Chandigarh, Thursday , October 21, 1999
Chandigarh, Thursday , October 21, 1999 |
| Underground
life on Mars? by Kalpish Ratna ENVIRONMENTALISTS tell us everyday the Earth is a lousy neighbourhood. The planet’s simply getting too hot to live on. The sky is shot to pieces with the ozone layer in tatters, our oceans are boiling pools of sewage, the tallest mountain we have is a garbage heap and every mouthful of food we swallow is tainted with toxins guaranteed to give us cancers, shrivel our gonads and pitch us unprotesting into the limbo of early senility. Enigma
of life in outer space Anatomy
of a proton DDT
nightmare remains Alarming
vanishing rate of animal species |
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Underground life on Mars? If there is intelligent life on Mars it could well be living underground, says Kalpish Ratna ENVIRONMENTALISTS tell us everyday the Earth is a lousy neighbourhood. The planet’s simply getting too hot to live on. The sky is shot to pieces with the ozone layer in tatters, our oceans are boiling pools of sewage, the tallest mountain we have is a garbage heap and every mouthful of food we swallow is tainted with toxins guaranteed to give us cancers, shrivel our gonads and pitch us unprotesting into the limbo of early senility. It’s time to move. And where else, but Mars? Astronomers are busy checking out the real estate. Can Mars support life? People have naively believed for years that it can. The old stories of little green men have been upgraded with the sophistries of the X-Files, but the truth is a little more exciting. We have been exploring Mars for 34 years now, but the Mars Global Surveyor presently in lazy orbit round the red planet has electrifying news. This February, the Global Surveyor sent back a picture of Mars’s Nanedi Vallis which showed a snaky, deeply cut gutter. Nothing but running water flowing over a long period of time could have carved this out, geologists feel. And this stream must have flowed out of a larger source of water. Add to this the 1997 Pathfinder report of rounded pebbles and conglomerate rock at the landing site in Ares Vallis, and one begins to think in terms of rivers and streams. Mars once had water enough to cover its surface 500 to 1000 metres deep, astronomers estimate. Yet the Global Surveyor reports only 1.2 million cu km of ice, barely enough for a respectable deluge. Where did all that water go? Some of it dissipated into space, astronomers guess, but most of it may be there as permafrost underground. Now that is a thought. Any intelligent form of life on Mars will certainly choose to live underground. Life on the surface of Mars isn’t my idea of a picnic. At sunrise my feet would be planted on warm ground while my nose turned blue with frostbite, and my hair cracked to a cindery powder, 20 degrees colder than my fingertips. It gets dusty in the afternoons, and housekeeping will be hell, fighting dust devils, those sudden burst of pressure change that loft lungfuls of red Martian dust. And in winter it doesn’t help to know that the poles are solid chunks of dry ice. Scientists have long suspected that life may be present underground on Mars which is pocked with caves. It’s also lush with sulphur. Geologists are now avidly studying terrestrial ecosystems that will clue us on how to live happily underground on Mars. Sunlight is such a vital link in the foodchain, that it’s difficult to think of any form of life being able to exist independent of photosynthesis. Even Einstein functioned because of the humble plankton. Since all the world seems made of carbon, we tend to think that there’s no life without sunlight. And yet, millions of the earth’s teeming organisms thrive without it. These microbes get energy not from photosyntheis, but from an inorganic chemical process: the oxidation of sulphur compounds. Sulphur eating bacteria are found in the earth’s bowels: deep cover, deep ocean vents. In the sulphur-spring cave of Cueva de Villa Luz in Mexico, this is how the food chain links up: Sulphur eating bacteria use carbon dioxide, water and sulphur to make energy. Other microbes eat them. Invertebrates like midges live off bacterial slime. Hunting spiders and tiny worms are next on the menu for small fish and molluscs. Along the walls of the cave are rodents, expert fishers and clam catchers. Bats swoop down from the outside world, and from times immemorial, Mayan tribemen have harvested the fish in this cave using a toxin derived from the barbasco vine native to this forest. Mars may have grown cave men along similar lines. To us earthlings, sulphur-survival may appear just a tiny ecosystem at first glance, no more than one of Earth’s many curiosities... Think again. It might just be the blueprint of survival for a polluted planet, choking in the smog of industrial waste. — ANF
