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NAME :M.Vijayasarathy.B.E.(CIVIL.2nd YR.)
FATHER :P.Muthu.M.Sc.,
MOTHER :M.Thavamani.
ADDRESS :1-41,karambayam(east),
pappanadu(post),
Pattukkottai(TK),
Thanjavur-614626.
INDIA.
D.O.B : 27 october 1988.
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AT :From L.K.G to 10th
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Erode-638010.
In 11th &12 th
Navarasam Matric.Hr.Sec.School,
palliyuthu,
Erode.
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K.S.Rangasamy college of tech.,
Tiruchengode.
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NANOTECHNOLOGY

sarathy88 — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 05:16:19 CDT

Nanotechnology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Buckminsterfullerene C60, also known as the buckyball, is the simplest of the carbon structures known as fullerenes. Members of the fullerene family are a major subject of research falling under the nanotechnology umbrella.

Nanotechnology is a field of applied science and technology covering a broad range of topics. The main unifying theme is the control of matter on a scale smaller than 1 micrometre, normally approximately 1 to 100 nanometers, as well as the fabrication of devices of this size. It is a highly multidisciplinary field, drawing from fields such as applied physics, materials science, colloidal science, device physics, supramolecular chemistry, and even mechanical and electrical engineering. Much speculation exists as to what new science and technology may result from these lines of research. Nanotechnology can be seen as an extension of existing sciences into the nanoscale, or as a recasting of existing sciences using a newer, more modern term.
Two main approaches are used in nanotechnology. In the "bottom-up" approach, materials and devices are built from molecular components which assemble themselves chemically by principles of molecular recognition. In the "top-down" approach, nano-objects are constructed from larger entities without atomic-level control.
The impetus for nanotechnology comes from a renewed interest in colloidal science, coupled with a new generation of analytical tools such as the atomic force microscope (AFM), and the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Combined with refined processes such as electron beam lithography and molecular beam epitaxy, these instruments allow the deliberate manipulation of nanostructures, and led to the observation of novel phenomena.
Examples of nanotechnology in modern use are the manufacture of polymers based on molecular structure, and the design of computer chip layouts based on surface science. Despite the great promise of numerous nanotechnologies such as quantum dots and nanotubes, real commercial applications have mainly used the advantages of colloidal nanoparticles in bulk form, such as suntan lotion, cosmetics, protective coatings, and stain resistant clothing.
TopicsSubfields and related fieldsNanomaterialsMolecular nanotechnology //

[edit] Origins

Main article: History of nanotechnology

The first distinguishing concepts in nanotechnology (but predating use of that name) was in "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959. Feynman described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, so on down to the needed scale. In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity would become less important, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction would become more important, etc. This basic idea appears feasible, and exponential assembly enhances it with parallelism to produce a useful quantity of end products.
The term "nanotechnology" was defined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi in a 1974 paper (N. Taniguchi, "On the Basic Concept of 'Nano-Technology'," Proc. Intl. Conf. Prod. Eng. Tokyo, Part II, Japan Society of Precision Engineering, 1974.) as follows: "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or by one molecule." In the 1980s the basic idea of this definition was explored in much more depth by Dr. K. Eric Drexler, who promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena and devices through speeches and the books Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (1986) and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, (1998, ISBN 0-471-57518-6), and so the term acquired its current sense.
Nanotechnology and nanoscience got started in the early 1980s with two major developments; the birth of cluster science and the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). This development led to the discovery of fullerenes in 1986 and carbon nanotubes a few years later. In another development, the synthesis and properties of semiconductor nanocrystals was studied. This led to a fast increasing number of metal oxide nanoparticles of quantum dots. The atomic force microscope was invented five years after the STM was invented. The AFM uses atomic force to see the atoms.

[edit] Fundamental concepts

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

The Opensource Handbook of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

One nanometer (nm) is one billionth, or 10-9 of a meter. For comparison, typical carbon-carbon bond lengths, or the spacing between these atoms in a molecule, are in the range .12-.15 nm, and a DNA double-helix has a diameter around 2 nm. On the other hand, the smallest cellular lifeforms, the bacteria of the genus Mycoplasma, are around 200 nm in length. To put that scale in to context the comparative size of a nanometer to a meter is the same as that of a marble to the size of the earth[1]. Or another way of putting it: a nanometer is the amount a man's beard grows in the time it takes him to raise the razor to his face[2] .

[edit] Larger to smaller: a materials perspective

Image of reconstruction on a clean Au(100) surface, as visualized using scanning tunneling microscopy. The individual atoms composing the surface are visible.

Main article: Nanomaterials

A unique aspect of nanotechnology is the vastly increased ratio of surface area to volume present in many nanoscale materials which opens new possibilities in surface-based science, such as catalysis. A number of physical phenomena become noticeably pronounced as the size of the system decreases. These include statistical mechanical effects, as well as quantum mechanical effects, for example the “quantum size effect” where the electronic properties of solids are altered with great reductions in particle size. This effect does not come into play by going from macro to micro dimensions. However, it becomes dominant when the nanometer size range is reached. Additionally, a number of physical properties change when compared to macroscopic systems. One example is the increase in surface area to volume of materials. This catalytic activity also opens potential risks in their interaction with biomaterials.
Materials reduced to the nanoscale can suddenly show very different properties compared to what they exhibit on a macroscale, enabling unique applications. For instance, opaque substances become transparent (copper); inert materials become catalysts (platinum); stable materials turn combustible (aluminum); solids turn into liquids at room temperature (gold); insulators become conductors (silicon). A material such as gold, which is chemically inert at normal scales, can serve as a potent chemical catalyst at nanoscales. Much of the fascination with nanotechnology stems from these unique quantum and surface phenomena that matter exhibits at the nanoscale.

[edit] Simple to complex: a molecular perspective

Main article: Molecular self-assembly

Modern synthetic chemistry has reached the point where it is possible to prepare small molecules to almost any structure. These methods are used today to produce a wide variety of useful chemicals such as pharmaceuticals or commercial polymers. This ability raises the question of extending this kind of control to the next-larger level, seeking methods to assemble these single molecules into supramolecular assemblies consisting of many molecules arranged in a well defined manner.
These approaches utilize the concepts of molecular self-assembly and/or supramolecular chemistry to automatically arrange themselves into some useful conformation through a bottom-up approach. The concept of molecular recognition is especially important: molecules can be designed so that a specific conformation or arrangement is favored due to non-covalent intermolecular forces. The Watson-Crick basepairing rules are a direct result of this, as is the specificity of an enzyme being targeted to a single substrate, or the specific folding of the protein itself. Thus, two or more components can be designed to be complementary and mutually attractive so that they make a more complex and useful whole.
Such bottom-up approaches should, broadly speaking, be able to produce devices in parallel and much cheaper than top-down methods, but could potentially be overwhelmed as the size and complexity of the desired assembly increases. Most useful structures require complex and thermodynamically unlikely arrangements of atoms. Nevertheless, there are many examples of self-assembly based on molecular recognition in biology, most notably Watson-Crick basepairing and enzyme-substrate interactions. The challenge for nanotechnology is whether these principles can be used to engineer novel constructs in addition to natural ones.

[edit] Molecular nanotechnology: a long-term view

Main article: Molecular nanotechnology

Molecular nanotechnology, sometimes called molecular manufacturing, is a term given to the concept of engineered nanosystems (nanoscale machines) operating on the molecular scale. It is especially associated with the concept of a molecular assembler, a machine that can produce a desired structure or device atom-by-atom using the principles of mechanosynthesis. Manufacturing in the context of productive nanosystems is not related to, and should be clearly distinguished from, the conventional technologies used to manufacture nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles.
When the term "nanotechnology" was independently coined and popularized by Eric Drexler (who at the time was unaware of an earlier usage by Norio Taniguchi) it referred to a future manufacturing technology based on molecular machine systems. The premise was that molecular-scale biological analogies of traditional machine components demonstrated molecular machines were possible: by the countless examples found in biology, it is known that billions of years of evolutionary feedback can produce sophisticated, stochastically optimised biological machines. It is hoped that developments in nanotechnology will make possible their construction by some other means, perhaps using biomimetic principles. However, Drexler and other researchers have proposed that advanced nanotechnology, although perhaps initially implemented by biomimetic means, ultimately could be based on mechanical engineering principles, namely, a manufacturing technology based on the mechanical functionality of these components (such as gears, bearings, motors, and structural members) that would enable programmable, positional assembly to atomic specification (PNAS-1981). The physics and engineering performance of exemplar designs were analyzed in Drexler's book Nanosystems. But Drexler's analysis is very qualitative and does not address very pressing issues, such as the "fat fingers" and "Sticky fingers" problems. In general it is very difficult to assemble devices on the atomic scale, as all one has to position atoms are other atoms of comparable size and stickyness.
Another view, put forth by Carlo Montemagno, is that future nanosystems will be hybrids of silicon technology and biological molecular machines. Yet another view, put forward by the late Richard Smalley, is that mechanosynthesis is impossible due to the difficulties in mechanically manipulating individual molecules. This led to an exchange of letters in the ACS publication Chemical & Engineering News in 2003.
Though biology clearly demonstrates that molecular machine systems are possible, non-biological molecular machines are today only in their infancy. Leaders in research on non-biological molecular machines are Dr. Alex Zettl and his colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories and UC Berkeley. They have constructed at least three distinct molecular devices whose motion is controlled from the desktop with changing voltage: a nanotube nanomotor, a molecular actuator, and a nanoelectromechanical relaxation oscillator. An experiment indicating that positional molecular assembly is possible was performed by Ho and Lee at Cornell University in 1999. They used a scanning tunneling microscope to move an individual carbon monoxide molecule (CO) to an individual iron atom (Fe) sitting on a flat silver crystal, and chemically bound the CO to the Fe by applying a voltage.

[edit] Current research

Space-filling model of the nanocar on a surface, using fullerenes as wheels.

Graphical representation of a rotaxane, useful as a molecular switch.

This device transfers energy from nano-thin layers of quantum wells to nanocrystals above them, causing the nanocrystals to emit visible light. [1]

As nanotechnology is a very broad term, there are many disparate but sometimes overlapping subfields that could fall under its umbrella. The following avenues of research could be considered subfields of nanotechnology. Note that these categories are fairly nebulous and a single subfield may overlap many of them, especially as the field of nanotechnology continues to mature.

[edit] Nanomaterials

This includes subfields which develop or study materials having unique properties arising from their nanoscale dimensions.

Colloid science has given rise to many materials which may be useful in nanotechnology, such as carbon nanotubes and other fullerenes, and various nanoparticles and nanorods.
Nanoscale materials can also be used for bulk applications; most present commercial applications of nanotechnology are of this flavor.
Progress has been made in using these materials for medical applications; see Nanomedicine.

[edit] Bottom-up approaches

These seek to arrange smaller components into more complex assemblies.

DNA Nanotechnology utilises the specificity of Watson-Crick basepairing to construct well-defined structures out of DNA and other nucleic acids.
More generally, molecular self-assembly seeks to use concepts of supramolecular chemistry, and molecular recognition in particular, to cause single-molecule components to automatically arrange themselves into some useful conformation.

[edit] Top-down approaches

These seek to create smaller devices by using larger ones to direct their assembly.

Many technologies descended from conventional solid-state silicon methods for fabricating microprocessors are now capable of creating features smaller than 100 nm, falling under the definition of nanotechnology. Giant magnetoresistance-based hard drives already on the market fit this description, [2] as do atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques.
Solid-state techniques can also be used to create devices known as nanoelectromechanical systems or NEMS, which are related to microelectromechanical systems or MEMS.
Atomic force microscope tips can be used as a nanoscale "write head" to deposit a chemical on a surface in a desired pattern in a process called dip pen nanolithography. This fits into the larger subfield of nanolithography.

[edit] Functional approaches

These seek to develop components of a desired functionality without regard to how they might be assembled.

Molecular electronics seeks to develop molecules with useful electronic properties. These could then be used as single-molecule components in a nanoelectronic device. For an example see rotaxane.
Synthetic chemical methods can also be used to create synthetic molecular motors, such as in a so-called nanocar.

[edit] Speculative

These subfields seek to anticipate what inventions nanotechnology might yield, or attempt to propose an agenda along which inquiry might progress. These often take a big-picture view of nanotechnology, with more emphasis on its societal implications than the details of how such inventions could actually be created.

Molecular nanotechnology is a proposed approach which involves manipulating single molecules in finely controlled, deterministic ways. This is more theoretical than the other subfields and is beyond current capabilities.
Nanorobotics centers on self-sufficient machines of some functionality operating at the nanoscale. There are hopes for applying nanorobots in medicine [3][4][5], while it might not be easy to do such a thing because of several drawbacks of such devices [6][7]. Nevertheless, progress on innovative materials and methodologies has been demonstrated with some patents granted about new nanomanufacturing devices for future commercial applications, which also progressively helps in the development towards nanorobots with the use of embedded nanobioelectronics concept[8].
Programmable matter based on artificial atoms seeks to design materials whose properties can be easily and reversibly externally controlled.
Due to the popularity and media exposure of the term nanotechnology, the words picotechnology and femtotechnology have been coined in analogy to it, although these are only used rarely and informally.

[edit] Tools and techniques

Typical AFM setup. A microfabricated cantilever with a sharp tip is deflected by features on a sample surface, much like in a phonograph but on a much smaller scale. A laser beam reflects off the backside of the cantilever into a set of photodetectors, allowing the deflection to be measured and assembled into an image of the surface.

Another technique uses SPT™s (surface patterning tool) as the molecular “ink cartridge”. Each SPT is a microcantilever-based micro-fluidic handling device. SPTs contain either a single microcantilever print head or multiple microcantilevers for simultaneous printing of multiple molecular species. The integrated microfluidic network transports fluid samples from reservoirs located on the SPT through microchannels to the distal end of the cantilever. Thus SPTs can be used to print materials that include biological samples such as proteins, DNA, RNA, and whole viruses, as well as non-biological samples such as chemical solutions, colloids and particle suspensions. SPTs are most commonly used with molecular printers.
Nanotechnological techniques include those used for fabrication of nanowires, those used in semiconductor fabrication such as deep ultraviolet lithography, electron beam lithography, focused ion beam machining, nanoimprint lithography, atomic layer deposition, and molecular vapor deposition, and further including molecular self-assembly techniques such as those employing di-block copolymers. However, all of these techniques preceded the nanotech era, and are extensions in the development of scientific advancements rather than techniques which were devised with the sole purpose of creating nanotechnology and which were results of nanotechnology research.
Nanoscience and nanotechnology only became possible in the 1910s with the development of the first tools to measure and make nanostructures. But the actual development started with the discovery of electrons and neutrons which showed scientists that matter can really exist on a much smaller scale than what we normally think of as small, and/or what they thought was possible at the time. It was at this time when curiosity for nanostructures had originated.
The atomic force microscope (AFM) and the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) are two early versions of scanning probes that launched nanotechnology. There are other types of scanning probe microscopy, all flowing from the ideas of the scanning confocal microscope developed by Marvin Minsky in 1961 and the scanning acoustic microscope (SAM) developed by Calvin Quate and coworkers in the 1970s, that made it possible to see structures at the nanoscale. The tip of a scanning probe can also be used to manipulate nanostructures (a process called positional assembly). Feature-oriented scanning-positioning methodology suggested by Rostislav Lapshin appears to be a promising way to implement these nanomanipulations in automatic mode. However, this is still a slow process because of low scanning velocity of the microscope. Various techniques of nanolithography such as dip pen nanolithography, electron beam lithography or nanoimprint lithography were also developed. Lithography is a top-down fabrication technique where a bulk material is reduced in size to nanoscale pattern.
The top-down approach anticipates nanodevices that must be built piece by piece in stages, much as manufactured items are currently made. Scanning probe microscopy is an important technique both for characterization and synthesis of nanomaterials. Atomic force microscopes and scanning tunneling microscopes can be used to look at surfaces and to move atoms around. By designing different tips for these microscopes, they can be used for carving out structures on surfaces and to help guide self-assembling structures. By using, for example, feature-oriented scanning-positioning approach, atoms can be moved around on a surface with scanning probe microscopy techniques. At present, it is expensive and time-consuming for mass production but very suitable for laboratory experimentation.
In contrast, bottom-up techniques build or grow larger structures atom by atom or molecule by molecule. These techniques include chemical synthesis, self-assembly and positional assembly. Another variation of the bottom-up approach is molecular beam epitaxy or MBE. Researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories like John R. Arthur. Alfred Y. Cho, and Art C. Gossard developed and implemented MBE as a research tool in the late 1960s and 1970s. Samples made by MBE were key to the discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect for which the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded. MBE allows scientists to lay down atomically-precise layers of atoms and, in the process, build up complex structures. Important for research on semiconductors, MBE is also widely used to make samples and devices for the newly emerging field of spintronics.
Newer techniques such as Dual Polarisation Interferometry are enabling scientists to measure quantitatively the molecular interactions that take place at the nano-scale.

[edit] Applications

Main article: List of nanotechnology applications

Although there has been much hype about the potential applications of nanotechnology, most current commercialized applications are limited to the use of "first generation" passive nanomaterials. These include titanium dioxide nanoparticles in sunscreen, cosmetics and some food products; silver nanoparticles in food packaging, clothing, disinfectants and household appliances; zinc oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens and cosmetics, surface coatings, paints and outdoor furniture varnishes; and cerium oxide nanoparticles as a fuel catalyst. The Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars' Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies hosts an inventory of consumer products which now contain nanomaterials.
However further applications which require actual manipulation or arrangement of nanoscale components await further research. Though technologies currently branded with the term 'nano' are sometimes little related to and fall far short of the most ambitious and transformative technological goals of the sort in molecular manufacturing proposals, the term still connotes such ideas. Thus there may be a danger that a "nano bubble" will form, or is forming already, from the use of the term by scientists and entrepreneurs to garner funding, regardless of interest in the transformative possibilities of more ambitious and far-sighted work.
The National Science Foundation (a major source of funding for nanotechnology in the United States) funded researcher David Berube to study the field of nanotechnology. His findings are published in the monograph “Nano-Hype: The Truth Behind the Nanotechnology Buzz". This published study (with a foreword by Mihail Roco, head of the NNI) concludes that much of what is sold as “nanotechnology” is in fact a recasting of straightforward materials science, which is leading to a “nanotech industry built solely on selling nanotubes, nanowires, and the like” which will “end up with a few suppliers selling low margin products in huge volumes."

[edit] Implications

Main article: Implications of nanotechnology

Due to the far-ranging claims that have been made about potential applications of nanotechnology, a number of concerns have been raised about what effects these will have on our society if realized, and what action if any is appropriate to mitigate these risks. Short-term issues include the effects that widespread use of nanomaterials would have on human health and the environment. Longer-term concerns center on the implications that new technologies will have for society at large, and whether these could possibly lead to either a post scarcity economy, or alternatively exacerbate the wealth gap between developed and developing nations.

[edit] Health and environmental issues

There is a growing body of scientific evidence which demonstrates the potential for some nanomaterials to be toxic to humans or the environment [3], [4], [5]. The smaller a particle, the greater its surface area to volume ratio and the higher its chemical reactivity and biological activity. The greater chemical reactivity of nanomaterials results in increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), including free radicals [6]. ROS production has been found in a diverse range of nanomaterials including carbon fullerenes, carbon nanotubes and nanoparticle metal oxides. ROS and free radical production is one of the primary mechanisms of nanoparticle toxicity; it may result in oxidative stress, inflammation, and consequent damage to proteins, membranes and DNA [7].
The extremely small size of nanomaterials also means that they are much more readily taken up by the human body than larger sized particles. Nanomaterials are able to cross biological membranes and access cells, tissues and organs that larger-sized particles normally cannot [8]. Nanomaterials can gain access to the blood stream following inhalation [9] or ingestion [10]. At least some nanomaterials can penetrate the skin [11]; even larger microparticles may penetrate skin when it is flexed [12]. Broken skin is an ineffective particle barrier [13], suggesting that acne, eczema, shaving wounds or severe sunburn may enable skin uptake of nanomaterials more readily. Once in the blood stream, nanomaterials can be transported around the body and are taken up by organs and tissues including the brain, heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, bone marrow and nervous system [14]. Nanomaterials have proved toxic to human tissue and cell cultures, resulting in increased oxidative stress, inflammatory cytokine production and cell death [15]. Unlike larger particles, nanomaterials may be taken up by cell mitochondria [16] and the cell nucleus [17], [18]. Studies demonstrate the potential for nanomaterials to cause DNA mutation [19] and induce major structural damage to mitochondria, even resulting in cell death [20], [21].
Size is therefore a key factor in determining the potential toxicity of a particle. However it is not the only important factor. Other properties of nanomaterials that influence toxicity include: chemical composition, shape, surface structure, surface charge, aggregation and solubility [22], and the presence or absence of functional groups of other chemicals [23]. The large number of variables influencing toxicity means that it is difficult to generalise about health risks associated with exposure to nanomaterials – each new nanomaterial must be assessed individually and all material properties must be taken into account.
In its seminal 2004 report Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and Uncertainties, the United Kingdom's Royal Society recommended that nanomaterials be regulated as new chemicals, that research laboratories and factories treat nanomaterials "as if they were hazardous", that release of nanomaterials into the environment be avoided as far as possible, and that products containing nanomaterials be subject to new safety testing requirements prior to their commercial release. Yet regulations world-wide still fail to distinguish between materials in their nanoscale and bulk form. This means that nanomaterials remain effectively unregulated; there is no regulatory requirement for nanomaterials to face new health and safety testing or environmental impact assessment prior to their use in commercial products, if these materials have already been approved in bulk form.
The health risks of nanomaterials are of particular concern for workers who may face occupational exposure to nanomaterials at higher levels, and on a more routine basis, than the general public.

