A trivial question regarding what is lignite soon escalated into a series of questions. Here is what I learned from that discussion and answer hunting on the internet.
- There are primarily 4 types of coal (yep, coal is a very large term) - Lignite, Sub-bituminous, Bituminous and Anthracite, each written in increasing proportion of carbon content and reduced moisture. So, naturally, the cost of coal also increases in the same order. They all start from a common stage, the most impure state called 'peat'.
- Interestingly, and against common perception, Diamonds don't form from coal. Why not? Because coals aren't usually found at the depths where diamond formation takes place. Duh! Going by that logic, it is obvious that by the time coal reaches that zone, it would be a diamond already (talk of promotions). But, I said it wrong. Geologists state that the ago of diamonds found on earth date them to around 1-3 billion years before, which is much older than the time we had trees (which is 300-400 million years). Apparently, diamonds effused out of the earths core and mantle while coal is formed as wood goes down under. There are also diamonds that were gifted from outer space (Guess who?) Also, diamonds can't form of coal because coal is impure and to be a diamond, one has to come undone.
- Only wood? Coal is fossil fuel, and so is Petroleum. But we don't see the two hanging out together. Why not? I don't know, all I have found is that coals are formed when trees and plants die fossilize, while petroleum is what we get when animals (land and aquatic) decay under high temperatures and pressures. That means petroleum is non-vegetarian and coal is not. This cue must be enough for stern vegans to abstain from using petroleum and turn herbal. Or better, switch to alternative renewable resources like the sun and wind. Stop messing around with mother earth. Period.
- Andhra Pradesh is known as the 'Rice Bowl of India', even though maximum production comes from West Bengal, and then other states on the Indo-Gangetic plains U.P. and Punjab (OK, it isn't a constant, and it lies on second, third or fourth spots).
- Jute has two other variants, 'Mesta' and 'Bimli'.
- GPUs are usually Throughput driven devices, while CPUs take into consideration the latencies. This makes GPUs more likeable for heavily multithreaded programs while CPUs run sequential programs better.
- SIMD stands for 'Single Instruction Multiple Data' while VLIW is 'Very Long Instruction Word'.
- Isohyets are the contour lines on a map which join places receiving equal amount of rainfall.