CULTURAL QA 11202313A Q1 During a Hindu ritual, will the Tamil people chant in Tamil or Sanskrit? Which language has a higher priority and why? Please provide the theological basis in the scriptures.
KR I am surprised even Balaji Viswanathan might be like Stalin! Or DMK party worker Kamala Hassan. Every one on this earth might chant only in a language known to him; in TN even the Sanskrit absentee might do so, if prompted by vadhyars; or else might use only their mother tongue; or any language he knows; what a stupid question ? Q2 We haven't even reached the bottom of the ocean yet, but how the hell do we find out that the earth has a core? KR The answer is incomplete and contains unverified and untrue elements. This is science. And at the bottom of the article the science had stated no one can find out so easily without seismic wave pattern and Newton did not have it. It is tough and those interested may read slowly. KR “Earth’s core is the very hot, very dense center of our planet. The ball-shaped core lies beneath the cool, brittle crust and the mostly solid mantle. The core is found about 2,900 kilometers (1,802 miles) below Earth’s surface, and has a radius of about 3,485 kilometers (2,165 miles). Planet Earth is older than the core. When Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, it was a uniform ball of hot rock. Radioactive decay and leftover heat from planetary formation (the collision, accretion, and compression of space rocks) caused the ball to get even hotter. Eventually, after about 500 million years, our young planet’s temperature heated to the melting point of iron—about 1,538° Celsius (2,800° Fahrenheit). This pivotal moment in Earth’s history is called the iron catastrophe. The iron catastrophe allowed greater, more rapid movement of Earth’s molten, rocky material. Relatively buoyant material, such as silicates, water, and even air, stayed close to the planet’s exterior. These materials became the early mantle and crust. Droplets of iron, nickel, and other heavy metals gravitated to the center of Earth, becoming the early core. This important process is called planetary differentiation. Earth’s core is the furnace of the geothermal gradient. The geothermal gradient measures the increase of heat and pressure in Earth’s interior. The geothermal gradient is about 25° Celsius per kilometer of depth (1° Fahrenheit per 70 feet). The primary contributors to heat in the core are the decay of radioactive elements, leftover heat from planetary formation, and heat released as the liquid outer core solidifies near its boundary with the inner core. Unlike the mineral-rich crust and mantle, the core is made almost entirely of metal—specifically, iron (Fe) and nickel (Ni). The shorthand used for the core’s iron-nickel alloys is simply the elements’ chemical symbols—NiFe. Elements that dissolve in iron, called siderophiles, are also found in the core. Because these elements are found much more rarely on Earth’s crust, many siderophiles are classified as “precious metals.” Siderophile elements include gold, platinum, and cobalt. Another key element in Earth’s core is sulfur—in fact 90 percent of the sulfur on Earth is found in the core. The confirmed discovery of such vast amounts of sulfur helped explain a geologic mystery: If the core was primarily NiFe, why wasn’t it heavier? Geoscientists speculated that lighter elements such as oxygen or silicon might have been present. The abundance of sulfur, another relatively light element, explained the conundrum. Although we know that the core is the hottest part of our planet, its precise temperatures are difficult to determine. The fluctuating temperatures in the core depend on pressure, Earth's rotation, and the varying composition of core elements. In general, temperatures range from about 4,400° Celsius (7,952° Fahrenheit) to about 6,000° Celsius (10,800° Fahrenheit). The core is made of two layers: the outer core, which borders the mantle, and the inner core. The boundary separating these regions is called the Bullen discontinuity. Outer Core The outer core, about 2,200 kilometers (1,367 miles) thick, is mostly composed of liquid iron and nickel. The NiFe alloy of the outer core is very hot, between 4,500° and 5,500° Celsius (8,132° and 9,932° Fahrenheit). The liquid metal of the outer core has very low viscosity, meaning it is easily deformed and malleable. It is the site of violent convection. The churning metal of the outer core creates and sustains Earth’s magnetic field. The hottest part of the core is actually the Bullen discontinuity, where temperatures reach 6,000° Celsius (10,800° Fahrenheit)—as hot as the surface of the sun. Inner Core The inner core is a hot, dense ball of (mostly) iron. It has a radius of about 1,220 kilometers (758 miles). Temperature in the inner