, especially children. Environmental tobacco smoke (also called passive smoke or second-hand smoke) affects people who are frequently around smokers. Second-hand smoke can cause chronic respiratory conditions, cancer, and heart disease. It is estimated that nearly 70,000 non-smokers die from heart disease each year as a result of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. Investigators at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital(MGH) — which finds that children who live in households where they are exposed to tobacco smoke miss more days of school than do children living in smoke-free homes, a new nationwide study confirms.   The report states that “children have higher rates of respiratory illnesses that can be caused by second-hand smoke.” This is a shocking effect because a smokers’ life choice should only affect him/her and it should in no circumstance have any affects on someone who is wiser and decided to not smoke.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has named tobacco one of the greatest public health threats of the twenty-first century. As of 1999, more than one billion people worldwide smoke, and 3.5 million people are expected to die from causes directly related to tobacco use. This death rate is expected to rise to 10 million by the year 2030. On average each cigarette that is smoked is estimated to shorten life by 11 minutes. So next time you’re lighting up think of what you’re doing to your body, your life and the people around you and your future and also remember with every cigarette you are accepting the fact that you want to live a shorter life.

The Heart

We all have a heart, but do we all know how it works?

A heart is in 4 main sections and it has a right and left atrium, it also has a right and left ventricle.

Blood Vessel: Transports blood.
Vein: Brings blood to the heart.
Artery: Takes the blood away from the heart.
Right Atrium: Is the smaller atrium and it does the least work compared to the left atrium. The right atriums job is to recieve blood from the body using veins.
Left Atrium: Does more work as it takes the oxygenated blood from the lungs using the vein.
Right Ventricle:Takes the blood that is in need of oxygen to the source of oxygen, the lung.
Left Ventricle: Transports the blood to the whole body using the artery.

Cardio-Vascular System: One of the systems which includs organs such as the vein and the artery's.
Aorta: Is an artery that takes blood to the whole body.
Valve: Is the reason which causes the blood to go one way.


THE WHOLE STORY: From a cell the blood goes to the heart using the blood vessel and also the pumping of the heart so the blood vessel can take the blood up. The blood vessel takes the blood into the right atrium which then goes into the right ventricle. After that the blood goes to the lungs using the artery, because the blood needs to be oxygenated. From there it enters the left atrium via the blood vessel, and then it goes to the left ventricle. The artery takes, the now oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.

Cool Facts:
Did you know that human heart beat 35 million times a year.

-Your system of blood vessels - arteries, veins and capillaries - is over 60.000 ( 96.000 km ) miles long. That's long enough to go around the world more than twice!

-The adult heart pumps about 5 quarts of blood each minute - approximately 2.000 ( 9120 liters ) gallons of blood each day - throughout the body.

-The heart beats about 100.000 times each day.

-In a 70-year lifetime, the average human heart beats more than 2.5 billion times.

-Blood is about 78 percent water

-Most heart attacks occur between the hours of 8 and 9 AM.

The way Google makes money

How Does Google MAKE MONEY??

The way Google makes money is by advertisement! When you search something on Google, there’s a section called “Sponsored Links”, and every time you click that link Google charges an amount of money for that click. But Google take it a step further, and this step makes a lot of money for the company. When you want to advertise with Google, the largest search engine, you have to choose keywords that you’re targeting. The price the companies pay for each keyword relies on how many other companies are paying Google for that keyword, so from here on Google uses a sort of bidding system. The price the company pays will rely on how many companies are bidding for that keyword. The higher the amount of companies bidding for the same keyword, the more money your company will pay. The price can differ from $1 to more than $100. Not bad for a click hey?? So really Google is getting paid by selling traffic to other websites.

Google makes around 40 million dollars annually but it can make up to 56.7 billion dollars annually.

Most of the money comes from advertising but there are other domains where they gain money.

Nike Vs. Adidas

This is a question that comes to our mind when we go to a sports shop, because the two top brands are Nike and Adidas, so which one comes out on top?

Before going into this long debate, lets know how these top brands got their strange names.

Adidas was named by Adolf "Adi" Dassler, the adi and the first three letters of his last name made the combination of Adidas.

The name Nike came from the Greek name for the Goddess of Victory. A better way of naming a company.

Lets compare two shoes of the two brands:





They both make great shoes, but there must be something that differs perspectives of some people, in thinking that Nike is better, and some evidence in this is at the end of 2008, Adidas brought in $14.5 billion, while Nike brought in $18.6 billion.


The best way of seeing which brand/company is better is by seeing who wears them.

Nike sponsors national teams such as: Netherlands, England (Umbro, owned by Nike), France and Brazil.
Nike also sponsors Inter Milan, Juventus, Werder Bremen, Manchester United , Arsenal, Manchester City (Umbro owned by Nike) and the world club champions FC Barcelona.

Adidas on the other hands also sponsors big teams like: Argentina, Germany, South Africa and the world best national team Spain.

Adidas also sponsors widely known clubs like: AC Milan, Chelsea, Liverpool, Olympique Lyonnais, Ajax, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg.

