In the last article, I spoke briefly about earthquakes. Briefly, but enough to scare you of their enormity. Any single place does not suffer heavy shocks so close together in time, also the quakes usually occur where the boundaries of the plate tectonics meet, although in both cases these are not the imminent rules or laws. Still, an earthquake, or temblor, is much like a hungry lion waiting outside your doorstep at night. 

The 2008 temblor in Pakistan was 7.6 on the Richter scale and resulted in about 100,000 deaths (non-government estimate), and utter destruction, with 250,000 farm animals dead too. It was as a result of a collision of Eurasian and Indian plates, two gigantic plates with gigantic consequences.

Earthquakes have decimated areas or regions at will, and they will continue to do so (unfortunately). Although much of the world live near, or in the vicinity of plate tectonics, again it is not a rule that glorious nature must abide by its own rules.

Ecosystem: It is the total ecological community, or, all living organism — all animals, humans, plantation and vegetation, environment, all organic and even inorganic material, also hills and mountains, breeze, rivers, seas and oceans.

The term is used to describe the interaction of living organism as well as non-living organism of land, water, sunlight, rain and minerals. Also, temperature, topography and atmosphere. Any fluctuation in any of these instantly becomes a purview of the ecosystem since any instability ends up in resultant imbalance. A drastic climate change can play havoc with life’s ways in the manner it is doing now. Either inadvertently or deliberately, we may be causing it without knowing, or ‘half-knowing’ it.

Already we may have caused a loss of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide. But the real crunch will come in the next decade when, whether rich or poor, all nations will end up with hefty compensations for our shenanigans.

Hans Albert Einstein 1879-1955: A German, Italian, Swiss, American scientist/physicist widely regarded as the Man of the Century. Not brilliant as a young school student, Einstein is reputed to be a thoughtful and brilliant thinker in his 20s and beyond. Professionally, he was a clerk in the Swiss patent office.

Born in Germany (Ulm, Wurttenberg), he died in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, in 1955. Like numerous others, he could not take the rule of Adolf Hitler lightly and stealthily escaped from Germany (aged 16), first to Switzerland, back into Germany, out of it (1918), in the intervening years to Italy and eventually to the US. 

Einstein’s theory of the accelerated motion and gravity, General Relativity is a fundamental concept of nature of time, space and gravity, and has fundamentally influenced how scientists perceive the universe. Published in 1915, after his Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Einstein’s theory views gravity as a property of space rather than a force between bodies. More about it at appropriate time and place.

The contentious fact is that if Einstein is said to have changed the way scientists looked at the physical world, as well as gravity (as truly he did) and so he should be regarded as the Man of the Century, for his greatest influence on physical scientists

But he cannot be said to be a “great humanist” for some reasons we need not go into here. However, it cannot be denied that he was a great scientist, physicist, innovator in scientific ideas that led to the creation of the nuclear power, and the first atomic bomb.

Electron: An elementary particle with a negative charge. Very important, and are fundamental for young students and aspiring astronomers to understand.

Electrons are found orbiting around the nucleus of an atom. Their number ranges from 1 to 100. It matches the number of charged particles of protons in the nucleus and verily determines how atoms will link with other atoms to form chemical bonds called molecules. It is the movement of a large number of electrons through conductors that constitutes an electric current.

More about astronomical parlance in the next issue.

The writer is an astronomer and can be reached at:

astronomerpreone@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 2nd, 2015