core is about 5,200° Celsius (9,392° Fahrenheit). The pressure is nearly 3.6 million atmosphere (atm). The temperature of the inner core is far above the melting point of iron. However, unlike the outer core, the inner core is not liquid or even molten. The inner core’s intense pressure—the entire rest of the planet and its atmosphere—prevents the iron from melting. The pressure and density are simply too great for the iron atoms to move into a liquid state. Because of this unusual set of circumstances, some geophysicists prefer to interpret the inner core not as a solid, but as a plasma behaving as a solid. The liquid outer core separates the inner core from the rest of Earth, and as a result, the inner core rotates a little differently than the rest of the planet. It rotates eastward, like the surface, but it’s a little faster, making an extra rotation about every 1,000 years. Geoscientists think that the iron crystals in the inner core are arranged in an “hcp” (hexagonal close-packed) pattern. The crystals align north-south, along with Earth’s axis of rotation and magnetic field. The orientation of the crystal structure means that seismic waves—the most reliable way to study the core—travel faster when going north-south than when going east-west. Seismic waves travel four seconds faster pole-to-pole than through the Equator. Growth in the Inner Core As the entire Earth slowly cools, the inner core grows by about a millimeter every year. The inner core grows as bits of the liquid outer core solidify or crystallize. Another word for this is “freezing,” although it’s important to remember that iron’s freezing point is more than 1,000° Celsius (1,832° Fahrenheit). The growth of the inner core is not uniform. It occurs in lumps and bunches, and is influenced by activity in the mantle. Growth is more concentrated around subduction zones—regions where tectonic plates are slipping from the lithosphere into the mantle, thousands of kilometers above the core. Subducted plates draw heat from the core and cool the surrounding area, causing increased instances of solidification. Growth is less concentrated around “superplumes” or LLSVPs. These ballooning masses of superheated mantle rock likely influence “hot spot” volcanism in the lithosphere, and contribute to a more liquid outer core. The core will never “freeze over.” The crystallization process is very slow, and the constant radioactive decay of Earth’s interior slows it even further. Scientists estimate it would take about 91 billion years for the core to completely solidify—but the sun will burn out in a fraction of that time (about 5 billion years). Core Hemispheres Just like the lithosphere, the inner core is divided into eastern and western hemispheres. These hemispheres don’t melt evenly, and have distinct crystalline structures. The western hemisphere seems to be crystallizing more quickly than the eastern hemisphere. In fact, the eastern hemisphere of the inner core may actually be melting. Inner Inner Core Geoscientists recently discovered that the inner core itself has a core—the inner inner core. This strange feature differs from the inner core in much the same way the inner core differs from the outer core. Scientists think that a radical geologic change about 500 million years ago caused this inner inner core to develop. The crystals of the inner inner core are oriented east-west instead of north-south. This orientation is not aligned with either Earth’s rotational axis or magnetic field. Scientists think the iron crystals may even have a completely different structure (not hcp), or exist at a different phase. Magnetism Earth’s magnetic field is created in the swirling outer core. Magnetism in the outer core is about 50 times stronger than it is on the surface. It might be easy to think that Earth’s magnetism is caused by the big ball of solid iron in the middle. But in the inner core, the temperature is so high the magnetism of iron is altered. Once this temperature, called the Curie point, is reached, the atoms of a substance can no longer align to a magnetic point. Dynamo Theory Some geoscientists describe the outer core as Earth’s “geodynamo.” For a planet to have a geodynamo, it must rotate, it must have a fluid medium in its interior, the fluid must be able to conduct electricity, and it must have an internal energy supply that drives convection in the liquid. Variations in rotation, conductivity, and heat impact the magnetic field of a geodynamo. Mars, for instance, has a totally solid core and a weak magnetic field. Venus has a liquid core, but rotates too slowly to churn significant convection currents. It, too, has a weak magnetic field. Jupiter, on the other hand, has a liquid core that is constantly swirling due to the planet’s rapid rotation. Earth is the “Goldilocks” geodynamo. It rotates steadily, at a brisk 1,675 kilometers per hour (1,040 miles per hour) at the Equator. Coriolis forces, an artifact of Earth’s rotation, cause convection currents to be spiral. The liquid iron in the outer core is an excellent electrical conductor, and creates the electrical currents that drive the magnetic field. The energy supply that drives convection in the outer core is provided as droplets of liquid iron freeze onto the solid inner core. Solidification releases heat energy. This heat, in turn, makes the remaining liquid iron more buoyant. Warmer liquids spiral upward, while cooler solids spiral downward under intense pressure: convection. Earth’s Magnetic Field Earth’s magnetic field is crucial to life on our planet. It protects the planet from the charged particles of the solar wind. Without the shield of the magnetic field, the solar wind would strip Earth’s atmosphere of the ozone layer that protects life from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Although Earth’s magnetic field is generally stable, it fluctuates constantly. As the liquid outer core moves, for instance, it can change the location of the magnetic North and South Poles. The magnetic North Pole moves up to 64 kilometers (40 miles) every year. Fluctuations in the core can cause Earth’s magnetic field to change even more dramatically. Geomagnetic pole reversals, for instance, happen about every 200,000 to 300,000 years. Geomagnetic pole reversals are just what they sound like: a change in the planet’s magnetic poles, so that the magnetic North and South Poles are reversed. These “pole flips” are not catastrophic—scientists have noted no real changes in plant or animal life, glacial activity, or volcanic eruptions during previous geomagnetic pole reversals. Studying the Core Geoscientists cannot study the core directly. All information about the core has come from sophisticated reading of seismic data, analysis of meteorites, lab experiments with temperature and pressure, and computer modeling. Most core research has been conducted by measuring seismic waves, the shock waves released by earthquakes at or near the surface. The velocity and frequency of seismic body waves changes with pressure, temperature, and rock composition. In fact, seismic waves helped geoscientists identify the structure of the core itself. In the late 19th century, scientists noted a “shadow zone” deep in the planet, where a type of body wave called an s-wave either stopped entirely or was altered. S-waves are unable to transmit through fluids or gases. The sudden “shadow” where s-waves disappeared indicated that Earth had a liquid layer. In the 20th century, geoscientists discovered an increase in the velocity of p-waves, another type of body wave, at about 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) below the surface. The increase in velocity corresponded to a change from a liquid or molten medium to a solid. This proved the existence of a solid inner core. Meteorites, space rocks that crash to Earth, also provide clues about Earth’s core. Most meteorites are fragments of asteroids, rocky bodies that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids formed about the same time, and from about the same material, as Earth. By studying iron-rich chondrite meteorites, geoscientists can get a peek into the early formation of our solar system and Earth’s early core. In the lab, the most valuable tool for studying forces and reactions at the core is the diamond anvil cell. Diamond anvil cells use the hardest substance on Earth (diamonds) to simulate the incredibly high pressure at the core. The device uses an x-ray laser to simulate the core’s temperature. The laser is beamed through two diamonds squeezing a sample between them. Complex computer modeling has also allowed scientists to study the core. In the 1990s, for instance, modeling beautifully illustrated the geodynamic—complete with pole flips.” Unless the secret is revealed by the inner core , density cannot be so easily ascertained so as to get an answer why there is a variation; and the bottom of the sea and the inner core of the earth so many other planets had been studied by seismic graphs, which theory is used in the submarines also. K R IRS 131123 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Q3 What are some places inaccessible to humans on our planet? KR Like Tepui there are 12 places which were not explored fully; while narrating Tepui, are we not doing injustice such places are also in India including the silent valley. Palmerston Island in the South Pacific is one of several mostly unexplored spots in the world. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images There are a handful of places around the world that are largely untouched or uninhabited. Although researchers have explored some parts of Antarctica, only aerial photos reveal what the rest of the continent and remote region is like. Several mountains in Himalayan country Bhutan are believed to be unconquered, namely the world's largest unclimbed mountain: Gangkhar Puensum. Unexplored areas around the world also include small islands, such as Pitcairn Island off of New Zealand, and Palmerston Island in the South Pacific. KR IRS 131123 ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: 'gopala krishnan' via iyer123 <iyer...@googlegroups.com> Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2023 at 19:04 Subject: [iyer123] CULTURAL QA 11-2023-13A To: Patty Thatha <thatha_patty@googlegroups.com>, Iyer < iyer...@googlegroups.com>, Kerala Iyer <keralaiy...@googlegroups.com> *CULTURAL QA 11-2023-13A* *All the BELOW QA are from Quora DIGEST to me on 13-11-2023.* *QUORA ANSWERS NEED NOT BE 100% CORRECT ANSWERS.* *Compiled and posted by R. Gopala Krishnan, 80, on 13-11-2023.* *Q1 During a Hindu ritual, will the Tamil people chant in Tamil or Sanskrit? Which language has a higher priority and why? Please provide the theological basis in the scriptures.* *A1 Dr. Balaji Viswanathan, Native speaker of தமிழ்.18h* *Hindu rituals are made of 3 layers and the language used depends on the layer.* *Yajna: The grand fire ceremonies, direct descendants of Vedic tradition, form the core of ancient scripture and practice. They are elaborate affairs, the domain of learned high priests versed in the sacred utterances of Vedic Sanskrit.* *Puja: These intimate worship rituals treat deities as honored guests gracing the earthly abodes of temples. A daily practice, pujas are a universal thread in the Hindu world, weaving Sanskrit mantras with the vibrant hues of regional dialects, all performed by dedicated temple priests.* *Bhajan: The heartfelt hymns of devotion, where the divine is serenaded in the common tongue. Bhajans, requiring no priestly intermediary, are the soulful expressions of the everyday devotee, often echoing through the air during festive or reflective weekend gatherings.* *At the Yajna level across India there is the common layer and doesn’t vary a lot. At the Puja level, a lot of regional elements get in while still maintaining a common structure. At the Bhajan level it is completely a commoner thing with substantial level of regional elements. This allows Hinduism to maintain the unity in diversity.* *Imagine the stone-carved corridors of Tamil Nadu's majestic temples, a symphony of devotion unfolds: the resonant chants of a Yajna emanate from the Yagasala, led by venerated priests; concurrently, the sanctum's heart beats to the rhythm of pujas, with priests orchestrating a divine welcome. And, enveloping it all, the melodic strains of bhajans rise, as devotees sing verses from cherished Tamil scriptures like Thevaram and Thiruvasagam.* *Herein lies Hinduism's essence, a harmonious blend of the sublime and the simple, resonating through every corner of India.* *Q2 We haven't even reached the bottom of the ocean yet, but how the hell we find out that the earth has a core?* *A2 John Turner, Aug 14* *Sir Isaac Newton is the first scientist known to have rationally deduced the existence of a core.* *The same year that he published his Principia Mathematica, he wrote in a letter to colleagues that he’d calculated the mass of Earth from its radius and its surface gravity, and then noticed that the average density (5.5 grams per cubic centimeter) of Earth was much higher than that of the average stone (3.0–3.5 g/cc). Reasoning that the simplest explanation was that Earth’s surface floats above a denser material like the slag on a crucible of molten metal, Newton then suggested Earth must have a center of molten iron.* *Not everyone liked this idea, but by the late 19th century most geologists believed Earth had “three layers” consisting of a metal core, a stony crust and a stony mantle in between them. They just couldn’t agree on the dimensions and they lacked much in the way of proof.* *Along came Richard Oldham.* *Oldham was a bureaucrat geologist, a member of the Royal Survey of India. He excelled at seismology, and India obliged him with a number of major quakes to study during his career. He worked with immense tables of numbers and often studied hundreds of paper recordings made by seismometers when analyzing a particular earthquake. He was the first geologist to prove that earthquakes are caused by crustal movement along faults.* *By 1897 Oldham had noticed from his studies that earthquakes make two kinds of vibrational energy, which he dubbed ‘P’ Primary waves and ‘S’ Secondary waves, terminology still used today.