Thursday, April 5, 2012

What is the use of going to temples?

There was a post filled with pseudoscience on the use of going to temples in Facebook. Seeing the number of shares and likes it was getting it made me wonder where did our engineers/ would be engineers go. It would have looked absurd to even those who studied physics in higher secondary. I thought our country used to be full of engineers. I have not written anything for a long time and finally I have written something on my own after a long time so I am just sharing it. Here is that Facebook share page.


Well the article had not made it clear what positive energy and negative energy means. The charge of an electron has been historically considered negative and proton positive. But there is no reason why it could not be other way round. We put negative sign infront of electric field vectors produced by a charge or charges but that is to imply the direction. We speak of obtaining negative energy or positive energy from a person but it is in a pure psychological sense, it has no meaning in physics.

Now let us consider the distribution of "magnetic lines for force" in a temple.( I think that author had confused them as "magnetic waves") I (or anyone who has passed a higher secondary in physics) will find the article Greek and Latin. It speaks that earth's electric and magnetic waves are maximum. There cannot be magnetic waves there can only be electromagnetic waves, as implied by Maxwell's laws. The amplitude of magnetic wave in an electromagnetic wave is extremely low when compared o that of electric wave that it is ignorable. And speaking of electric and magnetic waves if they had intended electromagnetic waves, They are everywhere. They come from sun, tubelight, laptops and even people around you. And earth's electric lines of force are radially inward. There are high concentrations of electric charges formed in atmosphere, that leads to lightnings. It has no relevance to what the author is speaking. The concentration of earth's magnetic lines of force are uniform at a place like a city. For evidence ask an undergraduate student or higher secondary student. The measuring of magnetic fields of earth by deflection or vibration magnetometers is a physics experiment. ( I wonder is this how they measure the exact spot for temples). If the calculated value is different from the known value, the examiner wont be happy. It would be quite daring to tell the examiner that the value was high at that particular area. And magnetic poles migrate about 40 km an year. And it has decayed 10% in last 150 years.  It will never be constant for large amount of time.

And the way of describing how the magnetic energy was observed was quite funny. How did it get absorbed? As thermal energy or does it get magnetised? Speaking of thirtham, it is water which is diamagnatic. It means it gets weakly repelled by magnetic field. But even if it used to wash a powerful magnet it does not make any difference. It returns to its previous state as soon as the magnetic field is removed. A piece of iron buried in earth for a long time gets magnetised as it is ferromagnetic but copper does not. It is paramagnetic means it gets weakly attracted towards magnetic field. But as soon as magnetic field is removed it returns back to normal. And ornaments or jewels cannot be magnetised as long as they are not made of iron or any ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic material. Any changing magnetic field produces an electric potential as per Faraday's law. It could heat up metals by use of Eddy current. So if they are iron they could attain thermal energy. The easiest way could be using an induction cooker. But it will cool soon so it is not a wise choice. Magnetising them will be quite difficult so why not tie a magnet around your neck. And the alternate medicinal practise of magneto-therapy is something to laugh about.

If you feel you lost too much energy from work, take glucose. But dont make it a habit. Take lime juice, tender coconut water or sambharam. Or just take some rest and the some food. If you have any ailments please do not go to temple. You could spread diseases easily in a crowded area. You can get clove, benzoin, tulsi and all this for Re 1. It is called Vicks. And it cannot be magnetised. And even if it could have been it would not be in market. It makes no use of magnetising it.

At the end of article, I find this hypocracy:”All the rituals, all the practices are, in reality, well researched, studied and scientifically backed thesis which form the ways of nature to lead a good healthy life.”. I challenge anyone o give those research paper in a peer reviwed scientific journal. Anyway I think temple could be an excellent place of meeting girls/boys and hooked up. I never go to temple so I dont know for sure. Do you know anyone who met his/her sweetheart in a temple?