Interesting Facts About the Universe !!

Some Facts about universe :--

1. It was hot when it was young

The most widely accepted cosmological model is that of the Big Bang. This was proven since the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation or CMBR. Although, strictly speaking, no one knows exactly what 'banged', we know from extrapolation that the Universe was infinitely hot at birth, cooling down as it expanded.

In fact, even only within minutes of expansion, scientists predict its temperature to have been about a billion Kelvin. Moving backward to 1 second, it is said to have been at 10 billion Kelvin. For comparison, today's universe is found to have an average temperature of only 2.725 Kelvin.
2. It will be cold when it grows old

Observations made especially on galaxies farthest from us show that the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. This, and data that show that the Universe is cooling allows us to believe that the most probable ending for our universe is that of a Big Freeze.

That is, it will be devoid of any usable heat (energy). It is due to this prediction that the Big Freeze is also known as the Heat Death.Accurate measurements made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) on the current geometry and density of the Universe favor such an ending.
3. The Universe spans a diameter of over 150 billion light years

Current estimates as with regards to the size of the Universe pegs it at a width of 150 billion light years. Although it may seem peculiarly inconsistent with the age of the Universe, which you'll read about next, this value is easily understood once you consider the fact that the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.
4. The Universe is 13.7 billion years old

If you think that is amazing, perhaps equally remarkable is the fact that we know this to better than 1% precision. Credit goes to the WMAP team for gathering all the information needed to come up with this number. The information is based on measurements made on the CMBR.

Older methods which have contributed to confirming this value include measurements of the abundances of certain radioactive nuclei. Observations made on globular clusters, which contain the oldest stars, have also pointed to values close to this.
5. The Earth is not flat – but the Universe is

Based on Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, there are three possible shapes that the Universe may take: open, closed, and flat. Once again, measurements by WMAP on the CMBR have revealed a monumental confirmation – the Universe is flat.

Combining this geometry and the idea of an invisible entity known as dark energy coincides with the widely accepted ultimate fate of our universe, which as stated earlier, is a Big Freeze.
6. Large Scale Structures of the Universe

Considering only the largest structures, the Universe is made up of filaments, voids, superclusters, and galaxy groups and clusters. By combining galaxy groups and clusters, we come up with superclusters. Some superclusters in turn form part of walls, which are also parts of filaments.

The vast empty spaces are known as voids. That the Universe is clumped together in certain parts and empty in others is consistent with measurements of the CMBR that show slight variations in temperature during its earliest stages of development.
7. A huge chunk of it is made up of things we can't see

Different wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum such as those of radio waves, infrared, x-rays, and visible light have allowed us to peer into the cosmos and 'see' huge portions of it. Unfortunately, an even larger portion cannot be seen by any of these frequencies.

And yet, certain phenomena such as gravitational lensing, temperature distributions, orbital velocities and rotational speeds of galaxies, and all others that are evidence of a missing mass justify their probable existence. Specifically, these observations show that dark matter exists. Another invisible entity known as dark energy, is believed to be the reason why galaxies are speeding away at an accelerated rate.
8. There is no such thing as the Universe's center

Nope. The earth is not the center of the Universe. It's not even the center of the galaxy. And no again, our galaxy is not the entire universe, neither is it the center. Don't hold your breath but the Universe has no center. Every galaxy is expanding away from one another.
9. Its members are in a hurry to be as far away from each other as possible

The members that we are talking about are the galaxies. As mentioned earlier, they are rushing away from each other at increasing rates. In fact, prior to the findings of most recently gathered data, it was believed that the Universe might end in a Big Rip. That is, everything, down to the atoms, would be ripped apart.

This idea stemmed from this observed accelerated rate of expansion. Scientists who supported this radically catastrophic ending believed that this kind of expansion would go on forever, and thus would force everything to be ripped apart.
10. To gain a deeper understanding of it, we need to study structures smaller than the atom

Ever since cosmologists started to trace events backward in time based on the Big Bang model, their views, which focused only on the very large, got smaller and smaller. They knew, that by extrapolating backward, they would be led into a universe that was very hot, very dense, very tiny, and governed by extremely high energies.

