Never tell everything to _________

Secrets are important because

Whose fault was it at the New Delhi Railway Station?

I was pushed onto a lady yesterday at the crowded New Delhi Railway Station. She was angry at me. I apologized and moved on. That she was angry at me felt unfair to me when it was some other guy who pushed me. 

While that looked unfair, me being angry on the guy who pushed me looked completely fair until the absurdity of the whole thing hit me. It is highly likely that the guy who pushed me did so because someone else pushed him.

In other words, while punishing the messengers for the messages is something that comes naturally to us, it is probably not the right thing to do.

Alienology Question Paper (Makeup)

Answer all the questions. All the questions carry equal marks.


Q.1. Businesspersons recognize this as a familiar scenario. 'How do you sell to someone who does not need something?' The case for businesspersons is simplified by the fact that they deal with humans, who have emotions, albeit to varying degrees, and these make it simpler to make them take decisions which don't gel with their logic.

How one can get something from an alien who has no need or desire. Do all aliens feel a need to connect to others? What if the aliens would rather remain aloof? How would you interact with such an alien?

How do you deal with an alien who is purely logical? How do you exchange something with it when you have nothing to exchange which it deems worthy? How do you deal with aliens who do not even subscribe to logic as we know it? Is logic universal? Is it tied to the mathematical system we use, which is incidentally based on a set of human made axioms? Is it tied to our senses? Had we accepted that sun moves around the earth and earth if flat (believing what we see) and tried to explain this world, would we probably have succeeded with a different set of theories, and probably a different logic?

Q.2. Imagine a planet with just one living being. Describe its life. Integrate insights from the previous answer into this.

Q.3. How is life different on planets with life form that live for hundreds of millions of years different from life on earth? How is it different from the planet in Q.2.? Would your answer have differed if you had not thought of the planet in Q.2?

Horizontal rains

This time I am blogging on a topic of general interest to many people; planets which can allow horizontal rains to occur and the implications of its occurrence for life on those planets. Horizontal rains are strictly not rains since they do not touch the ground; they travel parallel to the surface of the planet. When someone says that the rain is horizontal, it means that the distance between the center of gravity of the rain droplet and the point on the surface at intersection of the line segment joining the center of gravity of the rain droplet and the center of gravity of the planet with the solid surface of the planet is constant.

I believe that there are at least two scenarios which we will broach here where such rain is possible.

1) The rain could exist if it occurs with a certain velocity and at a distance from the center of the planet where it is in free fall like the geostationary satellites which orbit the earth. One way the rain could form at that height is through a collision of the planet with a large space object reducing the planet's size and leaving the rain in orbit. It could also form when the atmosphere of the planet is denser than the rain leading to a situation where the rain is pushed to the height of the geosynchronous orbit. The velocity in this case could to be acquired from collisions which happened in the past or as a result of the ionization of liquid particles in the strong magnetic field of the star and the star's changing magnetic field creating an electric field which drives the ionized rain.

2) The rain could also occur when the liquid on the surface of the planet is a superfluid. (Superfluids have no viscosity, hence can flow endlessly). The necessary condition here is that the superfluid has to be trapped in its heavy atmosphere allowing it to flow endlessly and close to its surface. The atmosphere should take the form of the surface upon which it rests allowing the rain to flow in it while maintaining a constant distance from the surface. The reason we need a heavy atmosphere in this case is because it needs to be of uniform thickness and accurately mimic the planet's solid surface.

There are a few other scenarios which we have not explicitly considered here. For example, one with extremely low density liquids floating above the gaseous atmosphere; or extremely small and low density planets having their geosynchronous orbit very close to their surface. These can be considered to be special cases of the first two scenarios which were mentioned earlier. It is important to note here that gaseous planets with small sizes do not fit the bill of small low density planers because the low mass makes them inherently unstable. So, the small low density planets mentioned above should have a solid surface made of low density materials (think aerogels).

The implications for life of having a horizontal rain on their planet depends on the specific scenario in which this is occuring. In the case of the rain circling the planet in the geosynchronous orbit, the life on the planet would have to be based not on the liquid that circles them, but on something else. Alternatively it could gain energy from the electric field generated by the ionized rain. Note that no magnetic field is created on the planet's surface in this case because the ionized particles in the rain are stationary with respect to the surface.

The implications in case of a superfluid rain are more difficult to ascertain as uncertainty exists regarding the existence of life in an environment where the liquid in the body does not have viscosity. If the liquid of the rain is different from the primary liquid needed for life on the planet, then one implication is that life there should not show toxicity for the rain. This is necessitated by the ability of the superfluid rain to enter the body through the pores. Alternatively, the life on the planet could be completely solid requiring no pores; indicating a lack of need for metabolism. The existence of life without need for liquids and metabolism is not impossible considering that many of the man-made objects which mimic life have neither liquids nor pores and a general definition of life is yet to be agreed upon.

As a closing note it is important to note what the blog post leaves out. It does not question the laws of physics; and it does not explore in detail the various ways in which life can exist. Horizontal rains and implications for aquatic life is another omission which could turn out to be extremely interesting.