* *In 1906 he published a paper with this diagram:* *When teaching himself to read the “first phase” P wave and “second phase” S wave signals on paper seismometer charts, Oldham had noticed they could lag or lead one another in ways that varied with how far around the Earth the seismometer was from the earthquake (measured in degrees of arc).* *In 1906 he delivered a logically impeccable paper explaining that Earth had to have a dense liquid core approximately 40% its own diameter in order to explain a pattern he was seeing in seismometer charts.* *The dimensions and masses calculated from this closely matched Newton’s prediction for a molten iron core, so the best explanation was that Earth indeed had a center made of molten iron. It had now been “seen” by mankind.* *It would be a woman however, who would spot the oddest detail.* *In 1936 a Danish-born actuarial turned geophysicist named Inge Lehmann published a paper analyzing seismometer data from the 1929 Murcheson earthquake, in which she revealed that what Oldham had interpreted as P waves refracting inside an all liquid core were actually refracting off a solid object centered within that core — an inner core:* *It took another three decades to prove that core iron could even form a solid when surrounded by molten iron. Chemists first had to devise laser-heated presses inside which tiny samples of metal could be crushed between flawless gem diamonds to recreate the conditions deep within Earth.* *But Lehmann stuck by her numbers, refining and republishing them several times as new earthquakes provided data. And by the time the solidification of core material was experimentally confirmed it was seen as a foregone conclusion more than a radical discovery.* *We can “see” quite a bit of detail inside Earth now, thanks to computer analysis of the same numbers that Oldham and Lehmann crunched by hand:* *But it was human minds alone, working with slide rules and fountain pens, who first peered into the data to perceive what no human eye has yet seen.* *Q3 What are some places inaccessible to humans on our planet?* *A3 Davide Fiore,10mo* *Tepuyes of Canaima National Park (Venezuela).* *These are rocky plateaus with walls up to 1,000 meters high. This characteristic makes them virtually inaccessible; it is estimated that 90 percent of them have not been trampled by humans. Because of this, the flora and fauna in the highlands are pristine and most likely full of unknown species.* *Q4 What is something most people don't know about Africa?* *A4 Innocent Masengo, Lecturer Language and Communication at Makerere University (2008–present)Updated 3y* *That most Africans are poor, not because they really are poor, but because someone decides to describe them as such.* *My grandfather is ‘poor’. He certainly lives on “less than a dollar a day”. He is now 95 years old. In his nine and a half decades on earth, he has never lacked, and he has never begged. He only attended one year at a mission school in the 1930s and learnt how to read and write. This is how he pulls it off:* *When he wants food, he goes to the banana plantation, looks at tens of bunches of matooke (banana) and decides which to harvest for the day’s dinner. Adjacent to the plantation is a sweet potato garden, cassava garden, yams and finger millet. To the south of the banana plantation are beans, cow peas or peanuts gardens. Down the valley is grazing land with tens of Frisian and cross-breed cattle. They provide him with milk daily, 365 days a year.* *He also has about 20 goats. In Uganda, goat milk was generally not considered palatable, possibly due to the abundance of cow milk, so we never milked goats. He would sell a couple of them to supplement income from other produce to send his children to school. He also reared a couple of chickens, more as a hobby.* *The farm produces more than he can consume. He sells the surplus to afford such essential services as kerosene (recently upgraded to solar), soap, sugar (at his age he no longer takes sugar, he uses honey — doctor’s orders).* *Scattered across the farm are sugarcane (for eating, not for making sugar) and fruit trees (guava, mango, pawpaw, avocado, orange, passion fruit, pineapple). He drinks fresh juice from mangoes and passion fruit. As is evident, everything here is on a subsistence basis, but very organic. He has done this for the past 75 years.* *He had eleven children, my mother being his first born. He sent all of them to school, saw eight of them through college. He sold at least two cows, some goats and some produce each school term to send his children to school.* *I went to live at grandfather’s place when I was 5 years old. I left when I was 14 (my family lived in an urban area). I learnt how to farm, milk cows, tether goats, harvest fruits (by climbing the fruit tree) and harvesting honey (at night using smoke).* *Why the long story?