These conditions were definitely within the realm of particle physics, or the study of the very small. Hence, the most recent studies of both cosmology and particle physics saw an inevitable marriage between the two.

The World's Most Beautiful College Campuses !!

When she was a senior in high school, Ellie Norton toured about 15 college campuses with her mom. But the moment they drove up the hill at Kenyon College, in Ohio, she knew her search was over.

"It was so amazingly beautiful," says Norton, now 21, and a modern languages major at the school.

What appealed to Norton about the tiny liberal arts college were the sweeping trees, the vast expanses of green and the way classic Gothic architecture blends in with the Midwestern-style houses on campus. "It's like the old part of campus has taken in its surroundings instead of alienating them," she says. "It feels like the campus is really part of Ohio."

Kenyon isn't just a looker compared to Midwestern neighbors. It's one of the best-looking campuses in the world, according to a panel of architects and campus designers interviewed by Forbes.

In Pictures: The World's Most Beautiful College Campuses

Architect Mike Evans, of the firm Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas in Norfolk, Va., which has worked on campuses worldwide, says it's easier for smaller campuses like Kenyon College or Scripps College to stay beautiful and charming "without the pressure of large-scale change."

For larger universities, a "clear diagram of organization" and "a continuity of materiality" are key to safeguarding their beauty, says Evans. Schools like Stanford University and the University of Virginia have painstakingly managed to maintain their distinct aesthetic and true sense of place, despite extensive growth.

Judge Natalie Shivers is currently overseeing the growth of another of our panel's favorite campuses, Princeton University. This classic American campus is "straight out of central casting," she says, pure collegiate Gothic, most of it executed in ivy-covered gray stone.

The University of Oxford made every architect's list, including that of David Mayernik, a professor at Notre Dame's School of Architecture. He calls the 11th Century campus, with its maze of cloisters, archways and pathways, "an architectural wonderland."

Kevin Lippert, publisher of the Princeton Architectural Press, which publishes the prestigious Campus Guide series, finds beauty outside of the Ivy Leagues.

Lippert put the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs high on his list, calling the campus, which was built in one fell swoop in the 1950s, "a tour de force of modern architecture." The Colorado Rockies as a backdrop doesn't hurt.

A powerful landscape can play a significant role in establishing a campus' character, says Aaron Schwarz, a principal at Perkins Eastman, a global architecture and urban design firm. The University of California at Santa Cruz, perched over the Pacific, is blessed with some good natural setting "genes," he says.

Sometimes a school benefits from its location in an urban environment, instead of mountains or ranch lands. The University of Bologna's campus is a city that dates back to the Roman Empire.

Most campuses deemed "beautiful" boast a "signature campus space," according to architect Mike Evans--an area that really defines the campus and its brand, like Thomas Jefferson's Lawn at the University of Virginia.

At Kenyon College, the signature space is a 10-foot-wide trail called The Middle Path, which doubles as central artery and village green for the campus. "In the fall," says Ellie Norton, "there's no place like it."

sources: http://in.news.yahoo.com/240/20100903/1503/tls-7892453_1.html

Tweens find Internet as source of happiness !!

Tweens are a lot more adept at using Internet and find it a source of happiness, new research has shown.The Tween Tracker survey showed that almost half of the 1200 children interviewed have Facebook profiles. Social media expert Laurel Papworth describes Facebook as the online equivalent of a "keep out, I mean it!" sign on the bedroom door.

Managing how they connect is a better option than saying 'don't connect at all'," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted her as saying. The study also revealed that Internet was a source of a lot of things apart from entertainment - environment, disease, poverty and terrorism were common concerns amongst Internet-savvy tweens.

These kids seem less depressed. Perhaps rather than being preached at how bad the world is, they see more people changing it . . . a chorus of voices speaking out, rather than just the bad news in passive mode.