[edit] Broader societal implications and challenges

Beyond the toxicity risks to human health and the environment which are associated with first-generation nanomaterials, nanotechnology has broader societal implications and poses broader social challenges. Social scientists have suggested that nanotechnology's social issues should be understood and assessed not simply as "downstream" risks or impacts, but as challenges to be factored into "upstream" research and decision making, in order to ensure technology development that meets social objectives [24]. Many social scientists and civil society organisations further suggest that technology assessment and governance should also involve public participation [25], [26], [27], [28].
Some observers suggest that nanotechnology will build incrementally, as did the 18-19th century industrial revolution, until it gathers pace to drive a nanotechnological revolution that will radically reshape our economies, our labour markets, international trade, international relations, social structures, civil liberties, our relationship with the natural world and even what we understand to be human. Others suggest that it may be more accurate to describe nanotechnology-driven changes as a “technological tsunami”. Just like a tsunami, analysts warn that rapid nanotechnology-driven change will necessarily have profound disruptive impacts. As the APEC Center for Technology Foresight observes:

If nanotechnology is going to revolutionise manufacturing, health care, energy supply, communications and probably defence, then it will transform labour and the workplace, the medical system, the transportation and power infrastructures and the military. None of these latter will be changed without significant social disruption. [29]

The implications of the analysis of such a powerful new technology remain sharply divided. Nano optimists, including many governments, see nanotechnology delivering environmentally benign material abundance for all by providing universal clean water supplies; atomically engineered food and crops resulting in greater agricultural productivity with less labour requirements; nutritionally enhanced interactive ‘smart’ foods; cheap and powerful energy generation; clean and highly efficient manufacturing; radically improved formulation of drugs, diagnostics and organ replacement; much greater information storage and communication capacities; interactive ‘smart’ appliances; and increased human performance through convergent technologies [30], [31].
Nano skeptics suggest that nanotechnology will simply exacerbate problems stemming from existing socio-economic inequity and the unequal distribution of power by creating greater inequities between rich and poor through an inevitable nano-divide (the gap between those who control the new nanotechnologies and those whose products, services or labour are displaced by them); destabilising international relations through a growing nano arms race and increased potential for bioweaponry; providing the tools for ubiquitous surveillance, with significant implications for civil liberty; breaking down the barriers between life and non-life through nanobiotechnology, and redefining even what it means to be human [

FLOOD

sarathy88 — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:57:55 CDT

Flood

Picture of flooding in Amphoe Sena, Ayutthaya Province, Thailand.

For other uses, see Flood (disambiguation).

A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land, a deluge.[1] In the sense of "flowing water", the word is applied to the inflow of the tide, as opposed to the outflow or "ebb".
It is usually due to the volume of water within a body of water, such as a river or lake, exceeding the total capacity of the body, and as a result some of the water flows or sits outside of the normal perimeter of the body. It can also occur in rivers, when the strength of the river is so high it flows right out of the river channel , usually at corners or meanders. These of course, are not applicable in such instances as sea flooding.
The word comes from the Old English flod, a word common to Teutonic languages, compare German Flut, Dutch vloed from the same root as is seen in flow, float.
The Flood, the great Universal Deluge of myth and perhaps of history is treated at Deluge (in mythology).

Causes

Flooding in Asheville, North Carolina in July 1916.

Rock River floodwaters in downtown Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.

Flood waters in Grayson County, Texas, June, 2007.

Floods from the sea can cause overflow or overtopping of flood defences like dikes as well as flattening of dunes or bluffs. Land behind the coastal defence may be inundated or experience damage. A flood from sea may be caused by a heavy storm (storm surge), a high tide, a tsunami, or a combination thereof. As many urban communities are located near the coast this is a major threat around the world. Many rivers flow over relatively flat land border on broad flood plains. When heavy the deposition of silt on the rich farmlands and can result in their eventual depletion. The annual cycle of flood and farming was of great significance to many early farming cultures, most famously to the ancient Egyptians of the Nile river and to the Mesopotamians of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
A flood occurs when an area of land, usually low-lying, is covered with water. The worst floods usually occur when a river overflows its banks. An example of this is the January 1999 Queensland floods, which swamped south-eastern Queensland. Floods happen when soil and vegetation cannot absorb all the water. The water then runs off the land in quantities that cannot be carried in stream channels or kept in natural ponds or man-made reservoirs.
Periodic floods occur naturally on many rivers, forming an area known as the flood plain. These river floods usually result from heavy rain, sometimes combined with melting snow, which causes the rivers to overflow their banks. A flood that rises and falls rapidly with little or no advance warning is called a flash flood. Flash floods usually result from intense rainfall over a relatively small area. Coastal areas are occasionally flooded by high tides caused by severe winds on ocean surfaces, or by tsunami waves caused by undersea earthquakes. There are often many causes for a flood.
Monsoon rainfalls can cause disastrous flooding in some equatorial countries, such as Bangladesh; Hurricanes have a number of different features which, together, can cause devastating flooding. One is the storm surge (sea flooding as much as 8 metres high) caused by the leading edge of the hurricane when it moves from sea to land. Another is the large amounts of precipitation associated with hurricanes. The eye of a hurricane has extremely low pressure, so sea level may rise a few metres in the eye of the storm. This type of coastal flooding occurs regularly in Bangladesh. In Europe floods from sea may occur as a result from heavy Atlantic storms, pushing the water to the coast. Especially in combination with high tide this can be damaging.

Flooding in Esztergom, Hungary in August 2006.

flood blocking the road in Jerusalem

Under some rare conditions associated with heat waves, flash floods from quickly melting mountain snow have caused loss of property and life.
Undersea earthquakes, eruptions of island volcanos that form a caldera, (such as Thera or Krakatau) and marine landslips on continental shelves may all engender a tidal wave called a tsunami that causes destruction to coastal areas. See the tsunami article for full details of these marine floods.
Floods are the most frequent type of disaster worldwide. Thus, it is often difficult or impossible to obtain insurance policies which cover destruction of property due to flooding, since floods are a relatively predictable risk. A flood can also be caused by blocked sewage pipes and waterways, such as the Jakarta flood.

Typical effects

Physical damage- Structures such as buildings get damaged due to flood water. Landslides can also take place.
Casualties- People and livestock die due to drowning. It can also lead to epidemics and diseases.
Water supplies- Contamination of water. Clean drinking water becomes scarce.
Crops and food supplies- Shortage of food crops can be caused due to loss of entire harvest.[2]

Main mitigation strategies

1. Mapping- of the flood prone area.
2. Land use control- Major development is restricted in areas subject to flooding.
3. Construction of engineered structures- Strong structures to withstand flood forces. Moreover the buildings should be constructed on an elevated area and if necessary should be built on stilts.

Flood defences, planning, and management

Autumn Mediterranean flooding in Alicante (Spain), 1997.

In western countries, rivers prone to floods are often carefully managed. Defences such as levées, bunds, reservoirs, and weirs are used to prevent rivers from bursting their banks. Coastal flooding has been addressed in Europe with coastal defences, such as sea walls and beach nourishment.
London is protected from flooding by a huge mechanical barrier across the River Thames, which is raised when the water level reaches a certain point (see Thames Barrier).
Venice has a similar arrangement, although it is already unable to cope with very high tides, and will become increasingly inadequate if anticipated rises in sea level occur.
The largest and most elaborate flood defenses can be found in the Netherlands, where they are referred to as Delta Works with the Oosterscheldedam as its crowning achievement. These works were built in response to the North Sea flood of 1953 of the south western part of the Netherlands. The Dutch had already built one of the worlds largest dams in the north of the country: the Afsluitdijk (closing occurred in 1932).
Currently the Saint Petersburg Flood Prevention Facility Complex is to be finished by 2008, in Russia, to protect Saint Petersburg from storm surges. It also has a main traffic function, as it completes a ring road around St Petersburg. 11 dams extend for 25.4 kilometres and stand eight metres above water level.
The New Orleans Metropolitan Area, 35% of which sits below sea level, is protected by hundreds of miles of levees and flood gates. This system failed catastrophically in the City Proper and in eastern sections of the Metro Area, resulting in the innundation of approximately 50% of the Metropolitan area, ranging from a few inches to twenty feet in coastal communities.
In China, flood diversion areas are rural areas that are deliberately flooded in emergencies in order to protect cities [1].

Benefits of flooding

This article deals principally with deleterious effects of flooding on human settlements and economic activities. However flooding can bring benefits, such as making soil more fertile and providing nutrients in which it is deficient. Periodic flooding was essential to the well-being of ancient communities along the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers, the Nile River, the Indus River, and the Yellow River, among others.

SUPER CONDUCTORS

sarathy88 — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 06:16:28 CST

Superconductivity

A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor, cooled with liquid nitrogen. Electrical current flows near the surface of the superconductor, acting to exclude the magnetic field of the magnet (the Meissner effect). This current, which lasts indefinitely, effectively forms an electromagnet that repels the magnet.

Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials at extremely low temperatures, characterized by exactly zero electrical resistance and the exclusion of the interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect). The electrical resistivity of a metallic conductor decreases gradually as the temperature is lowered. However, in ordinary conductors such as copper and silver, impurities and other defects impose a lower limit. Even near absolute zero a real sample of copper shows a non-zero resistance. The resistance of a superconductor, on the other hand, drops abruptly to zero when the material is cooled below its "critical temperature", typically 20 kelvins or less. An electrical current flowing in a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. It cannot be understood simply as the idealization of "perfect conductivity" in classical physics. Superconductivity occurs in a wide variety of materials, including simple elements like tin and aluminium, various metallic alloys and some heavily-doped semiconductors. Superconductivity does not occur in noble metals like gold and silver, nor in most ferromagnetic metals. In 1986 the discovery of a family of cuprate-perovskite ceramic materials known as high-temperature superconductors, with critical temperatures in excess of 90 kelvins, spurred renewed interest and research in superconductivity for several reasons. As a topic of pure research, these materials represented a new phenomenon not explained by the current theory. And, because the superconducting state persists up to more manageable temperatures, more commercial applications are feasible, especially if materials with even higher critical temperatures could be discovered.

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Elementary properties of superconductors

Most of the physical properties of superconductors vary from material to material, such as the heat capacity and the critical temperature at which superconductivity is destroyed. On the other hand, there is a class of properties that are independent of the underlying material. For instance, all superconductors have exactly zero resistivity to low applied currents when there is no magnetic field present. The existence of these "universal" properties implies that superconductivity is a thermodynamic phase, and thus possess certain distinguishing properties which are largely independent of microscopic details.

Zero electrical "dc" resistance

Electric cables for accelerators at CERN: top, regular cables for LEP; bottom, superconducting cables for the LHC.

The simplest method to measure the electrical resistance of a sample of some material is to place it in an electrical circuit in series with a current source I and measure the resulting voltage U across the sample. The resistance of the sample is given by Ohm's law as . If the voltage is zero, this means that the resistance is zero and that the sample is in the superconducting state. Superconductors are also able to maintain a current with no applied voltage whatsoever, a property exploited in superconducting electromagnets such as those found in MRI machines. Experiments have demonstrated that currents in superconducting coils can persist for years without any measurable degradation. Experimental evidence points to a current lifetime of at least 100,000 years, and theoretical estimates for the lifetime of persistent current exceed the lifetime of the universe. In a normal conductor, an electrical current may be visualized as a fluid of electrons moving across a heavy ionic lattice. The electrons are constantly colliding with the ions in the lattice, and during each collision some of the energy carried by the current is absorbed by the lattice and converted into heat (which is essentially the vibrational kinetic energy of the lattice ions.) As a result, the energy carried by the current is constantly being dissipated. This is the phenomenon of electrical resistance. The situation is different in a superconductor. In a conventional superconductor, the electronic fluid cannot be resolved into individual electrons. Instead, it consists of bound pairs of electrons known as Cooper pairs. This pairing is caused by an attractive force between electrons from the exchange of phonons. Due to quantum mechanics, the energy spectrum of this Cooper pair fluid possesses an energy gap, meaning there is a minimum amount of energy ΔE that must be supplied in order to excite the fluid. Therefore, if ΔE is larger than the thermal energy of the lattice (given by kT, where k is Boltzmann's constant and T is the temperature), the fluid will not be scattered by the lattice. The Cooper pair fluid is thus a superfluid, meaning it can flow without energy dissipation. In a class of superconductors known as type II superconductors (including all known high-temperature superconductors), an extremely small amount of resistivity appears at temperatures not too far below the nominal superconducting transition when an electrical current is applied in conjunction with a strong magnetic field (which may be caused by the electrical current). This is due to the motion of vortices in the electronic superfluid, which dissipates some of the energy carried by the current. If the current is sufficiently small, the vortices are stationary, and the resistivity vanishes. The resistance due to this effect is tiny compared with that of non-superconducting materials, but must be taken into account in sensitive experiments. However, as the temperature decreases far enough below the nominal superconducting transition, these vortices can become frozen into a disordered but stationary phase known as a "vortex glass". Below this vortex glass transition temperature, the resistance of the material becomes truly zero.

Superconducting phase transition

Behavior of heat capacity (cv) and resistivity (ρ) at the superconducting phase transition

In superconducting materials, the characteristics of superconductivity appear when the temperature T is lowered below a critical temperature Tc. The value of this critical temperature varies from material to material. Conventional superconductors usually have critical temperatures ranging from less than 1 K to around 20 K. Solid mercury, for example, has a critical temperature of 4.2 K. As of 2001, the highest critical temperature found for a conventional superconductor is 39 K for magnesium diboride (MgB2), although this material displays enough exotic properties that there is doubt about classifying it as a "conventional" superconductor. Cuprate superconductors can have much higher critical temperatures: YBa2Cu3O7, one of the first cuprate superconductors to be discovered, has a critical temperature of 92 K, and mercury-based cuprates have been found with critical temperatures in excess of 130 K. The explanation for these high critical temperatures remains unknown. (Electron pairing due to phonon exchanges explains superconductivity in conventional superconductors, but it does not explain superconductivity in the newer superconductors that have a very high Tc.) The onset of superconductivity is accompanied by abrupt changes in various physical properties, which is the hallmark of a phase transition. For example, the electronic heat capacity is proportional to the temperature in the normal (non-superconducting) regime. At the superconducting transition, it suffers a discontinuous jump and thereafter ceases to be linear. At low temperatures, it varies instead as e−α /T for some constant α. (This exponential behavior is one of the pieces of evidence for the existence of the energy gap.) The order of the superconducting phase transition was long a matter of debate. Experiments indicate that the transition is second-order, meaning there is no latent heat. In the seventies calculations suggested that it may actually be weakly first-order due to the effect of long-range fluctuations in the electromagnetic field. Only recently it was shown theoretically with the help of a disorder field theory, in which the vortex lines of the superconductor play a major role, that the transition is of second order within the type II regime and of first order (i.e., latent heat) within the type I regime, and that the two regions are separated by a tricritical point.

[edit] Meissner effect

When a superconductor is placed in a weak external magnetic field H, the field penetrates the superconductor for only a short distance λ, called the penetration depth, after which it decays rapidly to zero. This is called the Meissner effect, and is a defining characteristic of superconductivity. For most superconductors, the penetration depth is on the order of 100 nm. The Meissner effect is sometimes confused with the kind of diamagnetism one would expect in a perfect electrical conductor: according to Lenz's law, when a changing magnetic field is applied to a conductor, it will induce an electrical current in the conductor that creates an opposing magnetic field. In a perfect conductor, an arbitrarily large current can be induced, and the resulting magnetic field exactly cancels the applied field. The Meissner effect is distinct from this because a superconductor expels all magnetic fields, not just those that are changing. Suppose we have a material in its normal state, containing a constant internal magnetic field. When the material is cooled below the critical temperature, we would observe the abrupt expulsion of the internal magnetic field, which we would not expect based on Lenz's law. The Meissner effect was explained by London and London, who showed that the electromagnetic free energy in a superconductor is minimized provided where H is the magnetic field and λ is the penetration depth. This equation, which is known as the London equation, predicts that the magnetic field in a superconductor decays exponentially from whatever value it possesses at the surface. The Meissner effect breaks down when the applied magnetic field is too large. Superconductors can be divided into two classes according to how this breakdown occurs. In Type I superconductors, superconductivity is abruptly destroyed when the strength of the applied field rises above a critical value Hc. Depending on the geometry of the sample, one may obtain an intermediate state consisting of regions of normal material carrying a magnetic field mixed with regions of superconducting material containing no field. In Type II superconductors, raising the applied field past a critical value Hc1 leads to a mixed state in which an increasing amount of magnetic flux penetrates the material, but there remains no resistance to the flow of electrical current as long as the current is not too large. At a second critical field strength Hc2, superconductivity is destroyed. The mixed state is actually caused by vortices in the electronic superfluid, sometimes called fluxons because the flux carried by these vortices is quantized. Most pure elemental superconductors (except niobium, technetium, vanadium and carbon nanotubes) are Type I, while almost all impure and compound superconductors are Type II.

Theories of superconductivity

Since the discovery of superconductivity, great efforts have been devoted to finding out how and why it works. During the 1950s, theoretical condensed matter physicists arrived at a solid understanding of "conventional" superconductivity, through a pair of remarkable and important theories: the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory (1950) and the microscopic BCS theory (1957). Generalizations of these theories form the basis for understanding the closely related phenomenon of superfluidity (because they fall into the Lambda transition universality class), but the extent to which similar generalizations can be applied to unconventional superconductors as well is still controversial.

History of superconductivity

Main article: History of superconductivity

Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who was studying the resistance of solid mercury at cryogenic temperatures using the recently-discovered liquid helium as a refrigerant. At the temperature of 4.2 K, he observed that the resistance abruptly disappeared. For this discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1913. In subsequent decades, superconductivity was found in several other materials. In 1913, lead was found to superconduct at 7 K, and in 1941 niobium nitride was found to superconduct at 16 K. The next important step in understanding superconductivity occurred in 1933, when Meissner and Ochsenfeld discovered that superconductors expelled applied magnetic fields, a phenomenon which has come to be known as the Meissner effect. In 1935, F. and H. London showed that the Meissner effect was a consequence of the minimization of the electromagnetic free energy carried by superconducting current. In 1950, the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity was devised by Landau and Ginzburg. This theory, which combined Landau's theory of second-order phase transitions with a Schrödinger-like wave equation, had great success in explaining the macroscopic properties of superconductors. In particular, Abrikosov showed that Ginzburg-Landau theory predicts the division of superconductors into the two categories now referred to as Type I and Type II. Abrikosov and Ginzburg were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for their work (Landau having died in 1968.) Also in 1950, Maxwell and Reynolds et al. found that the critical temperature of a superconductor depends on the isotopic mass of the constituent element. This important discovery pointed to the electron-phonon interaction as the microscopic mechanism responsible for superconductivity. The complete microscopic theory of superconductivity was finally proposed in 1957 by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer. Independently superconductivity phenomenon was explained by Nikolay Bogolyubov. This BCS theory explained the superconducting current as a superfluid of Cooper pairs, pairs of electrons interacting through the exchange of phonons. For this work, the authors were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972. The BCS theory was set on a firmer footing in 1958, when Bogoliubov showed that the BCS wavefunction, which had originally been derived from a variational argument, could be obtained using a canonical transformation of the electronic Hamiltonian. In 1959, Gor'kov showed that the BCS theory reduced to the Ginzburg-Landau theory close to the critical temperature. In 1962, the first commercial superconducting wire, a niobium-titanium alloy, was developed by researchers at Westinghouse. In the same year, Josephson made the important theoretical prediction that a supercurrent can flow between two pieces of superconductor separated by a thin layer of insulator. This phenomenon, now called the Josephson effect, is exploited by superconducting devices such as SQUIDs. It is used in the most accurate available measurements of the magnetic flux quantum h/e, and thus (coupled with the quantum Hall resistivity) for Planck's constant h. Josephson was awarded the Nobel Prize for this work in 1973.

A quench of the superconducting state in a superconducting magnet will result in the boiling away of potentially thousands of dollars worth of liquid helium, as seen in the above image of such an event at the ATRAP experiment at CERN.

Until 1986, physicists had believed that BCS theory forbade superconductivity at temperatures above about 30 K. In that year, Bednorz and Müller discovered superconductivity in a lanthanum-based cuprate perovskite material, which had a transition temperature of 35 K (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1987). It was shortly found by Paul C. W. Chu of the University of Houston and M.K. Wu at the University of Alabama in Huntsville [1] that replacing the lanthanum with yttrium, i.e. making YBCO, raised the critical temperature to 92 K, which was important because liquid nitrogen could then be used as a refrigerant (at atmospheric pressure, the boiling point of nitrogen is 77 K.) This is important commercially because liquid nitrogen can be produced cheaply on-site with no raw materials, and is not prone to some of the problems (solid air plugs, etc) of helium in piping. Many other cuprate superconductors have since been discovered, and the theory of superconductivity in these materials is one of the major outstanding challenges of theoretical condensed matter physics.

