THELINES OF MISTERY

 NATURE'S WONDER

 Nazca Lines: From Peruvian soil

 As I said before that our mother nature is full of wonders which mesmerizes our sense of beauty, sometime not so picturesque but left us unanswered or victimize ourselves in a glare of mystery. 

If anyone tells you about Latin America then at first if you are a nature lover or travel explorer then the great Amazonia automatically catches most of your attractions which mostly lies in Brazil; the land of football. 

Now just turn your vision toward another famous country also most well known for football ; that is PERU. The capital of PERU is LIMA. If you go to the southern part of  LIMA then you will visualize some strange lines known as NAZCA LINES . Famous writer Erik Von  Daniken mentioned about it in his book " CHARIOT OF GODS". basically there are controversy still exists on these lines but according to the most of the archeologist it symbolizes the cultural and tribal behaviors, their creeds and customs most probably. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving different-colored dirt exposed. Most lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. The combined length of all the lines is more than 1,300 km (800 mi), and the group covers an area of about 50 km² (19 sq mi). They were made by removing the top layer of reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles to reveal a yellow-grey subsoil. The figures vary in complexity. Hundreds are simple lines and geometric shapes; more than 70 are zoomorphic designs, including a hummingbird, spider, fish, condor, heron, monkey, lizard, dog, cat, and a human. Other shapes include trees and flowers. 

They were designated in 1994 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

 

                                                       NATURE'S WONDER 

                                Lauterbrunnen : The Queen of Swiss Alps

                                                                                                                                      DATE:- 07.06.23

Our mother Earth is full of natural beauty and charismatic wonders. One side we are experiencing the grueling scorching heat of summer other side there are rainfall, snow at an excessive rate ; both are imbalance in different ways.

As an Indian if you ask anybody about their dream destination most of them will indicate towards Europe or America, where as for brain drain UK,USA etc. are the first preferences then the Scandinavian countries or especially Switzerland will be the top most choice for travelling. 

Today I am going to mention about a small village with immense beauty in the lap of Swiss Alps; LAUTERBRUNNEN, originally it is a municipal area of Swiss Alps which is free from any kind of hustle bustle of the society, where the mother nature enjoys  full freedom by expressing her ways of splendor where only BONDAGE FREE PRINCIPIA rules. 

It consist of eye pleasing greeneries everywhere, beautiful valleys, mountains, waterfall and moreover pleasant weather , certainly like AN OYESTER IN THE LAND OF PARADISE.

 NATURE'S WONDER 

Umngot River : One of the finest river in India

DATE  :  05.06.23

Our mother nature is the alternate definition of WONDER LUST if preserved in the right way with proper conscience and sense of beauty. 

Unfortunately the negative flip of the coin of possibility is more prevalent in recent times. Pollution is raising scary eye brows though we have a very little care on that, water pollution is one of the concern. Many water sources are becoming ' not worthy enough to use ' due to lack of awareness among people, lack of maintenance from individualistic to the authoritarian level. 

                                             Don't feel negative always ! 

We feel pleasure when we notice that still there are some wonderful yet not so well known places are there which can blow our mind towards celestial feeling. UMNGOT river of MEGHALAYA is one of them. Arguably the cleanest river of India famous for fishing, side scenes, natural beauty ( consist of green vegetation , wonderful rock enclaves , even the colorful pebbles inside river are clearly seen. 

In April 2021, the Meghalaya government took a decision to construct a dam on the river, in view of the shortage of electricity. The project was the proposed 210 MW Umngot Hydroelectric Project, which received loads of backlash and opposition from the local villagers, who feared that its construction would disrupt tourism. The project was
eventually scrapped.  

The life lost (A frictional fantasy on Avni saga)

Date :- 18.03.2022

The blowing sound of chill wind... The moon looks unnaturally crescent looks like a pale bashful widow...the love lost..hapless . Shameless shadows are passing by... Scarlett,the renowned hunter distressed by his fellas on a dark Night...  The dense disdained jungle,deeper ever than before,denser perhaps the wild attire of nature mourning down here   He feels lonely..lonelier than before... Oh! My beloved one...for the last laugh I want ur warmth    The shadowy faces of dangers are passing by..   Here raises the sound..the roar..larger louder than before  Like a voice of lost emptiness  ...here scarlett once an ominous hunter now he is quite senile..  Faces a Tiger..    Flabbergasted...dumbfounded for a while.. No the tiger is not attacking him neither showing aggression.   Suddenly it came near Scarlett...whispers on ear  ' let's see'..we have no family.. Then we were there..and then... ' The tiger was stopped stumbled Little. 

            Mr. Arthobalanus - Darwin's favourite animal;  At a glance 

                                     Koustav Bhattacharjee

                                        DATE:- 11.03.22

In January 1835, three years into the voyage, the Beagle anchored off the coast of Chile, and Darwin—who’d been seasick much of the trip—scrambled ashore to walk the beach. He found a lush green canopy covering silky sand, with snow-peaked mountains visible in the distance. Wild potatoes grew near the shore, and otters splashed in the water, hunting crabs.

On the beach Darwin found a strange shell. It was coconut-sized and had a baffling feature: hundreds of millimetre-sized holes, as if somebody had blasted it with tiny buckshot. He’d never seen anything like it.

That night, back on the Beagle, Darwin studied the holes under his microscope. Using a needle, he pried something unexpected from inside them—minute barnacles, roughly a tenth of an inch long. They were cream-coloured and doubled over on themselves like hairpins.

