Skip to main content

SCIENCE stranger than fiction - 2

From time immemorial we humans have been thinking that the earth is a place which God built to teach us some manners. No religious texts seemed to mention another animals specifically and importantly as we. Everything was about us. We were the center of universe. Well this study puts one more bullet hole in that theory, because scientists found out that there could be more than 1 trillion species housing this planet. And we're just one among them. Oooh that sucks! Yes that's right, you've heard me, scientists have proof for that now. This profound work is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). It's such an amazing and groundbreaking effort by the scientific community,trying to map the biological diversity. The number of living beings shot up because this time extensive mapping of microbial life has been done. Usually people ignore the microbial diversity because they are invisible to the naked eye. The volume itself makes people's eyes pop out in amazement. Trillion is a huge huge number. And all, lives here with us on our planet. So next time we talk about our country, our home, our planet....... you may just want to reconsider .

We've always been taught, we gotta live in the present. Don't ponder in to the past. Past is past we can't undone it. Well, part of it is right, we definitely can't undone what's been already done. but new study shows that we are not living in present at all, as we thought we were. We live 80 milliseconds in the past. We see the surface of sun always 8 minutes ago, because the light takes 8 minutes to reach us on earth. Just like that, this, 80 milliseconds, is the time it takes for our brains to process information that's hitting us from all around. Isn't it crazy ? After all it seems we are past dwellers.

inmagine.com
This is such a relevant story that I came across in "time" magazine. A group is planning to invade and destroy India's most illustrious and glorious monument of all time, Taj Mahal. Actually they started the invasion long time ago. We were not aware of it till now. UP government has recognised it as a serious threat. Don't think even for a minute that these invaders are foreigners, they are born and brought up here, in fact very near to the monument itself. They belong to genus Goeldi-chironomous, These guys are insects who breed in the river Yamuna. They feed on the phosphorus accumulated from the dumping of ash into the river, from near by cremation grounds. They look like mosquitoes but they are not, theirs are elongated body structure than mosquitoes. Their excreta is destroying the mosaics and marble on the structure. It seems not only terrorists but the nature too has something against this man-made wonder. Or is it a warning that everything has its time, a time for every purpose.


                                               

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The bloodsucking Yakshi

When I was a kid, April and May fell in the list of my favourite months. Not because it's going to rain and there would be mud all around, but those are the months my cousins would be here at our family house, in our hometown in Kerala. Those are the memories I would cherish forever. My grand-mother has 5 offsprings, 4 boys and a girl. My father is the second eldest of five. Then, he was the only one staying in Kerala and everyone else was in different parts of India, a Pan-India Family one could say. We were all present, it's like Parliament, shouting, laughing, scolding children, people everywhere, busy doing their chores. An outsider entering the home can still go unnoticed. Life was less complicated then. We were just ........just ourselves. Everyone you valued dearly is with you. It's like, the world has shrunken to a square block of bricks and mortar. Now it's all feel like a fairy-tale, one of the best things about joint-family. We are all tired of day's

THE EPIC - where to draw the line?

India is the land where history and myth get intertwined in such a way that you cannot say which is which. One of India's gift to the world of literature is her majestic epical wonder " Mahabharata ", attributed to some one(might be one person or many) called Vyasa or Vyas ( Ved Vyas ) which literally means one who dissected 'Veda' (religious and philosophical writings of Hindu religion). Research on this great epic revealed that many appendage had been done to the original text , before it became whole. Mahabharata's impact on Indian psyche is so profound that people consumed every word of it as such.  Characters were being worshipped as role models, like modern day Bollywood stars. As the generations passed by, line which divides the story and reality started blurring. Stories told and retold, appended stories that were not present at the beginning happened, kind of regional versions. Many dynasties and empires came and gone everyone tried to leave t

Youth and Politics

Our political system is crippling and burdened with over aged hypocrites. I honestly believe our politics  need a revamp. Don’t you think present is ruled and governed by the ghosts of past. There is big difference in past and present  social values.  Don’t get me wrong, when i colloquially put it as older people coz you might think i am some kind of Nazi. When i say older, i meant our over-the-hill politicians, you can say they have experience and all, but right now what we need most is not experienced minds but bold minds who can accept the change happening around and those who are willing to break free from the old traditional format. The average age of our Parliament is over 60 years. How many leaders are there in our parliament who are not from a well-off and don’t have a criminal background. Most of our politicians and executives for that matter are sycophants. Being rhetoric and sycophancy are the trademarks of most of our statesmen. This sycophantic behaviour destroyed our co