Applications

Main article: Technological applications of superconductivity

Superconductors are used to make some of the most powerful electromagnets known to man, including those used in MRI machines and the beam-steering magnets used in particle accelerators. They can also be used for magnetic separation, where weakly magnetic particles are extracted from a background of less or non-magnetic particles, as in the pigment industries. Superconductors have also been used to make digital circuits (e.g. based on the Rapid Single Flux Quantum technology) and microwave filters for mobile phone base stations. Superconductors are used to build Josephson junctions which are the building blocks of SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices), the most sensitive magnetometers known. Series of Josephson devices are used to define the SI volt. Depending on the particular mode of operation, a Josephson junction can be used as photon detector or as mixer. The large resistance change at the transition from the normal- to the superconducting state is used to build thermometers in cryogenic micro-calorimeter photon detectors. Other early markets are arising where the relative efficiency, size and weight advantages of devices based on HTS outweigh the additional costs involved. Promising future applications include high-performance transformers, power storage devices, electric power transmission, electric motors (e.g. for vehicle propulsion, as in vactrains or maglev trains), magnetic levitation devices, and Fault Current Limiters. However superconductivity is sensitive to moving magnetic fields so applications that use alternating current (e.g. transformers) will be more difficult to develop than those that rely upon direct current.

Superconductors in popular culture

Superconductivity has long been a staple of science fiction. One of the first mentions of the phenomenon occurred in Robert A. Heinlein's novel Beyond This Horizon (1942). Notably, the use of a fictional room temperature superconductor was a major plot point in the Ringworld novels by Larry Niven, first published in 1970. Organic superconductors were featured in a science fiction novel by physicist Robert L. Forward. Superconductivity is a popular device in science fiction due to the simplicity of the underlying concept - zero electrical resistance - and the rich technological possibilities. For example, superconducting magnets could be used to generate the powerful magnetic fields used by Bussard ramjets, a type of spacecraft commonly encountered in science fiction. The most troublesome property of real superconductors, the need for cryogenic cooling, is often circumvented by postulating the existence of room temperature superconductors. Many stories attribute additional properties to their fictional superconductors, ranging from infinite heat conductivity (ie thermal superconductivity) in Niven's novels (real superconductors conduct heat poorly, though superfluid helium has immense but finite heat conductivity) to providing power to an interstellar travel device in the Stargate movie and TV series. In the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the CPU of the T-800 destroyed in Terminator 1 is found to be superconductive at room temperature. Superconductors are a technology required in the Civilization series (computer game) in order to build the spaceship to Alpha Centauri hence achieving a space victory. Superconductors are also an early technology in another of Sid Meier's games, Alpha Centauri (game) In the movie "Strangers with Candy", students in a science class build a superconductor made of soup cans. In the movie "Joe versus the Volcano", an industrialist needs a mineral called bubaru to make superconductors.

References

Books

Tinkham, Michael (2004). Introduction to Superconductivity, 2nd ed., Dover Books on Physics. ISBN 0-486-43503-2 (Paperback).
Tipler, Paul; Llewellyn, Ralph (2002). Modern Physics, 4th ed., W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-4345-0.
Kleinert, Hagen, Gauge Fields in Condensed Matter, Vol. I, " SUPERFLOW AND VORTEX LINES"; Disorder Fields, Phase Transitions, pp. 1--742, World Scientific (Singapore, 1989); Paperback ISBN 9971-5-0210-0 (also readable online: Vol. I)
Larkin, Anatoly; Varlamov, Andrei, Theory of Fluctuations in Superconductors, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2005 (ISBN: 0198528159)

Journal articles

H.K. Onnes (1911). "". Commun. Phys. Lab. 12 (120).
W. Meissner and R. Oschenfeld (1933). "". Naturwiss. 21 (787).
F. London and H. London (1935). "". Proc. R. Soc. London A149 (71).
V.L. Ginzburg and L.D. Landau (1950). "". Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 20 (1064).
E.Maxwell (1950). "". Phys. Rev. 78 (477).
C.A. Reynolds et. al. (1950). "". Phys. Rev. 78 (487).
J. Bardeen, L.N. Cooper, and J.R. Schrieffer (1957). "". Phys. Rev. 108 (1175).
N.N. Bogoliubov (1958). "". Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 34 (58).
L.P. Gor'kov (1959). "". Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 36 (1364).
B.D. Josephson (1962). "". Phys. Lett. 1 (251).
J.G. Bednorz and K.A. Mueller (1986). "". Z. Phys. B64 (189).
M. K. Wu, J. R. Ashburn, C. J. Torng, P. H. Hor, R. L. Meng, L. Gao, Z. J. Huang, Y. Q. Wang, and C. W. Chu (1987). "Superconductivity at 93 K in a New Mixed-Phase Y-Ba-Cu-O Compound System at Ambient Pressure". Physical Review Letters 58: 908–910.
Kleinert, Hagen, "Disorder Version of the Abelian Higgs Model and the Order of the Superconductive Phase Transition," Lett. Nuovo Cimento {\bf 35}, 405 (1982) (also available online: [2])

External links

News

ScienceDaily: Physicist Discovers Exotic Superconductivity (University of Arizona) August 17, 2006

Media

Superconducting levitation of YBCO (file info)
- Video of superconducting levitation of YBCO (360KB, Ogg/Theora format).

ALIENS

sarathy88 — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 06:56:47 CST

Among countless stars, is Earth the only planet blessed with life? Is this some miracle by chance, never to be reproduced on another world? In 399 b.c., the great philosopher Socrates was accused of not believing in the gods in which the state believed. He was tried and found guilty of corrupting Athenian youth and religious heresy. He was sentenced and put to death by the use of a poison he chose to ingest. Galileo was warned not to defend Copernican Astronomy because it went against the doctrine of the church. In 1616, the Roman Catholic Church demanded that Galileo stop teaching the theory that the sun was at the center of the cosmos and everything revolved around it. The belief at that time was that the Earth was the center and the sun (and everything else) revolved around the Earth. Galileo was eventually hauled before the Catholic Inquisition and condemned to house arrest, for life. After 10 years, he died while still under house arrest. We know today of course, that Galileo was indeed (more or less) correct. Thoughout history people have been unjustly ridiculed, harassed, and even severely punished for their views and ideas that didn't seem to quite fit in with the current socially accepted beliefs. Are we arrogant to assume that man is the only intelligent life out there? We think so. Over the past 8 years, we have spent much of our time privately researching this subject, (which is sometimes a hard subject to research, when considering that most people do not feel comfortable publicly sharing their experiences). Although most polls show that the majority of the population believes that the governments are hiding what they know about worldly visitors, the general attitude towards this subject is often one of total disbelief and ridicule.
Whether for our own protection or their own abuse of power, the reason for this secrecy is unclear. If only the slightest percentage of the hundreds of reported cases are true, then this is something the people of the world need to know about. It would be the single most important discovery of all time. We might need to rethink many of our views on things like our place in the universe and religion. Of course, many initial reactions would probably be those of fear and suspicion. Most of the reports could probably be overlooked if it not for the amount of credible witnesses. If it were just people of little intelligence and unreliable witnesses making the hundreds of claims of UFO sightings and alien visitation, then we could all laugh it off. But unfortinately it's not. Often reports come from more reliable witnesses then perhaps you or I. Reports come in from doctors, lawyers, teachers, police officers, military personnel, pilots, clergymen, etc... from all over the world. Sure, there is a large percentage of claims that can be explained away, often as a simple misidentification. But unfortunately there are also a lot of claims that can't be explained away and remain true unknowns. Much of the evidence that can't be explained is in photographic and video evidence, as a persons credibility is too easy to question or discredit when dealing with personal accounts. Even when there are multiple witnesses, an event is sometimes explained as no more than mass hallucination. Now let us play a little game which will require some imagination on the part of the reader. Assume for a moment that it's sometime in the distant future and you are an explorer among the stars. Now also lets assume that you have just discovered a young earth-like planet, inhabited by primitive lifeforms similar to early man. Would you then reveal yourself and all your advanced technology to those inhabitants? You may of course be looked upon as a god, so to speak. And what of the technology? Sharing it with a society that is not yet mature enough to manage it in a totally benificial manner, might be comparable to giving guns to children, and result in having a very negative overall impact. Would it be right to introduce your own beliefs, culture, and morals? Would you allow yourself to interfer with the natural evolution of a primitive culture or developing species of another world? Would you introduce your own religion? Might your presence perhaps inspire new religions or beliefs?

The skeptic can pose many valid arguments like, "where is the proof or physical evidence". Or, "even if there was life out there, the distance between stars is too great for us to ever be visited". Yet, who can say what technologies a race hundreds or even thousands of years ahead of us might have. Just look what man has accomplished in the last hundred years with science, computers, space travel, etc. Now imagine a race with technology a thousand years ahead of our own. Many will argue that man as a species, is still very young and so is our science, so there may be many ways to overcome the vastness of space that we don't even know about and have yet to discover. As for the proof, it may well be out there, to anyone with eyes open enough to see it. The most frightening, while also the most difficult to accept, aspect of this phenomenon would have to be the claims of abduction. Whether you believe or not matters little to the abductees. They truly believe these experiences to be real. Your average level-headed individual doesn't just wake up one day and say- "Oh, I think I'll be abducted by aliens today". This is a horrifying experience to those who have not yet come to terms with it. Many believe they are loosing their minds at first. They don't want it to be true. It can't be true. Many would also prefer that they were crazy or delusional. At least if it were an illness, it could be treated. We are not here to say, "Yes, all these people are being abducted by aliens". The fact of the matter is that something is happening to hundreds of people all around the world that doesn't quite add up. There also seems to be a genuine fear of something within a majority of the people involved in the abduction experience. Fear of what? What could be responsible for the unbelievable feelings or emotions that seem to stem from some incredible experience that has literally shaken the foundation of that persons belief system? We are not referring to the type of people who make wild claims for attention. Science has yet to discover a mental disorder that could be even partially responsible for abduction claims. Skeptics will often try to explain it away as nothing more than Sleep Paralysis.
After all, do we not assume the role of the alien abductors when we go out and track down an animal we are interested in studying? First we locate a specimen, then we put the animal to sleep. We capture it and then run whatever test or experiments we wish. Then we tag the animal for monitoring, tracking, etc...and release it back into its enviroment. Sounds a little familiar to most abductees. Those that have moved past the fear stage, usually seem to be very intelligent and spiritually enlightened individuals. Often, such people develop a deep concern for how we live and interact with our environment and each other. According to certain ufologist, such as Stanton Friedman, the polls show that the majority of people do believe in UFOs and in fact they often show that the higher a persons education, or perhaps intelligence, the more likely one is to believe. One problem that hinders getting at the truth, are the frauds that have been exposed. Why one would choose to fake such an extraodinary claim is unclear. It does nothing short of discrediting the real evidence that may be out there. The purpose of this website is not to prove whether aliens in fact exist and have visited Earth. We only wish to show that we feel that there is at least enough evidence to warrant the need for serious scientific study and attention. Perhaps serious attention is already being given by certain groups or organizations, if the rumors of government cover-ups and secrecy hold any weight. From the subjects of early cave paintings to ancient art and scriptures, history would seem to indicate that we may have had visitors from other worlds or dimensions. In fact, some ancient scriptures from many different cultures, give the impression that it was common knowledge that we've had visitors from the stars. How do you explain ancient tales of chariots from the sky? And what of flying ships appearing in art far before the first plane was ever thought about. Even the Bible has been suggested as possible evidence of alien contact, for its numerous accounts of objects in the sky, wonderous miracles and other strange events. What secrets lie with ancient Egypt, Stonehenge, or possibly even Atlantis? Have there indeed been more advanced civilizations of man that have somehow been lost? We would like to suggest a book to anyone out there searching for answers to the question of -ARE WE ALONE?- The book is called COSMIC VOYAGE and is written by Courtney Brown, Ph.D. It's an incredible book. It is based primarily on Remote Viewing sessions conducted by the author. For those of you who do not yet know of S.R.V. (Scientific Remote Viewing), In short it is a trainable mental procedure which allows a person to extract accurate and often detailed information from distant locations across time and space. If your main interest is in abduction cases then ABDUCTION by John E. Mack, M.D. is a must. It explores many cases of UFO abductions from all angles and is very credible. If you'ld like to read about the more recent hardcore evidence surrounding this phenomenon, then we would like to suggest CONFIRMATION-The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us. It is written by Whitley Strieber, author of Communion. The books main focus is on the video evidence, close encounter testimonies and unexplained objects more recently removed from abductees.

TIME MACHINE

sarathy88 — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 06:48:19 CST

The Time Machine is a book by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895, later made into two films of the same title. Technically a novella — it weighs in at a mere 38,000 words — the book is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively.

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[edit] History

Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in an earlier (but less well-known) work entitled The Chronic Argonauts. He had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, until the publisher asked him if he could instead write a serial novel on the same theme; Wells readily agreed, and was paid 100 pounds on its publication by Heinemann in 1895. The story was first published in serial form in the New Review through 1894 and 1895.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The book's protagonist is an amateur inventor or scientist living in London identified simply as The Time Traveller. Having demonstrated to friends using a miniature model that time is a fourth dimension, and that a suitable apparatus can move back and forth in this fourth dimension, he completes the building of a larger machine capable of carrying himself. He then immediately sets off on a journey into the future. The Time Traveller details the experience of time travel and the evolution of his surroundings as he moves through time. While travelling through time, his machine allows him to observe the changes of the outside world in fast motion. He observes the sun and moon traversing the sky and the changes to the buildings and landscape around him as he travels through time. His machine produces a sense of disorientation to its occupant, and a blurring or faintness of the surroundings outside the machine. His journey takes him to the year A.D. 802,701 where he finds an apparently peaceful, pastoral, communist,[1] future, filled with happy, simple humans who call themselves the Eloi. The Eloi are about four feet tall, pink-skinned and frail-looking, with curly hair, small ears and mouths and large eyes. Males and females seem to be quite similar in build and appearance. They have high-pitched, soft voices and speak an unknown language. They appear to be quite unintelligent and child-like and live without quarrels or conflict. Soon after his arrival he rescues Weena, a female Eloi he finds drowning in a river. Much to his surprise she is grateful to him and insists on following him. The Eloi live in a small community within a large and futuristic yet dilapidated building, doing no work and eating a frugivorous diet. The land around London has become a sort of untended garden filled with unusual fruiting and flowering plants, with futuristic, albeit broken down buildings and other structures dotted around, seemingly of no purpose and disused. There is no evidence of the implementation of agriculture or technology, both of which the Eloi seem incapable of. The Time Traveller is greeted with curiosity and without fear by the Eloi, who seem only vaguely surprised and curious by his appearance and lose interest rapidly. He disables the time machine and follows them to their commune and consumes a meal of fruit while trying to communicate with them. This proves somewhat ineffectual, as their unknown language and low intelligence hinders the Time Traveller from gaining any useful information. With a slight sense of disdain for his hosts' lack of curiosity and attention to him, the Time Traveller decides to explore the local area. As he explores this landscape, the Time Traveller comments on the factors that have resulted in the Eloi's physical condition and society. He supposes that the lack of intelligence and vitality of the Eloi are the logical result of humankind's past struggle to transform and subjugate nature through technology, politics, art and creativity. With the realisation of this goal, the Eloi had devolved. With no further need for technology and agriculture and innovations to improve life, they became unimaginative and incurious about the world. With no work to do, they became physically weak and small in stature. Males, generally being breadwinners and workers in former times, have particularly degenerated in physique, explaining the lack of dimorphism between the sexes. The Time Traveller supposes that preventive medicine has been achieved, as he saw no sign of disease amongst his hosts. With no work to do and no hardships to overcome, society became non-hierarchical and non-cooperative, with no defined leaders or social classes. The fact that there was no hardship or inequalities in societies meant there was no war and crime. Art and sophisticated culture, often driven by problems and aspirations or a catalyst for solutions and new developments, had waned, as no problems existed and there were no conceivable improvements for humanity. He accounted for their relatively small numbers as being due to the implementation of some form of birth control to eliminate the problems of overpopulation. The abandoned structures around him would suggest that prior to these achievements, the population had been larger and more productive, toiling to find the solution that would make the new utopia a reality. As the sun sets, the Time Traveller muses on where he will sleep. Retracing his steps back to the building where he had eaten with the Eloi, he suddenly realises that the time machine is missing. He panics and desperately searches for the vehicle. At first, he suspects that the Eloi have moved it to their shelter. He doubts the Eloi would be capable or inclined to do this, but nonetheless rushes back to the shelter and demands to know where his machine is. The Eloi are confused and a little frightened by this. Realising the Eloi don't understand him and he is damaging his position with them, he continues his search in desperation during the night before relenting and falling into an uneasy sleep. The Utopian existence of the Eloi turns out to be deceptive. The Traveller soon discovers that the class structure of his own time has in fact persisted, and the human race has diverged into two branches. The wealthy, leisure classes appear to have devolutionised into the ineffectual, not very bright Eloi he has already seen; but the downtrodden working classes have evolved into the bestial Morlocks, cannibal hominids resembling albino apes, who toil underground maintaining the machinery that keep the Eloi – their flocks – docile and plentiful. Both species, having adapted to their routines, are of distinctly sub-human intelligence. After some adventures the narrator manages to get to his machine, reactivate it as the Morlocks battle him for it, and escape them. He then travels into the far future, roughly 30 million years from his own time. There he sees the last few living things on a dying Earth, the rotation of which has ceased with the site of London viewing a baleful, red sun stuck at the setting position. In his trip forward, he had seen the red sun flare up brightly twice, as if Mercury and then Venus had fallen into it. Menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wander the blood-red beaches, and the world is covered in "intensely green vegetation." He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing the Red Giant of a sun grow redder and dimmer. Finally, the world begins to go dark as snowflakes begin to fall, and all silence falls upon Earth. In the very end of the Earth, all life has ceased, other than the lichens that still grow on rocks, and a Kraken-like creature, roughly the size of a soccer ball, that slowly moves onto shore. Feeling giddy and nauseous about the return journey before him, he nevertheless boards his machine and puts it into reverse, arriving back in his laboratory just three hours after he originally left. Entering the dining room, he begins recounting what has just happened to his disbelieving friends and associates, bringing the story back full circle to his entrance in chapter 2. The following day, the unnamed narrator returns to the Time Traveller's house. There, he finds the Time Traveller ready to leave again, this time taking a small knapsack and a camera. Although he promises the narrator he will return in half an hour, three years pass and the Time Traveller still remains missing. What happened to him, and where he ultimately ventured, remains a mystery. The story reflects Wells' political views; he was a committed socialist, and the narrator reasons that the state he sees is the outcome of capitalist class structures. The book may also have influenced the Thea von Harbou novel and subsequent movie Metropolis. He probably did not see it as an accurate portrayal of the future. The Time Machine is in the public domain in the United States, Canada, and Australia, but does not enter the public domain in the European Union until January 1, 2017 (1946 death of author + 70 years + end of calendar year). An extract from the 11th chapter of the serial published in New Review (May, 1895) was not included in the book version, as it was thought too violent.[citation needed] This portion of the story was published elsewhere as The Grey Man. The Grey Man begins with the Traveller waking up in his Time Machine after escaping the Morlocks. He finds himself in the distant future of an Earth that is unrecognizable, seeing kangaroo-like hopping creatures (with some vaguely humanoid features) being attacked and eaten by a giant centipede that comes out of the ground. The Great Illustrated Classics version of The Time Machine includes a whole chapter not found in the original book, in which the Time Traveller blunders into a highly advanced future society where time travel is illegal. The time machine is confiscated and the Traveller is arrested, but he eventually escapes after one of the future men attempts to steal the time machine.

[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The first visual adaptation of the book was a live teleplay broadcast in 1949 by the BBC, which starred Russell Napier as the Time Traveler and Mary Donn as Weena. No recording of this live broadcast exists, only a few still photos. A reading of the script, however, suggests that this teleplay remained fairly faithful to the book.

Main article: The Time Machine (1960 film)

George Pál (who also made a famous 1953 "modernized" version of Wells' The War of the Worlds) filmed The Time Machine in 1960. This is more of an adventure tale than the book was; The Time Traveller witnesses war's horrors first-hand in 1940 & 1966; also the division of mankind results from mutations induced by nuclear war during the twentieth century. In 802,701 AD, the Eloi learn and speak broken English. Rod Taylor (The Birds) starred, along with Yvette Mimieux as Weena, Alan Young as his closest friend David Filby (and, in 1917 & 1966, his son James Filby), Sebastian Cabot as Dr Hillyer, Whit Bissell as Walter Kemp and Doris Lloyd as his housekeeper Mrs Watchett. The Time Traveller had the first name of George. Interestingly, the plate on the Time Machine is inscribed ' Manufactured by H. George Wells'. In the end, the Time Traveller leaves for a second journey, but Filby & Mrs Watchett note that he had taken three books. ' Which three books would you have taken? ' Filby inquires to Mrs Watchett, adding ' . . he has all the time in the world '. The film is noted for its then-novel use of time lapse photographic effects to show the world around the Time Traveller changing at breakneck speed as he travels through time. Thirty-three years later, a combination sequel/documentary short, Time Machine: The Journey Back (1993 film), directed by Clyde Lucas, was produced. In the first part, Michael J. Fox went behind the scenes of the movie & time travelling in general. In the second half, written by original screenwriter David Duncan, the movie's original actors Rod Taylor, Alan Young & Whit Bissell reprised their roles. The Time Traveller returns to his laboratory in 1916, finding Filby there, and encourages his friend to join him in the far future - but Filby has doubts (It is featured on the DVD of the 1960 film). A low-quality TV version was made in 1978, with very unconvincing time-lapse images of building walls being de-constructed, and inexplicable geographic shifting from Los Angeles to Plymouth, Mass., and inland California. John Beck starred as Neil Perry, with Whit Bissell (from the original 1960 movie and also from the 1966 television series "The Time Tunnel") appearing as one of Perry's superiors. However, the race names Eloi and Morlocks, and the character Weena (played by Priscilla Barnes of Three's Company fame), were reused, though set only a few thousand years in the future.

