Tag: science

World’s Most Relaxing Music and a Trick to Waking Up Happy

By Anupum Pant

Warning: I like to boast in public because it helps me stick to my resolutions better. Following is a paragraph that brags a bit, so please understand…

Phew! It’s been 179 days since I started this website and there isn’t a single day I’ve missed writing something here. Some days the articles were good, other days they were awful. Good or not, at least I slept a little smarter everyday. As a result, I have documented 179 good pieces. You can check them in the archives right now. Be my guest and since it is sunday, take some time to read through some of them, find mistakes, comment etc.This, thankfully, is the 180th article that is being written on the 180th day. That’s pretty huge for me. I’ve never done something this big ever in my life before. Trust me, it is a very tough commitment. If you wish to, acknowledge it in the comments. It will mean a lot to me.

However, today due to some other important work, my article writing ritual got delayed (happens a lot), and now it’s more than an hour past midnight. Thanks to my public boasting, I will still have to keep up. No sleeping before I write something. Or, I will simply have to get shamed in public (if someone even keeps a track of my progress). Probably my sleep will have to suffer today. So I thought, to sleep efficiently, let me learn a bit about sleep!

59 Seconds again!

And as always, the YouTube channel 59 seconds came to my rescue. I love the channel so much, I’ve mentioned it in at least 5 different posts before.

Anyway, the host, Richard Wiseman has a new book in the market – Night School: Wake up to the power of sleep. It talks about the science of sleep. Whenever he has a new book, there are a few interesting videos that come up on his channel that share a very cool tidbit from the book. The book is definitely on my read list, but will have to do with a related video for now.

World’s Most Relaxing Music

One of the videos this time is one hour-long and plays a scientifically constructed music that according to the professor is the world’s most relaxing piece of music. If you keep playing it in the background while sleeping, it will help you sleep better. I’ve tried this one when I took a nap in the afternoon one day. I can vouch for it. I actually had a very relaxing nap that time.

The tune is especially relaxing because, with a 90 BPM tempo and notes moving from low to high, it is scientifically designed to help you fall asleep. Here is the piece. Play it and have a good sleep.

While this would help me fall asleep, tonight I won’t have a problem with falling asleep. As I’m tired, I’d fall asleep easily. What I’m worried about is that I might get less sleep (it really doesn’t matter, I can just wake up late tomorrow). So, here is something from the same channel that, even with a shorter sleep span, would probably help me wake up happier tomorrow.

The 90-Minute rule

During our sleep, we have these cycles where our brain takes us from light sleep to deep sleep and then to a dream state. These three states make one cycle and it takes about 90 minutes to complete a cycle. If you happen to wake in the middle of a cycle, you’d wake up cranky. The trick to waking up happier is to wake up when one of this cycles is complete. There are of course apps on the Play store that help you achieve that, but I don’t have an android phone. So here is what I can do.

I can plan an alarm in a way that I complete several 90 minute cycles and wake up at the end of the last cycle. For that, if I plan to fall asleep at 2:30 AM, to complete a fair 6 hour sleep, I’d have to put an alarm for 8:30 AM. At 8:30, I’d have completed 4 cycles.

Except that these cycles don’t last for exactly 90 minutes. Some times they are more than that, other times they last for a lesser time. Still, by measuring my sleep period in 90 minute chunks, I can increase the probability of me waking up happier. Here is the video where Richard explains this…

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Walking from Cape Town to Buenos Aires

By Anupum Pant

You could theoretically walk from cape town in South Africa to Buenos Aires in Argentina. No, I’m not talking about you walking on the deck of a cruise liner while it’s sailing across the South Atlantic ocean. I’m talking about a really really long walk on land, that would require you to walk to Argentina from the other side of the globe!

This is the path you could take if you are adventurous enough –

cape town to buenos aires

Winter time: If you ever plan to do that, remember to plan your journey in such a way that you get to cross the Bering strait during the winters.

Since the land masses are separated by sea, it won’t be possible to cross it on foot. But during winters, when there a couple of chunks of ice floating around, you could theoretically jump from chunk to chunk and complete your almost impossible journey. Two things to remember would be that it is illegal to do that and is extremely dangerous too. Read on to know why.