Unlike other barnacles, these lacked shells. And while most barnacles secrete a cement like glue and lock themselves on to anything convenient—ships, docks, the bellies of whales—these barnacles were living as parasites inside another creature’s shell. No scientist had ever recorded anything like it, and despite all the other wonders Darwin saw on the rest of the voyage, his mind kept circling back to that odd species of barnacle. He nicknamed it Mr. Arthrobalanus, which means “jointed barnacle.” On his return to England in 1836, he was eager to study Mr. Arthrobalanus more thoroughly.

To describe Mr. Arthrobalanus, Darwin needed to know what differentiated its species from other species of barnacles. So he began writing letters to museums, requesting barnacle specimens. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that all existing work on barnacles was sloppy and third rate. There were gaps, obvious mistakes, redundancies. With a sigh, Darwin realised he would have to reclassify everything himself. He started writing more letters, requesting more specimens.

All known barnacles then were actually hermaphrodites, with both male and female sex organs. In calling the specimen “mister,” Darwin had been joking around. But in truth, the joke was on him. It turned out that Mr. Arthrobalanus’s species was not hermaphroditic. In fact, Mr. Arthrobalanus wasn’t even a mister—she was Ms. Arthrobalanus, a female.

Illustration by Clay Cansler; Thomas Johnson/Science History Institute, George Sowerby/Biodiversity Heritage Library

 Zospium thollusum - The tale of Unique Snail from the deepest cave of the World 

 DATE :- 08.03.2022                              Koustav Bhattacharjee

Zospeum tholussum or the Domed Land Snail, is a cave-dwelling species of air-breathing land snails in the family Ellobiidae. It is a very small species, with a shell height of less than 2 mm (0.08 in) and a shell width of around 1 mm (0.04 in). Z. tholussum individuals are completely blind and possess translucent shells with five to six whorls. The second whorl of their shells has a characteristic dome-like shape. They are also extremely slow-moving and may depend on passive transportation through running water or larger animals for dispersal.

Zospeum tholussum was discovered at depths of 743 to 1,392 m (2,438 to 4,567 ft) in the Lukina jama–Trojama cave system in Croatia in 2012, during a caving expedition. It was formally described as a new species in 2013 by the taxonomist Dr. Alexander M. Weigand.

On 22 May 2014 International Institute for Species Exploration declared the snail as one of the "Top 10 New Species of 2014" among species discovered in 2013. The reason for its selection is its habitat in complete darkness of a cave some 900 meters below the surface. It lacks eyes and its shell is transparent giving it a ghost-like appearance. 

Like all members of the genus Zospeum, Zospeum tholussum are completely blind. Because of this and their lack of pigmentation, they are considered to be true cave-dwelling organisms (eutroglobionts). Very little is known about their biology, but members of the genus Zospeum are known to prefer muddy to permanently wet subterranean microhabitats. They are generally found along the drainage systems of caves.

 Zospeum tholussum are currently only known from the Lukina jama–Trojama cave system of Croatia. Its distribution range is within the larger distribution range of the morphologically similar Zospeum amoenum (which is found in caves in the Western Balkans in northern Slovenia, western Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro). Since Zospeum species with large inferred distribution ranges are known to actually also contain morphologically similar and unrecognised cryptic species, Weigand postulated that some early records of Zospeum amoenum may have actually been specimens of Zospeum tholussum.

                      

A TALE OF GLASS TADPOLES

 PRINCE RUPERT'S DROPS - IN A NUTSHELL 

                                                         KOUSTAV BHATTACHARJEE                                                                           

 DATE :- 03.03.2022

Prince Rupert's drops first gained widespread fame in 1660, when Prince Rupert of the Rhine (of Germany) brought a few of the curiosities to King Charles II of England. (The teardrops, which are made by pouring molten glass into cold water, had likely been known to glassblowers centuries earlier.) Charles then handed them over to the Royal Society, which published its first scholarly investigation of their properties in 1661.

        Strong head

In the new study, Chandrasekar relied on a slightly different technique called integrated photoelectricity , to reveal the mysteries of the glass tadpoles' heads. The technique calls for placing the object in a pool of water and then passing polarized light waves, or light that is oriented in a single plane, through the material. Internal stresses inside the material change the polarization of the light. Looking at the polarization of the outgoing light waves through special filters reveals the internal stresses inside the object — in this case, the head of the drop and the tail. 

These stresses formed because the type of glass used in these teardrops — which expands dramatically with heat — also shrinks dramatically when exposed to cold water. During the process to make these drops, the molten glass is dipped in cold water. When the glass hits the water, the outside cools faster than the inside. The outside layer of the glass then forms a kind of "jacket" that squishes the inside. Because the inside is still cooling, and because the total forces acting in the object have to equal zero, the head forms tensile stresses on its interior, the researchers reported in their paper, which was published online in Applied Physics Letters. 

The reason the compressive stress on the outside of the drops prevents fracturing is somewhat intuitive; the compression is squishing the atoms of the glass closer together – so they have no place to go. Fractures also don't move as easily through materials under compression. By contrast, most materials tend to break more easily when they are being pulled apart in tension.

However, even these shatter-resistant confections will eventually crack under pressure; for instance, if the heads of the drops are put inside a vise with enough pressure, they too will eventually turn to powder, though not quite as spectacularly as in the tail-snapping process, Chandrasekar said.

( SOURCE:- live science)