Imaginch's doubts - part1

All of a sudden, clouds of doubts assembled in Imaginch’s mind. They had a mind of their own and started to torment him in sleep, by parading horrific dreams of demons demanding a resolution. No amount of squirming in the bed or cursing his stars could check the free runs these doubts. In frustration he decided to take leave of absence, doubting whether this move would help him to find answers. But before that could happen, he had to prepare a list of doubts which would guide him in this great endeavour. Imaginch was well aware of his ‘Mensa’ score and had great trouble in convincing himself to embark on this journey.

When the first man landed on the lunar surface, which phase of moon was visible to him?
He calculated it to be nearing the full moon phase, for us, and more closely between 10th and 12th day after new moon day! To arrive at this guess he struggled with an ephemeris for that year and month of landing. Having done so much of work he was excited to get in to an astronaut’s space suit and steal a look at mother earth, hoping to see almost half of it in day light.

He wondered,“How many people might have seen the dark or hidden side of the moon”?
This doubt came to his mind as an afterthought of the earlier one. It took him some time to realise that the visible face of the moon has never changed since his childhood! He was neither a keen observer nor knowledgeable in orbital mechanics between earth and moon. So he had decided to take the moon’s appearance at its face value, mainly to avoid finding an answer to this doubt. Now things started to look different. It became clear to him that the answer lay in guessing the number of persons who had that opportunity to see the hidden side of moon, except aliens. About two dozen astronauts fell in to the slot. What human eyes could see, a camera lens also could see! The total went up another dozen to account for the unmanned probes that had orbited around moon. The moon on its part went on showing the same profile with fascinating phases. Full moon to new moon it inspired poets and hung on as a lamp in the garden of love.

Like a meteorite falling from the sky, Imaginch’s doubts took a nose dive and crash landed on earth – “Is there a connection between the geographical features – the Marianna trench and Mount Everest? Is it by coincidence or design that both the landmark and watermark happen to be in Asian continent”?
He knew for sure - the only time he was sure about anything, that this doubt had no definite answer. Undeterred he went about collecting information about the Everest and the Marianna Trench.

The squabbles surrounding the actual height did

not lower its grandness or his esteem for Mount Everest in his mind. The fact that Mariana Trench lay on the ocean floor did not raise a doubt about its capacity to hold several thousand million tons of sea water. He was only trying to find out if by any chance the land mass excavated from the trench could have contributed the working mass for the Everest? Will it be with or without the snow cover?

The hitch was that he was unable get accurate of length and breadth details for Mount Everest alone.Having started the game, he did not like to call it quits at this stage. Instead, he assumed his own averaged numbers for the height of the Himalayan mountain chain and the depth of the Trench to carry on with the calculations:
The Marianna trench has the volume capacity of 6, 15,825 cu.km, the volume occupied by Himalayan mountains stood at 26, 40,000 cu.km . According to calculation 1 cu.km volume can hold 100, 00, 00,000 tons of water.

The volume capacity of Himalayan mountain chain worked out to be has 4.29 times greater than that of the Marianna Trench. He was too terrified to find out the tons of water that was needed to fill the Trench.He was sure the answer will have many zeroes and did not want to be reminded of his dismal academic record. He became exasperated at the moment when his old pocket calculator refused to oblige.

Nobody has really counted the number sand particles on earth or nobody has really counted the number of nebulae and number of stars in each nebula. Yet, everybody came up with a mind boggling number of 10 raised to the power(20 to 40) for a starter. There was always room for revision. Disliking this wisdom, Imaginch decided to call it quits and scooted from the scene faster than a scared rabbit , deciding to live with a doubt rather than grappling with a ghost from the school days.  Neither he was strong in mathematics nor it had been kind to him!

However, his chest swelled with pride even after this mathematical misadventure. This swelling of chest and size measurements have been doing the rounds in the last 2 ½ years and he also wanted to  personally experience it  ,if at all there was anything attached with this human element.