Main article: The Time Machine (2002 film)

The 1960 film was remade in 2002, starring Guy Pearce as the Time Traveller (named Alexander Hartdegen), Mark Addy as his friend David Filby, Sienna Guillory as Alex's ill-fated fiancée Emma, Phyllida Law as Mrs. Watchett, and Jeremy Irons as the uber-Morlock. Playing a quick cameo as a shopkeeper was Alan Young, who featured in the 1960 film. (H.G. Wells himself can also be said to have a "cameo" appearance, in the form of a photograph on the wall of Alex's home, near the front door.) The film was directed by Wells' great-grandson Simon Wells, with an even more revised plot that incorporated the ideas of paradoxes and changing the past, before the Time Traveller moves on to 2030, 2037, 802,701 for the main plot, and (briefly) 635 million AD. It was met with generally mixed reviews and earned $56M before VHS/DVD sales. The Time Machine used a design that was very reminiscent of the one in the Pal film, but was larger and employed brass construction, along with quartz/glass (In Wells' original book, the Time Traveller mentioned his 'scientific papers on optics'). Weena makes no appearance; Hartdegen instead becomes involved with a female Eloi named Mara, played by Samantha Mumba. In this film, the Eloi have preserved a "stone language" identical to English with the help of a computerized librarian in the ruins of a library. The Morlocks are much more fierce and agile, and the Time Traveller has a direct impact on the plot. In 1994 an audio drama was published on CD by Alien Voices, starring Leonard Nimoy as the Time Traveller (named John) and John de Lancie as David Philby. John de Lancie's children, Owen de Lancie and Keegan de Lancie, played the parts of the Eloi. The drama is approximately two hours long. Interestingly, this version of the story is more faithful to Wells's novella than either the 1960 movie or the 2002 movie.

INDIA- BASIC DETAILS

sarathy88 — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 06:56:36 CST

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM OF INDIA

Jana-Gana-Mana

(Thou Art the Ruler of All Minds)

The Indian National anthem, composed originally in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore, was adopted in its Hindi version by the Constituent Assembly as the National Anthem of India on 24 January 1950. It was first sung 27 December 1911 at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress. The complete song consists of five stanzas. The lyrics were rendered into English by Tagore himself. NATIONAL ANTHEM OF INDIA

" Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka Jaya He
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata
Punjab Sindh Gujarat Maratha
Dravida Utkala Banga
Vindhya Himachal Yamuna Ganga
Ucchala Jaladhi Taranga
Tubh Shubha Name Jage
Tubh Shubha Ashisha Mange
Gahe Tubh Jaya Gata
Jan Gan Mangaldayak Jay He
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata
Jaye He ! Jaye He ! Jaye He !
Jaye,Jaye,Jaye,Jaye He "

Translation of The national anthem- Jana Gana Mana In English Thou are the ruler of the minds of all people, dispenser of India's destiny. The name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sind, Gujurat and Maratha. Of the Dravid and Orissa and Bengal. It Echoes in the hills of Vindhyas and Himalayas, mingles in the music of Yamuna and Ganga and is chanted by the waves of the Indian Sea. They pray for your blessing and sing thy praise. The salvation of all peaople is thy hand, thou dispenser of India's destiny. Victory, Victory, Victory to thee. The Jana Gana Mana was composed by Shri Rabindranath Tagore and first sung at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress on December 27th, 1911. It was adopted as the National Anthem of India on 24th January, 1950 by the Constituent Assembly. The first stanza( out of five stanzas) of the song forms the National Anthem.

FLAG OF INDIA

THE NATIONAL FLAG OF INDIA is in tricolour of deep saffron(Kesari) at the top, white in the middle and dark green at the bottom in equal propotions.The flag is a horizontal tricolour in equal proportion of deep saffron on the top, white in the middle and dark green at the bottom. The ratio of the width to the length of the flag is two is to three. In the centre of the white band, there is a wheel in navy blue to indicate the Dharma Chakra, the wheel of law in the Sarnath Lion Capital. Its diameter approximates the width of the white band and it has 24 spokes. The saffron stands for courage, sacrifice and the spirit of renunciation; the white, for purity and truth; the green for faith and fertility. The design of the National Flag was adopted by India's constituent assembly on 22nd july, 1947. It's use and display are regulated by a code. The Indian flag symbolizes freedom. The late Prime Minister Pandit Nehru called it a flag not only of freedom for ourselves, but a symbol of freedom for all people.

Some interesting flag facts : Courtesy sitagita.com
Our national flag was hoisted on Mt. Everest, the highest peak in the world, on May 29 1953, along with the Union Jack and the Nepalese National flag. In 1971, the Indian flag, went into space on board Apollo-15. It flew into space as a medallion on the spacesuit worn by Cosmonaut Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, during the Indo-Soviet joint space flight in April 1984. On January 9 1982, the first Indian Antarctica Expedition planted the first Indian flag over Dakshin Gangotri. It was hoisted for the first time on the South Pole on January 17, 1989, by Colonel J.K. Bajaj. On April 21, 1996, at 0352 hrs (IST), the first Indian and perhaps the first in Asia, Sqdn. Ldr. Sanjay Thapar, holder of many national and international records in parajumping and skydiving, jumped from an altitude of 10,000 ft from an MI - 8 helicopter and hoisted the Indian tricolour on the North Pole. On Sept 28, 1985, the Tiranga set out on an around the world sailing expedition on board Trishna under Colonel T.P.S. Chowdhry and successfully returned home on January 10, 1987, cruising the high seas of the world and covering over 30,000 nautical miles in 470 days.

Pictures for Indian flag

National Emblem of India The National emblem is a symbol of contemporary India's reaffirmation of its commitment to world peace and goodwill. The National Emblem of India is a replica of the Lion of Sarnath, near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh State. The Lion Capital was erected in the 3rd century BC by Emperor Ashoka to mark the spot where Lord Buddha first proclaimed his gospel of peace and emancipation.. It is symbolic of India's reaffirmation of its ancient commitment to world peace and goodwill. In the original, there are four lions, standing back to back, mounted on a abacus with a frieze carrying sculptures in high relief of an elephant, a galloping horse, a bull and a lion separated by intervening wheels over a bell-shaped lotus. Carved out of a single block of polished sandstone, the capital is crowned by the Wheel of the Law (Dharma Chakra). In the state emblem adopted by the Government of India on 26 January 1950, only three lions are visible, the fourth being hidden from view. The wheel appears in relief in the center of the abacus with a bull on the right and a horse on the left and the outlines of the other wheels on extreme right and left. The bell-shaped lotus has been omitted. The four lions (one hidden from view) - symbolising power, courage and confidence - rest on a circular abacus. The abacus is girded by four smaller animals - guardians of the four directions: the lion of the north, the elephant of the east, the horse of the south and the bull of the west.The abacus rests on a lotus in full bloom, exemplifying the fountainhead of life and creative inspiration. The motto 'Satyameva Jayate' inscribed below the emblem in Devanagari script means 'truth alone triumphs'

National Animal of India-THE TIGER. The magnificent Tiger Panthera tigris (linnaeus), the national animal of India, is a rich-colored well-striped animal with a short coat. The combination of grace, strength, power has earned the tiger great respect and high esteem. Indian tigers are famous all over the world and one of the main attractions for the lovers of wild life. They are the crowning glory and the light of the Indian wild life. Tough, muscular, majestic tigers roam about the Sunderbans of Bengal "burning bright in the darkness of the night." The natives of the forest worship the tiger as the deity that gives them honey and wax. The Sunderbans are their main habitat for their thick forests of Sunder trees. They feed on fish, cattle and sometimes human beings. The man-eaters are the most dreaded of all wild beasts. It is a common belief that a tiger does not harm anyone who has offered prayers to him. Tigers are fast runners, excellent swimmers and their eyesight is strong. To check the dwindling population of tigers in India, which came down to just 1,827 in 1972, massive conservation program was initiated in April 1973, known as the 'Project Tiger'. This project aims to maintain a viable population of tigers in India for scientific, economic, aesthetic, cultural and ecological values. Since then, the tiger population has shown a gradual increase and the census of 1989 puts the tiger population of the country at 4,334. So far, 19 tiger reserves have been established in the country under this project, covering over 29, 716 sq. km. forest area

National Bird of India-THE PEACOCK Peacock is a large and majestic bird. It has got a long and beautiful tail. Both the peacock and the hen have crest. But the crest of hen is smaller in size. The main body of the cock is mottled brown in color. Especially, the metallic green color found on the lower neck is very attractive. Though peacocks are beautiful looking birds their calls are loud and coarse. They move in-groups and they are normally spotted in the forests, villages and nearby fields. They are shy in nature. It feeds on lizards, snakes, grains and insects. The hen lays a maximum of five eggs, which are in pale cream color. The significance of peacock is attached to cultures of India, Far East, Ancient Persia, Greek and Christian. In Hinduism, the image of the god of thunder, rains and war, Indra, was depicted in the form of a peacock. In south India, peacock is considered as a 'vahana' or vehilce of lord Muruga. The figure of peacock is painted in various Islamic religious buildings. In Christianity, the peacock was also known as the symbol of the 'Resurrection'. In India people believe that whenever the cock spread its tails in an ornamental fashion, it indicates that rain is imminent. In a way it is partly true. At the sight of dark clouds the bird outspreads its tail and starts dancing in rhythmic fashion. Most of the folklore including Bharatha Natyam has got special dancing poses for the peacock dance.

National Flower of India- THE LOTUS Among the various flowers of Indian sub-continent, the flower Lotus is regarded with divinity and grace. Often, Goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswathi are associated with the flower lotus. Even Lord Siva, who wanted to escape the wrath of the Lord Saneeswaran, morphed himself into the shape of a bee and took asylum inside a lotus. Buddhists regard this flower as a sacred one. Lotus symbolizes purity, beauty, majesty, grace, fertility, wealth, richness, knowledge and serenity. They are found in white and pink colors in general and they grow in shallow and murky waters. Some blue colored flowers are also sighted. These flowers enjoy a warm sunlight and intolerant to cold weather. Hence they cannot be seen blossoming in the winter. The floating leaves and flowers have long stems, which contains air spaces to maintain buoyancy. The plant is having various uniqueness attached to it. Though the large leaves of the plant are floating on the surface of the water, even a drop of water is not accommodated on top of the leaves. Perhaps, they are teaching the human beings, to lead a life of non-attachment and avoid the worldly pleasures. Depending upon the level of water in the tank, the stems will rise. In this fashion, it is guiding the human beings to rise upto the situation leading to a genuine elevation in their lives. As the world famous 'Thirukural' says, "Vellathanayathu malar neetam manthartham
ullath thanyathu ouyarvu"

signifying, in relation with the water level of a tank, the stem will rise. In the same way, depending upon their ambitions and thoughts, human beings can elevate themselves in their life. In Indian religious epics, references of lotus are made, in relation with eyes and feet of divine persona. For instance "Kamala Kannan" referring Lord Krishna with the contextual meaning, a person having eyes with the color of the pink lotus. Also, it is coupled with the feet of deities. "Kamala Patham" means lotus feet implying the feet of the god. "Charan Kamala Patham" implying, submit oneself in totality, at the lotus feet of the god.

National Tree of India-THE BANYAN TREE. THE BANYAN TREE-Called the Indian fig tree( Ficus bengalensis) grow over a large area. The roots then give rise to more trunks and branches. Because of this characteristic & longevity, the Banyan tree is considered immortal & sacred and is an integral part of the myths and legends in India. Even today, the banyan tree is the focal point of village life and the village council meetings under the shade of this huge shade-giving tree.

National Fruit of India-THE MANGO The fruit Mango,of the tree Mangifera indica, is one of the most widely cultivated fruits of the tropical world. This juicy, delicious fruit is a rich source of Vitamins A, C and D. In India there are hundreds of varieties of mangoes, in different sizes, shapes and colours etc. Mangoes, have been cultivated in India since time immemorial. The famous Indian poet Kalidasa sang its praises.King Alexander relished its taste, as did the Chinese traveller Hieun Tsang. Akbar, the Moghal emperor planted over 100,000 mango trees in Darbhanga, known as Lakhi Bagh(India).

MOON HOAX

sarathy88 — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 06:15:44 CST

The Great Moon Hoax Moon rocks and common sense prove Apollo astronauts really did visit the Moon.

February 23, 2001 -- Last week my phone rang. It was my mother ... and she was upset. "Tony!" she exclaimed, "I just came from the coffee shop and there's an [adjective omitted] man down there who says NASA never landed on the Moon. Everyone was talking about it ... I just didn't know what to say!" That last bit was hard to swallow, I thought. Mom's never at a loss for words. But even more incredible was the controversy that swirled through her small-town diner and places like it across the country. After a long absence, the "Moon Hoax" was back. Above: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the Moon in 1969. [more information] All the buzz about the Moon began on February 15th when Fox television aired a program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? Guests on the show argued that NASA technology in the 1960's wasn't up to the task of a real Moon landing. Instead, anxious to win the Space Race any way it could, NASA acted out the Apollo program in movie studios. Neil Armstrong's historic first steps on another world, the rollicking Moon Buggy rides, even Al Shepard's arcing golf shot over Fra Mauro-- it was all a fake! Fortunately the Soviets didn't think of the gag first. They could have filmed their own fake Moon landings and really embarrassed the free world. Shows like Conspiracy Theory ought to be as tongue-in-cheek as they sound. Unfortunately, there was an earnest feel to the Fox broadcast, enough to make you wonder if the program's makers might have fallen under their own spell. According to the show NASA was a blundering movie producer thirty years ago. For example, Conspiracy Theory pundits pointed out a seeming discrepancy in Apollo imagery: Pictures of astronauts transmitted from the Moon don't include stars in the dark lunar sky -- an obvious production error! What happened? Did NASA film-makers forget to turn on the constellations? Most photographers already know the answer: It's difficult to capture something very bright and something else very dim on the same piece of film -- typical emulsions don't have enough "dynamic range." Astronauts striding across the bright lunar soil in their sunlit spacesuits were literally dazzling. Setting a camera with the proper exposure for a glaring spacesuit would naturally render background stars too faint to see. Here's another one: Pictures of Apollo astronauts erecting a US flag on the Moon show the flag bending and rippling. How can that be? After all, there's no breeze on the Moon.... Not every waving flag needs a breeze -- at least not in space. When astronauts were planting the flagpole they rotated it back and forth to better penetrate the lunar soil (anyone who's set a blunt tent-post will know how this works). So of course the flag waved! Unfurling a piece of rolled-up cloth with stored angular momentum will naturally result in waves and ripples -- no breeze required! Left: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin deploy a U.S. flag on the Moon in 1969. [more] The Fox documentary went on with plenty more specious points. You can find detailed rebuttals to each of them at BadAstronomy.com and the Moon Hoax web page. (These are independent sites, not sponsored by NASA.) The best rebuttal to allegations of a "Moon Hoax," however, is common sense. Evidence that the Apollo program really happened is compelling: A dozen astronauts (laden with cameras) walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Nine of them are still alive and can testify to their experience. They didn't return from the Moon empty-handed, either. Just as Columbus carried a few hundred natives back to Spain as evidence of his trip to the New World, Apollo astronauts brought 841 pounds of Moon rock home to Earth. "Moon rocks are absolutely unique," says Dr. David McKay, Chief Scientist for Planetary Science and Exploration at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). McKay is a member of the group that oversees the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility at JSC where most of the Moon rocks are stored. "They differ from Earth rocks in many respects," he added. "For example," explains Dr. Marc Norman, a lunar geologist at the University of Tasmania, "lunar samples have almost no water trapped in their crystal structure, and common substances such as clay minerals that are ubiquitous on Earth are totally absent in Moon rocks." "We've found particles of fresh glass in Moon rocks that were produced by explosive volcanic activity and by meteorite impacts over 3 billion years ago," added Norman. "The presence of water on Earth rapidly breaks down such volcanic glass in only a few million years. These rocks must have come from the Moon!" Right: A glass spherule (about 0.6 mm in diameter) produced by a meteorite impact into lunar soil. Features on the surface are glass splashes, welded mineral fragments, and microcraters produced by space weathering processes at the surface of the moon. SEM image by D. S. McKay (NASA Photo S71-48109). Fortunately not all of the evidence needs a degree in chemistry or geology to appreciate. An average person holding a Moon rock in his or her hand can plainly see that the specimen came from another world. "Apollo moon rocks are peppered with tiny craters from meteoroid impacts," explains McKay. This could only happen to rocks from a planet with little or no atmosphere... like the Moon. Meteoroids are nearly-microscopic specks of comet dust that fly through space at speeds often exceeding 50,000 mph -- ten times faster than a speeding bullet. They pack a considerable punch, but they're also extremely fragile. Meteoroids that strike Earth's atmosphere disintegrate in the rarefied air above our stratosphere. (Every now and then on a dark night you can see one -- they're called meteors.) But the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere to protect it. The tiny space bullets can plow directly into Moon rocks, forming miniature and unmistakable craters.

"There are plenty of museums, including the Smithsonian and others, where members of the public can touch and examine rocks from the Moon," says McKay. "You can see the little meteoroid craters for yourself." Right: Nick-named "Big Muley," this 11.7 kg Moon rock was the largest returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts. One side of Big Muley was peppered with meteoroid "zap pits." Below right: A close-up view of 1 mm diameter zap pits shows tiny craters lined with black glass surrounded by a white halo of shocked rock. [more] Just as meteoroids constantly bombard the Moon so do cosmic rays, and they leave their fingerprints on Moon rocks, too. "There are isotopes in Moon rocks, isotopes we don't normally find on Earth, that were created by nuclear reactions with the highest-energy cosmic rays," says McKay. Earth is spared from such radiation by our protective atmosphere and magnetosphere. Even if scientists wanted to make something like a Moon rock by, say, bombarding an Earth rock with high energy atomic nuclei, they couldn't. Earth's most powerful particle accelerators can't energize particles to match the most potent cosmic rays, which are themselves accelerated in supernova blastwaves and in the violent cores of galaxies. Indeed, says McKay, faking a Moon rock well enough to hoodwink an international army of scientists might be more difficult than the Manhattan Project. "It would be easier to just go to the Moon and get one," he quipped. And therein lies an original idea: Did NASA go to the Moon to collect props for a staged Moon landing? It's an interesting twist on the conspiracy theory that TV producers might consider for their next episode of the Moon Hoax. "I have here in my office a 10-foot high stack of scientific books full of papers about the Apollo Moon rocks," added McKay. "Researchers in thousands of labs have examined Apollo Moon samples -- not a single paper challenges their origin! And these aren't all NASA employees, either. We've loaned samples to scientists in dozens of countries [who have no reason to cooperate in any hoax]." Even Dr. Robert Park, Director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society and a noted critic of NASA's human space flight program, agrees with the space agency on this issue. "The body of physical evidence that humans did walk on the Moon is simply overwhelming." "Fox should stick to making cartoons," agreed Marc Norman. "I'm a big fan of The Simpsons!"

BMW BIKES

sarathy88 — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 05:49:57 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

ABDULKALAM

sarathy88 — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:51:05 CST

We have made significant achievements in the last fifty years in food production, health sector, higher education, media and mass communication, industrial infrastructure, information technology, science and technology and defence. Our nation is endowed with natural resources, vibrant people and traditional value system. In spite of these resources, a number of our people are below the poverty line, undernourished and lack primary education…Along with speedy development aimed at elimination of poverty and unemployment, national security has to be recognized by every Indian as a national priority. Indeed, making India strong and self-reliant—economically, socially and militarily—is our foremost duty to our motherland and to us and to our future generations. Dr. Kalam in his speech on the occasion of his assumption of office as President of India on July 25, 2002 Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, popularly known as Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the son of a little educated boat-owner in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, has become the 11th President of the Republic of India. The names of the earlier Presidents of India are: Dr. Rajendra Prasad, S. Radhakrishnan, Zakeer Hussain, Fakuruddin Ali Ahmed, V. V. Giri, Neelam Sanjeev Reddy, Gyani Zail Singh, R. Venkataraman, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma and K. R. Narayanan. Some of our Presidents rose even from much humbler beginning than Dr. Kalam. It is very significant that he is the first scientist to occupy the Rashtrapati Bhavan. He is a man one, who has taken unto himself, the task of changing the destiny of India. He is a man with a vision.

