LEAP YEAR

What happened on 29^th February 1900? Well nothing since the day never existed. Now I can hear you say hang on don’t we have a leap year every four years? And if the year in question is divisible by 4 then it should be a leap year? The answer is partially correct.

Let us first understand why and how a leap year is calculated. We all know that it takes 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds for our earth to revolve the sun. We round off the minutes and seconds and we calculate it as 365 days and 6 hours. So six hours accumulated for four years becomes a day and so a day is added for every four years to the month of February which is known as leap day and the year as a leap year.

To round off the hour to a whole number i.e. to 6 hours we add 10 minutes and 48 seconds every year. Over a period of 400 years these extra minutes and seconds adds up to 3 days. Which means we add 648 seconds every year, in 400 years it would become 2,59,200 seconds. Which is 3 days (259200/60/60/24=3). To compensate these 3 days, it was decided that century years or the years which are divisible by 100 will not be a leap year unless it is also divisible by 400.

Therefore 1900 is not a leap year, so are 2100, 2200, 2300. Whereas years 2000, 2400 are leap years.

Now you may want to quickly check this, I can see you opening an MS Excel file and typing 29-Feb-1900. Surprise MS Excel accepts it as a date. But try 29-Feb-2100 or 2200 etc., you will find that they are treated as a text and not as date. The reason behind the treatment of 1900 as a leap year is given in these two links by Microsoft - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/21401 and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214058.


With Best regards,

bjayakar

Perception Management

We get information from Internet, TV Social Networking sites etc. We react to these events and we have an opinion on these events.  Are these informations facts? Are the opinions our own? Not in all cases.

I read a novel “The Whole Truth” by “David Baldacci”. I was thus introduced to a new theory called Perception Management. It is a field where Truth is manufactured and delivered to its targets. Making them believe it to be true irrespective of the actual truth. Perception Management is used by Government, Military, used in Fashion Industry, Media, politics. These managers adopt different methods and tools to change our perceptions.

Hope the above piece of information kindles curiosity.

With Best Regards,

bjayakar

Article in THE HINDU on Lemuria and Kumari Kandam

I just read this article in The Hindu, wanted to share it with you all

The Hindu : States / Tamil Nadu : Lemuria and Kumari Kandam

Time Travel

Couple of years ago I read Timeline a novel by Michael Crichton. Right from the first page the author grabs the attention of the reader. It is the story of few archaeologists traveling back to the 14^th century to a fort in France which is researched by the same archaeologists in the present time.

The idea of traveling from one time to another fascinated me. The concept of time travel is just not the imagination of a science fiction writer; this idea had been among us for a very long time. Time travel throws some interesting scientific debates; right from the origin of this idea to the possibility of time travel itself. Traveling back to the past poses some interesting Paradoxes the most famous is being the “Grandfather Paradox”. Suppose a person travels to the past, meets his grandfather and kills him before his father or mother is born and hence his birth would not have taken place and he could not have traveled back in time to kill his grandfather.

People who argue that such a travel is not possible put forth some reasonable arguments such as, if time machine is invented why we are not seeing any guest from the future, what if we accidentally kill one of our grandparents, what if we change few events and thereby the entire history, there is no past or future hence time travel is impossible.

There are theories which counter the above arguments. Parallel Universe is a theory which says that there are multiple universes co-existing at the same time. There is a universe for every possible outcome of every event.

After few years we actually may have a time machine to travel through time but we may not be allowed to alter the events which had already taken place. Hey lookout I may be standing behind you while you are reading this.