Curiosity: Did god create the universe?

Curiosity: Did god create the universe?

PART 1:

According to Stephen Hawking’s cosmic cookbook, we need three things for creating a universe, one Matter, second Energy, and third is Space.

In 1609, Galileo had analyzed Jupiter from his self engineered telescope, which helped him to see the space 20 times magnified, every night. The church was not into believing any of this (Aristarchus, in around 280 B.C., had said that earth was not the centre of universe, and it itself makes revolutions around the sun). Galileo had merely escaped death sentence for putting his revolutionary finding before the world. He had to take back his theories and he was put to life-sentence of public disappearance. He spent rest 30 years of his life in isolation. At the time when he had accepted his fault in the eyes of church and had accepted the punishment, he had spoken to himself, “Earth does make rotations.” While observing Jupiter, Galileo had noticed three shining points in close proximity of the spot of Jupiter. Sometimes there were four, and this number may become four but never increased. He observed the motion of these four points and it was in some way relative to the Jupiter. These four points were the moons of Jupiter which were rotating around it, which simply implies that not everything in universe has earth as its center, and hence Aristarchus was right.

There exist two types of laws in this world: one type is man-made, and second is nature-made. We can manipulate man-made rules to our comfort, ease and use, but we cannot manipulate the laws of nature which are same for everyone and apply in the same way on everything whether it is a tennis ball bouncing in the tennis court or it is big ball of gaseous in the cosmic space taking different shapes by virtue of gravitational pull of nearby galaxies. Nature-made rules can’t be violated by even God in case if he wishes to. Church had told not to go in depth of space research to the point of creation of universe, because it has been created by god himself. Stephen Hawking was against it. He had learnt from his childhood days in London that nothing comes for free, but then this was not wholly right, this universe was given to us for free, out of nothing.

PART 2:

If we consider a very simple example of creation of a mountain by a man in a large dusty ground in some highland, we shall understand an important, yet simple aspect of creation. The man starts digging the ground on his left and pours the sand on his right; he digs on his left and pours the sand on his right to form a heap. He digs and pours, digs and pours, this happens until he sees himself totally in the depth of dug ground on the side of his equally high sand mountain. This shows that where he built a mountain we got an excavation as well. In the overall process, the total change he brought to the surroundings is zero; the world is still there right from where he had started. So if universe had come out of nothing then from where did this energy come from, how this huge massive universe came into existence out of nothing? The dark matter, the anti matter is the substance which answers this intuitive question. Dark matter is present everywhere in space, until the mass and energy is concentrated itself in certain points in the vast volume of infinite space. The dark matter is everywhere, unlike mass and energy, yet on a whole when we bring the matter and anti-matter of the entire universe together once more it will amount to nothing, the zero, right from where it had once started.

This simply eliminates the doubt about the coming up of everything out of nothing after the Big Bang.

Albert Einstein had given beautiful, yet intelligent and complicated, equation E=mc^2 to show that mass and energy are two sides of a single coin. He said that energy and matter are different forms of each other. This further shortens our list of ingredients for ‘creating the universe’ cookbook to two; one is Energy and second is Space.

It is known that the creation of this universe had started with one big explosion which led to the release of all the energy and matter that currently constitutes this universe. Whole universe was of the size smaller than that of a proton, and it was an extremely condensed mass of black hole itself. Studies on black hole tell us that their gravitational pull is so powerful that even the light cannot escape of out of one. If we imagine a cosmic clock that is inching towards a distant black hole, then we find that as the cosmic clock inches forward its duration of one-moment increases. This decrease in the flow of time continues as long as the distance between the clock and the black hole decreases. If we assume that the clock remains intact even long after it has entered the black hole, we see that the clock stops ticking, there is no flow of time inside the black hole, and the black hole does not see the time passing.

Albert Einstein had beautifully shown how time and space are interleaved into each other. It is not new; it had been this way ever since the universe started to come into existence. Space and time cannot be without each other. The universal clock we live in had started right with the zeroth moment of Big Bang, neither before it, nor after.

