Our Earth and Future Earth : Continental Drift

[Paper presented at the National Seminar on the Concept of Scientific Temper organized by True Rationalistic Union of Samaj-seva Trainers (TRUST) led by Nihar Acharya at Jayadev Bhavan Bhubaneswar on 18 th December 2005] PART III......continuation

Black Hole and Bleak Future

United States National Science Foundation with the help of Cosmology Bolomeer Array Receiver (Acbar) from the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole station found that “ Universe is accelerating outwards and is dominated by strange form of matter nobody knows anything about. 30 percent of all energy is strange form of dark matter that does not interact with light and 65 percent is even a stranger form of dark energy that appears to be causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate” The principal investigator William Holzapfel of the University of California had said “ It is amazing how preciously our theories can explain the behavior of the Universe when we know so little about dark matter and dark energy that comprise 95 percent of it.

In this context in my blog on the eve of Diwali I wrote “Understand Darkness before celebrating Light”. Black holes will lead us to a bleak future. “Two super massive black holes each with the mass of at least a million suns have been encircling each other in a butter fly shaped galaxy. These two giant black holes found by Chandra X-Ray Observatory are at the center of a galaxy born from joining of two smaller galaxies and are drifting towards a cataclysmic collision that will send ripples throughout the universe many million years from now.

The observations showed that the big black holes were each about the size of the inner solar system that includes Earth, in a distance stretching from the Sun to Mars and were circling each other at a distance of 3000 light years. The merging of two smaller size galaxies into NGC 6240 is also a prelude to the future of the Earth’s galaxy, the Milky Way composed of hundreds of millions of stars including Sun. “ In about 4 billion years, astronomers believe the Milky Way and the nearby Andromeda galaxy will collide and merge fusing their black holes into one” says Dr.Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania University.

Well in this speech I am only drawing your attention to enlighten masses about dark energy and black holes. The effects that these black holes including the recent one found that will unsettle our Earth is matter of concern and deep study.

In an article on Secrets of Universe Priyamvada Natarajan, a Tamil Scientist says “ Current observations of distant Supernovae suggests that the universe is undergoing an accelerating phase having switched from a de-accelerating phase about 5 million years ago. This is believed to have been caused by dark energy. During the late 1990 observations by two independent research teams of these type la supernovae suggested that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating and it began doing so 5 billion years ago”.

Tenth planet found  

While we in our temples are coming around navagrahas, 10 th planet had been found. This new planet, yet to be named but currently known as 2003 UB313 is now 9 billion miles away from the Sun or 97 times far away as Earth and about 3 times Pluto’s current distance from the Sun. Its 560-year elliptical orbit brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. This discovery was made in January 8 th at Palomar Observatory at California.

Our Earth and Future Earth : Continental Drift

At the same time we must know that our planet Earth was once one continent called Pangaea, which drifted into and settled currently over 12 plates. Now the Indo Australian plate is breaking into two thereby creating the 13 th plate. Throughout history scientists believe that continents are drifting, moving closer or breaking one another. The super continent Pangaea broke 160 million years ago. Paul Hoffman Professor of Geology at Harvard University states that while Pangaea broke up the Atlantic Ocean opened splitting North America from Eurasia.

 Then North America parted from Eurasia, subsequently South America from Africa Australia Antarctica and India separated from Africa creating the Indian Ocean. Atlantic and Indian Oceans continue to widen while Pacific gets smaller.” It will become evident that the ring of fire, which means volcanic activity beneath ocean floor, as shown in a picture becomes the extreme vulnerable zone for earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis.