ANCIENT DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS IN INDIA-SABHA & SAMITI.

 The basic roots of the Democracy in India can be traced to the Vedic times in the institutions called the “Sabha” & “Samiti”. Therefore, Democracy is nothing new or strange to India. However, in India with time, Kingship evolved from Democracy and strengthened. Our people had forgotten all about Democracy and we had to re learn it from Britain which in fact experimented with the Democratic systems far later than us.

Britain started off on the road of Democracy with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 AD which limited the powers of the King. The people of England then had to fight with the King in order to obtain their rights. But it took a long time for England to evolve into a full-fledged Democracy. 

When the East India Company was founded in England in 1600 AD, the English people were still struggling against the King to get their Democratic rights. By 1832 AD only a small number of middle class citizens had a right to vote. Only by the year 1928 AD could all the men and women vote in England. So, India had to reinvent Democracy some 2000 years later after it lost it to that very England some 200 years earlier.

But we have to remember that the Sabha and the Samiti despite having wide powers are by no means fully democratic because they did not consist of all the male population and also excluded most of  the entire female population.

The Sabha was as selective council of elders, nobles, wealthy men and priests who advised the King and managed Judicial matters, in administrative and policy decisions. So, they are the elite members of the society and by no means represented the common people. The early Vedic tests occasionally note the presence of women in the Sabhas.

As opposed to the Sabha, the Samiti represented a large number of freemen and ordinary members of the tribe. The Samiti is attended by the tribal king. The Samiti addressed major tribal business, discussed cattle and wealth and debated war and peace. The Samiti held the power to approve or elect the king.

Women (named Sabhavati) occasionally attended early Sabha meetings while they had no role in the Samiti at all.

The Sabha and samiti were mentioned in the Rigveda itself and hence date back to as late as 1500-1200 BC. During the later Vedic period between 1000-600 BC, their powers declined rapidly and the importance of the King increased. The Samiti disappeared altogether as it became impossible for all citizens to gather when the Kingdoms expanded greatly. The Sabha became more exclusive and it was dominated by the king, rich nobles and Brahmin priests. The women who attended the Sabha during the earlier Vedic period were totally banned to attend the Sabha.

While this had been the case with other kingdoms, the Vajji (Vrijji in Sanskrit) confederacy existed at the time of Buddha. The Vajji confederacy consisted of and led by Licchavis, Videha and Jnatrika clans. The Vajji confederacy had its capital at Vaishali and had a rivalry with Magadha and ultimately Ajatashatru of Magadha conquered them in 468 BC and it was merged into the Magadha kingdom.

The Shakya clan of Buddha was another separate tribal republic but King Virudhaka of of Kosala massacred and extinguished the clan during the time of Buddha himself in about 510 BC. This happened on account of the following events.

King Prasenajit ( Pasenadi in Prakrit) of Kosala sought the hand of a Shakya Princess in marriage. The proud Shakyas sent a slave girl disguised as a Princess to whom was born Virudhaka. 

When Virudhaka learned the secret of his birth he was furious and vowed to destroy the Shakya clan. After ascending the throne Virudhaka invaded Kapilavastu in 510 BC and massacred the population which was quoted in the Buddhist texts. 

With the perishing of both the Vajji (Vrijji in Sanskrit) confederacy and the Shakyas, Democracy completely ended in India. We got it back in the 1900’s under the English some 2400 years after it was extinguished in India. Because India got Democracy off the shelf unlike in countries where it evolved it could not act with efficiency and failed to embed the Democratic values and systems in the minds of the people.

Wherever Democracy evolved itself (which is mostly in the West), it had largely been successful.  Today’s Democracy is not one of the past and is based on the equality of men rather than certain types of men like the older Democracy. It is an evolute of the society we live in.

But we can certainly say that India was almost the first country in the world where Democracy happened even if it be in a rudimentary form but it ended far too soon and was completely extinguished far before the British came in. However, the Western historians claim that Democracy evolved first in Athens in Greece which is not factual.

Democracy was supposed to have been brought into Athens/Greece by Cleisthenes in about 500 BC, but our Vedic texts and later the Buddhist ones clearly indicate that the Sabha and Samiti existed in 1000 BC itself. 

However, the Phoenicians from whom the Greeks learnt a lot of things also had the type of Democracy India had it at almost the same time as they did 1100 BC. So, if at all, the concept of Democracy first arose in Phoenicia and then almost at the same time in India.

The Phoenicians are the neighbors of the Hebrews and are a seafaring trading civilization located at the Eastern point of the Mediterranean sea. Their language is closely allied to Hebrew. They built the strong and fortified cities of Tyre & Sidon on the easternmost coast of the Mediterranean sea and gained a monopoly of trading in the Western seas. Marseilles in France was one of their colonies.   

They developed a high level of civilization and Greeks had a cultural exchange with them and have certainly borrowed their Democracy from the Phoenicians despite the Western historians denying it and claiming that Greeks developed their own. The Phoenicians did not know what the words integrity or honesty meant and lived only for profit.  They lived in an area which is now the countries of Lebanon, with parts of Syria and Israel.

To claim that Democracy first arose in Greece is overlooking strong evidence on account of a bias of the Western Historians. In fact the Greeks actually took Democracy form the Phoenicians. They and India are the places in the world that first developed Democracy at the same time.

POLITICS & RELIGION-RIGIDITY IN THOUGHT.

 

While cataract slowly blinds the eye, both politics and religion are lethal as they bind the mind itself and not just the eyes.

Political views are purely based on perception than reality. How did NTR win in the 1983 assembly elections in AP? AP was a very strong pro Congress state always giving the Congress solid majority to govern till NTR came along there was no party worth the name to challenge the Congress even remotely.

Firstly it was the perception that he is always a do gooder who always wanted to help the people. His image built in his movies helped him greatly and all that was perception rather than reality because he had not been generous in helping anyone with his own money before entering politics. 

Of course the Anjaiah incident with Rajiv Gandhi created anger in the people of AP which the NTR could convert into an act against the Telugu pride. Of course, despite his eccentricities NTR did try his best to give out schemes for the poor people and he did think of the people and there is no denying that. It was he created the TDP which even today is a powerful force in Andhra Politics.

It was this perception that gave NTR a landslide victory to a party established just 9 months before that. This landslide victory against the Congress had a lot do with perception of the people. This is precisely the reason why the present day political parties, be it in the state or at the centre have a strong media presence both on TV as well as social media.

Because of this perception war people who favour parties idolize the head of the party and no criticism on him/her is tolerated. That totally blinds people to all logic.

In the case of religion it is different. A person who follows a religion thinks his religion is the ultimate and no religion is an exception to that. The fact happens to be that it is a perception just like in the case of politics. 

Hinduism formed about 3500 years ago, Christianity 2000 years ago and Islam 1400 years ago. When the religions formed the social circumstances were totally different and each religion had a society that shaped it. So these religions reflect the needs and thoughts of those times. 

No doubt the basic human nature has not changed from then and now, but the societal structure has changed completely. Today the world has drawn closer by the information revolution and the internet. We instantly know what is happening in Iran. At the time of formation of the religions very few people knew that Iran existed, and such events petered in to educated people (who were only a few) years later.

So the world at that time was more insular and ideas percolated very slowly among the society. In the meantime the priests of the religions, looking at the personal benefits accruing claimed that they are the intermediaries to God and increased their power. 

So for them bringing in ritual and theology became more important tools to claim their own special status with god. They became the ultimate arbiters who decided what is good and what is not in relation to God. At every stage of the human race the priestly class interpreted religion to its own benefit.

It was those gentlemen that made religion more rigid and said thinking anything outside that is blasphemy and irreligious and have therefore limited human thought on that. It is they who by their preachings and ritual made religion rigid and created a feeling that their religion is the best in the world. 

This strong perception that was created in the minds of the people on religion is the one that binds people in thought. So on religion people do not think and simply believe that whatever they believe is right and final and no one can question it.

That is how politics and religion became final and beyond all logic for its followers. Therefore for most people who are strong followers, those beliefs cannot be challenged at all, and neither can they be tested with logic. When one binds their minds in that fashion, how can there be any discussion or openness on those topics? They become the final frontier that nobody can dare to touch and get away.

So with anyone known to us, be it our friends or relations we should tread very carefully on these two topics and the make a light discussion rather than going into an argument. Because that serves nothing and would only alienate those people from us.  

INDIAS GREATEST BATTLE OF VALOUR-BATTLE OF SARAGARHI.

 

It is just by chance that one of my classmates in Engineering posted a small piece on the Battle of Saragarhi along with a song that goes “Mitti Me Mil Java” which I am posting below.

When I read that piece, my feeling is one of guilt and also of awe. How can I not know about this scintillating piece of unbelievable valour? I then read about the battle and what my reading revealed fascinated me and also made me sad.

Such battles should go into our history books and each child should know about it. Both the Indian and the British armies celebrate 12^th September as a day of valour in commemoration of the battle.

The battle of Saragarhi was fought with tremendous odds of one side. I don’t think there is any other battle in the history of the world which was so unequal. So what was the background for the battle and how did it come about?

The battle took place in Sep 12, 1897. The British were in complete control of India by then, but their hold on the North West Frontier Province peopled by Pashtuns was somewhat tenuous. The 36^th Sikh Regiment was created by the British in 1887 under the command of Colonel J.Cook. The regiment comprised fully of Jat Sikhs and it was deployed in the NWFP to fight the rebellious Pashtuns.

The Amir of NWFP conceded to the British but the people would have none of that and there were rebellions. The British to control the people of NWFP used the Forts built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh and stationed soldiers there. Two such were Fort Lockhart and Fort Gulistan in the Hindu Kush Mountains. These 2 forts were located at a distance of about 5 Km. from one another. As the terrain and the ridges blocked the line of sight between the 2 forts, another small intermediary fort was established at Saragarhi at a height as a communications out post. It lay roughly in between the 2 forts. This was used as a heliographic communications post and used to rays from the Sun to transmit messages between the 2 forts.

The number of soldiers defending that outpost was just 21 led by Havildar Ishar Singh of the 36^th Sikh Regiment. . A general uprising of the Afghans began in 1897 and many vigorous efforts by the Pashtuns to capture the forts were beaten back by the Sikh Regiment.

Then on as a part of the uprising, to take the 2 forts it was decided by the Pashtuns to take the fort of Saragarhi to cut the communications between the 2 forts. A Pashtun army of no less than 10,000 soldiers attacked Saragarhi on Sep 12, 1897 while it only had 21 soldiers to defend it.

So the odds of the battle were 500 to 1 there. Despite that and despite inducements offered to the Sikh soldiers by the Pashtun army to surrender, none did so, and in an extreme act of bravery each of the 21 soldiers fought to death, both with guns initially and also in hand to hand combat with ultimate bravery when the fort walls were breached. They held the fort for 7 hours under extreme odds.

When the fort walls were breached Havildar Ishar Singh himself delayed the British attack by confronting and fighting with them while his soldiers moved into the inner layer.

It was a miserable failure of the British army that they failed to send reinforcements to these troops in time. Sepoy Gurmukh Singh signalled the commencement of the battle to Colonel Haughton at Fort Lockhart. He was the last surviving member of the soldiers and is considered to have killed 40 enemy soldiers himself.  

The relief party came in only 2 days later and the Fort of Saragarhi was taken back by intense artillery fire. The Pashtuns themselves admitted that about 300 of their men were killed and hundreds wounded before the fort could be taken by them. When the relief party entered into the fort after the artillery barrage they found 600 Pashtun bodies lying around in the fort. Of course 200-300 of the must have perished in the intense artillery barrage.

All the 21 Sikh soldiers who died in the battle were awarded the “Indian Order of Merit” at that time the highest gallantry award an Indian soldier can receive.

The following is the link for the song Mitte me Mil Java from the film Kesari which commemorates the battle. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tionpZAVPd4

  

INANIMATE TO ANIMATE--ABIOGENESIS

 

It is an irony that despite our authors dishing out books and novels on extra-terrestrial life forms in the thousands, there is not a single instance where our scientists could credibly establish that alien life exists. Instead we only have Hocus Pocus stories about UFO sightings mostly in the USA none of which have any credible proof.

Yes, as life exists on the Earth, it is a logical necessity that it should exist in other planetary systems going around other stars like the Sun which are too numerous in the Universe. However, there is an immense problem in finding life in other planets if the life forms there are under developed, because they give out very less in terms of signatures (markers that life leaves around) that can be seen as life from other planets.

Living beings on Earth are so minuscule compared to the planet that they inhabit that it is actually like searching for a needle in a haystack. For example the weight of all the living organisms on earth is estimated to be 550 billion metric tons or 55* 10 raised to the power of 9. While the Earth weighs about 6.5 billion trillion tons OR 6.5* 10²¹ tons. That means earth has almost a trillion times higher mass than the entire life on earth combined. So if any alien life forms are searching for life on Earth, for them it would have been very difficult to find us if we never had any electricity that lights up the planet in the night. But again, even those so called numerous lights cannot be seen from the nearest star to us.  

Another thing that is hindering our discovery of other life forms is our bias. We tend to interpret life as it had developed on our planet and place riders on its appearance and composition.

We interpret the creation through Chemistry which is subject created by the human brain. We interpret the interaction between molecules in a certain way as per our structured thinking, but are not in a position to visualize how the structure of matter operates from another view that is totally different from ours. But then, in this we are constrained in our thoughts and cannot think differently than what we do.  

Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago (this is also called GA or Gigannum) while life began on the Earth some 3.8 billion years ago. So for 700 millions of years after earth formed there was no life. At its formation earth had an atmosphere that was intensely hot and it was far denser than the current atmospheric blanket.  Active volcanoes spewed out massive amounts of steam, CO2, Methane & Ammonia into the air. There was no free Oxygen then as plants and Oxygen producing photosynthesis had not yet evolved.

As the hot earth cooled down, the huge amount of water vapour in the air began to condense and fall as rain. That formed the first oceans. The high energy radiation from the young Sun broke down volcanic ammonia molecules and slowly freed the Nitrogen in the atmosphere.

Life is mostly emptiness pretending to be solid. The thing called “You” is 99.9% nothing. Your atoms are separated by distances that proportionately make Galaxies look crowded. But somehow this organized void learnt to want things to grow and to think.  

Life started at the very edge of nothingness itself, in structures so tiny that they barely qualify as things at all. 20 nanometers ( 1 nano meter equals 10^-9  mtrs or one billionth of a meter) . These things/proto life are called Nanobes and they are tiny threadlike structures found in rocks and sandstone deep underground. This is the smallest level where life can physically exist. Below this size it is so small that it is impossible for any metabolism to exist and Physics breaks down. It is a fundamental law written into the laws of Physics themselves.

According to an article published in 2024 in “Nature”, the minimum viable proto cell  requires about 4 basic components; A membrane to contain it, genetic material to store information, enzymes to catalyse reactions, and Ribosomes to build proteins. If these are packed into anything less than 20 nanometres the cell just cannot function. However about 4 billion ago, life started anyway and Chemistry found a way to be Biology.

We know this because the genetic code is universal. Everything from bacteria to blue whale uses the same basic molecular alphabet, the same 20 amino acids, the same 4 nucleotide bases, the same genetic code that translates DNA sequences to proteins. This universality is almost impossible to explain unless all life descended from a common Ancestor. Scientists call this hypothetical organism LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor).

Researchers at the University of Bristol led by Dr Timothy Lenton developed algorithms that can trace the genetic sequences backward through time. Then they calculated back as to how much time this process from the non-living to living would take.  LUCA is incredibly simple, simpler than any living thing that we ever found. It had fewer than 400 genes compared to the 4000 found in the simplest modern bacteria. It was tinier than any cell that exists today. It was found by the researchers that LUCA was somewhere between 20 and 50 nanometres in diameter.     

Amazingly LUCA outsourced most of its requirements from the environment. This is the RNA world hypothesis proposed by Nobel winner Walter Gilbert in the 1980”s. Before DNA, before proteins, before the complex molecular machinery of modern life, there was RNA, a molecule that can store Genetic information like the DNA and catalyse chemical reactions like proteins. But the RNA is fragile and can be easily destroyed by the environment, so how did it survive?

In 2024, researchers from the University of Colorado have shown that RNA could be stable and functional at temperatures exceeding 100 degrees centigrade, but under specific conditions. These exact conditions exist on the walls of the alkaline hydrothermal vents, deep sea structures where mineral rich water erupts from the ocean floor.  This is where there are perfect conditions exist. However, the proto cells that form are incredibly small and are from 10 to 50 nanometres across.

This is also known as Omni. Dr Jack Jostack’s team at the Massachusetts general hospital embarked on a journey to build a proto cell, the complete configuration that can be absolutely genuinely alive at the smallest level. It is they arrived at the 20 nanometres barrier beyond which Physics breaks down.

How did such a profoundly small thing pass on to become higher level of cells? By cooperation. They were too small to thrive independently so they outsourced their functions across thousands or millions of such organisms.  Dr Sara Imari Walker of the Arizona State University is developing theoretical framework for understanding the transition from non-living to the living.

Her research published in Nature Physics in 2024 suggests that life is not the property of individual molecules. It is emergent property of information processing networks. So the first cells were living systems together to produce something larger than the sum of their parts. It is like a distributed computer with many processors. Early life worked the same way. When two protocells come into contact their contents mix, allowing the materials to flow. This was replicated in the laboratories.

That means early life forms could overcome the limitations of Physics via sharing of resources like a cellular internet. But how did these networks stay coordinated? How did they function as a single cell? This is answered by latest research on Horizontal Gene transfer. In modern biology genetic information flows vertically from parent to offspring but in the earlier stages of life genetic material flowed horizontally flowing between different unrelated organisms. It was the primary mechanism for genetic inheritance. Dr Carl Wos revolutionised our understanding   called it the progenate stage of life, a phase where genetic innovation spread rapidly through entire populations. In this the genetic information is passed on to the entire network and not just to the offspring. The network as a whole becomes smarter, more efficient and more adaptive.

The fossil evidence supports this picture. The earliest signs of life dating                3.8 billion ago are not isolated but are vast microbial mats, communities of organisms working to transform their environment. These structures called Strumatalytes still form today in some places like Shark Bay Australia. Being small forced the earlier life to be collaborative,       being simple forced it to become networked. Being limited forced it to become something entirely new. Modern organisms are descendants of this networked stage, but they have lost most of the collaborative abilities their ancestors had. We have traded network intelligence for individual complexity, horizontal sharing for vertical inheritance, collective adaptation for competitive evolution, but traces of the ancient network still exist.

For decades what puzzled the scientists was how random chemical reaction could give rise to the genetic code, the universal language that translates RNA sequences into proteins. What the scientists discovered recently changes what we thought about the origins of the genetic code. In research published in 2024 it was found that information processing does not evolve gradually from random chemistry. It appears suddenly through a process they call informational phase transformation.

Below a certain threshold of molecular complexity RNA sequences behave like ordinary chemicals reacting randomly with the environment. But above that threshold they begin to exhibit properties we associate with information; Pattern recognition, error correction, selective replication. The transition happens at exactly 12 Nucleotides. RNA sequences shorter than 12 bases remain purely chemical. Sequences of 12 or more nucleotides can form stable secondary structures that give them specific repeatable functions. This is the minimum length needed for an RNA molecule to fold into a shape that can catalyse its own replication.

At below 12 Nucleotides RNA is just Chemistry, but at 12 Nucleotides and above it becomes information. Work by scientists now indicates that information processing might be an inevitable outcome of certain type of chemical networks. When you have a system of enough components, enough connections and enough energy flow informational properties emerge automatically. Not through design, not through selection but as a direct consequence of the systems organization. This is called Autocatalytic emergence.

The chemistry creates conditions that favour information processing, and information processing creates chemistry that becomes more organized. It is a feedback loop that drives increasing complexity without any external guidance.

Labs around the world are creating artificial chemical networks that spontaneously develop informational properties. These systems are not designed to process information. They are just mixtures of organic molecules.

Dr Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow has built chemical computers using nothing but organic reactions in solution. No DNA, no Proteins, no biological components at all. Just carbon based chemistry that has learned to perform computational operations. They are doing computation, but their computer is made of ordinary chemistry rather than silicon and electrons.

Remarkably, these chemical computers can evolve, introduce random mutations into the reaction networks, and the systems develop new computational abilities over time. Not only are they processing information, they are learning to process information more effectively.  This suggests that the transition from chemistry to information processing is not a rare unlikely event that happened once in Earth’s history.  

Metabolism is the life’s solution to the Universes’s most fundamental problem. The 2^nd law of Thermodynamics guarantees that all organized systems will eventually decay into random heat and disorder. Yet everything on Earth somehow builds and maintains complex molecular structures that become more organized over time and not less. This is not a violation of the law of Thermodynamics but it requires something remarkable, a continuous flow of energy that can be captured transformed and used to drive chemical reactions uphill against their natural tendency.

Mitohondria in your cells use Oxygen to extract energy from Glucose through a chain of precisely orchestrated reactions. Chloroplastin plants capture light and use to build sugar molecules from carbon dioxide. These systems are incredibly complex involving hundreds of different              enzymes working in perfect coordination.   

DWARAKA THE ABODE OF LORD KRISHNA.

 

                                            DWARAKA PAINTING BY WILLIAM PURSER.

For us all Dwaraka is a great place known as the capital city of Lord Krishna. It stands in the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat on the right bank of the Gomti river. Currently it is a town with a population of 40-45000. Lord Krishna settled at Dwaraka after he killed his uncle Kamsa at Mathura. Krishna was supposed to have reclaimed 96 Sq. Km of land from the sea to create Dwaraka.

The Dwarakadish Temple dedicated to Lord Krishna was built in the year 200 BC at the earliest. An excavation was carried out by the ASI for antiquity has yielded a settlement that is probably contemporary to Mahabharata dated to around 2^nd millennium BC.

Marine archaeological excavations of ASI date the oldest submerged structural remains and artefacts found off the coast of Dwaraka to around 1500-1800 BC which makes it roughly 3500-4000 years old. The Mahabharata battle is dated to have taken place at about 1000 BC.  

In 1473 the Sultan of Gujarat Mahmud Begada sacked the town and destroyed the temple of Dwarakadish. They were later rebuilt. When the Turk Aziz invaded Dwaraka, the idol was shifted to the island of Bet Dwaraka. When the temples of Dwaraka and Bet Dwaraka suffered damage and looted, in 1861 the Dwarakadish temple was renovated by Maharaja Khanderao and the British.

విశ్వంలోని 'దెయ్యం కణాలు' ( GHOST PARTICLES)

 విశ్వం ఒక అద్భుతమైన విషయం. విశ్వం గురించి మీకు ఎంత ఎక్కువగా తెలిస్తే, అంతగా మీరు అయోమయానికి మరియు ఆశ్చర్యానికి గురవుతారు. 

కానీ దెయ్యం కణాలు అని పిలువబడే న్యూట్రినోలు ఎలక్ట్రాన్ల కంటే చాలా ఎక్కువ సూష్మమైనవి, పైగా విద్యుత్ పరంగా తటస్తమైనవి. 

