Update your nuclear knowledge !

**This is to inform everyone reading the blog that the author by any means does not support the use of nuclear power in any form possible for causing harm to any living species or objects**



Well, it's quite a relief to hear that something 'positive' happened at last at the US-NK summit at Singapore. With the buzz that North Korea is going to 'denuclearise' ....people with little or no knowledge regarding the nuclear weapons scenario are willing to know more...which gave me a nice opportunity to present everything on a platter (At least I'll try my best).

Starting with what could be the most absurd(or basic) doubt arising in a noob's mind:

What are nuclear weapons?

In the simplest lingo...they can be defined as bombs or missiles which can be used to cause explosions using Nuclear Power. (of course I am not here to teach primary science !). All other ghots not happy with something simple can just click here → Nuclear Weapons for nerds.

This is what a nuclear missile actually looks like

Again, it's not that simple as it sounds...wait..let me give you a sound (it might be not as loud as you were expecting) Nuclear explosion sound. There are two types of nuclear weapons:

Fission Based 

They derive their energy from Nuclear Fission reactions.

Fusion Based 

They derive their energy of explosions from Nuclear Fusion reactions.

(I tend to write my blog in a user friendly way so that it doesn't seem biased towards people from science background.)

For a country to become a nuclear power, the following criteria should be met: Essential infrastructure like Industrial and electrical support from the government, Financing, Various undertakings etc. 

Countries with nuclear weapons

There are 8 countries that have successfully detonated nuclear weapons out of which five are considered to be nuclear weapon states under the Non Proliferation Treaty ( I would be discussing this further) : 

• US
• Russia 
• UK 
• France
• China

Three countries not under the NPT are : India , Pakistan and North Korea .( North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003)

Source: www.mapsofworld.com

What is NPT?

                     NPT or The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is an international treaty signed by 191 countries (as of August 2016) with the prime objective of  preventing further spread of nuclear weapons and the ultimate goal being complete disarmament.

                      It was negotiated by the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament, a UN sponsored organisation based in Switzerland.

                     Although majority countries have agreed to this proposal, but still the trust and doubt gap between nations will always exist due to which complete disarmament is possible on only on paper but we're far from that to happen in reality.

So, how much damage can a nuclear warhead cause?

Although a very obvious answer exists for this query with every literate person on Earth every single person is aware of the damage caused by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing....everything within a mile of the centre of explosion was totally finished. For those more interested try Ground Zero, a nuke simulator. 

Damage caused at Hiroshima-Nagasaki.....A country should NEVER use nuclear weapons

The Future.

Now North Korea is among the recently 'being considered' as a nuclear-capable state. The future is clear, more and more countries will keep on developing nuclear warheads either undercover or openly (as in the case of North Korea). No matter how many treaties be signed...the seed of doubt has already been planted now in every country's government. It's nothing but the trust gap and open defiance displayed by some countries which force the others to do so....as every state keeps it's security at the top most priority.

The use of nuclear weapons is certainly VERY WRONG. I personally condemn all the countries developing nuclear warheads for destruction. There is no greater loss than that of humanity.

Thanks everyone for reading till here ! . Please follow, comment and share as much as possible.

*Many portions have been directly copied from Wikipedia as I myself sometimes can't rely on the complete authenticity of my knowledge of such detailed facts and hence can't present unauthenticated information to my readers*

Spare Time to Dream !

You kidding me? I know what a dream is !

Dreams could be defined as stories our brains come up with while we sleep (or when math seems too boring), having vivid imagery and real life like situations. They may be about a past experience, your crush, your aspirations and basically anything else your mind can cook up.

Though I didn't know this :

But one thing that leaves me fascinated is that, how can our brains think of such close to real experiences or stories? I mean, sometimes I’m hugely impressed by my dreams. Surely if told to come up with a story while awake, we probably couldn’t do half as good a job as we could while asleep.

The best reason I found so far is the simplest. While we are asleep, our other limbs and body parts require almost no energy. So all this extra energy is guzzled up by our brain in making dreams. So yeah, that’s probably why you were in a live action film last night.

And after doing so much work, what does our mind do? It forgets. Truth is, we remember only 5% of all dreams we’ve ever had. Only the most vivid and hard hitting dreams make it to short term memory, even fewer to long term. And the harder you try to remember your dreams the faster you forget them. If you dreamt just before waking up, then chances are you’ll remember it.

Rapid eye movement in play during a dream....creepy.eh?

Sometimes when you have an important exam to give, you’ll dream both before and after giving it. If your exam went well then you may dream that you screwed it up. But when you wake up, the reassurance you get it is something isn’t it?

Any benefits?

Ok, so are dreams in any way useful? Depends. If you have a problem which you’re desperately trying to solve, then you may actually dream up its possible solutions. The most famous example is that of Kekule. Kekule came up with a cyclic structure for benzene after dreaming of a snake biting its own tail.

And lastly, even though you’d expect it, the best way to end this article would be with the most clichéd line ever -“keep dreaming”.

By Arjun Kulshreshtha (Guest Author)