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Enigma
of life in outer space THE attraction of the unknown beckons people to the new and unusual world of space. Space has become for romantics a new portentous dimension where they hope to find not only friendly and intelligent extraterrestrials but also the solutions to the many riddles posed by nature before us. Lately people are talking too much about the so-called UFOs (the unidentified flying objects). Some say that UFOs have been seen somewhere. But the fact is that none of the space travelers has had the chance of seeing them, despite having spent many months in space. On the other hand, it is impossible to imagine that we are the only intelligent beings in the boundless expanse of the universe. This, to put it mildly, amounts to assuming that in a huge forest there lives only one bear! For the moment we have many riddles here on the earth, which have yet to be adequately explained, such as the strange landing sites and ancient petroglyphic pictures of human figures in clothes looking like space suits. So we must not reject off-hand any unexplained phenomenon but rather study it carefully. Many myths have reached us from the mist of ages. These speak about strange newcomers from other worlds. Several structures and petroglyphic drawings of ancient civilisations are yet to be understood. These structures and drawings are generally ascribed to be the work of extraterrestrial visitors from space. These ancient remnants include the giant boulders in the valleys of the Khakass Autonomous Region and in the coastal regions of Europe and Asia, Africa and America. The cyclopic structures in the Pyrenees, the inscrutable miracle of Stonehenge and the many kilometre long stone pictures in the Peruvian desert of Nazca are other such examples. These myths seemed to be just fairy-tales or fantasies until recently. Now we are being witnessed to the first attempt to inhabit outer space. The assumption that our planet has been visited by extraterrestrials appears to be logical. In this space age the idea of meeting with intelligent creatures from other worlds fascinates many people. Many scientists believe that the Earth is not the only inhabited planet in the universe. The contemporary radio-astronomical data indicate that the evolution of organic substances is progressing on a wide scale in interstellar space and in many heavenly bodies. The interstellar space is the oldest and largest pool of organic molecules. The building bricks for life on the earth had been formed even before the appearance of our planet. It was space that supplied the earth with this building material. Until recent times there was a widespread opinion among scientists that the emergence of life on the earth had been some sort of a ‘happy accident’. It was the most rare event that could happen only once during the whole time of the existence of our planet. This notion, which had become embedded in the minds of people, led to closing the door to scientific and rational study of the problem of the origins of life. It also did not provide any foundation for an objective judgement about the possibility of life beyond the earth. On the basis of latest scientific investigations now we know that the origin of life on our planet, far from being accidental, was an altogether natural development. In our galaxy there are a countless variety of space bodies similar to our planet and our solar system. Hence, the life similar to that on the earth could doubtless, have emerged on some planets. As a principle, such events ought to have occurred in the boundless expanse of the universe a countless number of times. Man’s exploration of space is expected to provide necessary basis to substantiate this theoretical assumption with concrete factual material. One would very much wish to believe that the extraterrestrials might have visited us in the past but the appropriate evidence is lacking. So far there are no scientific grounds to assert that they have visited the earth at some time or another and that the unidentified flying objects are their space ships. This does not mean that there is no intelligent extraterrestrial life in the universe. Many well-known scientists do believe in the existence of intelligent beings outside the earth. The absence of contacts with them is probably due to only the insufficient level of the development of the earthly civilisation. Experts predict that such contacts may be established by the middle of the 21st century.
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Anatomy
of a proton AN atom, a basic unit that constitutes matter, consists of a positively charged nucleus and negatively charged electrons revolving around the nucleus in different orbits. The nucleus of the atom contains positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons. Total positive charge of the nucleus is cancelled by the negative charge of the electrons. Till about three decades back electrons, protons and neutrons were considered to be fundamental particles without any structure or possible subdivisions. However, the protons and the neutrons were found to have an inner structure and that excluded them from the category of fundamental particles. Nevertheless, an electron still remains a fundamental particle. A proton and a neutron consist of smaller particles called quarks. Binding of quarks in proton/ neutron is provided by particles which, for obvious reasons, are called gluons. Structure of proton/neutron as described above is popularly known as the quark model. Since the structures of a proton and of a neutron are similar, further discussion can be confined to the anatomy of a proton. The quark model shattered two basic concepts of fundamental particles. Firstly, a proton and a neutron were excluded from the family of fundamental particles and secondly the charge of an electron did not remain the minimum possible value for the electric charge of any particle. Before the introduction of the quark model, charge of an electron and that of a proton were taken to be the basic units of negative and positive charges, respectively. Quarks carry electric charge, some positive and others negative, which for different quarks can either be two-thirds the charge on a proton or one-thirds the charge on an electron. Further quarks occur in a number of varieties, 18 in all. To start with there are six types of quarks, three with two-thirds the charge on a proton and the other three with one-thirds the charge on an electron. All six quarks have different masses. Later it was found that each of these six quarks occur in three varieties. These varieties have been named, to make things a bit colourful, red, green and blue. colour assignment has nothing to do with the standard perception of colour. Some scientists prefer the term colour charge. gluons have also been found to carry colour charge. A proton consists of two u-quarks each carrying two-thirds of charge on a proton and one d-quark having one-thirds of charge on an electron. Each of the u-and the d-quarks occur in three colours. A neutron contains two d-quarks and one u-quark. In both cases gluons provide the necessary binding between the quarks. Quarks were considered to be the key components in the quark model. Although three quarks form a proton, it is impossible to separate the quarks. In the quark model colour gluons were initially conceived as mere paste that kept the more substantial stuff, the quarks, together. Not anymore. Experiments performed in recent years to study the detailed anatomy of a proton have added new dimensions to the quark model. Results of these experiments reveal that total mass of three quarks in a proton is much smaller than the mass of a proton implying that most of the mass of a proton is carried by the gluons. The same is true for the angular momentum and the linear momentum of a proton. Thus there is more to gluons than what has been perceived earlier. Something like half of the angular momentum and half of the linear momentum of a proton comes from the gluons. Surprisingly about 90 per cent of the mass contribution in a proton comes from the gluons. Electric charge of a proton is entirely due to the quarks. Detailed experiments reveal that a quark is always surrounded gluons. Similarly, a gluon has been found to be a bundle of smaller gluons. On a closer examination a proton turns out to be more a bundle soft glue than a trio of quarks. It is now believed that the gluons surrounding the quarks prevent them from drifting away. To sum up the latest anatomical picture of a proton puts more emphasis on the contribution from the gluon cloud and less on the quarks. Thus gluonisation of the proton has changed the importance attributed to the quarks earlier. |
DDT
nightmare remains THE dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) nightmare will not end. Not just yet. Representatives of over 115 nations, who met to negotiate a convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), agreed not to do so. The excuse is that the pesticide is needed to fight malaria in about 24 countries. It was the after-effects of DDT that shook the world out of its complacency towards pesticides in the 1950s. Several industrialised countries have banned the substance, which is known for its ability to render birds sterile, enter the food chain and persist in its original form without degrading for a long period of time. It is known to disrupt hormonal levels, affecting the reproductive system, and is suspected to be carcinogenic. DDT has been found in mothers’ milk among the Inuit people of Canada and could have travelled there from Asia. When a toxic substance sprayed in a poor person’s world ends up affecting a rich person in another part of the world, it is time to think of it as one world. What has come as a major setback to the efforts of environmentalists and health experts from across the world is the fact that about 24 countries still rely on DDT to deal with the threat of malaria. The disease claims more than 1.1 million lives in the third world every year. Certain health experts argue that if spraying of DDT is discontinued, the death roll could go up substantially. DDT has also been used widely in Bihar to control kala azar, a fatal disease transmitted by the sandfly. While the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Worldwide Fund for Nature have raised objections to the continued use of DDT, the USA has argued that less dangerous pesticides can be used to combat malaria. No one has bothered to think that there is a lack of research funds for malaria. There is no vaccine for malaria. It is given low priority because it is a poor nation’s disease. This attitude has left poor nations with cheap and dangerous alternatives. Also, is there any guarantee that the cheaper pesticides will not pollute further? — CSE |