రుణాత్మక ఆవేశం కలిగి, అతి సూక్ష్మమైన ద్రవ్యరాశి (9.11* 10⁻³¹ కిలోగ్రాములు) ఉన్న ఎలక్ట్రాన్ గురించి మనకు తెలుసు. అయితే, న్యూట్రినోలు విద్యుత్ పరంగా తటస్థంగా ఉంటాయి, వాటి ద్రవ్యరాశి కేవలం 1.25*10⁻³⁵ కిలోగ్రాములు మాత్రమే. 

అంటే, అతి సూక్ష్మమైన ద్రవ్యరాశి ఉన్న ఎలక్ట్రాన్ బరువుతో పోలిస్తే, ఒక న్యూట్రినో బరువు సుమారు 73,000 రెట్లు తక్కువ. బరువైన కణాలు క్షీణించే ప్రక్రియలో ఇవి ఉత్పత్తి అవుతాయి. 

మానవ శరీరంలో 35 ట్రిలియన్ల జీవ కణాలు ఉంటాయి. అయితే, న్యూట్రినో అనే కణంతో పోలిస్తే మానవ కణం చాలా పెద్దది. దీని బరువు దాదాపుగా అత్యల్పం. సుమారు 1035 న్యూట్రినోల బరువు ఒక మానవ కణం బరువుతో సమానంగా ఉంటుంది.  

న్యూట్రినోలను గోస్ట్ పార్టికల్స్ అని కూడా అంటారు, ఎందుకంటే అవి గుర్తించలేనంత సూక్ష్మంగా ఉండటమే కాకుండా, తటస్థ విద్యుత్ ఆవేశాన్ని కలిగి ఉండి దేనితోనూ సంకర్షణ చెందవు. విశ్వంలో ఇవి అత్యంత సాధారణమైన కణాలు. 

అవి పరమాణువులతో అరుదుగా ఢీకొంటాయి కాబట్టి, వాటిని గుర్తించడం కష్టం. వాటికి విద్యుత్ ఆవేశం లేకపోవడం మరియు వాటి అతి సూక్ష్మమైన ద్రవ్యరాశి కారణంగా, ప్రతి సెకనుకు సుమారు 100 ట్రిలియన్ల న్యూట్రినోలు మన శరీరం గుండా పూర్తిగా నిరపాయంగా ప్రయాణిస్తాయి. మన సంఖ్యల పరంగా చెప్పాలంటే, ఈ సంఖ్య కోటి కోట్లు అవుతుంది. మనం గమనించకుండానే ప్రతి సెకనుకు అన్ని న్యూట్రినోలు మన శరీరం గుండా ప్రయాణిస్తాయి. 

ప్రస్తుతం, అతిపెద్ద న్యూట్రినోలను గుర్తించే టెలిస్కోప్‌ను మాడిసన్ విశ్వవిద్యాలయం అభివృద్ధి చేసింది మరియు ఇది అంటార్కిటికాలో ఉంది. దీని సెన్సార్లు సుమారు 1 క్యూబిక్ కిలోమీటరు మేర విస్తరించి ఉన్నాయి. 

ప్రపంచంలోనే అతిపెద్ద పారదర్శక గోళాకార డిటెక్టర్ 2025 (JUNO-Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory) ఆగస్టులో చైనాలో పనిచేయడం ప్రారంభించింది. దీనితో ఇది అత్యంత కచ్చితత్వంతో న్యూట్రినో పరిశోధనకు అంకితమైన ప్రపంచంలోనే మొట్టమొదటి కార్యాచరణలో ఉన్న అతిపెద్ద శాస్త్రీయ సదుపాయంగా నిలిచింది. 

అంతేకాకుండా,కొన్నిసార్లు న్యూట్రినోలు నీటి అణువులతో సంకర్షణ చెందుతాయి. అందుకే చైనా దక్షిణ చైనా సముద్రంలో నీటి అడుగున ట్రైడెంట్ (TRIDENT-Tropical Deep Sea Neutrino Telescope) అనే పేరుతో ఒక ఘోస్ట్ మాలిక్యూల్ టెలిస్కోప్‌ను నిర్మిస్తోంది. ఇది ఈ దశాబ్దంలో పూర్తయ్యాక, 7.5 క్యూబిక్ కిలోమీటర్ల భారీ సెన్సార్లు కలిగి ఉంటుంది. ఈ టెలిస్కోప్ సముద్రంలో 3.5 కిలోమీటర్ల లోతులో నిర్మించబడుతోంది. 

అత్యధికంగా లభించే న్యూట్రినోలు ఎందుకు అలా ప్రవర్తిస్తాయో శాస్త్రవేత్తలకు తెలియదు. అవి భౌతిక శాస్త్రంలోని స్థిరపడిన నియమాలను ధిక్కరిస్తాయి. 

