Look at yourself. What are you made of? Carbon, nitrogen. oxygen. How hot is the Sun? Around 6000 deg C at the core. Pretty hot, huh? It is only hot enough to fuse hydrogen into helium. For making heavier elements, one needs much higher temperatures, of the order of millions of degree C. Such temperatures only exist in a supernova. So, prior to the Sun, there was our grandfather star, a star which exploded as a supernova, which cooked all material needed for life. So, life on Earth has its roots, not to the first cells of life, not to the first amino acids, or to formation of the solar system, but to formation and destruction of a much older star system - a supernova, which spewed the elements needed to create life. Some billion years back probably. Look at yourself again. Each atom in your body was cooked up some millions of degrees in a supernova some billions of years back. If only our atoms could tell their story.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Monday, February 2, 2015
Gulam
In the movie Gulam, there is a small town gunda. Nobody has guts to challenge him and people meekly submit to him, till one guy decides to stop his gunda-gardi. We enjoy watching movies in which truth, freedom and honesty prevail in the end. Our hearts sympathize with the heroes of such movies. But, in real life, we prefer to live meekly. Intellectuals of today have all the right ideas of democracy, freedom of speech, honesty and integrity on all the matters that do not directly involve them. But, when they are needed to speak up, stand up to small town gundas they prefer to look the other way.
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