Alarming
vanishing rate ONE of the most alarming manifestations of ecological disruption is the threat posed to a very large number of animal species, the threat of extinction. The World Conservation Union (IUCN), a leading international environmental coalition, regularly collects and publishes statistics on threatened animal species in red data books. The latest available statistics for the year 1996 cover all known birds and mammals. However, in the case of reptiles, amphibians and fish the statistics are confined to a limited number of species which could be surveyed for their conservation status. There are about 10000 known species of birds. At least two out of every three birds (66 per cent) are in decline worldwide. As many as 875 bird species (9 per cent) are nearing threatened status 704 (7 per cent) are threatened — vulnerable to extinction, while 403 (4 per cent) are most threatened — in immediate danger of extinction. As many as 542 species of songbirds are threatened. The highest risk of threatened birds is known to exist in several Island nations, including New Zealand, the Philippines and Mauritius. No Island birds had been more endangered than those of Hawaai-two-thirds of the original 90-odd species have already vanished and of the species that have survived to this date, nearly two-thirds are still threatened. But out of almost 4400 mammal species, 598 (14 per cent) are nearing threatened status, 612 (14 per cent) are threatened while 484 (11 per cent are most threatened. Nearly half of all primate (lemurs, monkeys and apes) species are threatened with extinction. In addition to habitat loss, at least one in five threatened mammals faces direct over-exploitation or excessive hunting. One of the 6300 known species of reptiles 1327 were studied for conservation status. Out of these 1327 species of reptiles, 79 (or 6 per cent) are nearing threatened status, 153 (12 per cent) are threatened, and 100 (8 per cent) are most threatened. As many as 31 per cent of threatened reptiles are affected directly from hunting and capture by humans. About 4000 species of amphibians have been documented. Out of these 497 were surveyed for their conservation status twentyfive species (5 per cent are nearing threatened status, 75 (15 per cent) are vulnerable to extinction and 49 (10 per cent) are most threatened. About 24,000 fish species have been documented, of whom only 2158 have been surveyed for their conservation status. Out of these 2158 species, 101 (or 5 per cent) are nearing threatened status, 443, (or 21 per cent) are threatened, while 291 (or 13 per cent) are most threatened. At least 60 per cent of threatened freshwater species are in decline because of habitat destruction. Fiftynine threatened species of fish were recently identified by the Zoological Survey of India. In the Colorado river of the USA, 29 of 50 native fish species are either extinct or endangered. Summarising the data we can briefly say that between 10 to 34 per cent of species are already threatened in the case of various types of vertebrates — 11 per cent in the case of birds, 25 per cent in the case of mammals, 20 per cent in the case of reptiles, 25 per cent in the case of amphibians, and worst of all — 34 per cent in the case of fish. Commenting in this situation two authorities, John Tuxill and Chris Bright writes in “The State of the World Report 1998,” “Like the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, humanity now finds itself in the midst of the mass extinction — a global evolutionary convulsion with few parallels in the entire history of life. But unlike the dinosaurs, we are not simply the contemporaries of a mass extinction — we are the reason of it.” Further, they write — “If the trends evident in vertebrates hold for other organisms, then extinction would appear to be a near-term possibility for about a quarter of the world’s appear to be a near- term possibility for about a quarter of the world’s entire complement of species”. What is more this situation can aggravate further due to the impact of the expected climate change in the next few decades. It is significant that half of the world’s forest loss over the course of human history occurred between 1950 and 1990. In the fragile ecosystems of the world’s tropical forests — where 50 per cent of the world’s species reside —half of the forest cover is now gone and half of what remains is fragmented and degraded. Afforestation drives have led to new tree-cover but this is mainly in the form of tree plantation. As J.B. Foster says in “The Vulnerable Planet,” industrial tree plantations are biological and genetic deserts when compared to the rich complexity of natural forests. The streams that flow through these plantations contain few fish. The variety of plants, animals, insects