Tag: green

2000 Year Old Extinct Tree is No Longer Extinct

By Anupum Pant

At Herod the Great’s palace in Masada, Israel, from the year 1963 to 1965 an excavation was carried out. It was an excavation which blew everyone’s mind. As a result of this archaeological endeavour, an ancient jar containing date palm (Judean Palm) seeds was unearthed. The radio dating of these seeds confirmed that they were about 2000 years old. Like all other excavated material, the seeds too were sent into a safe storage at the  Bar-Ilan University. For the next 40 years, these seeds remained in the storage.

The seeds which were unearthed belonged to a plant which in its time had flourished for thousands of years. Around 150 AD the tree went extinct. None of them remained. However, the seeds did…

In the year 2005, a researcher, Elaine Solowey, decided to plant the seed. Elaine was pretty sure that a 2000 year old seed would be totally dead by now, and there’s a little chance it would even sprout. She went ahead anyway.

Elaine did a deep research on how to revive old seeds. Then, she first soaked them in hot water. And then in a nutrient rich solution. Finally they were put in contact with an enzymatic fertilizer.

To her surprise the seed did germinate. But when it did come out, Elaine was pretty sure that the sapling would die out. It didn’t. Although there were claims of a 32,000 year old germinated seed later in the year 2012, in its time, the Judean palm’s name had gone into the record books as the oldest seed to have ever sprouted…

The tree has been named Methuselah after the oldest person named in the Old Testament of the Bible. Today the plant still continues to grow and has even made its first flowers.

[More about it]

Stop Trusting Everything You See

By Anupum Pant

Background

Everyone who comes on this blog often knows that I’m a huge fan of Prof. Rischard Wiseman. If you don’t know that, well, I urge you to check out every other post where I’ve mentioned him (Yes, he’s the same man who makes videos for the YouTube channel 59 seconds). The man certainly knows how to play with your brain. And once again he has blown my mind with this amazing optical illusion that he shared on his blog.

This is probably the best optical illusion I have ever seen. That is because, it’s somewhat like the Mc Gurk effect (do check it out too) – in a way that, it is one of those illusion where even after you learn about it, you still can’t see through it. I mean, it will continue to fool your brains, even when you know the trick. It’s an eternal magic trick. Enough of the build up. Now, let’s see what this illusion really is…

Wash your eyes if you have to

In the image below, you’ll see a pinkish swirling image and inside it you’ll see that there are green swirls and blue swirls embedded. What if I tell you the green and the blue you see are the same colors? Just because I’ve written something that’s completely opposite to what you see with your own eyes, you’ll probably laugh on my face and call me mad. I did that. I trusted my eyes more than any one else’s word. So I had to verify it…

most amazing optical illusion

The Proof


greenblue2Ok, if you take my word for it, fine. If you don’t believe me, you could use a simple image editor, pick colours and check. Both the colours you see here, green and blue, have the same hexadecimal value: #00ff96.

Another thing you could do is, download the image, zoom it to a great extent, such that both the colours that you see are in the same frame and you’ll see that the colours are actually same. Here’s a picture of that zoomed part…
 bluegreenzoom

optical illusion proofHere’s an image I created where we have the #00ff96 coloured square overlapping the seemingly blue and green parts. If you, cover everything except the topmost corner first, look at it carefully, and compare it with the bottom-most corner, you’ll see that the colour of the square block perfectly matches that of both the “blue” colour and the “green” colour in both areas. And it is the same block.

The several other blocks in the middle are for you to remain sure that the colour of the block doesn’t change in between.

There’s another image in which it works…
Even here the blue and green colours are actually the same colours…

color_illusion

 

A Miniature Planet Inside a Planet

By Anupum Pant

A couple of months back I wrote about a miniature sealed self-sustaining ecosystem that an old man has been running successfully for more than 53 years now. The whole ecosystem surviving out of itself in a completely closed system for such a long time is really fascinating. It’s like a little planet.

What if I tell you, there’s a much larger version of this completely sealed biosphere in Arizona. Much larger than the bottle, but way too smaller than our planet, and yet it works like a little planet inside a planet.

They call it the Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 is the plane earth’s biosphere). It is a completely closed 3-acre facility, currently owned by the University of Arizona, which doesn’t allow any matter to go in or out. There’s just energy moving in and out of this little planet that is the size of 3 football fields. Exactly like a miniature version of our pale blue dot.

Think about it this way. If you had to make a pizza in a place like that, it could take you two months or more, assuming you had everything needed to make a pizza (goats/cows for the cheese etc…). Just thinking about it makes you appreciate the fact that we’ve come so far. So far, that we’re able to get a pizza right on our door step in under 30 minutes.

The Biosphere 2 was designed to get a deeper understanding on how the earth’s biosphere actually works. Also, its aim was to try and create a prototype space base for Mars – Something like a little planet earth where we could live in and could carry it with us on a trip to other planets.

In the Biosphere 2 are areas that are meant for humans to live. Besides that there is a miniature rainforest, a savannah, a desert, a marsh, and a little mini-ocean in there!

Jane Poynter, with her team, walked into this biosphere when she was 29 years old. She lived in there for about 2 years and then came out. The world felt like a completely different place to her. It is really interesting to hear her talk in this TEDx talk…

The Greenest Invader in the History

By Anupum Pant

Background

The impact of human activities on climate change is by no means new. It is not an 1800s or 1900s thing. It did not start happening when we started burning huge amounts of coal or oil. In fact, human impact on the climate has been here for a long long time now. It started happening about thousands of years ago when our ancestors started clearing forests to make land for cultivation. The impact was less back then, but it had started.

So, basically an overly simplified equation has been like this – more humans, more cleared forests (for cultivation), more carbon emissions.

All these years humans have also been hit by some very unfortunate historical events which have resulted in the death of a great number of people.  Of course these events like the fall of Ming dynasty,  Black death and Conquest of America were sad events. They resulted in a massive wipe-out of human population which we would not wish to see ever again.

However, the huge number of deaths that happened due to these unfortunate events did have a common salubrious effect on our planet. Huge tracts of cultivated lands turned back into forests. As a result, great amounts of carbon dioxide got absorbed and there was effectively a global cooling happening.

The Mongol Invasion

Among all these historical events, one stands out – The Mongol invasion which lasted for about 150 years and covered more than 20% of Earth’s surface.

After founding the Mongol empire, Genghis Khan has been believed to have started these Mongol invasions. Time and again he was involved in the decimation of huge settlements. It is estimated that these invasions led by Genghis Khan resulted in the death of a whopping 40 Million people!

Death of so many people meant that the cultivated lands of settlements started turning back into forests and these forests ended up absorbing huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the air. Result – Global cooling (kinda).

It is estimated that the Genghis Khan invasions helped remove about 700 Million tons of carbon from the atmosphere. That about the same as a whole year of carbon that is being put back into the air due to burning of petrol today, in this industrialised world!

Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history.

Random Genghis Khan fact:
1 in 200 men are direct descendants of Genghis Khan – [Source]

Hit like if you learnt something today.

Sun’s Green Flash

By Anupum Pant

More often while setting than rising, if the conditions are right, a part of the sun (on the top) can appear green. This happens for very short interval lasting for about 2-3 seconds and is considered a rare phenomenon. Since it is green and lasts for a very small interval, it is also called the green flash, emerald flash or green ray. If you have ever captured it or plan to do it in the future, do share your results with me through mail/twitter. [See the animation] [Real GIF]

What does it look like?

Sometimes the sun’s rim can appear green (in optically zoomed images). Otherwise, when the sun is set, for a brief moment, it appears as if a part of sun has separated from the main body and has turned green. It is usually seen as a horizontal line, like in the video below. But, a few lucky ones have captured complete green auras too.

Why does it happen?

The sun gives out a white light, which contains all the colors – Green is one among  them. Normally, our eye isn’t able to resolve the separate colors and sees them as a mixture which is white. When the sun sets, our atmosphere acts like a prism and bends the colors. A few colors get bent more than others. For example, green bends more than red. As a result the two colors get separated enough to be resolved by our eye. But the right amount of bending happens only if the atmospheric conditions are right.

In extremely rare cases, blue or violet flashes have been reported. [image]

For a detailed explanation you can go through this – [Geometric Optics of Green Flashes]

At poles where the sun moves in a different manner, probably the green ray can last much longer. Admiral Richard Byrd has claimed to have seen this green flash for 35 minutes while on an expedition to Antarctica.

 

Building A Solar Death Ray At Home

By Anupum Pant

Sun’s Energy

Sun is an huge fusion reactor. Every second it produces enough energy that could power the US for 9 million years. But from the perspective of people living on earth, most of it radiates into the space and gets ‘wasted’. Still by using even the part of energy that is received by us, a solar death ray that melts steel can be built.

Earth is only a fraction of the size of sun. In comparison, sun is so mind-boggling-ly big that I bet you can’t manually scroll this page from Sun, all the way to earth (and this is a heavily scaled down version of our Solar System). In short, earth is so small that it receives a microscopic fraction of the energy radiated out by the sun.

Technically: The total flux received by earth is about 343 Watt per meter squared. On the way to earth’s surface, 30% of this gets scattered by the atmosphere and 19% of it is absorbed by the clouds. So, out of 343, only 51 percent reaches the surface. Which is calculated to be about 175 Watt per meter squared. Which is a very small part of the energy that sun gives out. [Source]

And yet, sunlight received by earth has by far has the highest theoretical potential of the earth’s renewable energy sources.

Harnessing this energy

For humans, it is possible to directly harness this energy broadly in two ways – heat or electricity (photoelectric effect). We are interested in only the heat part here. To demonstrate the kind of heat that can be generated by focusing 2 meter square worth of this energy to a single point, watch how this equipment can melt steel in seconds (The melting point of steel is around 1500 degree centigrade).

Making at home

Building something similar at home is fairly easy as far as the concept is concerned. But the process can be very tedious. I found three interesting ways in which this can be done at home.

1. Using a satellite dish: A satellite dish is parabolic and is designed to focus signal to a single point. Instead of signal, you could use it to focus light (sun rays). To use an old dish for making a solar death ray, all you’ll have to do is stick 5,800 tiny pieces of mirrors on its surface, like Eric Jacqmain did. – [Source]

2. Use a projection TV: A projection TV has a huge Fresnel lens in front of it. It is kind of a convex lens that is flat. If you can find an old projection TV, you could use the screen to make a solar death ray like Grant Thompson did.

3. Using water: Another creative way could be to use water. By combining the power of gravity and stretching plastic, you could turn clear water into a parabolic lens like this [Video]. Although I don’t think something like this could be efficient enough to melt steel. It could still be used as an outdoor machine to cook breakfast.

EDIT: Why isn’t there a comments section?

First I forgot to add this and remembered only when a reader pointed it out. I promised in my yesterday’s post, that i’d tell you the reason behind a missing comments section on this blog. Here it goes…

I use a theme built by Leo Babauta (see FAQ) and am a fan of his teachings. It [the theme] has an inbuilt comment section but Leo doesn’t use comments on his blog. For me to not use it too, there are 3 reasons:

  1. I’m a fan of Leo Babauta and try to emulate his ways in my life. (not perfectly)
  2. I want to create a pure reading experience for the reader (now ads, which hinder the pure reading experience, are for experiment only). People who really like to interact usually mail me. And it is a much more enriching experience.
  3. Unlike every other blogger, comments have a great effect on me. This in turn affects my ability to write. For instance, comments which appreciate, seem flattering to me. As a result, I become complacent. If they are critical, I get concerned about my writing abilities. There are hardly any neutral comments. I’d like to focus my energy on writing than arguing on the internet.

I do have plans to include it in the future. It is just that I’m not sure when I’ll do it. Probably when I change my theme, I’ll do that.

Paper Bags Are Not Better Than Plastic Bags

By Anupum Pant

Plastic bags are terrible things. They choke animals, aren’t easy to recycle, do not break down, pollute our oceans, their production adds to our oil demands…and the list goes on. Some time back, we realized their ill effects and started taking steps that would encourage people to use bags made of alternative materials. Furthermore, several cities all over the world have banned the use of plastic bags.

Side Note: Interestingly, plastic bags aren’t actually banned for any of those reasons. They are banned because they tend to fly with the wind and move out of your trash fairly easily. They create a mess at places where they aren’t supposed to. That is the major reason as to why they are being banned.

In 2007, San Francisco banned plastic bags for supermarkets and pharmacies. Last year, it got expanded to all retail stores. Now, they have been banned for restaurant takeaways too. Also, the use of plastic bags at retail stores has been banned in several Indian cities. But the point isn’t to list out all the cities where it has been banned. There are many cities. I hope you get the idea…

When it comes to finding an alternative for plastic bags, paper bags seem to be the first choice. But it turns out, paper bags are not better than plastic bags.  Most of us underestimate their ill effects. Here are a few reasons that will make you realize why paper bags are not so good:

The point isn’t to make paper bags look bad or to make plastic look good or vice versa. It is to dispel the image of “the green paper bag” from our minds.

Reasons

Production: Production of paper bags all over the world involves cutting down 14 million trees every year. It is estimated that the production of paper bags creates 70 % more air pollution than plastic bag production.
Production of paper bags also results in much more water getting polluted when compared to the production of plastic bags. This is because their manufacturing process requires a lot of water.
Almost the same amount of petroleum used for plastic bags (for the material) gets consumed in making of paper bags to fuel the machines plus transportation.

Weight: Paper weighs a lot more than plastic. It is estimated that to carry the same number of paper bags it takes 7 times the transportation it takes to haul plastic bags. More trucks, more pollution, greater greenhouse impact.

Space: Paper bags occupy a lot more space than plastic bags do. This creates a problem at landfills that are getting filled to the brim already.

Recycling: Paper bag activists would say, plastic bags live for ever in the landfills. Yes they do, but there, paper bags do not decompose within a meaningful time period either. In fact, most of the stuff lives on for a long time in landfills. Landfills aren’t meant to make things degrade. With a paucity of oxygen and water in landfills, it is hard for things to decompose there. Even food items thrown away at landfills last for years.
That said, even plastic bags are almost never recycled.

Also they tear easily. As a result, more number of paper bags have to be used.

Solution

Both of them – plastic and paper bags – are equally bad. Recently developed biodegradable plastic bags are not any good either (they have a bigger carbon footprint). Carrying canvas, cloth or jute bags and saving them for future use is probably the best alternative.

If you liked this, you’ll probably also like – Understanding the Impending Helium Crisis