Bering Strait: At the closest distance, the mainlands of America and Russia are just 85 km apart. The main lands are separated by the Bering strait. But the 2 seemingly distant countries get much closer to each other at edges of these 2 islands in between the Bering strait – The Diomede islands. Separated by just about 4 km, one of the islands is in Russia while the other is in America. A date line passes from right in between the islands and the times one island is 23 hours ahead of the other.

bering strait

During winters the parts of Bering strait freeze and they have huge chunks of ice floating around. But almost always, even during winters, there is a very strong current of water flowing across the Bering Strait. If you are lucky enough, the top part could get clogged for some time due to big ice chunks and could allow you to walk across to Russia, from Alaska.

In fact, people have done it in the past. In the year 2006, two friends Karl Bushby, and his friend Dimitri Kieffer were able to walk across the Bering strait from Alaska to Russia. They were immediately detained and deported for entering the country illegally. Most other attempts have ended fatally, involving rescue teams almost every time.

On November 1, 1998, at the age of 29, Bushby began walking from Punta Arenas, Chile at the southern tip of South America. Everything he owned was in a makeshift trolley called “The Beast.” He only had $300 in his pocket. Since then he has traversed the entire length of South and North America, completed the first recorded crossing of the Bering Strait on foot and progressed two thousand miles into Siberia. His goal is to finish the remainder of his journey across Asia and Europe back to England. To date, he has walked 20,000 miles of the 36,000-mile journey over the course of 15 years.

Even crossing this strait on a boat could prove to be dangerous as you’d be bombarded by intense storms constantly. And of course you’d end up in jail for attempting it. There is also no chance you are getting a legal permission to do it.

In short, provided you cross it in winter, have the ability to survive wind chill temperatures up to -100 degree C, are ready to risk your life and are ready to face legal consequences, you can cross the Bering strait and literally walk across from America to Russia.

In addition, if you are sure you can walk for several thousands of kilometres to make a one of its kind journey, you could actually walk from Cape Town to Buenos Aires.

[Read more]

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Stone Age Technology Still Makes the Best Blades

By Anupum Pant

Normally, the electric shaver gets the work done. So, I almost never  have to use a fixed blade razor for shaving my facial hair, but after seeing this, I think I should start using a fixed blade. Here is a highly magnified image (using a scanning electron microscope) of two strands of hair. The left one was cut using a fixed blade and the right one was cut using an electric razor. See the difference for yourself.

magnified image of Hair cut using a fixed blade and electric shaver

 

So, even if the major thing that causes a messed up strand is due to the fast moving blade of an electric razor, but one other important factor is the sharpness of the blade. The point is, electric shaver blades aren’t too sharp, while fixed blade steel razors are pretty sharp. Thus, the steel blades can give you a clean cut.

Still, when it comes to fine tools, steel blades stand nowhere. Look at what a Gillette blade looks like when its put under an electron microscope (at not even a very high magnification – 150x).

Gillette_Blue_Blade_150x

Yes, even those seemingly perfect Gillette blades can be that jagged under high magnification. Thank goodness, blades can get much finer.

Obsidian Blades

Obsidian is a naturally occurring black volcanic glass. A glassy rock, you could say. It is very hard and of course, like most hard things are, it is brittle too. So, if it isn’t handled with good care, it breaks pretty easily. Yes, that kind of a rock.

When it breaks, it forms very sharp edges. These edges can sometimes get much much sharper than your normal steel blades. Also, even if they are brittle, they are pretty durable in a sense that they can hold their edge for much longer times. These were the reason, our ancient palaeolithic ancestors used to chip these rocks and made them as the tips of their spears and arrows.

Blade edges made out of obsidian are so sharp that they don’t seem jagged even when seen under an electron microscope. Their edges, if made carefully using processes like pressure flaking process, can get up to 3 nm thick. Good quality blades can make cuts down to single molecules! That is about 500 times sharper than the sharpest steel blade.

Left: Obsidian tip under and electron microscope. Right: Steel point under an electron microscope.
Left: Obsidian tip under and electron microscope. Right: Steel point under an electron microscope.

While blade edges made out of obsidian are not approved by the FDA, surgeon scalpels are still made using them. Studies say that cuts made using these blades get healed much faster than the ones made by steel blades because obsidian blades can make extremely narrow cuts between the cells, and not tear the cells apart.

Lee A. Green, associate professor of family practice at the Medical Center, uses obsidian knives for removing moles and repairing torn earlobes. – Source

Of course synthetic diamond blades have been made. But obsidian blades are still better in terms of durability.

Stone age technology is still the best.

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Planarian Worm – Cloning a Creature was Never This Easy

By Anupum Pant

Lizards grow a new tail if the old one is lost. In fact, they even shed it of voluntarily to save themselves from predators. Then start fish can grow their cut arms back, earthworms can grow back cut parts too. Even Axolotls are pretty good at regeneration. But there is probably nothing as strange as the Planarian flatworm.

If you happen to slice a Planarian worm into half, vertically (or any other way), both the parts will regenerate! So, in 2 weeks you’ll have 2 Planarian worms cut out of a single one. The ability to regenerate is so good that even if a 1/300th part of this worm is cut, the small bit of it can regenerate the rest of the worm! But that isn’t even the strange part.

Now, naturally, since it can grow back its body, it can grow back its head too. But the most amazing part is that with the new head, the old memories of the flat worm also come back! That is strange, isn’t it?

With just a knife in your hand, cloning was never so easy.

Fun Fact: Planarian Flatworms also do not have a separate anus. But they do have an cavity at the rear end which they use to take in food. The same cavity is also used to send out the waste stuff.

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Do Not Paint Your Walls Pink

By Anupum Pant

Like I’ve told you once, there is no pink. Still, we do see the colour pink and there’s no denying that. Don’t call me a sexist for saying this, but it’s true that the colour pink is associated with femininity. Otherwise the colour is also known to generate feelings of caring, tenderness, and love. If everything we know about pink is somewhat positive, then why isn’t it a good idea to paint your walls pink?

Let me start with a little story.

Hayden Fry and the Pink room

Hayden Fry was an American football player and later he went on to become a coach. In the late 70s he started coaching the University of Iowa football team. Now, the particular thing to note about Fry was that in the year 1951 he had graduated from Baylor with a degree in psychology.

Since he had graduated in psychology, Fry probably knew some good ways that he could use to mess with the opposing team’s brain. And then he decided to paint the walls of the visitor’s locker room at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium, with the colour pink. The walls, floors, toilets, ceiling and everything else in the locker room was painted pink. As a result, the home team started doing significantly well at football games (later the practice of painting locker rooms pink was outlawed).

Some say, he used pink to paint the visitor’s locker room because he knew that the colour pink had a calming effect on people. But I think he was relying on something deeper. He was probably trying to cash on the results of a study that was done by Prof. Alexander Schauss in the year 1979.

The Effect of Pink Colour

Prof. Alexander Schauss started a study with a couple of volunteers. He divided the group into two equal halves. All of their strengths were measured by asking them to use their arms against a counter-force and by asking them to squeeze a device called a dynamometer.

After this, for a minute, the first half had to stare at a dark blue colour and the other half stared at pink. Their strengths were recorded again.

A remarkable decrease in physical strength was recorded among the people who were given the colour pink to stare at. The participants were not aware of the effect it had on them.

Probably it were those pink walls and pink floors at the visitor’s locker that made the opposing team physically weaker and helped Iowa win.

Conclusion

Colours certainly are one of those subtle forces which change the way we think, feel, and behave. Pink has been proven to make you weaker physically. So, unless you wish to be weaker, you wouldn’t want to paint your walls pink! How about blue? It is a simple choice.

Now I think even writing an article about pink and having your brain think about the colour makes you weaker. Seriously, I feel like I need rest after writing this. Phew!

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Scientific Ways to Make Cut Flowers Last Longer

By Anupum Pant

Suppose, someone gives you a beautiful bouquet, celebrating a very important day of your’s, say your 50th wedding anniversary – A rare event these days. Wouldn’t it make you happier if these precious flowers last longer, even if it is just “slightly longer”? If you are a person like me who is easily moved, seeing flowers last longer would certainly make you happier!

Here are a few simple scientifically proven ways you could try that would make your cut flowers last slightly longer.

Sprite or 7-Up

Well, to make a flower last for about 3 days,  of course you could cut off an inch of the stem, clean it and put it in plain water. But there is also a little addition you can do to the water to keep them blooming for a few more days.

Add some amount of sprite or 7-Up to the water. Yes, that’s it. I know, some would consider it an urban legend or a forwarded email story, trust me, it actually works. Continue reading Scientific Ways to Make Cut Flowers Last Longer

Wood Frog Dies and Comes Back to Life

By Anupum Pant

Ice Kills

Everybody knows what extremely low temperatures can do to our body. If you aren’t well protected from the cold, unable to retain the heat, the core temperature of your body may drop below 35 degree C and can cause some serious problems, even death.

At even lower temperatures, ice crystals can form in the tissues and puncture blood vessels. Ice crystals may even squeeze, deform and break cells. Otherwise it can leave behind shrunken and destroyed cells by sucking out water from them to form ice. Probably leaving you with a permanently damaged body part.

Due to ice formation inside the cells, this disastrous structural damage that is caused in human bodies, or most other organisms is unavoidable. We were not built to endure horrendous cold. But there are a few organisms who are built to live, or if I may say, die and then live again in extremely cold temperatures.

Meet the Wood Frog

Wood frog, a small variety of frog found in north america is one such creature. You ask what’s so interesting about them?

It is probably one of the most freeze tolerant beings. In other words, extracellular freeze tolerance and intracellular freeze avoidance enables the frog to do what it does.

Well, when it is really cold out there in the Arctic circle or the upper parts of America, they can freeze themselves for weeks, even for months. It does this by first finding out if it is really cold out there. When it touches the first bits of winter snow, a signal sets off in its body and the signal starts the blood freeing process.

All the water is pulled away from the core of its organs and the water gets frozen. Putting all the organs in a shell of solid ice. The whole frog becomes hard as a rock and sits there like that for weeks. Till it sees the spring time.

The most amazing part is that, during this time, the frog doesn’t breathe, its heart stops beating and even kidneys stop functioning. In medical terms it could be called dead. In reality, it is only temporarily dead.

Just like a dead man – without a hear beat – walking.

And then spring comes. It thaws itself out without any cellular injury and starts jumping again. It dies in winter and comes back to life in the next season.

This is probably how carbonite from Star Wars works.

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The Ultimate Roller Coaster Ends Lives

By Anupum Pant

Euthanasia Coaster, A concept designed by Julijonas Urbonas, is a one of its kind roller coaster concept designed to literally kill you. As the name suggests, it is an engineering marvel designed to intentionally end lives of people suffering from terminal illnesses or the ones who are bored of a too long life – a practice referred to as Euthanasia. The coaster is a different kind of Euthanasia machine.

The concept, according to him is a humane way of ending lives of people who don’t want to live any more. Since, Euthanasia is seen as a suicide by some, it has been banned in some countries, while there are others who consider it legal. Similarly, the humane way of ending life by inflicting euphoria and thrill is considered a marvellous concept by some, and there are also others who are extremely disgusted by the idea. Most find it morbid.

Since Julijonas neither encourages nor discourages suicide, I think it isn’t right to judge him by his concept.

It kills you by extreme G forces that are produced at certain parts of the coaster. In simple words, it kills you by depriving your brain of oxygen. The medical term for it is Hypoxia. It does this by taking you up half a kilometre high and then dropping you into a 10 second long fall. It is built to carry 24 people and it ensures that all of them come back dead.

Euthanasia Coaster from Julijonas Urbonas on Vimeo.

There is no organization who plans to build it yet.

[Find out more]

A tip you don’t need: Another way to die out of pleasure would be to feed yourself Theobromine. Now where would you find it?

Dark chocolates! A tiny bite of dark chocolate can easily kill your dog. But, if you are an 80 kg human, you need to consume about 10 kg of dark chocolate to kill yourself. That would be a great way to go, wouldn’t it?

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Watch How 32 Metronomes get Synchronized Automatically!

By Anupum Pant

Background

From biological cells to celestial bodies spontaneous synchronisation is found everywhere in the nature. In simple words, you could call “spontaneous synchronisation” as “a natural self-organisational behaviour” in things. Where, out of a chaos, uniform order starts appearing. If that feels too abstract to understand, read on…

Probably the first human to note this effect was a Dutch physicist, Huygens. Huygens noticed this when he was working on a ship with two pendulum clocks. For very long times, his work of calculating longitudes required him to watch these clocks swinging away their pendulums. He would lie on the bed and watch them go. There was one weird thing he noticed about these pendulum clocks. No matter how the pendulums started swinging, after an hour or so, both the pendulums ended up synchronized! This was a perfect example of uniform order appearing out of no where from an apparent chaos.

The effect amazed scientists for about 350 years. Only then some researchers at Georgia Tech University, were they able to produce a perfect mathematical model that proved it. So, what was happening on the boat? In a similar fashion, would all pendulum clocks in the world get spontaneously synchronized? Let’s look at the following example to find the answer.

Synchronizing metronomes

Think of it this way. You have a couple of metronomes with you – the physical ones, the ones that are based on pendulums. You start each one of them and there is almost no chance that you’d get them perfectly synchronized in the first go. So what do you do to get them synced?

You simply keep all of these metronomes (ticking with the same frequency but different phase relations) on a free-floating table. That gets them synchronized in a matter of minutes. See how the 32 metronomes completely out of sync of each other get synchronized in the following video. Note that they are on a surface that is free-floating.

Adam Milkovich explains the effect very beautifully in the following video:

Another video – Link

Back to Huygens

Now, if we come to see the boat as a free-floating base and the 2 discordant pendulum clocks as metronomes, the segue of their motion into a perfectly synchronized one, makes complete sense.

The only difference is that the boat was a pretty huge free-floating base – something which has a relatively very high mass as compared to the pendulums. And then there is the drag on water; other forces etc.. The pendulums had a very very tiny effect on the boat and in turn, were able to transfer only a teeny bit of energy with every oscillation. So it took longer.

I find it pretty incredible that it even happened in an hour. I think it would have taken a much longer time, given the huge difference in their masses. May be Huygens exaggerated. Or it was a very small boat. Anyway, that is the reason, Huygens’ clocks took about an hour to get synchronized. While the ones we see above are able to do it in a matter of minutes.

Back to the Question

Would all pendulum clocks in the world would get spontaneously synchronized?

Well, I’m not too sure. But this is how I see it:

I think of Earth as a really really really huge free-floating boat. Now, the movement of pendulums on Earth certainly has an effect on the earth. And in turn the other pendulums get affected. And they end up synchronized at some point. But the first effect itself is unimaginably small.

I mean, the Earth is so massive that even if all of the 7 billion people on Earth jumped at the same time, the 6-trillion-trillion-kilogram Earth would move so less. Earth would move about a hundredth of the radius of a single hydrogen atom.

So, pendulums would hardly have any effect. But the effect would certainly be there.

Therefore, I’d say the answer is yes. Yes, all the pendulum clocks on earth would eventually get synchronized. But it would probably take so long, that even earth, leave alone pendulum clocks, would cease existing.

Toy idea: Well, that gives me a great idea for a toy. 5 – 10 pendulums inside a huge pendulum. The inner ones would get beautifully synchronized automatically!

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Sad Story of The Lonely Whale – 52 Hertz

By Anupum Pant

Background Story

In the year 1989, a navy technician Joseph George, discovered something mysterious. While looking for enemy submarines in the sea by detecting sound signals, Joseph noticed that there was a mysterious lone sound which stood out in the acoustic signal. From his years of experience as an acoustic analyst, Joseph knew that this sound wasn’t coming from a submarine. As predicted, no enemy ships or submarines were found on further examination.

The sound was a deep pulsing wave and was incredibly loud. It seemed as if it were coming from a machine. But he was certain that this wasn’t a mechanical machine which was making the sound. There was something biological about it. So Joseph decided to call an experienced marine biologist to find out what was making that sound. The researcher confirmed that it was a whale! But not a normal whale…

Did you know?
Whale vomit can make you rich.
and Whale fat is a very healthy thing to eat.

The Twist

If this was really a whale, it still confused the marine biologist because first, the sound was coming from an awkward path. Since whales travel together in a regular migratory path, this wasn’t coming from any of those paths. Also, it was a lone sound.

Secondly, the frequency of sound that was detected was measured to be 52 hertz, and no species of whales were known to make that kind of sound. Usually whales create a sound with a frequency that lies between 15 to 20 hertz. This was definitely not any known species of whale. Or even if it was among any of the known species, it was calling out the wrong note. A note, probably no other whale could hear.

So, for obvious reasons, even when the loud bass was heard for several times, no response by other whales was detected. This was awkward because whales usually respond to the members of their groups. They talk. It was concluded that this whale was travelling alone. No one knew why.

Studies and Theories

In the 13 years of study that ensued, the whale (or whatever it was) was never seen, nor was a response to its song was noted. Scientists started calling it the 52 hertz whale. They could never figure out why the whale sang in a different voice or even an answer to why it was alone, travelling on a completely different path.

Scientists have tried to explain this, but there has never been a solid answer that explains the lonely nature of the creature. To explain the loneliness, some say that the 52 hertz’s voice can’t be heard by other whales, others say that it can’t hear the other whales. Some say that the other whales are scared to respond or go near an unusual voice. Other theories say that the whale must be a hybrid of two different species of whales and that is the reason it sounds so different. What is the real deal, no one knows.

Stories Documentaries and Poems

The 52-hertz whale started having a huge fan following in the late 2000s. A 90 minute documentary was made. However, I couldn’t find it anywhere. Poems were written. Blogs and statuses were written and people sounded touched & concerned. They wanted to extend help to the lonely whale in some way.

lonely whale response

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A Mountain on Earth Taller Than The Mt. Everest

By Anupum Pant

Background

Of course there are taller mountains than the Everest. Like if you consider the whole solar system, the tallest mountain is in Mars. It is about 2.5 times the height of Mt. Everest, and had it been on Earth, going to its peak would have required you to wear a space suit. It is about 21 km tall!

But here on earth, you’d think Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain. No, it is not. In fact, the peak of Mt. Everest is of course the Highest peak. So, it is the “Highest” mountain, not the “tallest”. The tallest one would be the Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Subtle differences, you see…

Tallest means – Measuring the mountain from its base to the peak. (Which seems pretty fair to me, but it isn’t the norm).
Highest means – Measuring the mountain from the sea level to the peak.

Measuring Heights

Mountain peaks are measured from the sea level. Suppose a mountain is in the sea, the part of it which lies below the sea isn’t added to it’s height. So a mountain lying in the sea says, “unfair!”

Measuring sea level in turn is another complex problem because the sea isn’t at the same level everywhere. In fact, the sea level is much higher at the base of a mountain because the mountain’s mass increases the gravity and pulls the sea water making it higher there. Even if there isn’t any sea around mount Everest, the calculated sea level (higher than normal) is used as the base of the mountain. From this raised sea level to the peak, Mt. Everest measures 8,848 m.

This is how sea level is calculated:

Therefore, Mt.  Everest is 8,848 meters tall, because there is no part of it which is under the sea (because there is no sea there). Also, Mt. Everest is 8,848 meters high because its peak is 8,848 meters from the calculated sea level.

Mauna Kea

Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano in Hawaii, is not popularly known because it’s peak is just 4207 m above the sea level. So, it is 4,207 meters high. Mt. Everest is much higher!

But the important thing to note is that a huge part of the volcano is under the sea level. In other words, its base is on the ocean bed, not on land. So, if measured from the base, it is 10,100 meters tall! That is more than 1.2 kilometres taller than the mount Everest.

Mount kea is tallest mountain

That means, if there were no sea, Mauna Kea would have been a clear winner. Think of it this way – Suppose you cut both the mountain at their bases and place them on a huge flat land, Kea would be 1.2 kilometers higher! Given it is not a constant, I wonder why “sea level” is used as a standard to measure heights of mountains.

Clearly, Kea should be known better. School text books should at least have a mention of it.

 Another Twist

Now if you think that is all I have to say about the highest and tallest things, you are wrong. There are all sorts of complex measurements we can do. What if, you start measuring the height of a mountain from the centre of the earth?

I don’t think that would be fair given the odd shape of earth – It is about 42 km farther across the equator than it is at the poles. That is too much distance to ignore. Had earth been a perfect sphere, this measurement would have made sense.

earth measured at poles and equator
earth measured at poles and equator

Nevertheless, let’s imagine that we have started measuring the height of a mountain peak by measuring its distance from the centre of the earth. In that case, Mt. Chimborazo, an ice-capped inactive volcano and the highest mountain in Ecuador, would have been the highest one. Even with a peak which is at an elevation of 6,268 meters from the sea level, it is still the most distant place from the centre of the earth. The peak of it is 6,384 km from the centre, while that of Mt. Everest is 6,382 km from the centre of the earth. In some way, even Chimborazo is taller than Mt. Everest. Still, we’re never taught about it in schools!

If there are any science teachers reading this, please tell these things to the kids. I’ll be honoured!

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The Rainbow Coloured Lake – Grand Prismatic Spring

By Anupum Pant

Of all the “cool” places we have here on earth, lakes and other water bodies fascinate me the most. This is probably the reason I keep stumbling upon some of the most amazing lakes over and over. In the past I’ve written about the Taal lake and the bleeding lake of Antarctica. I have several others in mind, but this is the one I’ve picked for today, and it isn’t “cool” – The rainbow coloured lake.

Lying amidst the colourful geysers and hot springs of Yellowstone National park, located in the state of Wyoming, is a lake where you’ll see colours ranging from brilliant yellow, orange, red, green and of course blue. Here is what it looks like…

The lake is called the grand prismatic spring and it is the largest hot spring in the US. The water there is hot enough to burn you. And yet…

The hot spring, is home to different kinds of tiny living creatures. Organisms called thermophiles have learnt to thrive in the abnormally hot place. In fact, these creatures depend so much on the heat that they can’t live away from the hot water.

What makes it coloured?

The lake is coloured, yes. But what causes these bright vivid colours? Is it because there is something in the air around it, or is it due to a industrial chemicals leaking into the lake, or is it due to these organisms? Whatever causes the lake to appear coloured, that too colours appearing in the same order like they would be seen on a rainbow, I wanted to know.

Turns out, it isn’t just the lake that is coloured. The steam that arises from the hot water comes in different colours too!

The orange and other non-green/blue colours which appear there the most after blue are due to a multi-layered sheet of microorganisms that thrive in the lake. These are pigmented. The main pigment is chlorophyll (the same thing which helps the plants make food). But chlorophyll is green. So there are some other yellow, red and orange coloured pigments called Carotenoids, that protect the chlorophyll when the sunlight is bright enough to damage it.

The colour of the part of lake is a function of, amount of Carotenoids  present with chlorophyll. More the Carotenoid, more colours you’ll see. A greater ratio of cartenoids to protect the chlorophyll during summers is the reason why the lake appears not-so-coloured during winters and vividly coloured during the summers. So, it isn’t the variety of microorganisms or chemicals or atmospheric conditions that colour the lake, the colour is due to the different mix of chlorophyll and carotenoids at different patches of the lake at different times of the year.

The best time to visit this place would thus be the summer season!

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Space Oddities – Part II

By Anupum Pant
pat on the back self
Self-administered pat on the back to me.

A few days back, in the month of December I had compiled a list of 6 space oddities that really interested me. At that time, I was pretty sure I would stumble upon a few more odd/interesting things about space within a month or two. With that in mind, I had decided to suffix the heading with “Part – I”. Four months have passed. That was a very thoughtful thing I did – thinking 4 months into the future. I have to appreciate my forethought (with a self-administered pat on the back) for doing that because today I’m back with a few more of these odd / interesting things about space and I’m still not embarrassed about the heading for the post.

So, here is the part II of space oddities (read the part I here):

1. A Hole in the Universe

Space Dust Image Gallery

About 7 years from now, researchers from University of Minnesota found out about a really huge void in our universe. The abnormal hole measures approximately sixty billion trillion miles. In easier words, it is about 10 Billion light years wide. Imagine! A beam of light would takes 10 Billion years to travel through that empty place. How lonely would it be at the centre of it. The void is bigger than anything else scientists have ever seen in space.

The whole volume of space shows no sign of any stars, planets, asteroids, gases, clouds, dust. The volume doesn’t even have any signs of dark matter (95% of our universe is dark matter) too. [read more about it]

2. Costliest thing ever built

Think of a huge 5 bed room house floating in space that can be seen moving from the surface of the earth with the naked eye! Yes, I’m talking about the International Space Station. It is a whooping 200,000 kg object that is 171 feet long, 240 feet wide and 90 feet high.

When it comes to the price of building something this huge in space, it beats everything from the most lavish sky scrappers to the most largest dams  ever built. The price of building it is estimated to be about $160 Billion and fortunately the cost is shared by Canada, the European Union, Japan, Russia and the US. It is officially the most expensive object ever constructed, and it is NOT on earth! – Guinness book of World Records.

3. The Cosmic Smile Continue reading Space Oddities – Part II

Intelligent Men Look Different – Says Science

By Anupum Pant

Background

I know, I’m not a very big fan of intelligence scores or IQ points measured using the standard IQ tests available today. And even if this study does rely on those scores, I still find it pretty interesting. You will too…

Judging a book by its cover isn’t unwise after all. A recent study published by researchers from the Czech Republic proves that all of us humans have a natural ability to estimate how intelligent a man really is, by just looking at his facial features. That said, the study also mentions that you can’t judge a woman’s intelligence by observing her facial features. It works for only men. However, both men and women have this ability to estimate the intelligence of a man by looking at his face.