His vision is to make India a developed country. He has given his plan of action and a road map for realizing his vision. He has articulated his thoughts in his three books: India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium, Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power Within India. India has already started looking to Dr. Kalam for inspiration and guidance. Dr. Kalam was born on October 15, 1931. He had a secured childhood both materially and emotionally. To quote from his autobiography Wings of Fire: “I was born into a middle-class Tamil family in the island town of Rameswaram in Madras state. My father, Jainulabdeen, possessed neither much formal education nor much wealth; despite these disadvantages, he possessed great innate wisdom and a true generosity of spirit. He had an ideal helpmate in my mother, Ashiamma. I do not recall the exact number of people she fed everyday, but I am quite certain that far more outsiders ate with us than all the members of our own family…We lived in our ancestral house, which was built in the middle of the 19th century. It was a fairly large pucca house, made of limestone and brick, on the Mosque Street of Rameswaram. My austere father used to avoid all inessential comforts and luxuries. However, all that was needed was provided for, in terms of food, medicine or cloths. In fact, I would say mine was a very secure childhood, both materially and emotionally.” Dr. Kalam’s father commanded a high respect as a religious man. Dr, Kalam has acknowledged that his scientific accomplishment and his views are very much influenced by his parents and other well-wishers. To quote him from his autobiography : “Every child is born, with some characteristics, into a specific socio-economic and emotional environment, and trained along the way, in certain ways by figures of authority. I inherited honesty and self-discipline from my father; from my mother, I inherited faith in goodness and deep kindness as did my three brothers and sisters. But it was the time I spent with Jallaluddin and Samsuddin that perhaps contributed most to the uniqueness of my childhood and made all the difference in my later life. The unschooled wisdom of Jallauddin and Samsuddin was so intuitive, responsive to non-verbal messages that I can unhesitatingly attribute my subsequently manifested creativity to their company in my childhood.” It may be noted that Ahmed Jallaluddin was a close friend of Dr. Kalam and Somesuddin was his first cousins. After studying in a primary school in Ramaeswaran, Dr. Kalam went to Schwartz High School at Ramanathpuram from where he went to Tiruchchirapalli for his higher studies. Dr. Kalam wrote : “By the time I completed my education at Schwartz, I was a self-confident boy with the determination to be successful. The decision to go in for further education was taken without a second thought. To us, in those days, the awarness of the possibilities for a professional education did not exist; higher education simply meant going to college. The nearest college was at Tiruchchirapalli, spelled Trichinopoly those days, and called Trichi for short. “ After completing his BSc from St. Joseph’s college he joined the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), for studying aeronautical engineering. From MIT, he went to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) at Bangalore as a trainee. As aeronautical engineer Dr. Kalam had two options -- in short, to join the Directorate of Technical Development and Production, or DTD & P (Air) of the Ministry of Defence or the Indian Air Force. As he could not make it to Indian Air Force, Dr. Kalam joined the Technical Centre (Civil Aviation) of the DTD&P (Air) as Senior Scientific Assistant on a basic salary of Rs. 250/-. While working at the Air force Directorate he got a chance to realise his dream. He joined the Indian Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR), the predecessor of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). And thus Kalam started his much talked about career in rocket and missile technology. Before he became President of the country, Dr. Kalam had divided his career in four phases. In the first phase (1963-82) he worked with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). At ISRO he served in various capacities. After initiating Fibre Reinforced Plastics (FRP) activities and spending some time with the aerodynamics and design group he joined the satellite launching vehicle team at Thumba. Here he was made the Project Director of the Mission for SLV-3. He played a crucial role in developing satellite launch vehicle technology and expertise in control, propulsion and aerodynamics. The SLV-3 project managed to put Rohini, a scientific satellite, into orbit in July 1980. India also acquired the ability to design various kinds of rocket systems. Commenting on the first phase of his career Dr. Kalam wrote: “This was my first stage, in which I learnt leadership from three great teachers—Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, Prof. Satish Dhawan and Dr. Brahm Prakash. This was the time of learning and acquisition of knowledge for me.” The second phase of his career started when he joined the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in 1982. As Director of DRDO, Dr. Kalam was entrusted with the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP). Under his leadership India has been able to develop strategic missiles. Like Nag (an anti-tank guided missile), Prithvi (a surface to surface battlefield missile), Akash (a swift, medium - range surface-to-air missile), Trishul (a quick-reaction surface – to – air missile) and Agni (an intermediate range ballistic missile).Three new laboratories/facilities in the area of missile technology were established. About this phase Dr. Kalam wrote: “During this stage, I have gone through many successes and failures. I learnt from failures and hardened myself with courage to face them. This was my second stage, which taught me the crucial lesson of managing failures.” Dr. Kalam’s contribution to India’s defence capabilities is very significant. Dr. Kalam identifies his third phase with his participation with India’s mission to become a nuclear weapon state, jointly undertaken by DRDO and Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) with the active support of the armed forces. During this phase he, as Chairman of the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), also got involved with the creation of Technology Vision 2020 and the India Millennium Missions (IMM 2020), which is an integratied version of technology vision and India’s security concerns. In November 1999 Dr. Kalam was appointed as Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. His fourth phase started after he left the post of Principal Scientific Adviser. He joined the Anna University at Chennai as Professor of Technology and Societal Transformation. As part of realizing his mission he decided to ignite the minds of the young. For this purpose he wanted to reach at least 100,000 students in different parts of the country before August 2003. He has already met about 40,000 students. His fourth phase took a sudden turn, which he himself perhaps did not visualize. He became the President of India. In 1997 Dr. Kalam was given the highest civilian award of India, the Bharat Ratna

Vigyan Prasar, while felicitating this humble and great scientist ; and now first citizen, takes the pledge to fully dedicate it self to turn his Dream of transforming our country into a developed nation.

KARAMBAYAM MUTHUMARIAMMAN

sarathy88 — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 03:03:54 CST

Karambayam Sri Muthumariamman Temple
Karambayam Muthumariamman Temple is situated in the North direction of Pattukottai at about 5 km in Karambayam village. This is the famous temple in the area of Pattukottai town. In the olden days, the place was as barren land (Karambai). A milkman (Yadhava) went to nearby place through the batten land daily and every day the milk he carried, spilled at the same place. He became angry and started digging the ground. There he surprisingly found the idol of Muthumariamman. One can see the scars of the digging by the milkman (Yadhava) on the idol. Due to the heat dissipated from the Amman, the milkman affected by Chicken pox. After five days due to the grace of Amman, The milkman cured from the chicken pox and hence the Amman is called Muthumariamman. A temple was constructed in the same place and people living around Pattukottai, worship this god on the Tamil month Panguni for 12 days.

STILLS

sarathy88 — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 03:01:06 CST

MUKKULATHOR

sarathy88 — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 06:57:01 CST

Mukkulathor

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Mukkulathor, Mukulathar or Mukulathor is a name for a group of three related social groups or castes of Tamil Nadu state of India. The related castes are Kallar, Maravar and Agamudaiyar.

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[edit] Origins

[edit] Maravar

Maravar are one of the earliest social groups to be mentioned by the Sangam Tamil literature, thus indicating an age old association with Tamil lands of at least 2,000 years. They are mentioned by the authors as part of the landscape beyond settled life in cities in the ancient Tamilakam. Maravar means in tamil warrier. [edit] Nativist roots Other historians postulate that Maravar is derived from Tamil language term Marutham for kind of place (called as Thinnai) they originally lived in (See Ancient Tamil country). The name of the city Madurai is also postulated to be derived from Maruthai and honorific title of local Pandya kings.

[edit] Kallar

The name kallar is given to a group of warrier clans who were often used by kings to capture food sources of enemy kings. The food sources included goats, cows, etc. The objective was to ensure a psycholological blow to the enemy king. In Madurai there is a god named Kallalagar(Lord vishnu). The caste is widely distributed in southern districts of Tamilnadu."Piramallai Kallar"is the subcaste of the main Kallar caste.They mainly lived in the districts of Theni at the time of British raj. They were deeply humiliated by the British Colonialist by confining all male members of the community to stand all night within a circle drawn on the ground. Muthuramalinga Thevar ayya was the one who fought against this. Todate they maintain ancient indigenous rituals that were mentioned in early Tamil literature. In the medieval period most were employed as soldiers or as security guards.

[edit] Agammudaiyar

Also known as Agam Padaiyar (defending soldiers) indicating a specialization as soldiers. Although their name is attested later in literature they and the culture is indigenous to the area and are ancient in origins. Some believe these castes formed as part of military formation of Kallap Padai or hustlers, Marap Padai or soldiers and Agap Padai or defenders, although no evidence has been put forward towards this theory.

[edit] Legends of the British Era

Marudu brothers Periya Marudhu and Chinna Manrudhu are the sons of Udayar Servai alias Mookiah palaniappan servai and Anandayer alias Ponnathal. They are native of Kongulu street of Ramnad. The Marudu brothers with 12,000 armed men surrounded Sivaganga and plundered the Nawab's territories. The Nawab on the 10th of March 1789 appealed to the Madras Council for aid. On 29th April 1789, the British forces attacked Kollangudi. It was defeated by a large body of Marudu's troops. He was in close association with Veera Pandiya Kattabomman of Panchalankurichi. Kattabomman held frequent consultations with Marudhus. Pooli Thevar is another legend in Thirunelveli district of Southern Tamilnadu who fought the British during the 1800's and is noted as one of the early king who fought and defeated the British on several wars before he was defeted by British forces in collaboration with the Trivancore forces. Queen Velu Nachiyar from Ramandhapuram disctict of Southern Tamilnadu is another noted personality who fought with the British during early British Era. " "REBEL" MUTHU RAMALINGM THE KING OF RAMNAD ALSO FOUGHT AGAINST THE BRITISH EMPIRE;. "KIZHAVAN SETHUPATHY"WHO FOUGHT WITH NAIK KINGS TO RECOVER MADURAI. "MARDHU PANDIYAR & VELU NACHIAR ,HAVE CORDIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TIPPU SULTHAN "THE DECLARATION GIVEN BY THE MARUDHU PANDIYARS TO UNITE THE SMALL KINGS OF TAMILNADU,UNDER THEIR LEADERSHIP IS THE FIRST WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
"SWAMI VIVEKANANDA" WAS KNOWN TO THE WORLD OF SPEECH AT NEW YORK.HE WAS HELPED BY THE RAJA OF RAMNAD TO GO TO CONFERENCE.. "vALLAL PANDI DURAI THEVAR "FORMED THE FOURTH TAMIL SANGAM IN MADURAI.

[edit] Descendents of the Very First Modern Humans

Dr Spencer Wells and Dr Pitchappan have found an ancient DNA marker in the blood of Piramalai Kallar that links them to the very first modern humans who migrated out of Africa about 60,000 years ago and travelling through the southern coastline of Asia had eventually reached Australia. From this it is clear that the Piramalai Kallar can be said to be the longest living human tribe in India.

[edit] Current status

Although great many of the members are still agriculturalists many have also progressed up the social ladder as doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, politicians and civil servants. Members of these castes are also found in the Tamil diaspora across the world,the word AGAM-PADAIYAR,or AGAP-PADAI, has a similarity with the surname AGAMPADI,in Srilanka which is used amongst one of the sub castes in the Sinhalese Salagama caste "Hewapanne"(Warriors)the name "AGAMPADI",(AGAMPU)+(ADI=TO HIT) or "AGAMPODI is used in front of their surnames, (e.g.),Agampadi Thabrew, Agampodi De Zoysa,Agampadi Jayathileke,Agampadi Abeysekara, etc...they are very proud of the military tradition of their ancestors,according to a legend, their ancestors were mercenary soldiers,from South India,who were brought to protect Royal Palaces,& to fight wars, they were highly trained in Martial Arts,Sword Fighting, etc...they were supposed to have fought valiantly against the Portuguese,there were apparently,several military camps in the southern part of Srilanka,& some of these soldiers married local Salagama women & got assimilated in to the Salagama caste. Some of them have embrassed Christianity. There was a familiar priest in Tirunelveli - Rev Issac Abraham who was given a status of Sainthood by the local people for his exemplary living and generousity. He and his wife were buried near the church at Pannaivilai. His descendants and relatives were also serving as pastors such as Rev Jeevanandam, Rev M D Joshva in the Church of South India. One of his family person is working as a professor at Birmingham University. His name is Rev Dr Joshva Raja. They come originally from Seevaleperi.the commonly used titles & surnames of this community,are Thevar,Nattaar,Padaiyachee,Thalaivar Ambalakarar ,vandiyars,salvars,kaduvettiar..this title differ according to the region they live .etc..Women use the title Nachiyaar,& its a general practice in Southern Tamil Nadu to address a Thevar woman as "Nachchiyaar.

[edit] Popular personalities of the community

Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar - Indian freedom fighter and known for his relationship with Subhash Chandra Bose.

Late actor Sivaji Ganesan

Justice RathnaVel Pandian Supreme court Judge and Chairman of Vth pay commission

Central Minister T.R.Baloo

Central Minister Pazhani Manickam

Former minister S. Thirunavukkarasar

Former minister T. Kiruttinan

Thevar leader Dr. N. Sethuraman of Moovendar Munnetra Kazhagam
DR RAMAKRISHNAN FOUNDER OF THEVAR PERAVAI.
Pon Paramaguru - I.P.S

Malaichamy I.A.S - He served as State Election commission officer in India.

comedy actor senthil

director Kathir,kguytretrsw54euiuyr6u

director Balaji Sakthivel

Lyrist Vairamuthu
VIVEK ACTOR
Actor S.S.Rajendran
o.pannerselvam former chief minister of tamilnadu
LATE PREM KUMAR VANDIAYAR.
M.V.MUTHURAMALINGAM CHAIRPERSON VELAMMAL GROUP OF SCHOOLS&COLLEGE.
Late actor R. Muthuraman and his son, actor and politician Karthik Muthuraman
Actor Prabhu Ganesan, son of Sivaji Ganesan

Director Bharathiraja and his son Actor and director Manoj Bharathiraja
actor chandrasekar EXISTING KINGS &QUEENS

KUMARAN SETHUPATHY OF RAMNAD SAMASTHANAM, CHARU BALA THONDAIMAN OF PUDUKKOTTAI, MADURANTAKKI NACHIAR OF SIVAGANGA, DURAICHI OF NERKATTAN SAEVEL . SOME OF THE PEOPLE BELONG TO MARUDHU FAMILY.THEY STILL RECIEVE THE HONOURS OF THEYRE OWN REGION,AND ALSO MAINTAINING THE OFFERINGS GIVEN TO THE TEMPLES UNDER THEIR CONTROL. Bold text==Reference== ↑ *Untouchability and Inter-caste relations in Rural India: The case of Southern Tamil Villages by A. Ramaiah Journal of Religious Culture, No 70 (2004)

actor vinuchakravarthy
director KATHIR(KATHAL DESAM)
director cum actor S.J.SURYA
actor S.S.CHANDRAN
M.Parthasarathy vandayar B.Tech.,pattukkottai.
M.Vijayasarathy vandayar B.E.,pattukkottai

ADOLF HITLER

sarathy88 — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 06:39:02 CST

Precededby Succeededby

Head of State
Führer und Reichskanzler

Precededby Succeededby Born Died Politicalparty Spouse

Adolf Hitler

Chancellor of Germany Reichskanzler
Inoffice 30 January 1933–30 April 1945
Kurt von Schleicher
Karl Doenitz
Inoffice 2 August 1934–April 30, 1945
Paul von Hindenburg (as President)
Karl Dönitz (as President)

April 20, 1889 Braunau am Inn, Austria
April 30, 1945 Berlin, Germany
National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP)
Eva Braun (married on 29 April 1945)

Adolf Hitler(help·info) (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of Germany from 1933, and "Führer" (Leader) of Germany from 1934 until his death. He was leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), better known as the Nazi Party. Hitler gained power in a Germany facing crisis after World War I. Using propaganda and charismatic oratory, he was able to appeal to the economic need of the lower and middle classes, while sounding resonant chords of nationalism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism. With the establishment of a restructured economy, a rearmed military, and a totalitarian fascist dictatorship, Hitler pursued an aggressive foreign policy with the intention of expanding German Lebensraum ("living space"), which triggered World War II when Germany invaded Poland. At its greatest extent, Nazi Germany occupied most of Europe, but along with the other Axis Powers it was eventually defeated by the Allies. By then, Hitler's racial policies had culminated in a genocide of approximately eleven million people, including about six million Jews, in what is now known as the Holocaust. In the final days of the war, Hitler along with his new wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin, after the city was surrounded by the Soviet army.

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Early years

Childhood and heritage

Adolf Hitler as an infant.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 at Braunau am Inn, Austria, a small town in Upper Austria, on the border with Germany. He was the third son and the fourth of six children of Alois Hitler (born Schicklgruber) (1837–1903), a minor customs official, and Klara Pölzl (1860–1907), his second cousin, and third wife. Because of the close kinship of the two, a papal dispensation had to be obtained before the marriage could take place. Of Alois and Klara's six children, only Adolf and his younger sister Paula reached adulthood. Alois Hitler also had a son, Alois Jr., and a daughter, Angela, by his second wife. Alois was born illegitimate and for the first thirty-nine years of his life bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber. In 1876, Alois began using the name of his stepfather, Johann Georg Hiedler, after visiting a priest responsible for birth registries and declaring that Georg was his father (Alois gave the impression that Georg was still alive but he was long dead). The name was variously spelled Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Hitler and probably changed to "Hitler" by a clerk. About the origin of the name there are two theories:

From German Hittler and similar, "one who lives in a hut", "shepherd".
From Slavic Hidlar and Hidlarcek.

Later, Adolf Hitler was accused by his political enemies of not rightfully being a Hitler, but a Schicklgruber. This was also exploited in Allied propaganda during World War II when pamphlets bearing the phrase "Heil Schicklgruber" were airdropped over German cities.[citation needed] Adolf was legally born a Hitler, however, and was also closely related to Hiedler through his maternal grandmother, Johanna Hiedler. Hitler's given name, "Adolf", comes from the Old High German for "noble wolf" ("Adel"="nobility" + "wolf").[1] Hence, not surprisingly, one of Hitler's self-given nicknames was Wolf or Herr Wolf — he began using this nickname in the early 1920s and was addressed by it only by intimates (as "Uncle Wolf" by the Wagners) up until the fall of the Third Reich.[2] By his closest family and relatives, Hitler was known simply as "Adi". The names of his various headquarters scattered throughout continental Europe (Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, Wolfsschlucht in France, Werwolf in Ukraine, etc.) seem to reflect this. As a boy, Hitler was whipped almost daily by his father. Years later he told his secretary, "I then resolved never again to cry when my father whipped me. A few days later I had the opportunity of putting my will to the test. My mother, frightened, took refuge in the front of the door. As for me, I counted silently the blows of the stick which lashed my rear end." [3] Hitler was not sure who his paternal grandfather was, but it was probably either Johann Georg Hiedler or his brother Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. There have been rumours that Hitler was one-quarter Jewish [1] and that his paternal grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, had become pregnant after working as a servant in a Jewish household in Graz. During the 1920s, the implications of these rumours along with his known family history were politically explosive, especially for the proponent of a racist ideology. Opponents tried to prove that Hitler, the leader of the anti-Semitic Nazi Party, had Jewish or Czech ancestors. Although these rumours were never confirmed, for Hitler they were reason enough to conceal his origins. Soviet propaganda insisted Hitler was a Jew, though more modern research tends to diminish the probability that he had Jewish ancestors. According to Robert G. L. Waite in The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, Hitler made it illegal for German women to work in Jewish households, and after the "Anschluss" (annexation) of Austria, Hitler had his father's hometown obliterated by turning it into an artillery practice area. Hitler seemed to fear that he was Jewish, and as Waite points out, this fact is more important than whether he actually was. Because of Alois Hitler's profession, his family moved frequently, from Braunau to Passau, Lambach, Leonding, and Linz. As a young child, Hitler was reportedly a good student at the various elementary schools he attended; however, in sixth grade (1900–1), his first year of high school (Realschule) in Linz, he failed completely and had to repeat the grade. His teachers reported that he had "no desire to work." One of Hitler's classmates in the Linz Realschule was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who went on to become one of the great philosophers of the 20th century.[4] Hitler later explained this educational slump as a kind of rebellion against his father Alois, who wanted the boy to follow him in a career as a customs official, although Adolf wanted to become a painter. This explanation is further supported by Hitler's later description of himself as a misunderstood artist. However, after Alois died on January 3, 1903, when Adolf was 13, Hitler's schoolwork did not improve. At the age of 16, Hitler left school with no qualifications.

Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich

From 1905 onward, Hitler was able to live the life of a Bohemian on a fatherless child's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907 – 1908) due to "unfitness for painting", and was told his abilities lay rather in the field of architecture. His memoirs reflect a fascination with the subject:

"The purpose of my trip was to study the picture gallery in the Court Museum, but I had eyes for scarcely anything but the Museum itself. From morning until late at night, I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings which held my primary interest." (Mein Kampf, Chapter II, paragraph 3).

Following the school rector's recommendation, he too became convinced this was the path to pursue, yet he lacked the proper academic preparation for architecture school:

"In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfillment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.''"(Mein Kampf, Chapter II, paragraph 5 & 6).

On December 21, 1907, his mother Klara died a painful death from breast cancer at the age of 47. Hitler gave his share of the orphans' benefits to his younger sister Paula, but when he was 21 he inherited some money from an aunt. He worked as a struggling painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists (there is evidence he produced over 2000 paintings and drawings before World War I). Several biographers have noted that a Jewish resident of the house named Hanisch helped him sell his postcards.[citation needed]

A watercolour by Adolf Hitler depicting Laon, France.

After the second refusal from the Academy of Arts, Hitler gradually ran out of money. By 1909, he sought refuge in a homeless shelter, and by the beginning of 1910 had settled permanently into a house for poor working men. Hitler first became an active anti-Semite in Vienna, which had a large Jewish community, including many Orthodox Jews from Eastern Europe and where traditional religious prejudice mixed with recent racist theories. Hitler was influenced over time by the writings of the race ideologist and anti-Semite Lanz von Liebenfels and polemics from politicians such as Karl Lueger, founder of the Christian Social Party and mayor of Vienna, one of the most outrageous demagogues in history, and Georg Ritter von Schönerer, leader of the pan-Germanic Away from Rome! movement. He later wrote in his book Mein Kampf that his transition from opposing anti-Semitism on religious grounds to supporting it on racial grounds came from having seen an Orthodox Jew:

"There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism.

Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?"
(Mein Kampf, vol. 1, chap. 2: "Years of study and suffering in Vienna")

Hitler began to claim the Jews were natural enemies of what he called the Aryan race. He held them responsible for Austria's crisis. He also identified certain forms of Socialism and especially Bolshevism, which had many Jews among its leaders, as Jewish movements, merging his anti-Semitism with anti-Marxism. Blaming Germany's military defeat on the 1917 Revolutions[citation needed], he considered Jews the culprit of Imperial Germany's military defeat and subsequent economic problems as well. Generalising from tumultuous scenes in the parliament of the multi-national Austria Monarchy, he developed a firm belief in the inferiority of the democratic parliamentary system, which formed the basis of his political views. However, according to August Kubizek, his close friend and roommate at the time, he was more interested in the operas of Richard Wagner than in politics.

A landscape painted by Adolf Hitler.

Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich. He later wrote in Mein Kampf that he had always longed to live in a "real" German city. In Munich, he became more interested in architecture and the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Moving to Munich also helped him escape military service in Austria for a time, but the Austrian army later arrested him. After a physical exam (during which his height was measured at 173 cm, or 5 ft 8 in) and a contrite plea, he was deemed unfit for service and allowed to return to Munich. However, when Germany entered World War I in August 1914, he immediately petitioned King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment, this request was granted, and Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian army.[5]

World War I

Hitler saw active service in France and Belgium as a messenger for the regimental headquarters of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment (also called Regiment List after its first commander), which exposed him to enemy fire. Unlike his fellow soldiers, Hitler reportedly never complained about the food or hard conditions, preferring to talk about art or history. He also drew some cartoons and instructional drawings for the army newspaper. His behaviour as a soldier was considered somewhat sloppy[citation needed], but his regular duties required taking dispatches to and from fighting areas and he was twice decorated for his performance of these duties. He received the Iron Cross, Second Class, in December 1914 and the Iron Cross, First Class, in August 1918, an honour rarely given to a Gefreiter. However, because of the perception of "a lack of leadership skills" on the part of some of the regimental staff, as well as (according to Kershaw) Hitler's unwillingness to leave regimental headquarters (which would have been likely in event of promotion), he was never promoted to Unteroffizier. Other historians, however, say that the reason he was not promoted is that he did not have German citizenship. His duty station at regimental headquarters, while often dangerous, gave Hitler time to pursue his artwork. During October 1916 in northern France, Hitler was wounded in the leg, but returned to the front in March 1917. He received the Wound Badge later that year, as his injury was the direct result of hostile fire. Sebastian Haffner, referring to Hitler's experience at the front, suggests he did have at least some understanding of the military. On October 15, 1918, shortly before the end of the war, Hitler was admitted to a field hospital, temporarily blinded by a poison gas attack. The English psychologist David Lewis [6] and Bernhard Horstmann indicate the blindness may have been the result of a conversion disorder (then known as hysteria). Hitler later said it was during this experience that he became convinced the purpose of his life was to "save Germany". Some scholars, notably Lucy Dawidowicz,[7] argue that an intention to exterminate Europe's Jews was fully formed in Hitler's mind at this time, though he probably hadn't thought through how it could be done. Two passages in Mein Kampf mention the use of poison gas: At the beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas . . . then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain. (Volume 2, Chapter 15 "The Right to Self-Defence"). These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human weakness and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be. (Volume 1, Chapter 2 "Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna") Hitler had long admired Germany, and during the war he had become a passionate German patriot, although he did not become a German citizen until 1932. He was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918 even while the German army still held enemy territory. Like many other German nationalists, Hitler believed in the Dolchstoßlegende ("dagger-stab legend") which claimed that the army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" by civilian leaders and Marxists back on the home front. These politicians were later dubbed the November Criminals. The Treaty of Versailles deprived Germany of various territories, demilitarized the Rhineland and imposed other economically damaging sanctions. The treaty also declared Germany the culprit for all the horrors of the Great War, as a basis for later imposing not-yet-specified reparations on Germany (the amount was repeatedly revised under the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the Hoover Moratorium). Germans, however, perceived the treaty and especially the paragraph on the German guilt as a humiliation, not least as it was damaging in the extreme to their pride. For example, there was a nearly total demilitarisation of the armed forces, allowing Germany only 6 battleships, no submarines, no air force, an army of 100,000 without conscription and no armoured vehicles. The treaty was an important factor in both the social and political conditions encountered by Hitler and his National Socialist Party as they sought power. Hitler and his party used the signing of the treaty by the "November Criminals" as a reason to build up Germany so that it could never happen again. He also used the 'November Criminals' as scapegoats, although at the Paris peace conference, these politicians had had very little choice in the matter.

The early years of the Nazi Party

A copy of Adolf Hitler's forged DAP membership card. His actual membership number was 555 (the 55th member of the party - the 500 was added to make the group appear larger) but later the number was reduced to create the impression that Hitler was one of the founding members (Ian Kershaw Hubris). Hitler had wanted to create his own party, but was ordered by his superiors in the Reichswehr to infiltrate an existing one instead.

Hitler's entry into politics

Main article: Hitler's political beliefs

After World War I, Hitler remained in the army and returned to Munich, where he - in contrast to his later declarations - participated in the funeral march for the murdered Bavarian prime minister Kurt Eisner.[8] After the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic, took part in "national thinking" courses organized by the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group, Headquarters 4 under Captain Karl Mayr. A key purpose of this group was to create a scapegoat[citation needed] for the outbreak of the war and Germany's defeat. The scapegoats were found in "international Jewry", communists, and politicians across the party spectrum, especially the parties of the Weimar Coalition, who were deemed "November Criminals"[citation needed]. In July 1919, Hitler was appointed a Verbindungsmann (police spy) of an Aufklärungskommando (Intelligence Commando) of the Reichswehr, for the purpose of influencing other soldiers toward similar ideas and was assigned to infiltrate a small party, the German Workers' Party (DAP), which was thought of to be a possibly socialist party (See: Adolf Hitler's inspection of the German Workers' Party). During his inspection of the party, Hitler was impressed with Drexler's anti-Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist ideas, which favoured a strong active government, a "non-Jewish" version of socialism and mutual solidarity of all members of society. Here Hitler also met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party and member of the occult Thule Society.[9] Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people. Hitler in return thanked Eckart by paying tribute to him in the second volume of Mein Kampf. Hitler was discharged from the army in March 1920 and with his former superiors' continued encouragement began participating full time in the party's activities. By early 1921, Adolf Hitler was becoming highly effective at speaking in front of even larger crowds. In February, Hitler spoke before a crowd of nearly six thousand in Munich. To publicize the meeting, he sent out two truckloads of Party supporters to drive around with swastikas, cause a commotion and throw out leaflets, their first use of this tactic. Hitler gained notoriety outside of the Party for his rowdy, polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians (including monarchists, nationalists and other non-internationalist socialists) and especially against Marxists and Jews. The DAP was centered in Munich which had become a hotbed of German nationalists who included Army officers determined to crush Marxism and undermine or even overthrow the young German republic. Gradually they noticed Adolf Hitler and his growing movement as a vehicle to hitch themselves to. Hitler traveled to Berlin to visit nationalist groups during the summer of 1921 and in his absence there was an unexpected revolt among the DAP leadership in Munich. The Party was run by an executive committee whose original members considered Hitler to be overbearing and even dictatorial. To weaken Hitler's position they formed an alliance with a group of socialists from Augsburg. Hitler rushed back to Munich and countered them by tendering his resignation from the Party on July 11, 1921. When they realized the loss of Hitler would effectively mean the end of the Party, he seized the moment and announced he would return on the condition that he was made chairman and given dictatorial powers. Infuriated committee members (including founder Anton Drexler) held out at first. Meanwhile an anonymous pamphlet appeared entitled Adolf Hitler: Is he a traitor?, attacking Hitler's lust for power and criticizing the violence-prone men around him. Hitler responded to its publication in a Munich newspaper by suing for libel and later won a small settlement. The executive committee of the DAP eventually backed down and Hitler's demands were put to a vote of party members. Hitler received 543 votes for and only one against. At the next gathering on July 29, 1921, Adolf Hitler was introduced as Führer of the National Socialist Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used. Hitler changed the name of the party to the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP). Hitler's beer hall oratory, attacking Jews, social democrats, liberals, reactionary monarchists, capitalists and communists, began attracting adherents. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, the former air force pilot Hermann Göring, and the army captain Ernst Röhm, who became head of the Nazis' paramilitary organization, the SA, which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. Hitler also assimilated independent groups, such as the Nuremberg-based Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft, led by Julius Streicher, who now became Gauleiter of Franconia. Hitler also attracted the attention of local business interests, was accepted into influential circles of Munich society and became associated with wartime General Erich Ludendorff during this time.

The Beer Hall Putsch

Main article: Beer Hall Putsch

Encouraged by this early support, Hitler decided to use Ludendorff as a front in an attempt to seize power later known as the Beer Hall Putsch (and sometimes as the Hitler Putsch or Munich Putsch). The Nazi Party had copied the Italian Fascists in appearance and also had adopted some programmatical points and now, in the turbulent year 1923, Hitler wanted to emulate Mussolini's "March on Rome" by staging his own "Campaign in Berlin". Hitler and Ludendorff obtained the clandestine support of Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler along with leading figures in the Reichswehr and the police. As political posters show, Ludendorff, Hitler and the heads of the Bavarian police and military planned on forming a new government. However on November 8, 1923 Kahr and the military withdrew their support during a meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall outside of Munich. A surprised Hitler had them arrested and proceeded with the coup. Unknown to him, Kahr and the other detainees had been released on Ludendorff's orders after he obtained their word not to interfere. That night they prepared resistance measures against the coup and in the morning, when Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government as a start to their "March on Berlin", the army quickly dispersed them (Ludendorff was wounded and a few other Nazis were killed). Hitler fled to the home of friends and contemplated suicide. He was soon arrested for high treason and appointed Alfred Rosenberg as temporary leader of the party but found himself in an environment somewhat receptive to his beliefs. During Hitler's trial, sympathetic magistrates allowed Hitler to turn his debacle into a propaganda stunt. He was given almost unlimited amounts of time to present his arguments to the court, and his popularity soared when he voiced basic nationalistic sentiments shared by some of the public. On April 1, 1924 Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg prison for the crime of conspiracy to commit treason. Hitler received favoured treatment from the guards and had much fan mail from admirers. Hitler was released on December 20, 1924 after the authorities decided that he was not a danger to the public. Including remand, he had served just over one year of his five-year sentence.

Mein Kampf

Main article: Mein Kampf

While at Landsberg he dictated his political book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to his deputy Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was both an autobiography and an exposition of his political ideology. It was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926 respectively, selling about 240,000 copies between 1925 and 1934 alone. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed (every newly-wed couple, as well as front soldiers, received free copies). Hitler spent years dodging taxes on the royalties of his book, and had accumulated a tax debt of about 405,500 Reichsmarks (6m euros in today's money) by the time he became chancellor (at which time his debt was waived).[10][11]

The rebuilding of the party

At the time of Hitler's release, the political situation in Germany had calmed down, and the economy had improved, which hampered Hitler's opportunities for agitation. Though the Hitler Putsch had given Hitler some national prominence, his party's mainstay was still Munich.

Joseph Goebbels with Adolf Hitler at the Obersalzberg, possibly early 1944.

As Hitler was still banned from public speeches, he appointed Gregor Strasser, who in 1924 had been elected to the Reichstag, as Reichsorganisationsleiter, authorizing him to organise the party in northern Germany. Gregor, joined by his younger brother Otto and Joseph Goebbels, steered an increasingly independent course, emphasizing the socialist element in the party's programme. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gauleiter Nord-West became an internal opposition, threatening Hitler's authority, but this faction was defeated at the Bamberg Conference (1926), during which Goebbels joined Hitler. After this encounter, Hitler centralized the party even more and asserted the Führerprinzip as the basic principle of party organization. Leaders were not elected by their group but were rather appointed by their superior and were answerable to them while demanding unquestioning obedience from their inferiors. Consistent with Hitler's disdain for democracy, all power and authority devolved from the top down. A key element of Hitler's appeal was his ability to convey a sense of offended national pride caused by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated German Empire by the Western Allies. Germany had lost economically important territory in Europe along with its colonies and in admitting to sole responsibility for the war had agreed to pay a huge reparations bill totaling 132 billion marks. Most Germans bitterly resented these terms but early Nazi attempts to gain support by blaming these humiliations on "international Jewry" were not particularly successful with the electorate. The party learned quickly and soon a more subtle propaganda emerged, combining anti-Semitism with an attack on the failures of the "Weimar system" and the parties supporting it. Having failed in overthrowing the Republic by a coup, Hitler now pursued the "strategy of legality": this meant formally adhering to the rules of the Weimar Republic until he had legally gained power and then transforming liberal democracy into a Nazi dictatorship. Some party members, especially in the paramilitary SA, opposed this strategy and Ernst Röhm ridiculed Hitler as "Adolphe Legalité".

The road to power

Main article: Hitler's rise to power

The Brüning administration

The political turning point for Hitler came when the Great Depression hit Germany in 1930. The Weimar Republic had never been firmly rooted and was openly opposed by right-wing conservatives (including monarchists), Communists and the Nazis. As the parties loyal to the democratic, parliamentary republic found themselves unable to agree on counter-measures, their Grand Coalition broke up and was replaced by a minority cabinet. The new Chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, lacking a majority in parliament, had to implement his measures through the President's emergency decrees. Tolerated by the majority of parties, the exception soon became the rule and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government. The Reichstag's initial opposition to Brüning's measures led to premature elections in September 1930. The republican parties lost their majority and their ability to resume the Grand Coalition, while the Nazis suddenly rose from relative obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote along with 107 seats in the Reichstag, becoming the second largest party in Germany.

Hitler emerges from the Brown House in Munich (headquarters of the Nazi party during the last days of the Weimar Republic) after a post-election meeting in 1930.

Brüning's measure of budget consolidation and financial austerity brought little economic improvement and was extremely unpopular. Under these circumstances, Hitler appealed to the bulk of German farmers, war veterans and the middle-class who had been hard-hit by both the inflation of the 1920s and the unemployment of the Depression. Hitler received little response from the urban working classes and traditionally Catholic regions. Meanwhile, on September 18, 1931, Hitler's niece Geli Raubal was found dead in her bedroom in his Munich apartment (his half-sister Angela and her daughter Geli had been with him in Munich since 1929), an apparent suicide. Geli was 19 years younger than he was and had used his gun, drawing rumours of a relationship between the two. The event is viewed as having caused lasting turmoil for him. In 1932, Hitler intended to run against the aging President Paul von Hindenburg in the scheduled presidential elections. Though Hitler had left Austria in 1913, he still had not acquired German citizenship and hence could not run for public office. In February, however, the state government of Brunswick, in which the Nazi Party participated, appointed Hitler to some minor administrative post and also gave him citizenship. The new German citizen ran against Hindenburg, who was supported by a broad range of reactionary nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, Republican and even social democratic parties, and against the Communist presidential candidate. His campaign was called "Hitler über Deutschland" (Hitler over Germany). The name had a double meaning.

Hitler over Germany. Political campaign by aircraft.

Besides an obvious reference to Hitler's dictatorial intentions, it also referred to the fact that Hitler was campaigning by aircraft. This was a brand new political tactic that allowed Hitler to speak in two cities in one day, which was practically unheard of at the time. Hitler came in second on both rounds, attaining more than 35% of the vote during the second one in April. Although he lost to Hindenburg, the election established Hitler as a realistic and fresh alternative in German politics.

The cabinets of Papen and Schleicher

President Hindenburg, influenced by the Camarilla, became increasingly estranged from Brüning and pushed his Chancellor to move the government in a decidedly authoritarian and right-wing direction. This culminated, in May 1932, with the resignation of the Brüning cabinet. Hindenburg appointed the nobleman Franz von Papen as chancellor, heading a "Cabinet of Barons". Papen was bent on authoritarian rule and, since in the Reichstag only the conservative DNVP supported his administration, he immediately called for new elections in July. In these elections, the Nazis achieved their biggest success yet and won 230 seats. The Nazis had become the largest party in the Reichstag without which no stable government could be formed. Papen tried to convince Hitler to become Vice-Chancellor and enter a new government with a parliamentary basis. Hitler however rejected this offer and put further pressure on Papen by entertaining parallel negotiations with the Centre Party, Papen's former party, which was bent on bringing down the renegade Papen. In both negotiations, Hitler demanded that he, as leader of the strongest party, must be Chancellor, but President Hindenburg consistently refused to appoint the "Bohemian private" to the Chancellorship. After a vote of no-confidence in the Papen government, supported by 84% of the deputies, the new Reichstag was dissolved and new elections were called in November. This time, the Nazis lost some votes but still remained the largest party in the Reichstag. After Papen failed to secure a majority, he proposed to dissolve the parliament again along with an indefinite postponement of elections. Hindenburg at first accepted this, but after General Kurt von Schleicher and the military withdrew their support, Hindenburg instead dismissed Papen and appointed Schleicher, who promised he could secure a majority government by negotiations with both the Social Democrats, the trade unions, and dissidents from the Nazi party under Gregor Strasser. In January 1933, however, Schleicher had to admit failure in these efforts and asked Hindenburg for emergency powers along with the same postponement of elections that he had opposed earlier, to which the President reacted by dismissing Schleicher.

Hitler's appointment as Chancellor

Meanwhile Papen, resentful because of his dismissal, tried to get his revenge on Schleicher by working toward the General's downfall, through forming an intrigue with the camarilla and Alfred Hugenberg, media mogul and chairman of the DNVP. Also involved were Hjalmar Schacht, Fritz Thyssen and other leading German businessmen. They financially supported the Nazi Party, which had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the cost of heavy campaigning. The businessmen also wrote letters to Hindenburg, urging him to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties" which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people."[12] Finally, the President reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler Chancellor of a coalition government formed by the NSDAP and DNVP. Hitler and two other Nazi ministers (Frick, Göring) were to be contained by a framework of conservative cabinet ministers, most notably by Papen as Vice-Chancellor and by Hugenberg as Minister of Economics. Papen wanted to use Hitler as a figure-head, but the Nazis had gained key positions, most notably the Ministry of the Interior. On the morning of January 30, 1933, in Hindenburg's office, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor during what some observers later described as a brief and simple ceremony.

Reichstag Fire and the March elections

Having become Chancellor, Hitler foiled all attempts to gain a majority in parliament and on that basis persuaded President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag again. Elections were scheduled for early March, but on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Since a Dutch independent communist was found in the building, the fire was blamed on a Communist plot to which the government reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 28, which suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus. Under the provisions of this decree, the German Communist Party and other groups were suppressed, and Communist functionaries and deputies were arrested, put to flight, or murdered. In the same month Hitler banned pornography, homosexual bars and bath-houses and groups that promoted "gay rights".[13] Campaigning continued, with the Nazis making use of paramilitary violence, anti-Communist hysteria, and the government's resources for propaganda. On election day, March 6, the NSDAP increased its result to 43.9% of the vote, remaining the largest party, but its victory was marred by its failure to secure an absolute majority. Hitler had to maintain his coalition with the DNVP, as the coalition had a slim majority.

The "Day of Potsdam" and the Enabling Act

On 21 March, the new Reichstag was constituted itself with an impressive opening ceremony held at Potsdam's garrison church. This "Day of Potsdam" was staged to demonstrate reconciliation and union between the revolutionary Nazi movement and "Old Prussia" with its elites and virtues. Hitler himself appeared, not in Nazi uniform, but in a tail coat, and humbly greeted the aged President Hindenburg. Because of the Nazis' failure to obtain a majority on their own, Hitler's government confronted the newly elected Reichstag with the Enabling Act that would have vested the cabinet with legislative powers for a period of four years. Though such a bill was not unprecedented, this act was different since it allowed for deviations from the constitution. As the bill required a two-thirds majority in order to pass, the government needed the support of other parties. The position of the Catholic Centre Party, at this point the third largest party in the Reichstag, turned out to be decisive: under the leadership of Ludwig Kaas, the party decided to vote for the Enabling Act. It did so in return for the government's oral guarantees regarding the Church's liberty, the concordats signed by German states and the continued existence of the Centre Party itself. On 23 March, the Reichstag assembled in a replacement building under extremely turbulent circumstances. Some SA men served as guards within while large groups outside the building shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving deputies. Kaas announced that the Centre would support the bill amid "concerns put aside.", while Social Democrat Otto Wels denounced the Act in his speech. At the end of the day, all parties except the Social Democrats voted in favour of the bill. The Enabling Act was dutifully renewed by the Reichstag every four years, even through World War II.

Removal of remaining limits

With this combination of legislative and executive power, Hitler's government further suppressed the remaining political opposition. The KPD and the SPD were banned, while all other political parties dissolved themselves. Labour unions were merged with employers' federations into an organisation under Nazi control and the autonomy of German state governments was abolished.

Adolf Hitler in Triumph of the Will.