PART 3:

Because we know that everything that is happening now is a direct result of the things that happened around the place before moment in question. When we try to explain one happening we point to what had happened before it. This is how the things happen.

It is in human nature to question, if ask for the reason behind the water-fall, then we get the answer from the mountain top that it must have due to a water body there. If we question the presence of water body, we see that it had rained there. If we reason try to reason the rainfall, we see that it must have been because of evaporation process going in the nearby see. If reason the evaporation process, we see that it is the sun, the source of heat. If try to reason the heat coming from sun we see that it is nuclear process of fusion of hydrogen with helium, and other crossed nuclear reactions. If try to reason the presence of hydrogen on sun, then it is the Big Bang, the process that created the entire universe. If now we will try to reason the Big Bang, then we will have go in time before it was there, before the universe was there, the time when there was one and only one thing, the super condensed black hole. The time in question is the about the moment when there was no time. Universe didn’t need a reason to take birth, the Big Bang wasn’t initiated, and it happened, it just happened. Universe didn’t need a moment to take birth, it just happened.

Therefore to ask ‘if god created the universe, was god the reason why everything came into being’ means going back in time when there was no time. It is like finding the end point of the surface of earth, the end point of this spherical planet we live on.

                                                                                                                                   “I believe that there is no need for god to be here, there is nothing like luck, destiny, hell, or heaven. There is nothing above, or below us, everything that’s here is here, and we have just this one life time to do what we can, to learn what we want. A life time that is like 6-minutes-and-a-quarter on the time course of 3000 years of human-kind, represented by a mere moment on this universal clock running since 14 billion years.” –Stephen Hawking

Why should you invest in mutual funds?

Why should you invest in mutual funds?

1. Power of compounding

Imagine if you earn an annual bonus of, say, $10,000 and you choose to invest it in a scheme to get an interest of 10% a year, at the end of the first year, you'll get a total of $11,000. Now, next year, instead of getting 10% on $10,000 again, with compounding interest, you'll get it on $11,000!

Imagine, if you keep investing over many years, how big a sum of money you'll be left with! Compounding allows you to turn just one dollar into thousands of dollars, if you leave it invested for long enough.

2. Making your money work

Investing your money is like giving you money a job. When you invest, you get your money back plus you earn interest or dividends, which are like to salary to your money.

3. The inflation problem

Inflation is when the price of goods and services rises over time. This occurs due to their demand growing faster than their supply, or when companies increase the cost of goods to maintain profit margins. And this is why you get fewer chocolates for $10 now than you did before.

So, does inflation mean that your money is losing its value? Yes, inflation simply means the same amount of money will buy you less things today than it did yesterday. That is to say, all the money one saves loses its value in the future because of inflation. But relax, as there is a way to prevent your money from losing its value and beat inflation. You have to make your money work effectively. All you need to do is put your money into investments that provide returns higher than inflation.

4. Introduction to equity

To invest in a company, you need to buy shares of that company, provided they are listed on the stock exchange. When that company makes a profit, the value of your shares goes up and you get a part of the profits of the company. It is like owning a small part of the company.

Well, the stock market is not easy to participate in. The price of shares depends on many factors in addition to profit a company makes, which you need to understand first, like the economic environment of the country, the prevalent market sentiment, estimated earnings of the company, among others. Yes, investing takes a lot of time and knowledge that most people do not have, so they make use of mutual funds. Mutual funds make investing in shares simple.

5. Mutual fund concepts

When you invest in a mutual fund, your money, along with money from like-minded investors, is pooled together and given to a fund manager. Then the fund manager will invest this money in stocks or bonds, depending on the mutual fund scheme's investment objective. Also, through mutual funds you can invest in large companies in which it may be difficult to invest on your own. Plus, your risk will be divided amongst all the investors and the best part - your money will be managed by a professional expert, so you don't have to worry about a thing. You do not need a lot of money to invest in mutual funds; you can even invest small amounts every month using a systematic investment plan (SIP).