ఎలక్ట్రాన్, ప్రోటాన్ మరియు న్యూట్రాన్ గురించి తెలుసుకున్నప్పుడు, ప్రాథమిక కణాల గురించి తమకు అన్నీ తెలుసని ప్రజలు భావించిన కాలం ఒకటి ఉండేది. 

కానీ విజ్ఞాన శాస్త్రం మరియు పరిశోధనలు పురోగమించడంతో ప్రాథమిక కణాల సంఖ్య పెరిగింది. నేటి వరకు తెలిసిన దాని ప్రకారం, విశ్వంలో 31 కణాలు ఉండగా, వాటిలో 25 ప్రాథమికమైనవి

HINDU TIMESCALE

 

The Hindu timescale says the duration on earth is divided into 4 Yugas; Satya, Treta, Dvapara & Kali. Satya yuga lasts for 17,28,000 human years, Treta Yuga is less by 25% than that at 12,96,000 years, Dvapara Yuga less by 50% or 8,64,000 years & Kali Yuga is less by 75% and lasts for for 4.32.000 years.

These 4 Yugas together comprise of 43,20,000 human years and are called the Mahayuga.  

One Kalpa or day of Brahma is equal to 1000 Mahayugas which equals to 432 crore human years which is strangely close to the age of the Earth as determined by scientists.

A full 24 hour cycle of Brahma comprising of one day and one night equals 864 crore years.

Brahmas lifespan is 100 years which is equal to 864*365*100 or 3,15,36,000 crore years. This is a stupendous figure because the age of the Universe itself is 1380 crore years. That means, the assumed age of Brahma is some 22800 times greater than the age of the Universe.

One completely fails to understand how the Vedic people managed to get these figures, the timescale is far far greater than any other religion on earth can even remotely imagine. Why should they think of such huge figures which are in no way related to their daily lives?

That does not make any sense to me. Is it that modern Hindu interpreters of the Vedas deliberately arrived at this huge figure? I would like to study those verses myself, and till that time I cannot even believe those numbers because no other religion on Earth assumes such stupendously massive figures for ages or the longevity of the Earth in their religious works.

Buddha started Buddhism which is more of an ethical philosophy than religion because it never talked about god and only talked about spiritual enlightenment. In fact Buddhism is a reaction to the idolatry of Hinduism. Surprisingly Buddha was later incorporated into Hinduism as the 9^th avatar of Vishnu. Today is Buddha is worshipped as a God in Mahayana Buddhism which is totally against what Buddha taught.

A I OPARIN ON EVOLUTION OF LIFE--PREYERS THEORY.

 

What is the definition of life given by Biologists? Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian Evolution.

Life abounds on earth in many forms. But what is life? Firstly, the origin of life on earth is one of the greatest mysteries of science. Are we alone in the universe? May or may not be, but we cannot give a definitive answer to that question.

Logically, we presume that since life evolved on Earth due to certain conditions, it should also evolve on other planets orbiting other stars in the Universe where similar conditions are present. But to date, we do not even know how life came about on Earth.

The Stanley Miller experiment of 1953 proves that amino acids evolved on the primordial earth, but it does not say how those amino acids combined to form the varieties of life around us. A lot has to be understood yet about life and we need to solve that mystery to say anything with certainty.  

The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Scientists estimate that 200 million years after, that is about 4.3 billion years ago life evolved on earth. The oldest known fossils on the earth are however only 3.7 billion years old. That leaves a 600 million-year window for which we do not have any information.

During this time it is possible that life may have evolved but has been repeatedly extinguished by catastrophic collisions with asteroids and comets. However, we have not found any evidence for that so far.

Life is supposed to have first begun in volcanically active hydrothermal environments on land and at sea. Some microorganisms thrive in the scalding highly acidic hot springs environments like those found today in Norway and Yellowstone in the USA. Therefore such organism may have formed on planets with similar environments in other parts of the Universe.

However, this is merely a hypothesis without any supporting proof. This is the problem with life, as we do not know how inanimate became animate; it becomes very difficult to say if it exists on other planets.   

What are in the ingredients for life on Earth?

It requires a steady energy source like the Sun, organic compounds and water. There are some elements that are crucial for life. They are Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Phosphorous.

Now a planet so close to the Sun cannot actually have Carbon and Nitrogen. Both the elements become solid only under very cold temperatures that are not present on Earth. Carbon is rare at the earth’s surface and chemically bonds more with iron than rock. So how did the Carbon found on the earth’s surface get there?

Water now covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface but how much of it was there 4 billion years ago for life to evolve?

How did life emerge on Earth?

Scientists believe that life emerged from a Primordial soup. As mentioned earlier, in 1953 a University of Chicago graduate student Stanley Miller performed his famous experiment along with Harold Urey, a Nobel winner in Chemistry.

