The History of the Internet

The Pictorial History of the Internet.

Brussles Sprouts and Neanderthals

If you think cabbages, brussels sprouts or other such vegetables taste bitter, then you could be the descendant of a Neanderthal! Check out here.

Look at the web looking at you!

You see the web regularly. Ever wondered about how does the web see you? Have a look at how you are perceived by the web at this interesting website.

Did the Cosmos exist before the Big Bang?

Well, this article seems to think so. I am tempted to co-relate this to the Hindu concept of the Cosmos (Brahmand) which says that it behaves like the lungs of the Brahma, inflating and deflating at regular intervals! May be this scientific theory has the same end result.

Ravana, Immortality and Vijaydashmi

This Vijaydashmi/Dusshera I was watching a live telecast of Ramlila and a strange thought came to mind, while I watched the battle scene between Ram and Ravana. As you would know, Ravana does not die when Ram hits him with arrows. When Ram cuts off his head a new one grows in its place. Ravana's brother Vibhishana points out to Ram that Ravana has been given the boon of immortality by Brahma and will die when the Amrita (Elixir) in his navel is hit by an arrow. Ram does that and Ravana is killed.

What struck me was there could be a scientifc basis for all this. Today's stem cell technology does look forward to doing this by harvesting stem cells from an umblical cord, the cord that ties a mother to a child, and using the stem cells harvested from there as a source for all 220 kinds of cells that make up a human body. Of course the end part of the umblical cord goes on to form the navel of the child. This is well documented and future research on human cloning also proceeds in that direction only with a large amount of attention focussed here.

Could it be that Ravana was a user of extremely advanced Microbiology and Genetic Research and that in addition to probably being the first person to use aviation also has this thing to his credit. We will know one day for sure.

As I search the internet for Ravana+Genetics or Ravana+Stem Cell or Ravana+Cloning, I can find related results but nothing which suggests what I have just suggested. When this post is published this may soon become the first entry on all these topics. Am I only one so far in the world to think of this theory, when the evidence has been staring us all our lives?

....then why does it feel so complete?

The last line really touched me!

"There are more than than one hundred different types of atoms, from lightweights like hydrogen and helium through welterweights like tin and iodine and out to such mumbling mooseheads as ununpentium and ununquadium, but they're all much the same nearly nil size. You can fit more than three atoms in a nanometer, meaning it would take 10 to the 13th power, or ten trillion of them, to coat the disk of our pinhead. And the funny thing about an atom is that its outlandish smallness is still too big for it: almost all of its subnanometer span is taken up by empty space. The real meat of an atom is its core, its nucleus, which accounts for about 99.9 percent of an atom's matter. When you step on your bathroom scale, you are essentially weighing the sum of your atomic nuclei. If you could strip them all from your body, go on a total denuclear diet, you'd be down to about twenty grams, the weight of four nickels, or roughly the weight of the doornail that you would be as dead as.

"Those remaining twenty grams belong to your electrons, the fundamental particles that orbit an atom's nucleus. An electron has less than 1/1,800 the mass of a simple atomic nucleus. ... Viewed from the more impressive angle of volumetrics, we see that, while the nucleus may make up nearly all of an atom's mass, ... it takes up only a trillionth of its volume.

"Here it is worth a final reversion to metaphor. If the nucleus of an atom were a basketball located at the center of Earth, the electrons would be cherry pits whizzing about in the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere. Between our nuclear [basketball] and the whizzing pits, there would be no Earth: no iron, nickel, magma, soil, sea, or sky, ... nothing, literally, to speak of. ... We live in a universe that is largely devoid of matter. Yet still the Milky Way glows, and still our hemoglobin flows, and when we hug our friends, our fingers don't sink into the vacuum with which all atoms are filled. If in touching their skin we are touching the void, why does it feel so complete?"

Natalie Angier, The Canon, Houghton Mifflin, 2007, pp. 85-86.

From Delanceyplace.com

The 10 most bizzare experiments of all time!

Oh! This list is sickening and fascinating at the same time. Do Read!

The Biggest Drawing in the World

Check this out - this is indeed the biggest drawing in the world! Some people have waaay too much time, money and waaaaay too many ideas. But good, nonetheless!

How to Predict the Future

How to Predict the Future is an excellent article! It focuses on how to predict the future ;)

Hoodia

Hoodia!

A Muslim Astronaut's dilemma

How to pray in space facing the Mecca correctly? That's the dilemma! Have a look at some solutions. Personally I agree with Dr Kamal Abdali's word.

Beware.....Ug99 is here

As this report suggests, India is one of the foremost targets of the Wheat Rust. Let us hope things improve on this front ASAP.

US no longer technology leader

A slightly unusual and interesting report. I don't agree completely, but have a look nonetheless. Article at BBC.

A tunnel 57 km long, 2 km underground!

As this article points out, the Alps is another frontier man is willing to challenge. Amazing, to say the least!

The Comet of 2007

I still fondly remember the comet Shoemaker-Levy. A spectacle that can be called AMAZING at the least. Here's news for another equally spectacular one. The Great Comet of 2007.

Richard Feynman

For those of you, who have not heard of him, Richard Feynman was reputedly the person with the lowest IQ (even at this low end, he was fairly high, probably at 125) to win a Nobel prize for scientific pursuits. I learnt of him first when I read his book, "Surely You are Joking Mr. Feynman". His interests were diverse including physics, biology and lock picking!

He was, by nature, a very curious person; a quality that I personally possess to some extent, and cherish a great deal. Here's a 50 minute video of him, in an interview with the BBC. It is called "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out". An instruction in itself.

Just goes on to show that your curiosity can be a good substitute for very high IQ.

How to calculate the value of Pi by throwing food

For those with surplus food and time, and the inquisitiveness to find out the value of Pi, which incidentally is 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510, here is the perfect solution. Throw food to calculate Pi. Wow!