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The Truth about Zoos
Last week we carried a piece about the relevance of zoos as the last refuge of endangered species. But in India it appears that zoos should be the last place for animals of any sort, let alone the endangered variety. It is no secret that most Indian zoos are in a bad state. Although zoos claim to educate people and preserve species, Indian zoos do neither. Most zoo enclosures are quite small, and labels provide little information....
How do Human Cannonballs Fly?
Even been to a circus where they featured a human cannonball? A person enters a huge cannon and when the fuse is lit, he comes shooting out with a bang, flying in the air before landing on a net! My god! I thought that was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen. What a crazy thing to do. How does he do it without being blown to pieces, I would wonder. How do Human Cannonballs Fly?...
Who Invented the Frisbee?
At first glance in the park or at the beach, you may confuse it for an UFO (unidentified flying object) and rush home thinking the Martians have really landed from outer space! Soon it becomes clear that the “spacecraft” is actually a harmless toy — a colourful Frisbee, and the creature from outer space is the boy next door! Today, almost all of us have seen one or sent a Frisbee gliding through air. We have seen dogs chase it and leap to catch these flying discs....
Dealing With the Potential Danger of a Meteor Hitting Earth
Our solar system is like a busy traffic round-about. The sun is at the centre of this round-about which drives a large number of heavenly bodies, including planets, comets and large and small rocks around it. While the earth and the other planets chart fairly fixed paths around the sun, our smaller solar siblings, like rocks, do not believe in staying in their lanes. As a result, a large rock – the size of a small city – bangs into the earth every once in a while....
A Beautiful Ship in the Sky
In the boundless ocean of space, a beautiful ship sails serenely around the sun. Our earth – Lovelier than the moon, this fragile ship travels one hundred and sixty thousand kilometres every hour. Space is full of countless such ships. But our Earth is special. It is the only ship which carries life – the only ship with voyagers on board. Four hundred thousand different kinds of life make their home on Earth. Together, they make it beautiful and precious....
World's First Space Tourist
May 11: The world’s first paying space tourist is back on earth after a week-long joyride in space. On Sunday, May 6, American millionaire Dennis Tito and two Russian cosmonauts landed back on earth, as their space capsule gently parachuted down onto the barren steppe in Kazakhstan. World’s First Space Tourist [Illustration by Shinod AP] Emerging unsteadily from the capsule, the exhilarated 60-year-old Tito, who is also a former NASA rocket scientist, said the trip was the culmination of a lifelong dream....
Space Tourism: Ready for a Skyrocketing Holiday
Do you wish for an “unearthly " vacation? American astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin, famous for being the second man to land on the moon, is one of the few people working to promote tourism in space. But if the thought of a holiday in space is mind-boggling, the cost of that thought is even more so – almost $200 million for an out-of-the-world experience! Realising the need to make space travel as normal as buses or trains, an American company called the X Prize Foundation is trying to cut down the cost of space travel....
Know-it-alls and Find-it-outs
Once upon a time, there was an island called the ‘Land of the Sun’. People of all shapes, sizes and appearances lived there. Everybody knew everybody and they were like one big happy family. But slowly, as time passed, the children grew bigger and had more children who grew bigger and had more children. Things reached a stage where there were so many people in the island that not everybody knew everybody else. People started doing their own things,...
Trees of Delhi – Under the Axe!
Where: The Capital city of New Delhi, India March 26, 2007: Imagine you are in a city where there are a lot of trees, large parks, open spaces, playgrounds. Slowly, the city starts filling up with more and more people. These people need houses. They need transport, to get from one place to another. They need more schools, more hospitals, more office buildings, more markets, more space. How will they get this space, and who decides which space to use?...
The Cool and Cunning Lark
The very mention of summer and heat makes us think of desert land. Countless films have shown thirsty travellers lost in the desert, uttering the words, ‘Water! Wa-a-ter, waaa…” But then what do you do if the temperature even in the desert shade is as high as 50 degree centigrade, hot winds almost cut you up into pieces, and there is no water, or even saliva in your mouth? If you are smart like the desert animals, you would probably sleep during the day and move about at night....
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