6. Expert tips on SIP

Taking a SIP and making an investment for the long term is a great idea. In fact, SIP(s) are one of the best ways to invest. If you invest through a SIP, you invest a small amount regularly and enjoy the benefit of an average cost rather than paying a lump sum at one time.  When you invest through a SIP, it buys you units of mutual fund at regular intervals at various prices, this way, you get the benefit of Dollar Cost Averaging, this means, in the end, poor performance of the market on a single day does affect your investments that are spread across time at various prices. From the investor's perspective, you may also benefit from a lower average price per unit as opposed to a single, possible higher price!

7. Diversify and conquer

The importance of diversifying your investments is that it lowers your risk by offsetting your losses from one asset with profits from another, thereby helping you achieve your long-term financial goals. Losing your walled is a great example of how diversification works: let's suppose you had kept your license and ATM card in separate cardholder and some of your cash in your bag, by diversifying the places you carried things, you would have reduced the risk of losing everything at once. Basically, diversification is just a fancy name for the age-old saying, "don't put all of your eggs in one basked". If you put your investments in many 'baskets', a dip in one investment may be offset by a rise in another, thus diversification helps you reach your long-term financial goals while minimizing your risk.

8. 30-30 challenge

With longer lifespans today, we spend 30 years on an average working and another 30 years retired. Basically, your 30 working years need to fund your 30 years of retirement. Hence, the 30-30 challenge! Remember the ant and the grasshopper's story that takes place over one summer and winter. Think of summer as their 30 working years and winter as their 30 retirement years. Both the ant and grasshopper start at the same level, working through the summer of their lives at the same job. While the grasshopper fritters away all of his earnings with no regard for tomorrow, the ant invests a portion of his salary every month. Grasshopper needs to start saving and investing his money right now or else he will have no money left when he retires. Grasshopper thinks otherwise, "It is not like I'm retiring tomorrow. I'll start saving someday." But he is not considering inflation in the future; he is busy enjoying himself right now. When winter rolls around, the ant's meticulous planning pays off as his investment returns allow him to continue his standard of living. Meanwhile, the now-penniless grasshopper realizes too late that he should have listened to the ant when he had the change. So, the earlier you start investing, the lesser you'll have to save in the end. The later you start, the more you have to save from your earnings and the less you will get to spend. That’s the power of compounding at play.

9. Taxing trouble

The government takes a percentage from the earnings of the individuals and businesses to maintain public infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and so on. This is what you call tax. Government also gives you the opportunities to save, provided you are helping the economy grow. One of the best ways is by investing, when you invest, you are pumping money back into the economy, helping the economy grow. If you invest your money in certain tax instruments that come under section 80C of the Indian income tax act, the government will give you tax deductions for that financial year! You could invest in an equity linked savings scheme (ELSS). This helps you save tax and seeks to grow your money while beating the inflation rate.

10. Child plans

While thinking of rising education expenses of your children, what you need is a child plan. Invest a small amount for your child every month in a child plan and through the power of compounding over the long term, this money will exponentially grow into a tidy sum for the child later in life. They are like SIP(s) for children.

11. Volatility and waiting it out

Sometimes, waiting it out is the best solution, even when it comes to investing. You see, the stock market is subject to fluctuations, due to both internal and external factors like growth or decline of the economy, global market prices, war, even global warming. These fluctuations are what you call stock market volatility and are completely normal. People get worried when the stock market goes down. This is when you have to wait it out. Investments, especially SIP(s), are safer in the long term because over the long run, this volatility will spread out and will not affect your returns adversely. In fact, it can work to your advantage. If you've invested in a SIP, you will purchase more units when the market has gone down. Thus, over the long term, due to Dollar Cost Averaging, you stand to get better returns.

Improvements In Healthcare System In Delhi Under Aam Aadmi Party (2016)

Despite everything that has happened over the past year since ruling Aam Aadmi Party came to power in Delhi, there has been some major reforms in the healthcare industry. In the Delhi Budget 2015-16, Rs 4787 crore was allotted to the health sector, whose planned outlay has been pegged at Rs 3138 crore, 45 percent more than last time.  