Both brands don’t just stop at national and club teams; they sponsor the big names in sport too, so there is competition between the two brands to sponsor a player.

Adidas sponsor widely reached sports men and women such as: Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane, Oliver Kahn, Del Piero, Gerrard, Beckham, Novak Djokovic and Sachin Tendulkar (regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket).

Nike sponsors world known sports people like: MJ (Michael Jordan), The Fênomeno Ronaldo, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Maria Sharopova, Derek Jetter, Cristiano Ronaldo and Carles Puyol.

Let’s compare these publicly renowned brands in terms of their ability to reach widely known stars of each each sport.

Let us start with Soccer,, Adidas gets us started by getting the best player in the world in three years in a row, Lionel Messi, but Ronaldo(who is sponsored by Nike) has about the same amount of fans, maybe less, but brands don’t just look for the players ability, they look at the players faces to see if their face on their product will get them any money or not. Adidas was originally just focused on soccer shoes, so Adidas win the battle in Soccer.

There are three sports which win without any competition and those are cricket which Adidas wins by sponsoring Sachin Tendulkar and baseball which Nike win by sponsoring Derek Jeter also boxing which Nike wins again by sponsoring Manny Pacquiao known as "Pac-Man".

In Tennis,, Adidas have chosen the right men to sponser, they sponsor No.1 and No.2 ranking mens tennis players which are Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, but Nike have chosen the tennis players which are most known such as 5 time No.1 tennis player Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. So in Mens Tennis Adidas is the winner, but in overall Nike win because they sponsor Maria Sharapova, which is No.4 in womens ranking and Nike also sponsor Serana Williams, No.12 in the womens ranking. But in womens Adidas sponsor Ana Ivanovic which is currently placed at No.22.

In golf, Nike win by sponsoring Tiger Woods.

In basketball, Adidas dominate by sponsoring all 30 NBA teams!!! So that easily makes them the winner for basketball. But if you want to look at single players then Nike wins by sponsoring Michael Jordan, who is an icon for basketball, and also sponsoring Kobe Bryant and Lebron James.


Adidas was originally intended to be a product focusing for soccer sportswear. Currently, however, Adidas has spread its target to all sportswear.

Nike began focused on track, but since 1972 has expanded greatly.

A conclusion that can also be drawn is the fact that the pricier products have the more advanced technology, but the technology ideas aren't that different. Nikes are also the ones that are most likely endorsed by famous athletes, which Nike seems to have the upper hand in. In soccer, Adidas definitely has more support.

While Nike has the upper hand in sales and sponserships, Adidas is growing rapidly. Adidas owns Reebok, Taylor Made golf company and Rockport. Nike owns Umbro, Hurley, Converse and Cole Haan.

New Seven Wonders Of The World

There are different sorts of seven wonders like there’s the wonders of ancient world, medieval world and the recent one which is USA’s seven wonders. New Seven Wonders of the World was a project to update the seven wonders of the ancient world, which only has one wonder that currently exists. The Official New Seven Wonders of the World campaign started in 2001.

In 2007, more than 100 million people voted to declare the New Seven Wonders of the World. The following list of seven winners is presented without ranking, and aims to represent global heritage.
The new seven wonders are: Chichen Itza, Christ the Redeemer, Colosseum, Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, Petra, Taj Mahal and also the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World, was granted an honorary site.

India's Taj Mahal, a tomb built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite wife. Is one of the most well-known of the chosen sites, and was built in 1653.

Jordan's Petra - the famed Rose City - also made the list. Petra was chosen by the BBC as one of "the 40 places you have to see before you die".

Peru's Machu Picchu (macho peko), 2,430m (8,000ft) up a mountain slope, and is the remains of an Inca city. The Incas started building the "estate" around AD 1400.

The Great Wall of China was a popular winner. built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire has concluded that the entire Great Wall, with all of its branches, stretches for 8,851.8 km (5,500.3 mi) making it the world's longest manmade structure.

The Colosseum in Rome, where gladiators once fought, is the only European building to make the list. Stonehenge, the Acropolis and The Kremlin all lost out. The Colosseum was completed in 80 AD and capable of seating 50,000 spectators.

Brazil's Statue of Christ the Redeemer, which gazes down over Rio de Janeiro, is one of three winners from Latin America. Christ the Redeemer statue has been looming over the Brazilians from upon Corcovado Mountain in an awe-inspiring state of eternal blessing since 1931. The 130-foot reinforced concrete-and-soapstone statue was designed by Heitor da Silva Costa and cost approximately $250,000 to. The statue has become an easily recognized icon for Rio and Brazil. It took five years to construct the 635 tonne statue.

Chichen Itza (checken litza) built by the Maya civilization in 600 AD is located in Mexico. The genius and adaptability of Mayan culture can be seen in the splendid ruins of Chichen Itza. This powerful city, a trading centre for cloth, slaves, honey and salt, and acted as the political and economic hub of the Mayan civilization.

And last but not least the Great pyramid of Giza, which was built in 2560 BC. Initially at 146.5 metres (480.6 ft), the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years, the longest period of time ever held for such a record.