Hitler also used the SA paramilitary to push Hugenberg into resigning and proceeded to politically isolate Vice Chancellor Papen. As the SA's demands for political and military power caused much anxiety among the populace in general and especially among the military, Hitler used allegations of a plot by the SA leader Ernst Röhm to purge the paramilitary force's leadership during the Night of the Long Knives. Opponents unconnected with the SA were also murdered, notably Gregor Strasser and former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher. Soon after, president Paul von Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. Rather than holding new presidential elections, Hitler's cabinet passed a law proclaiming the presidency dormant and transferred the role and powers of the head of state to Hitler as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). Thereby Hitler also became supreme commander of the military, which then swore their military oath not to the state or the constitution but to Hitler personally. In a mid-August plebiscite, these acts found the approval of 84.6%[14] of the electorate. Combining the highest offices in state, military and party in his hand, Hitler had attained supreme rule that could no longer be legally challenged.

The Third Reich

Main article: Nazi Germany

Photographs like the one on the cover of Heinrich Hoffmann's book of photography were used to promote Hitler's populist-nationalist (Völkisch) image.

Having secured supreme political power, Hitler went on to gain their support by convincing most Germans he was their saviour from the Depression, the Communists, the Versailles Treaty, and the Jews, along with other "undesirable" minorities.

Economics and culture

Hitler oversaw one of the greatest expansions of industrial production and civil improvement Germany had ever seen, mostly based on debt flotation and expansion of the military. Nazi policies toward women strongly encouraged them to stay at home to bear children and keep house. In a September 1934 speech to the National Socialist Women's Organization, Adolf Hitler argued that for the German woman her “world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home,” a policy which was reinforced by the bestowing of the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more babies. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Given this, claims that the German economy achieved near full employment are at least partly artifacts of propaganda from the era. Much of the financing for Hitler's reconstruction and rearmament came from currency manipulation by Hjalmar Schacht, including the clouded credits through the Mefo bills. The negative effects of this inflation were offset in later years by the acquisition of foreign gold from the treasuries of conquered nations.

Another popular photo theme was Hitler and his dog Blondi, here seen at the terrace of the Berghof.

Hitler also oversaw one of the largest infrastructure-improvement campaigns in German history, with the construction of dozens of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. Hitler's policies emphasised the importance of family life: men were the "breadwinners", while women's priorities were to lie in bringing up children and in household work. This revitalising of industry and infrastructure came at the expense of the overall standard of living, at least for those not affected by the chronic unemployment of the later Weimar Republic, since wages were slightly reduced in pre-World-War-II years, despite a 25% increase in the cost of living (Shirer 1959). Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale, with Albert Speer becoming famous as the first architect of the Reich. While important as an Architect in implementing Hitler's classicist reinterpretation of German culture, Speer would prove much more effective as armaments minister during the last years of World War II. In 1936, Berlin hosted the summer Olympic games, which were opened by Hitler and choreographed to demonstrate Aryan superiority over all other races, achieving mixed results. Olympia, the movie about the games and other documentary propaganda films for the German Nazi Party were directed by Hitler's personal filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Although Hitler made plans for a Breitspurbahn (broad gauge railroad network), they were pre-empted by World War II. Had the railroad been built, its gauge would have been three metres, even wider than the old Great Western Railway of Britain. Hitler contributed slightly to the design of the car that later became the Volkswagen Beetle, and charged Ferdinand Porsche with its design and construction.[15] Production was also deferred due to the war.

Rearmament and new alliances

Main articles: Axis Powers and Tripartite Treaty

Axis Powers signing with Saburo Kurusu (Japan's Ambassador to Germany), Galeazzo Ciano (Italy's Foreign Minister) and Adolf Hitler.

In March 1935, Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by reintroducing conscription in Germany, building a massive military machine, including a new Navy (Kriegsmarine) and an Air Force (Luftwaffe). The enlistment of vast numbers of men and women in the new military seemed to solve unemployment problems, but seriously distorted the economy. For the first time in 20 years, Germany's armed forces were as strong as France's. In March 1936, Hitler again violated the Treaty by reoccupying the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland. When Britain and France did nothing, he grew bolder. In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began when the military, led by General Francisco Franco, rebelled against the elected Popular Front government. Hitler sent troops to support Franco and Spain served as a testing ground for Germany's new forces and their methods, including the bombing of undefended towns such as Gernika in April 1937, prompting Pablo Picasso's famous eponymous Guernica painting.

Hitler in Finland

An Axis was declared between Germany and Italy by Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on October 25, 1936. Tripartite Treaty was then signed by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany and Galeazzo Ciano of Fascist Italy in September 27, 1940 and was later expanded to include Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. They were collectively known as the Axis Powers. Then on November 5, 1937, at the Reich Chancellory, Adolf Hitler held a secret meeting and stated his plans for acquiring "living space" (Lebensraum) for the German people.

The Holocaust

Main article: Holocaust

One of the foundations of Hitler's and the NSDAP's social policies was the concept of racial hygiene. This was applied with varying degrees of rigourousness to different groups of society, but constituted in essence the same application of the brutal and crude concept of social Darwinism to all the different kinds of victims. Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, systematically killed about 11 million people, including about 6 million Jews[16], in concentration camps, ghettos and mass executions, or through less systematic methods elsewhere. Besides being gassed to death, many also died of starvation and disease while working as slave labourers (sometimes benefiting private German companies in the process, because of the low cost of such labour). Along with Jews, non-Jewish Poles (over 3 million of whom died), alleged communists or political opposition, members of resistance groups, resisting Roman Catholics and Protestants, homosexuals, Roma, the physically handicapped and mentally retarded, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, anti-Nazi clergy, trade unionists, and psychiatric patients were killed. This industrial-scale genocide in Europe is referred to as the Holocaust (the term is also used by some authors in a narrower sense, to refer specifically to the unprecedented destruction of European Jewry). One of the biggest and most important concentration camps is Auschwitz. The massacres that led to the coining of the word "genocide" (the Endlösung der jüdischen Frage or "Final Solution of the Jewish Question") were planned and ordered by leading Nazis, with Himmler playing a key role. While no specific order from Hitler authorizing the mass killing of the Jews has surfaced, there is documentation showing that he approved the Einsatzgruppen and the evidence also suggests that in the fall of 1941 Himmler and Hitler agreed in principle on mass extermination by gassing. During interrogations by Soviet intelligence officers declassified over fifty years later, Hitler's valet Heinz Linge and his military aide Otto Gunsche said Hitler had "pored over the first blueprints of gas chambers." To make for smoother cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution", the Wannsee conference was held near Berlin on January 20, 1942, with fifteen senior officials participating, led by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. The records of this meeting provide the clearest evidence of planning for the Holocaust. On February 22, Hitler was recorded saying to his associates, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews".

World War II

Main article: World War II

Opening moves

Hitler with Romanian leader Ion Antonescu (far left).

On March 12, 1938, Hitler pressured his native Austria into unification with Germany (the Anschluss) and made a triumphal entry into Vienna. Next, he intensified a crisis over the German-speaking Sudetenland districts of Czechoslovakia. This led to the Munich Agreement of September 1938, which authorized the annexation and immediate military occupation of these districts by Germany. As a result of the summit, Hitler was TIME magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.[17] British prime minister Neville Chamberlain hailed this agreement as "Peace in our time", but by giving way to Hitler's military demands Britain and France also left Czechoslovakia to Hitler's mercy. Hitler ordered Germany's army to enter Prague on March 10, 1939 and from Prague Castle proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate. After that, Hitler was claiming territories ceded to Poland under the Versailles Treaty. Britain had not been able to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for an alliance against Germany, and, on August 23, 1939, Hitler concluded a secret non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) with Stalin on which it was likely agreed that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany would partition Poland. On September 1, Germany invaded the western portion of Poland. Britain and France, who had guaranteed assistance to Poland, declared war on Germany. Not long after this, on September 17, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland. After capturing western Poland by the end of September, Hitler built up his forces much further during the so-called Phony War. In April 1940, he ordered German forces to march into Denmark and Norway. In May 1940, Hitler ordered his forces to attack France, conquering the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium in the process. France surrendered on June 22, 1940. This series of victories convinced his main ally, Benito Mussolini of Italy, to join the war on Hitler's side in May 1940. Britain, whose defeated forces had evacuated France from the coastal town of Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside Canadian forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. After having his overtures for peace systematically rejected by the defiant British Government, now led by Winston Churchill, Hitler ordered bombing raids on the British Isles, leading to the Battle of Britain, a prelude of the planned German invasion. The attacks began by pounding the RAF airbases and the radar stations protecting South-East England. However, the Luftwaffe failed to defeat the RAF by the end of October 1940. Air superiority for the invasion, code-named Operation Sealion, could not be assured and Hitler ordered bombing raids to be carried out on British cities, including London and Coventry, mostly at night.

Path to defeat

Hitler with Großadmiral Erich Raeder.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler gave the signal for three million German troops to attack the Soviet Union, breaking the non-aggression pact he had concluded with Stalin less than two years earlier. This invasion, code-named Operation Barbarossa, seized huge amounts of territory, including the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine, along with the encirclement and destruction of many Soviet forces. German forces, however, were stopped short of Moscow in December 1941 by the Russian winter and fierce Soviet resistance (see Battle of Moscow), and the invasion failed to achieve the quick triumph over the Soviet Union which Hitler had anticipated. Hitler's declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941 four days after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, USA set him against a coalition that included the world's largest empire (the British Empire), the world's greatest industrial and financial power (the USA), and the world's largest army (the Soviet Union). In May 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, one of the highest SS officers and one of Hitler's favorite subordinates, was assassinated by British-trained Czech operatives in Prague. Hitler reacted by ordering brutal reprisals, including the massacre of Lidice. In late 1942, German forces under Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein, thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. In February 1943, the lengthy Battle of Stalingrad ended with the complete encirclement and destruction of the German 6th Army. Both defeats were turning points in the war, although the latter is more commonly considered primary. From this point on, the quality of Hitler's military judgment became increasingly erratic and Germany's military and economic position deteriorated. Hitler's health was deteriorating too. His left hand started shaking uncontrollably. The biographer Ian Kershaw believes he suffered from Parkinson's disease. Other conditions that are suspected by some to have caused some (at least) of his symptoms are methamphetamine addiction and syphilis. Italians overthrew Hitler's ally, Benito Mussolini, in 1943 after Operation Husky, an American and British invasion of Sicily. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler's armies into retreat along the eastern front. On June 6, 1944, the Western allied armies landed in northern France in what was the largest amphibious operation ever conducted, Operation Overlord. Realists in the German army knew defeat was inevitable and some officers plotted to remove Hitler from power. In July 1944 one of them, Claus von Stauffenberg, planted a bomb at Hitler's military headquarters in Rastenburg (the so-called July 20 Plot), but Hitler narrowly escaped death. He ordered savage reprisals, resulting in the executions of more than 4,900 people[18] (sometimes by starvation in solitary confinement followed by slow strangulation). The main resistance movement was destroyed although smaller isolated groups such as Die Rote Kapelle continued to operate.

Defeat and death

Main article: Hitler's death

Cover of US newspaper The Stars and Stripes, May 1945.

By the end of 1944, the Red Army had driven the last German troops from Soviet territory and began entering Central Europe. The western allies were also rapidly advancing into Germany. The Germans had lost the war from a military perspective, but Hitler allowed no negotiation with the Allied forces, and as a consequence the German military forces continued to fight. Hitler's stubbornness and defiance of military realities also allowed the continued mass killing of Jews and others to continue. He even issued the Nero Decree on March 19, 1945, ordering the destruction of what remained of German industry, communications and transport. However, Albert Speer, who was in charge of that plan, did not carry it out. (The Morgenthau Plan for postwar Germany, promulgated by the Allies, aimed at a similar deindustrialization.) In April 1945, Soviet forces were at the outskirts of Berlin. Hitler's closest lieutenants urged him to flee to Bavaria or Austria to make a last stand in the mountains, but he seemed determined to either live or die in the capital. SS leader Heinrich Himmler tried on his own to inform the Allies (through the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte) that Germany was prepared to discuss surrender terms. Meanwhile Hermann Göring sent a telegram from Bavaria in which he argued that since Hitler was cut off in Berlin, as Hitler's designated successor he should assume leadership of Germany. Hitler angrily reacted by dismissing both Himmler and Göring from all their offices and the party and declared them traitors. After intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were spotted within a block or two of the Reich Chancellory in the city centre, Hitler committed suicide in the Führerbunker on April 30, 1945 by means of a self-delivered shot to the head (it is likely he simultaneously bit into a cyanide ampoule). Hitler's body and that of Eva Braun (his long-term mistress whom he had married the day before) were put in a bomb crater, partially burned with gasoline by Führerbunker aides and hastily buried in the Chancellory garden as Russian shells poured down and Red Army infantry continued to advance only two or three hundred metres away. He also had his dog Blondi poisoned around the same time. When Russian forces reached the Chancellory, they found his body and an autopsy was performed using dental records (and German dental assistants who were familiar with them) to confirm the identification. To avoid any possibility of creating a potential shrine, the remains of Hitler and Braun were repeatedly moved, then secretly buried by SMERSH at their new headquarters in Magdeburg. In April 1970, when the facility was about to be turned over to the East German government, the remains were reportedly exhumed, thoroughly cremated, and the ashes finally dumped unceremoniously into the Elbe. According to the Russian Federal Security Service, a fragment of human skull stored in its archives and displayed to the public in a 2000 exhibition came from the remains of Hitler's body uncovered by the Red Army in Berlin, and is all that remains of Hitler; however, the authenticity of the skull has been challenged by many historians and researchers. At the time of Hitler's death, most of Germany's infrastructure and major cities were in ruins and he had left explicit orders to complete the destruction. Millions of Germans were dead with millions more wounded or homeless. In his will, he dismissed other Nazi leaders and appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reichspräsident (President of Germany) and Goebbels as Reichskanzler (Chancellor of Germany). However, Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide on 1 May 1945. On 7 May 1945, in Rheims, France, the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies and on 8 May 1945, in Berlin to the Soviet Union thus ending the war in Europe and with the creation of the Allied Control Council on 5 June 1945, the Four Powers assumed "supreme authority with respect to Germany." Adolf Hitler's proclaimed Thousand Year Reich had lasted 12 years.

Legacy

Outside the building in Braunau am Inn where Adolf Hitler was born is a memorial stone warning of the horrors of World War II.

Since the defeat of Germany in World War II, Hitler, the Nazi Party and the results of Nazism have been regarded in most of the world as synonymous with evil. Historical and cultural portrayals of Hitler in the west are, by virtually universal consensus, condemnatory. The copyright of Hitler's book Mein Kampf in Europe is claimed by the Free State of Bavaria and will expire in 2015. Reproductions in Germany are generally authorized only for scholarly purposes and in heavily commented form. The situation is however unclear; Werner Maser (whom Theodor Heuss proposed to publish "Mein Kampf" as a weapon against Nazi Ideology) comments that intellectual property cannot be confiscated and so, it still would lie in the hands of Hitler's nephew, who, however, does not want to have anything to do with Hitler's legacy. This situation lead to contested trials, eg., in Poland and Sweden. "Mein Kampf", however,is published in the USA, as well as in other countries such as Turkey and Israel, by publishers with various political positions. The display of swastikas or other Nazi symbols is prohibited in Germany and political extremists are generally under surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz, one of the federal or state-based offices for the protection of the constitution. There have been instances of public figures referring to Hitler's legacy in neutral or favourable terms, particularly in South America, the Islamic World and parts of Asia. Future Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wrote favourably of Hitler in 1953.[19] Bal Thackeray, leader of the right-wing Shiv Sena party in the Indian state of the Maharashtra, declared in 1995 that he was an admirer of Hitler.[20] Much of the positive or neutral attitude towards Hitler may partly be because many of these countries were colonies of Allied Powers who were fighting Hitler-led Germany. Further information: Consequences of German Nazism and Neo-Nazism

Hitler's religious beliefs

Main article: Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs

Adolf Hitler was brought up in his family's religion by his Roman Catholic parents, but as a school boy he began to reject the Church and Catholicism. After he had left home, he never attended Mass or received the Sacraments. In later life, Hitler's religious beliefs present a discrepant picture: In public statements, he frequently spoke positively about the Christian heritage of German culture and belief in Christ. Hitler’s private statements, reported by his intimates, are more mixed, showing Hitler as a religious but also anti-Christian man. However, in contrast to other Nazi leaders, Hitler did not adhere to esoteric ideas, occultism, or neo-paganism, and ridiculed such beliefs in his book Mein Kampf. Rather, Hitler advocated a "Positive Christianity", a belief system purged from what he objected to in traditional Christianity, and reinvented Jesus as a fighter against the Jews.[citation needed] Hitler believed in a Social Darwinist struggle for survival between the different races, among which the "Aryan race" was supposed to be the torchbearers of civilization and the Jews as enemies of all civilization. Whether his anti-semitism was influenced by older Christian ideas remains disputed. Hitler also strongly believed that "Providence" was guiding him in this fight. Among Christian denominations, Hitler favoured Protestantism, which was more open to such reinterpretations, but at the same time imitated some elements of Catholic church organization, liturgy, and phraseology in his politics.

Health and sexuality

Main article: Adolf Hitler's medical health

Hitler's alleged health problems in his later years have long been the subject of debate, and he has variously been suggested to have suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, tremors on the left side of his body, syphilis, Parkinson's disease and a strongly suggested addiction to methamphetamine. Most of Hitler's biographers have characterized him as a vegetarian who abstained from eating meat, beginning in the early 1930s until his death (although his actual dietary habits appear inconsistent and are sometimes hotly disputed). There are reports of him disgusting his guests by giving them graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make them shun meat. A fear of cancer (which his mother died from) is the most widely cited reason, though many authors also assert Hitler had a profound and deep love of animals. He did consume dairy products and eggs, however. Martin Bormann constructed a large greenhouse close to the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) in order to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruits and vegetables for Hitler throughout the war. Personal photographs of Bormann's children tending the greenhouse survive and, by 2005, its foundations were among the only ruins visible in the area which were directly associated with Nazi leaders. For more information on this topic, see Vegetarianism of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was also a fervent non-smoker and promoted aggressive anti-smoking campaigns throughout Germany. He reportedly promised a gold watch to any of his close associates who quit (and actually gave a few away). Several witness accounts relate that, immediately after his suicide was confirmed, many officers, aides, and secretaries in the Führerbunker lit cigarettes.[21] Contrary to popular accounts, there seems to be some evidence Hitler did not abstain entirely from alcohol. After the war, an interrogation in the USSR of his valet Heinz Linge could indicate that Hitler drank champagne now and then with Eva Braun.[citation needed]

Sexuality

Hitler presented himself to his public as a man without an intimate domestic life, dedicated to his political "mission". He is known to have had a fiancée, Mimi Reiter in the 1920s, and to have later had a mistress, Eva Braun. He had a close bond with his niece Geli Raubal, which many commentators have claimed was sexual.[22] All three women attempted suicide during their relationship with him, a fact which has led to speculation that Hitler may have had unusual sexual fetishes, though Reiter, the only one to survive the Nazi regime, denies this.[23] During the war and afterwards psychoanalysts offered numerous inconsistent psycho-sexual explanations of his pathology. More recently Lothar Machtan has argued in his book The Hidden Hitler that Hitler was homosexual.

Hitler's family

Main article: Hitler (disambiguation)

Paula Hitler, the last living member of Adolf Hitler's immediate family, died in 1960. The most prominent, and longest-living direct descendants of Adolf Hitler's father, Alois, was Adolf's nephew William Patrick Hitler. With his wife Phyllis, he eventually moved to Long Island, New York and had four sons. None of William Hitler's children have yet had any children of their own. Over the years various investigative reporters have attempted to track down other distant relatives of the Führer; many are now alleged to be living inconspicuous lives and have long since changed their last name.

Adolf Hitler's genealogy.

Sketch of Eva Braun by Hitler.

Eva Braun, mistress and then wife
Alois Hitler, father
Klara Hitler, mother
Paula Hitler, sister
Alois Hitler, Jr., half-brother
Bridget Dowling, sister-in-law
William Patrick Hitler, nephew
Heinz Hitler, nephew
Angela Hitler Raubal, half-sister
Maria Schicklgruber, grandmother
Johann Georg Hiedler, presumed grandfather
Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, maternal great-grandfather, presumed great uncle and possibly Hitler's true paternal grandfather
Geli Raubal, niece and rumoured mistress

People associated with Hitler

Main articles: List of Nazi Party leaders and officials and List of former Nazis influential after 1945

Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitler's secretary.
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and Hitler supporter.
Hans Frank, Hitler's lawyer and later senior Nazi official in occupied Poland.
Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda.
Hermann Göring, Reichsmarschall, Commander of the Luftwaffe, founder of the Gestapo.
Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy as party leader, best known for his flight to Scotland to negotiate peace in 1941.
Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (including the Gestapo)
Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, key figure in the Holocaust and the "Final Solution".
Heinrich Hoffmann, official photographer from 1920 to 1945.
Alfred Jodl, military officer, knew Hitler since 1923.
Wilhelm Keitel, military Field Marshal during World War II.
August Kubizek, close friend and roommate in Vienna
Leopold Poetsch, Hitler's anti-Semitic school teacher
Leni Riefenstahl, friend and filmmaker who documented the Nazi party.
Erwin Rommel, the famous "Desert Fox", a highly skilled Field Marshal during World War II who was forced to commit suicide after being implicated in a plot against Hitler.
Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA and internal critic, killed in the Night of the Long Knives (1934).
Albert Speer, Hitler's personal architect, Minister of armaments. Close friend to Hitler.
Paul Troost, famous architect who served before Speer.
Winifred Wagner, head of the Wagner family and close friend of Hitler's.

