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APPENDIX 'A'
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What next? is a glaring question before the scientists. They believe that the universe cannot end thus. Some unknown force must rewind the clock of the universe so that it may be set running once again. According to Hindu belief the rewinding is done by the Almighty God whereas according to Jainas the process is automatic.
There is another line of thinking in science. According to this, sun is the source of energy for all life on earth. It is on the advent of the Spring that buds open, it is the heat energy which brings forth new life from within an agg; it is the energy of the sun which the human beings, animals and vegetables utilize for their growth. The sun is a hot body with its surrace temperature of 6000oC and in the interior the temperature is two crores of degrees Centigrade. It is radiating energy inces santly in all directions and as such it ought to cool down some day to the temperature of its surroundings. But it has been maintaining its temperature for billions of years and will continue to do so for a few billions of years more, when it will altogether disappear. The reason is this : several milleniums before Christian era, our Tirthankars taught that heat and light are fine forms of matter and have, therefore, weight.
This discovery was made by Einstein in modern times. Sun is losing heat by radiation and its temperature is constant. It means, it is losing mass. It has been estimated that its inass is being reduced by 250 million tons per minute and therefore it will disappear after a few billion years. The total mass of the sun is 2x1047 tons. When universe becomes devoid of solar energy, all life will disappear and it will be a sort of pralaya (979).
In recent years another interesting discovery has been made. It is well known that the magnetic North Pole does not coincide with the geographical North Pole. There is an angle between them. Now it has been found that the magnetic poles of the earth are slowly rotating and a time will come when the North pole will go into the position of South pole and vice-versa. In between there will be a period of 100 to 200 years when the earth will have no magnetism at all, because when we go from a negative quantity to a positive quantity, zero comes in between.
The Earth's magnetic field acts like an umbrella for the destructive showers of cosmic rays coming profusely from interstellar space. The Earth's field deflects them to one side and it is only in very small numbers that they are able to reach us. The rotation of the poles has a period of about 7,50,000