They injected Methane, Ammonia, and water vapour into an enclosed glass container to simulate lightning. Amino acids, the building blocks of Proteins soon formed in the container. They realized that this process would have created the way for the formation of life.

Scientists now believe that Earth's early conditions had a different chemical makeup from the one used by Miller in their experiment. The experiment gave rise to a new scientific field named prebiotic or abiotic Chemistry.

Some scientists think that molecules for life may have been produced outside the Earth and were brought to Earth by meteorites or comets. In 1969 the Murchison meteorite that fell in Australia contained dozens of different amino acids.

In 2019, a team of researchers in France and Italy reported finding extra-terrestrial organic material preserved in the 3.3 billion old sediments of Barberton, South Africa. They suggested micro meteorites as the likely source. Further evidence came in 2022 from the samples of the Asteroid Ryugu brought back by a Japanese mission. It had over 20 different amino acids.

But how can inanimate matter combine in a certain way to develop to be a composite organism in the first place, where each part becomes special for a particular job? It is very easy to say that some chemical reaction produced Amino acids as the Miller experiment has shown but, then how do those amino acids combine and form the DNA, RNA and Proteins?

Is it not silly to say that they evolved? How did that happen? Again taking for granted that proteins and RNA and DNA have formed, how did they conveniently combine to make complex organisms?  

The problem here is that there are too many questions without any answers unless we exercise our sheer imagination which would not be based on any proof.

The Soviet Biochemist A I Oparin has advanced his theory for evolution of life. In it he says

1.     There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter. The complex combination which requires life to form must have arisen as a part of the process of the evolution of matter.

2.     Taking into account the then-recent discovery of methane in the atmospheres of Jupiter and the other giant planets, Oparin suggested that the infant Earth had possessed an atmosphere containing methane, ammonia, hydrogen , and water vapour. In his opinion, these were the raw materials for the evolution of life.

3.     In Oparin's formulation, there were first only simple solutions of organic matter. Gradually though, he said, the resulting growth and increased complexity of molecules brought new properties into being and a new set of organic chemicals.

4.     Oparin posited that this process brought biological orderliness into prominence. According to Oparin, competition, speed of cell growth, survival of the fittest, struggle for existence, and, finally, natural selection determined the form of material organization characteristic of modern-day living things.

Even the simplest of unicellular organisms have a complexity of structure and function that staggers the mind and is removed from the beginnings of life by a genealogy extending for millions and millions of years.

Pasteur’s unequivocal experiments have given us irrefutable proof that living organisms, no matter how simple they might be, cannot be generated from organic matter. Yet this might have happened in the millions and millions of years of evolution. It is impossible by any experiments to prove Biogenesis but looking to the life around us it looks like a reasonably consistent logical necessity.

The conditions on the earth in the last 2 billion years have undergone radical alterations and perhaps Biogenesis may not be possible in the current conditions. Today if life is not already present, even if it does evolve, the innumerable predatory organisms that exist on the earth would quickly destroy any such new organism.    

So, is life a new property of Organic matter acquired in the course of evolution or is it something that resulted from the organization of organic matter?

There is every reason to believe that a certain period of Earth’s history must have been completely sterile. Proteins containing Nucleic acids are the only constituents of the organisms that grow and reproduce by self-duplication or by replication. Neither viruses nor genes can duplicate or replicate themselves unless implanted in a cell or nucleus. So are these Nucleo proteins living or non-living?   

Till Louis Pasteur conducted his brilliant experiments which were published in 1862, most scientists believed that microorganisms automatically got generated from matter. Pasteur conclusively proved that in every case the growth of the organism is due to contamination and there is no fresh generation of anything.

There are two fundamental theories based on the conception of continuity of life.

1. The theory of Cosmozoa (which says that life originated elsewhere in the Universe and later came  to earth)  along with the closely related theory of Panspermia( that seeds of life exist in all the Universe and even in empty space)

and

2. Preyers theory of eternity of life.

Preyer starts from the empirical theory that all organisms are derived from similar other organisms, and questions “Is not the problem of the origin of life based on a wrong assumption that the living must have come sometime from the non-living?  “Why not consider the living to be in eternal existence like other inorganic matter?”

But if a living thing has only come from a living substance then that substance must have also existed at the time when earth was still a molten mass. Preyer insists that the living did exist in that molten mass.

He says “If we rid ourselves of the idea wholly arbitrary and unsupported by facts that Protoplasm can exist only in its current composition, and of the old convenient prejudice that at first there was only inorganic substance, we can without fear take the next bold step, discard altogether all belief in a primary origin, and recognize the timelessness of the current of life. “

So, theories may abound but we actually have no means of proving which is correct, and at the most they are mere conjectures till proven otherwise and life remains a mystery to us