Miscellany

In order to meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article's trivia section requires cleanup.
Content in the trivia section should be integrated into other appropriate areas of the article.

A nickname for Hitler used by German soldiers was Gröfaz, a derogatory and/or sarcastic abbreviation for Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten ("Greatest War Lord of all Time"), a title initially publicized by Nazi propaganda after the surprisingly quick fall of France. Nicknames by others were more disparaging. General George S. Patton referred to Hitler as "that paper-hanging son of a bitch!", after Hitler's habit of going over wall maps with his staff. Some within his staff called him "carpet eater", after seeing him fly into a rage so intense that it left him on the floor gripping the carpet with his teeth and fists[citation needed].

Hitler did not like women to wear cosmetics, since they contained animal by-products, and frequently teased his mistress Eva Braun about her habit of wearing makeup.[24]

He almost never wore a uniform to social engagements, which he attended frequently whenever in Berlin during the 1930s. When he did wear uniforms, they were tailored and understated compared to those of other prominent Nazis who often wore elaborate uniforms with extensive decorations and medals.

According to the 2001 documentary The Tramp and the Dictator, the Charlie Chaplin parody/satire The Great Dictator was not only sent to Hitler, but an eyewitness claimed he did see it.[25] Chaplin has been quoted as saying, "I'd have given anything to know what he thought of it."

Hitler's favourite film is variously credited as being King Kong (1933) or The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) and his favourite opera was Richard Wagner's Rienzi, of which he claimed to have seen over 40 performances. [citation needed]

In the British Radio series the Bradshaws, many references are made to Hitler, mostly because Audreys uncle, Uncle wally one-ball has only one Testicle (in an urban legend it is said that Hitler had only one testicle).

Hitler in various media

	Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Adolf Hitler

See also: Hitler in popular culture

Movie clip

Hitler at Berchtesgaden (file info)
- Video clips of Hitler at his mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden, Germany.
Problems seeing the videos? See media help.

Speeches and talk by Hitler

Main article: List of Adolf Hitler speeches

Hitler was a gifted orator who captivated many with his beating of the lectern and growling, emotional speech. Authentic though they may seem, Hitler's speeches were full of propaganda and rhetoric, used to touch a spot with his audience as a way to persuade them. While his early speeches were rather amateurish, over time Hitler perfected his delivery by rehearsing in front of mirrors and carefully choreographing his display of emotions with the message he was trying to convey.[26][27]

Recording of Hitler in private conversation

Hitler visited Finnish Field Marshal Mannerheim on his 75th birthday on the June 4, 1942. During the visit an engineer of the Finnish broadcasting company YLE, Thor Damen, recorded Hitler and Mannerheim in a private conversation, something which had to be done secretly as Hitler never allowed recordings of him off-guard.[2] Today the recording is the only known recording of Hitler not speaking in an official tone. The recording captures 11 and a half minutes of the two leaders in private conversation.[3] Hitler speaks in a slightly excited, but still intellectually detached manner during this talk (the speech has been compared to that of the working class). The majority of the recording is a monologue by Hitler. In the recording, Hitler admits to underestimating the Soviet Union's ability to conduct war (some English transcripts exist [4] [5]).

Recording on the YLE Internet Archieve

Films

During Hitler's reign, he appeared in and was involved to varying degrees with a series of films by the pioneering filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl:

Der Sieg des Glaubens (The Victory of Faith, 1933).
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1934), co-produced by Hitler.
Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht (Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces, 1935).
Olympia (1938).

Hitler was the central figure of the first three films, that focused on the party rallies of the respective years and are considered propaganda films, and features prominently in the Olympia film. Whether the latter is a propaganda film or a mere documentation is controversial, but it nonetheless perpetuated and spread the propagandistic message of the 1936 Olympic Games, depicting Nazi Germany as a prosperous and peaceful country.

IMDb: Adolf Hitler

Documentaries

The World at War (1974) is a famous Thames Television series which contains much information about Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, including an interview with his secretary, Traudl Junge.
Adolf Hitler's Last Days, from the BBC series "Secrets of World War II" tells the story about Hitler's last days during World War II.
Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary (2002) is an exclusive 90 minute interview with Traudl Junge, Hitler's final trusted secretary. Made by Austrian Jewish director André Heller shortly before Junge's death from lung cancer, Junge recalls the last days in the Berlin bunker. Clips used in Downfall.

Dramatizations

Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) is a movie depicting the days leading up to Adolf Hitler's death, starring Sir Alec Guinness.
The Bunker (1978) by James O'Donnell, describing the last days in the Führerbunker from 1945-01-17 to 1945-05-02. Made into the TV movie The Bunker (1981), starring Anthony Hopkins.
Hitler: The Rise of Evil (2003) is a two-part TV series about the early years of Adolf Hitler and his rise to power (up to 1933). Stars Robert Carlyle.
Der Untergang (Downfall) (2004) is a German movie about the last days of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, starring Bruno Ganz. This film is partly based on the autobiography of Traudl Junge, a favorite secretary of Hitler's. In 2002 Junge said she felt great guilt for "...liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived."
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Hitler - Ein Film aus Deutschland (Hitler, A Film From Germany), 1977. Originally presented on German television, this is a 7-hour work in 4 parts: The Grail; A German Dream; The End Of Winter's Tale; We, Children Of Hell. The director uses documentary clips, photographic backgrounds, puppets, theatrical stages, and other elements from almost all the visual arts, with the "actors" addressing directly the audience/camera, in order to approach and expand on this most taboo subject of European history of the 20th century.
Max is a 2002 Drama movie, that depicts a friendship between art dealer Max Rothman (who is Jewish) and a young Adolf Hitler as a failed painter in Vienna.

NEWTON

sarathy88 — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 06:29:57 CST

Isaac Newton Born Died Occupation

Sir Isaac Newton at 46 in Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait
4 January 1643 [OS: 25 December 1642][1] Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England
31 March 1727 [OS: 20 March 1727][1] Kensington, London, England
Physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, and natural philosopher

4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727) [ OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727][1] was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, and natural philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest figure in the history of science.[2] His treatise Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from this system, he was the first to show that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws. The unifying and deterministic power of his laws was integral to the scientific revolution and the advancement of heliocentrism. In mechanics, Newton also markedly enunciated the principles of conservation of momentum and angular momentum. In optics, he invented the reflecting telescope and discovered that the spectrum of colours observed when white light passes through a prism is inherent in the white light and not added by the prism (as Roger Bacon had claimed in the thirteenth century). Newton notably argued that light is composed of particles. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, studied the speed of sound, and proposed a theory of the origin of stars. In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus. He also demonstrated the generalized binomial theorem, developed the so-called "Newton's method" for approximating the zeroes of a function, and contributed to the study of power series. French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange often said that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that he was also "the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish."[3] English poet Alexander Pope was moved by Newton's accomplishments to write the famous epitaph:

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.

Biography

The life of
Isaac Newton

Early life
Middle years
Later life
Writing Principia
Religious views
Occult studies

Early years

Main article: Isaac Newton's early life and achievements

Newton was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. He was born to a family of farmers who owned animals and land, thus making them fairly wealthy. The location he was born at was about seven miles from Grantham, where he later attended school. By his own later accounts, Newton was born prematurely and no one expected him to live; his mother Hannah Ayscough said that his body at that time could have fit inside a quart mug. His father, also named Isaac Newton, had been a yeoman farmer and had died three months before Newton's birth, at the time of the English Civil War. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough. According to E.T. Bell and H. Eves: Newton began his schooling in the village schools and was later sent to The King's School, Grantham, where he became the top boy in the school. At Kings, he lodged with the local apothecary, William Clarke and eventually became engaged to the apothecary's stepdaughter, Anne Storey, before he went off to Cambridge University at the age of 19. As Newton became engrossed in his studies, the romance cooled and Miss Storey married someone else. It is said he kept a warm memory of this love, but Newton had no other recorded "sweethearts" and never married.[4] However, Bell and Eves' sources for this claim, William Stukeley and Mrs. Vincent (the former Miss Storey - actually named Katherine, not Anne), merely say that Newton entertained "a passion" for Storey while he lodged at the Clarke house. From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School, Grantham (where his signature can still be seen upon a library window sill). He was removed from school, and by October 1659, he was to be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, where his mother attempted to make a farmer of him. He was, by later reports of his contemporaries, thoroughly unhappy with the work. It appears to be Henry Stokes, master at the King's School, who persuaded his mother to send him back to school so that he might complete his education. This he did at the age of eighteen, achieving an admirable final report. In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge. At that time, the college's teachings were based on those of Aristotle, but Newton preferred to read the more advanced ideas of modern philosophers such as Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that would later become calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his degree in 1665, the University closed down as a precaution against the Great Plague. For the next 18 months Newton worked at home on calculus, optics and the law of gravitation.

Isaac Newton in 1712

Middle years

Main article: Isaac Newton's middle years

Mathematical research Newton and Gottfried Leibniz developed calculus independently, using their own unique notations. Although Newton had worked out his method years before Leibniz, he published almost nothing about it until 1693, and did not give a full account until 1704. Meanwhile, Leibniz began publishing a full account of his methods in 1684. Moreover, Leibniz's notation and "differential Method" were universally adopted on the Continent, and after 1820 or so, in the British Empire. Newton claimed that he had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared being mocked for it. Starting in 1699, other members of the Royal Society accused Leibniz of plagiarism, and the dispute broke out in full force in 1711. Thus began the bitter calculus priority dispute with Leibniz, which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter's death in 1716. This dispute created a divide between British and Continental mathematicians that may have retarded the progress of British mathematics by at least a century. Newton is generally credited with the generalized binomial theorem, valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton's identities, Newton's method, classified cubic plane curves (polynomials of degree three in two variables), made substantial contributions to the theory of finite differences, and was the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler's summation formula), and was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. He also discovered a new formula for pi. He was elected Lucasian professor of mathematics in 1669. In that day, any fellow of Cambridge or Oxford had to be an ordained Anglican priest. However, the terms of the Lucasian professorship required that the holder not be active in the church (presumably so as to have more time for science). Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and Charles II, whose permission was needed, accepted this argument. Thus a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted. Optics From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colours, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into white light.

A replica of Newton's 6-inch reflecting telescope of 1672 for the Royal Society.

He also showed that the coloured light does not change its properties, by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects. Newton noted that regardless of whether it was reflected or scattered or transmitted, it stayed the same colour. Thus the colours we observe are the result of how objects interact with the incident already-coloured light, not the result of objects generating the colour. For more details, see Newton's theory of colour. From this work he concluded that any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours, and invented a reflecting telescope (today known as a Newtonian telescope) to bypass that problem. By grinding his own mirrors, using Newton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes, he was able to produce a superior instrument to the refracting telescope, due primarily to the wider diameter of the mirror. In 1671 the Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope. Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes On Colour, which he later expanded into his Opticks. When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. The two men remained enemies until Hooke's death. Newton argued that light is composed of particles, but he had to associate them with waves to explain the diffraction of light (Opticks Bk. II, Props. XII-L). Later physicists instead favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for diffraction. Today's quantum mechanics restores the idea of "wave-particle duality", although photons bear very little resemblance to Newton's corpuscles (e.g., corpuscles refracted by accelerating toward the denser medium). In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the theosophist Henry More, revived his interest in alchemy. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. John Maynard Keynes, who acquired many of Newton's writings on alchemy, stated that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason: he was the last of the magicians."[5] Newton's interest in alchemy cannot be isolated from his contributions to science.[6] (This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science.) Had he not relied on the occult idea of action at a distance, across a vacuum, he might not have developed his theory of gravity. (See also Isaac Newton's occult studies.) In 1704 Newton wrote Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another,...and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"[7] Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator, using a glass globe (Optics, 8th Query). Gravity and motion

Newton's own copy of his Principia, with hand written corrections for the second edition.

Further information: The writing of Principia Mathematica In 1679, Newton returned to his work on mechanics, i.e., gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets, with reference to Kepler's laws of motion, and consulting with Hooke and Flamsteed on the subject. He published his results in De Motu Corporum (1684). This contained the beginnings of the laws of motion that would inform the Principia. The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (now known as the Principia) was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Edmond Halley. In this work Newton stated the three universal laws of motion that were not to be improved upon for more than two hundred years. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the force that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation. In the same work he presented the first analytical determination, based on Boyle's law, of the speed of sound in air. With the Principia, Newton became internationally recognised. He acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, with whom he formed an intense relationship that lasted until 1693. The end of this friendship led Newton to a nervous breakdown.

Later life

For more details on this topic, see Isaac Newton's later life.

In the 1690s Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal interpretation of the Bible. Henry More's belief in the universe and rejection of Cartesian dualism may have influenced Newton's religious ideas. A manuscript he sent to John Locke in which he disputed the existence of the Trinity was never published. Later works — The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) and Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) — were published after his death. He also devoted a great deal of time to alchemy (see above). Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England from 1689 to 1690 and in 1701, but his only recorded comments were to complain about a cold draft in the chamber and request that the window be closed. Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England's great recoining, somewhat treading on the toes of Master Lucas (and finagling Edmond Halley into the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch). Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon Lucas' death in 1699, a position Newton held until his death. These appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously, retiring from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercising his power to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters. As Master of the Mint in 1717 Newton unofficially moved the Pound Sterling from the silver standard to the gold standard by creating a relationship between gold coins and the silver penny in the "Law of Queen Anne"; these were all great reforms at the time, adding considerably to the wealth and stability of England. It was his work at the Mint, rather than his earlier contributions to science, that earned him a knighthood from Queen Anne in 1705.

Newton's grave in Westminster Abbey

Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Académie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's star catalogue, which Newton had used in his studies. Newton died in London on March 20th, 1727, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His half-niece, Catherine Barton Conduitt,[8] served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he was her "very loving Uncle",[9] according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox. Although Newton, who had no children, had divested much of his estate onto relatives in his last years he actually died intestate. His considerable liquid estate was divided equally between his eight half-nieces and half-nephews (three Pilkingtons, three Smiths and two Bartons (including Catherine Barton Conduitt).[10] Woolsthorpe Manor passed to his heir-in-law, a John Newton ("God knows a poor representative of so great a man"), who, after six years of "cock[fight]ing, horse racing, drinking and folly" was forced to mortgage and then sell the manor before dying in a drunken accident.[11] After his death, Newton's body was discovered to have had massive amounts of mercury in it, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life.[12]

Religious views

Main article: Isaac Newton's religious views

See also: Isaac Newton's occult studies Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."[13]

Isaac Newton (Bolton, Sarah K. Famous Men of Science. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1889)

His scientific fame notwithstanding, Newton's study of the Bible and of the early Church Fathers were among his greatest passions. He devoted more time to the study of the Scriptures, the Fathers, and to Alchemy than to science, and said, "I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily."[14] Newton himself wrote works on textual criticism, most notably An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture. Newton also placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which is now the accepted traditional date. He also attempted, unsuccessfully, to find hidden messages within the Bible (See Bible code). Despite his focus on theology and alchemy, Newton tested and investigated these ideas with the scientific method, observing, hypothesising, and testing his theories. To Newton, his scientific and religious experiments were one and the same, observing and understanding how the world functioned. Newton may have rejected the church's doctrine of the Trinity. In a minority view, T.C. Pfizenmaier argues that he more likely held the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity rather than the Western one held by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and most Protestants.[15] In his own day, he was also accused of being a Rosicrucian (as were many in the Royal Society and in the court of Charles II).[16] In his own lifetime, Newton wrote more on religion than he did on natural science. He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. Thus, the ordered and dynamically informed universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason, but this universe, to be perfect and ordained, had to be regular.

Newton's effect on religious thought

"Newton," by William Blake; here, Newton is depicted as a 'divine geometer'

Newton and Robert Boyle’s mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians.[17] Thus, the clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of both superstitious enthusiasm and the threat of atheism,[18] and, at the same time, the second wave of English deists used Newton's discoveries to demonstrate the possibility of a "Natural Religion." The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment "magical thinking," and the mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with Boyle’s mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle’s ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more important, was very successful in popularising them.[19] Newton refashioned the world governed by an interventionist God into a world crafted by a God that designs along rational and universal principles.[20] These principles were available for all people to discover, allowed man to pursue his own aims fruitfully in this life, not the next, and to perfect himself with his own rational powers.[21] Newton saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.[22][23][24] But the unforeseen theological consequence of his conception of God, as Leibniz pointed out, was that God was now entirely removed from the world’s affairs, since the need for intervention would only evidence some imperfection in God’s creation, something impossible for a perfect and omnipotent creator.[25] Leibniz's theodicy cleared God from the responsibility for "l'origine du mal" by making God removed from participation in his creation. The understanding of the world was now brought down to the level of simple human reason, and humans, as Odo Marquard argued, became responsible for the correction and elimination of evil.[26] On the other hand, latitudinarian and Newtonian ideas taken too far resulted in the millenarians, a religious faction dedicated to the concept of a mechanical universe, but finding in it the same enthusiasm and mysticism that the Enlightenment had fought so hard to extinguish.[27]

Newton and the counterfeiters

As warden of the royal mint, Newton estimated that 20% of the coins taken in during The Great Recoinage were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was treason, punishable by death by drawing and quartering. Despite this, convictions of the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult to achieve; however, Newton proved to be equal to the task. He gathered much of that evidence himself, disguised, while he hung out at bars and taverns. For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton was made a justice of the peace and between June 1698 and Christmas 1699 conducted some 200 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers and suspects. Newton won his convictions and in February 1699, he had ten prisoners waiting to be executed. He later ordered all records of his interrogations to be destroyed.[citation needed] Newton's greatest triumph as the king's attorney was against William Chaloner. One of Chaloner's schemes was to set up phony conspiracies of Catholics and then turn in the hapless conspirators whom he entrapped. Chaloner made himself rich enough to posture as a gentleman. Petitioning Parliament, Chaloner accused the Mint of providing tools to counterfeiters (a charge also made by others). He proposed that he be allowed to inspect the Mint's processes in order to improve them. He petitioned Parliament to adopt his plans for a coinage that could not be counterfeited, while at the same time striking false coins. Newton was outraged, and went about the work to uncover anything about Chaloner. During his studies, he found that Chaloner was engaged in counterfeiting. He immediately put Chaloner on trial, but Mr Chaloner had friends in high places, and to Newton's horror, Chaloner walked free. Newton put him on trial a second time with conclusive evidence. Chaloner was convicted of high treason and hanged, drawn and quartered on March 23, 1699 at Tyburn gallows.[28]

Enlightenment philosophers

Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors—Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally—as the guides and guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of Nature and Natural Law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be discarded.[29] It was Newton’s conception of the universe based upon Natural and rationally understandable laws that became the seed for Enlightenment ideology. Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of Natural Law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied Natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems and the sociologists criticised the current social order for trying to fit history into Natural models of progress. Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton's work, but eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views of nature.

Newton's laws of motion

Main article: Newton's laws of motion

The famous three laws of motion:

Newton's First Law (also known as the Law of Inertia) states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and that an object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force.
Newton's Second Law states that an applied force, F, on an object equals the time rate of change of its momentum, p. Mathematically, this is written as Assuming the mass to be constant, the first term vanishes. Defining the acceleration to be results in the famous equation which states that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the magnitude of the net force acting on the object and inversely proportional to its mass. In the MKS system of measurement, mass is given in kilograms, acceleration in metres per second squared, and force in newtons (named in his honour).
Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Newton's apple

A reputed descendant of Newton's apple tree, found in the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge, England.

A popular story claims that Newton was inspired to formulate his theory of universal gravitation by the fall of an apple from a tree. Cartoons have gone further to suggest the apple actually hit Newton's head, and that its impact somehow made him aware of the force of gravity. John Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the royal mint and husband of Newton's niece, described the event when he wrote about Newton's life:

In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.[30]

The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital period, and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it "universal gravitation". A contemporary writer, William Stukeley, recorded in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726, in which Newton recalled "when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth's centre." In similar terms, Voltaire wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), "Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree." These accounts are probably exaggerations of Newton's own tale about sitting by a window in his home (Woolsthorpe Manor) and watching an apple fall from a tree. Various trees are claimed to be "the" apple tree which Newton describes. The King's School, Grantham, claims that the tree was purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster's garden some years later, the staff of the [now] National Trust-owned Woolsthrope Manor dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their gardens is the one described by Newton. A descendant of the original tree can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there.

Writings by Newton

Method of Fluxions (1671)
De Motu Corporum in Gyrum (1684)
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
Opticks (1704)
Reports as Master of the Mint (1701-1725)
Arithmetica Universalis (1707)
An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (1754)
Short Chronicle, The System of the World, Optical Lectures, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms, Amended and De mundi systemate were published posthumously in 1

EINSTEIN

sarathy88 — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 06:24:39 CST

Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich and he began his schooling there at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.

During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton*. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.

After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.

At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.

In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.

In the 1920's, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.

After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.

Einstein's researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.

Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.

Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey. From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967 This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. * Albert Einstein was formally associated with the Institute for Advanced Study located in Princeton, New Jersey.

GREAT PERSONALITIES

sarathy88 — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:52:28 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

TAMIL NADU

sarathy88 — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:43:38 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

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