* *My grandfather, just like millions of other Africans that live like him, is considered poor. He rarely holds money, and he rarely needs it. He produces most of what he needs. But using the standard World Bank/IMF description of ‘poor’, my grandfather is poor.* *I live in the city and earn about USD 12,000 a year after tax, which in Uganda is a decent salary. But I can hardly match my grandfather in terms of providing for my family with fresh milk, fresh food and fresh fruits.* *This is one thing most people that watch International media do not know about Africa: not all Africans are poor, many simply live differently than you.* *Ugandan farmer riding bananas from his farm to the market. Most people from other backgrounds would pity him, and consider him ‘poor’.* *Edit 1: Thank you John Kim for the edit suggestions. Much appreciated.* *Edit 2: I have added a picture I took with my grandfather and grandmother on 2/6/2020. I visited them as soon as the Covid-19 lockdown was eased in my country. They live 350km from the city where I live. I enjoyed tons of stories and experiences from as far back as the late 1930s. They are such a loving and jolly couple.* *My note- I have posted this QA as refreshing. I have posted this QA earlier.* *Q5 What invention or discovery most advanced humanity?* *A5 Jake Mawson, Constantly extended in Maths and Problem-Solving1y* *Think about what separates us from people thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, in the 1500s. What have we achieved?* *Surprisingly, nobody has mentioned the invention which we probably rely on near to the most these days.* *Think about this, what inventions were necessary for you to be reading this right now?* *Now, did anybody consider the battery?* *These odd devices power our phones, our laptops…. and none of this technology would even be possible if it weren’t for the battery.* *Let’s go back a couple of hundred years to the pre-1800s, when the battery had not yet been invented. Since we didn’t have a way to store electricity, we could not analyse its behaviours - and, therefore, we could not explain electrical properties - which would lead to the invention of new electrical/electronic devices. We wouldn’t have electric inter-communication, wireless well- anything, this would be a much older time to live.* *In the year 1799, Alessandro Volta invented what he called the “Voltaic Pile”:* *This led to a greater widespread interest in harnessing the power electrons, which would inevitably lead to the first invention of a device to harness this newly found power.* *In 1821, Michael Farraday set on a journey to understand the works of Ørsted and Ampère, and through the process, he invented the world’s first electric motor.* *The motor used a bath of mercury with a ball suspended on the surface. The metal ball was connected via wire to an electrical energy source (a battery) and it started to rotate in a circle over the mercury. This was due to the movement of electrical charge creating magnetic fields, which together interact to apply an unbalanced force on the sphere.* *The first electromagnet was soon after invented by William Sturgeon in 1825, where he then proceeded to improve Farraday’s motor design:* *This motor design was then improved upon until it was discovered that the process was reversible. Rather than sending in electrical charge to get movement, movement could generate the electrical charge, leading to Farraday’s (and the first) electromagnetic generator, the Faraday disk, being invented in 1831.* *To keep this answer concise, I will quickly summarise the remaining major inventions:* *In 1833, Farraday invented the thermistor and the laws of electrolysis.* *Moritz von Jacobi created the first ‘real’ rotating electric motor in May 1834, providing substantial output power.* *1836 - Nicholas Callan invented the electric transformer.* *1837 - Edward Davy invented the electric relay* *1844 - The first electrical generator used in industrial processes* *1845 - Kirchoff developed -non-other-than- Kirchoff’s laws* *1855 - First utilisation of AC* *1873 - Zenobe Gramme discovered that his DC generator could be used as a DC motor (developing the first modern DC motor)* *1877 - Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph (an electric communication device)* *1877 - Werner von Siemens invented the loudspeaker* *1879 - Thomas Edison patented his first electric lightbulb* *Most modern electrical inventions, such as semi-conductor usage and components were developed in the 1900s.* *And that is a brief summary of what the invention of a battery led to.* *My note- Nostalgic memories goes to the study of voltaic cells, lechlanche cells and dry cells studied in middle school in 1958-1959. * -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iyer123" group. 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