The study finds no solid correlation between the features of a woman’s face and their intelligence. That means, to find out about how intelligent a woman is, you’ll have to dig deeper than just the facial features.

People can accurately judge intelligence by looking at faces of men, but not women.

The study did not use a very huge sample – Still pictures of 40 men and 40 women were used. Nevertheless even 80 pictures contribute a significant amount to science. No experiment is a bad one. We’ll probably see more such studies and know more about the phenomenon in the near future.

They also measured the intelligence of these 80 people using standard IQ tests and asked people to rate their intelligence. It was found that people were able to almost accurately tell the IQ of a man by looking at his picture!

How do we do it?

We have an inbuilt ability to spot the shape and features of intelligent men. This could be a pretty logical evolutionary trait.

Faces of intelligent men: According to the researchers, longer faces with greater distance between the eyes, pointy chins, larger noses, slightly smiley lips are the features of highly intelligent men.

Faces of not so intelligent men: Whereas broader and rounded faces with eyes closer to each other, shorter faces, sad lips and bigger chins are the signs which tell us that a man is not so intelligent.

Here see the difference yourself. What do you think? Could you spot it? Which one of these faces is the closest to your face? Tell me in the comments below. Tell me about mine too.

intelligent face

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Suicide Attempt Turns into a Successful Surgery

By Anupum Pant

Background

I don’t mean to sound wry with the heading, but it’s a real story, and is a real fact. I can’t be held responsible, if you are stupid enough to try this “surgery” at home. Still, let me say it – Please don’t try this, even if you are stupid. There is no chance you’d survive this. The whole purpose of this article is to keep you informed.

In short, it is about a man (you could even call him a boy) who suffered from an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, shot himself in the head to commit suicide. The very act, ironically ended up curing himself of the OCD.

Crash Course in OCD

To tell you a little about OCD, it is a disorder which creates a serious problem in someone’s life if they suffer from it. They get obsessed with doing some things repetitively. For example, people often have an OCD where they feel compelled to arrange things in stacks. Or others who can’t sit in ease if their clothes are not in a perfect order. Or some, who have an obsessive fear of germs and end up washing hands several times a day….etc.

These disorders usually can make a person lonely as others start staying away from the seemingly paranoid person. Otherwise, they also create a problem in the sufferer’s life by consuming excess time, money, energy, etc of their’s. Most times, the person suffering from an OCD starts experiencing serious emotional distress or depression.

In very rare and extreme cases, where anti-depressant and behaviour therapy doesn’t work, doctors resort to performing a surgery, where they remove a part of the brain from which the problem seems to come from. Even under controlled circumstances, this surgery is considered as a very serious one.

The story

About 30 years from now, a 19-year-old boy George, from Vancouver, British Columbia suffered from a serious problem that used to interfere with his normal life. He had an obsessive fear of germs and used to wash, and used to shower hundreds of times in a single day. Yes, really hundreds, not less. Doing this took away all of his strength and he found it hard to do anything else. This made his education and general life suffer as he could not attend school or work at any place.

He was a top class student and had a pretty good IQ. But the boy was seriously depressed and often complained to his mother that he wanted to die. On unfortunate day, when the boy felt really troubled, he went down to his mother and complained that he wanted to die. This seemed like a final blow to the mother’s exasperation and she  told him to go shoot himself. Not realizing the metaphoric nature of his mom’s statement, the boy decided to go and do just that.

He went to the basement and shot himself in the head using a .22 long rifle. The bullet got lodged in the brain. Naturally, after this, he had to be rushed to the hospital. After a very long surgery, surgeons were able to remove the bullet, but couldn’t successfully remove all the fragments of the bullet that were lodged in the brain.

Fact: There was a similar accident that happened at a particle accelerator, where a proton beam travelling at almost the speed of light, destroyed a part of a man’s brain and yet it left him with almost no serious complications. He went on to complete his PhD after that!

When three weeks later he was admitted at the hospital again, for a check-up, there was no obsessive behaviour observed in him. He was left only with a few minor quirks that did not interfere much with his life. He had apparently cured himself by shooting himself in the brain and destroying the part where the problem originated from. At the same time, his IQ did not drop and and he passed other brain damage tests too! Such a miraculous surgery had never ever been recorded in the history.

[Original article]

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