Lola Spence, 7, and Sinead Leahy, 8, said they used it every day and spent up to two hours a day playing computer games and using social networking sites like Habbo.
Despite the high importance of socialising online, most tweens still prefer to read books and magazines than surf the web.

source: http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100829/854/ttc-tweens-find-internet-a-source-of-hap.html

India will Have 237 Million Web Surfers in 2015 !!

The number of Internet users in India is expected to triple in the next five years, according to a report from the Boston Consulting Group Wednesday but making money from them isn’t going to be easy.

Although PC penetration in India is low, at less than 5% of the population, and so is Internet use, with the country’s approximately 80 million Internet users averaging just about half an hour online a day, the report points to China’s growth and its 384 million surfers as a sign of how quickly this could change.

The unexpectedly rapid pace of China’s online migration is a sharp reminder of how quickly the other BRICI markets are likely to evolve in terms of Internet penetration rates, the number of hours spent online per day and e-commerce adoption,” said the report, which focused on the top emerging markets, Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia.

Many Indians will first go online from a phone, not from a computer.
A lot of the growth in India will come from users who first surf the Internet from their mobile phones, said Arvind Subramanian, managing director BCG Mumbai and one of the authors of the report, even though right now only 1% of mobile phone users are using the Internet.
“India is going to be different than what we’ve seen in mature markets but also in emerging markets. It’s going to be predominantly a mobile experience,” said Mr. Subramanian, who says the Internet will transform itself in the process.

The traditional Internet in its current form would be largely inaccessible even if it were to be available.The language and literacy barriers in the country—those are formidable.”
Global sites that want to keep the edge they already have in India, compared to some other emerging markets, will have to Indianize more than they have so far.

“If you look at the Internet in Russia, China and Brazil, it is largely dominated by local sites, local content,” said Mr. Subramanian. “In India and Indonesia, it’s the Googles, Facebooks, Orkut.”
Going forward, “you will have language editions of all these global sites,” he said. The hardware might have to change too, to voice-based devices or other gadgets that are more intuitive to use, he added.

Mr. Subramanian says Indians are likely to take to services that enhance personal productivity, such as job alerts or continuing education. About 73% of people who go online in India spend time job hunting, the research showed, a finding backed up by Google search trends in India which show job-related terms in the top 10 most days.

“The other thing that’s big there is matrimonial which is a very unique Indian thing,” he said.
Most Chinese Internet users instead spend their time online instant messaging or listening to music and only 19% look for jobs. Russian and Brazilian web surfers use search engines a lot.
Making money from Indians on the Internet? That’s an even harder proposition.

BRICI Internet users are much more likely to pay for online services than for content though Indian and Indonesian users are quite reluctant to pay at all, said the report.
Mr. Subramanian said that user fees, subscriptions or e-commerce aren’t going to be major sources of earnings for a while.

source: http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/09/01/india-to-have-237-million-web-surfers-in-2015/?mod=e2e_yahoo_home_india

Facts About Computer

Computer performance increased by about a factor of a million between 1950 and 1990.

Another name for a Microsoft Windows tutorial is 'Crash Course'!

Modern Microprocessors contain as many as 10 million transisters.

At the beggining of 1995 there were 24 million users on the Internet, of those 17 million were based in America. The Internet has doubled in size each year since it was invented in 1988.

The fastest computer in 1993, the CM-5, could perform 131 billion operations per second. With a pocket calculator this number of operations would take 41 000 years.

The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com.

Bill Gates' house was designed using a Macintosh computer.

By the year 2012 there will be approximately 17 billion devices connected to the Internet.

Domain names are being registered at a rate of more than one million names every month.

E-mail has been around longer than the World Wide Web.

For every 'normal' webpage, there are five porn pages.

In the 1980s, an IBM computer wasn't considered 100 percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft Flight SimulatorMySpace reports

over 110 million registered users. Were it a country, it would be the tenth largest, just behind Mexico.