Some of the major developments are as follows:

1. Mohalla clinic: AAP offers affordable healthcare model at doorstep.
AAP delivers on pre-poll promise as Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal plans to open 1,000 mohalla clinics by the end of this year, offering healthcare at doorstep. ‘The introduction of the medicine vending machine gives confidence to the patient. It also makes the process more transparent’, said Rishi Bal, a doctor at the Todapur mohalla clinic. This is a big step in a country which neither has a capitalist driven private healthcare model like US nor a socialized universal healthcare program like UK, France, Scandinavian countries, etc. 

2. AAP's healthcare bonanza: Delhi government reveals plans for more dialysis units and a separate Delhi Health University
In a meeting held on December 10, 2015, the Minister for Health and Family Welfare Satyendra Jain and some other senior health officials resolved to improve some of the basic facilities in the government hospitals.
“The health minister is too keen in changing the old face of the government hospitals. He wants people to prefer Delhi government hospitals over the private hospitals. We have been told to work on the plans in the next 15 days,” according to a senior doctor. 
Under the new initiative, the government plans to set up six new dialysis machines at Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital and 10 at Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital. The tender for using the dialysis unit through private agencies is to be floated on an "as is where is" basis. 

3) Initiatives by the central government in line with the AAP's groundwork:
Earlier in 2016, the Central government in a pilot project set up five healthcare ATMs. This project, spread across four states including Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, are to tackle the shortage of doctors and pilferage that comes along with free drug programmes. “In medical science, history is very important,” said Mitra, adding that creating a digital database which can be accessed instantly is positive step.

4) Expand Healthcare Infrastructure: We will create 900 new Primary Health Centers (PHCs) and 30,000 more beds in Delhi hospitals, out of which 4,000 will be in maternity wards. We will ensure that Delhi conforms to the international norm of five beds for every 1000 people.”

5) Quality Drugs For All At Affordable Price: Pharmaceutical drug and equipment procurement will be centralized to ensure zero corruption. High quality drugs will be made available to the public.” Government sources said the plan was ambitious, as it required ensuring no shortage of medicines and consumables mentioned in the Essential Drug List in each of the 39 government hospitals.

6) The Aam Aadmi Party Govt. in Delhi recently announced several measures to provide improved health care to the people of Delhi. The Delhi Health Minister, Satyendra Jain used twitter (@SatyendarJain) to announce these. 

Is having a water fountain a sensible thing to do?

Is having a water fountain a sensible thing to do?

Let us discuss this in points:

1. Fountains are a wastage of water.
Fountains represent a conspicuous consumption of scarce water resources. Not only do they use water, but the splash and flow of fountains flaunt this dubious use of water.

2. Fountains make too much noise.
Water fountains operate at a minimal amount of noise, which could be enough to disrupt the peace of mind if not taken care of. However, there are ways to make it quiet if the water pump is become a nuisance. First, make sure the water level is covering the pump. Next, make sure the pump isn’t vibrating against one or the other side. (If so, put a cloth in between the pump and fountain) The fountain should operate quietly after this.

3. Water fountains use a lot of electricity.
Your fountain should use electricity depending on the number of water outlets it has, the pressure at which the fountain is operating, and the lighting present in the fountain setup. The electricity wasted in water fountain operating at high pressure with five openings could rather be used to light up five houses in a remote village.

4. Algae and other mineral deposits develop in the water body.
To keep all the pests out of the fountain, it requires a few drops of anti-algae water treatment into the fountain on a weekly basis. These drops should destroy algae already present and also prevent the formation of new growth.

5. Mosquito breeding
Water fountains should be cleaned to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in it. It is better to turn off and dry the fountains during the seasons when mosquito population thrives.


Concluding with this, it is not a sensible thing to install fountain as the resources it takes are scarce and it has some major side effects.

Dated: 21 Nov 2016