and fungi is minimised. The floor of an old-growth forest is a lush carpet of vegetation; the floor of a tree plantation is almost barren by comparison. The trees themselves, which are viewed as mere commodities (i.e. so many board feet of standing timber), are genetically improved to allow for a lower rotation time and hence for profit maximisation. Natural diversity is destroyed is the same proportion as profits are promoted.” According to the FAO’s recent detailed studies tropical forest areas have been shrinking on average 15.4 million hectares per year. Some of the most ‘developed’ countries have also been the most ruthless towards other forms of life. As World Resources Report (WRR) 1990 says “Nowhere has the conversion of natural habitats been more ubiquitous than in the temperate portions of Europe, where essentially no natural habitat remains. Wildlife still exists on the continent, of course, but the number of extinction is significant”. As for excessive hunting, here are some recent estimates: In Italy alone as many as 50 million songbirds are harvested every year as bite-size delicacies. *The population of Siberian musk dear in Russia has fallen by 70 per cent during this decade as a result of hunting to feed the musk-trade (musk is used in perfumes and some medicines). * According to one estimate, 14 million mammals are hunted (killed) in the Amazon basin alone. *According to recent report by TRAFFIC, a group that monitors the international wildlife trade, the annual East Asian trade in tortoises and river turtles involves some 3,00,000 kg of live animals. * In just one decade, the 1980s, the African elephant population declined by half, from 1.25 million to about 625000 as a result of hunting for ivory. In a little over a decade, from the mid 1970s to 1987 the population of black rhinos in Africa declined from 6000 to 3800, as a result of the hunting for horns. Chemical pesticides and introduction of exotics are too other main threatening factors. In late 1995 and early 1996, about 5 per cent of the world’s population of Swainson’s hawks (nearly 20000 birds) died in unintentional mass poisonings on their watering grounds in Argentina. In Australia the introduction of several non-native rabbits, cats and other animals has contributed to the extinction of several mammals. As many as 60 per cent of Lake Victoria Cichlids fish species may be extinct due to introduction of exotic fish. Clearly a massive loss of animal species has been experienced in recent decades — one of the worst tragedies of our times causing immense distress to voiceless creatures. Human beings as the most powerful form of life should have used this to protect other species; instead man-made factors are responsible for most threats to other species. This glaring
distortions of human attitudes should change — human
beings should be protectors and not destroyers. |
by J. P. Garg 1. A character in G.B. Shaw’s drama “Arms and the Man” says: “You’re not a man: you’re a machine.” This integration of a human and a machine into one being is now a reality. What is it called in computer technology? Name the first such human being who is a talking, walking electronic shop, can look at the condition of his heart any moment and can send e-mail while taking classes. 2. An alloy called nitinol has been recently developed in the USA that has a property of “shape memory”. Articles made from this alloy can “learn” their shapes and then retain these shapes even under extreme physical conditions. Which metals is this alloy made of? 3. One urgent requirement suggested for Indian defence is the introduction of SARs, which can be mounted on transport aircraft to get strategic information even during inclement weather and during the night. What does SAR stand for? 4. What is a star called that suddenly brightens and whose brightness increases thousands of times within a few days but lasts only for a few weeks? In which type of star systems does it usually appear? 5. An extremely small unit, used to measure the wavelength of radiations like light rays, X-rays, gamma rays etc., has been named after a Swedish physicist. Which is this unit and what is its value? 6. Name the instruments usually used to measure the speed and to indicate the direction of wind. On which numerical scale is the wind speed represented? 7. What is common about ‘peat’, ‘lignite’ and ‘anthracite’? 8. Prolonged use of ‘bindi’ on their foreheads by Indian women can cause skin disorders like itching, redness, scars and leucoderma. Which substances in bindi usually cause these problems? 9 When this small sea animal stings, there is instant numbness, gradually one becomes paralysed and unconscious, and death takes place within five hours. Name this highly poisonous animal, which has been found to be a potential source of potent drugs for the future. 10. “The Budha is smiling.” Can you recall when this telegraphic signal was sent to the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi? Answers 1. Cyborg; Dr Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, Canada 2. Nickel and titanium 3. Synthetic Aperture Radar 4. Nova; in two star systems called binary stars 5 . Angstrom unit equal to 10-10 metre 6. Anemometer; wind vane; Beaufort scale 7. These are varieties of coal in different stages of its formation 8. Synthetic adhesive containing chemicals like para-tertiary butyl phenol and compounds rich in mercury 9. Cone shell - a sea snail 10. When India conducted its first nuclear explosion at Pokhran on May 18, 1974.H |
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