One of every 8 married couples in the US last year met online.

The average 21 year old has spent 5,000 hours playing video games, has exchanged 250,000 e-mails, instant and text messages and has spent 10,000 hours on the mobile phone.

The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute, less than half the normal rate of 20.

The first banner advertising was used in 1994.

The first computer mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart in around 1964 and was made of wood.

Interesting Facts About Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and AllTheWeb

Nearly 85% of all knowledge obtained online starts with somebody doing R & D on one or more search engines. Whether a product or a service, search engines are the tool people are using to find what they want. You would benefit greatly to gain an understanding of how search engines can help grow your business.

Search engines are of two basic styles - portal and search box focused. In either search style, results depend on inclusion within the engine’s extensive database, some using human editing and others fully automated, some requiring paid inclusion and others free. Search results listings are called SERP’s or search engine result pages.

Studies have shown that search engines and links are the most effective way to reach Web users. Search engine marketing is tiered, meaning one may promote a Web site on the search engines at various levels of visibility. Each level offers a distinctly different service than the next.

At the most basic level of marketing is search engine listing which is simply registration in any given search database. This doesn’t guarantee or solidify ranking in the top results, but does obtain consideration. The next level is called search engine optimization, or improving a Web site’s ability to gain top rankings in SERP’s.

To rank relevantly within search engine results, Web sites must be considered relevant for a particular search algorithm for that particular keyword or phrase. This is a dynamic and growing strategy based on various tactics aimed to use search algorithms to the marketer’s best advantage. Currently, Web sites rank highest when each page is optimized separately. Metatags are thus developed with appropriate content.

There are countless search engines driving traffic to Web sites. Most of these are small, targeted and growing, while others have a large, broad and loyal audiences. Just a few search engines control the majority of queries on the Internet. These leaders include: Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves and AllTheWeb.

Other search sites compile results from multiple search engines into all-encompassing SERP’s. Finally, a one-of-a-kind undertaking, the Open Directory Project or DMOZ is a non-commercial directory focused on human-editing and free inclusion.
Studies also indicate search engines and links are the most effective method to reach users. According to GVU users survey, 85 percent of all new visitors currently arrive from search engines. Other strong marketing venues include word of mouth and printed direct mail advertising.


Traffic Facts:-

The following shows the average reach. For instance, if you sampled a million Internet users, average reach states how many visit each of the follow (Metrics as of February 2005.)

Yahoo
Google
Ask Jeeves
AllTheWeb
Dogpile
DMOZ

301,800 reach per million Internet users
170,650 reach per million Internet users
6,905 reach per million Internet users
1,070 reach per million Internet users
1,485 reach per million Internet users
1,880 reach per million Internet users

Today Yahoo is the top ranked Web site on the Internet. Word of mouth grew into what is now a publicly traded company. A Yahoo listing is as important as one in the phone book.
Google.com opened in a garage in September, 1998 in Menlo Park, California. Google handled more than 100 million search queries a day by the end of 2000.


In February 2002, Google launched AdWords, a self-serve cost-per-click advertising model. In December 2002, Google launched Froogle, a free product search service. 2004 brought Local Search and Gmail, as well as a public offering under the ticker GOOG.
No longer a garage business, Google reaches an average of 148,800 million users each day. Being included in the next Googlebot Internet crawls is as important as drinking milk.

Source: http://www.webreference.com/authoring/seo_facts/

All About Google

We all use Google in some way or the other. The way Google has evolved is a story worth telling.
Here are some of the interesting facts about Google :-

1. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. It was the result of a spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’. The domain name “Googol.com” was already taken by the time Google was founded. Google founded

2. The domain Google.com was registered on 15 September 1997.

3. The first operations of Google was started in this garage

google-garage-picture

4. Google (aka Googol) is a mathematical term which means “1 followed by hundred Zeros”. The term ‘Googol’ was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasne.

5. Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

4. Google’s Homepage has 42 validation errors. Check Google Validation

google-w3c-errors

5. Google’s homepage can be accessed in 88 languages including Urdu and Latin.

6. Every day the Google servers receives about a billion search requests . 20 to 25% of Google queries have never been searched before.

7. The main reason why the Google homepage is so simple is because the founders didn’t knew HTML. The submit button was included much later and hitting the return key was the only way to get the search results.

8. The “I am feeling lucky” button is almost never used by the end user. However it was found that removing the button would reduce the Google experience.

9. In the early days of testing Google employees noted people just sitting and looking at the screen. After a minute the tester asked “What are you waiting for ?”. To this the users replied “We are waiting for the page to load”.

To solve this issue the copyright message was added which acted as an end of the page marker.

10. Google has the largest network of translators in the world.

11. All Google employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working in their own projects. Google news and Orkut are two big examples that grew from this working model.

12. Google consists of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world.

13. Google started in January, 1996 as a research project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.The original google project was named backrub.

14. When Google started it indexed 25,000 web pages. Today Google indexes billions of web pages and each time it grows by 10-25%.

15. According to Google “As the web grows search becomes more and more important”. It acts like a library , the bigger the library the more important is the index.

16. The pagerank algorithm uses more than 200 attributes to determine the rank of a given webpage.

17. Google has the largest corporate solar panel installation in the US.

18. The biggest break in search came when Google introduced their improved spell checker seen as “Did you mean ? ”.This feature doubled their traffic and soon the developers discovered that the ideal placement was at the bottom of the search results.

19. Every now and then Google makes small changes and test them with a given set of users. The users aren’t told of this. They are presented with a new interface and the testers observe how the users react to it.

20. Google believe in 20 % – 5% philosophy. According to this, if at least 20% of the users use a feature then it will be included. To make it to the advanced search preferences, at least 5 % of the users need to use a particular feature.

21. In the results found in user testing and design, Google testers found that only a small number of people are typical of the larger user base. Hence,Google labs was born and it monitors how people use each and every service.

22. Gmail – Free email from Google was used internally for nearly 2 years by Google employees before it was launched for public use. The engineers discovered that there are typically 6 types of email users and Gmail was made to satisfy the needs of them.

23. Google’s index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of 8 billion web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.

24. They listen to feedback actively. Emailing Google isn’t emailing a black hole.

25. Google’s first April fool prank went live on April 1st,2000 and was coined “MentalPlex” – Google’s ability to read your mind.

google-april-fool-prank-mentalplex

Some thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fool’s Day was a joke. (Thanks Mani Karthik)

26. Google Groups comprises of more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world’s largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.

27.In a 2006 report of the world’s richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin was #26 with a net worth of $12.9 billion, and Larry Page was #27 with a net worth of $12.8 billion

28. There isn’t any restriction for proper dress code in the Google office. This may include pajamas and even super hero costumes.

google-dress

29. Tom Vendetta is the youngest google employee ever hired. He was hired by Google when he was 15 years old. Vendetta used to fool his friends by sending fake press releases and news. Vendetta was employed to know the know-how of the teen and to implement them in Gmail security flaws.

30. The first employee that google hired is Craig Silverstein.

Craig-Silverstein-first-google-employee google-baby

31.The first human being named after Google is Oliver google kai. He was born on September 12th 2005 and his parents named him because they wanted Oliver to have as many friends as google has.
10 Things that drive Google Philosophy

According to Larry page “The perfect search engine,” would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want. Mentioned below are the top principles that guide Google’s action :

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.

3. Fast is better than slow.

4. Democracy on the web works.

5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

7. There’s always more information out there.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

10. Great just isn’t good enough.
Ten principles that contribute to a Googley user experience

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.

2. Every millisecond counts.

3. Simplicity is powerful.

4. Engage beginners and attract experts.

5. Dare to innovate.

6. Design for the world.

7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.

8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.

9. Be worthy of people’s trust.

10. Add a human touch.