Category: Science

Hummingbirds’ Magic

I was rushing to the car – needed to be somewhere. But the little hummingbirds stopped me for just a moment yet again. We have a few of them hovering over our lovely little lavender patch in the garden. The little bright flurries of beauty never fail to enthrall me. There is at least 1 red ruby throated hummingbird and several Anna’s hummingbirds gleaming in the sunshine with their green plumage catching the light of the day in brilliant angles. 

I am eternally grateful – both for the fact that I have these little visitors and for the ability to stop and appreciate them. 

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I have now stopped trying to photograph them while they flit for I find I am barely ever able to capture them with my iPhone, and my friends are far better photographers. This way, I get to enjoy the brilliant pictures and the momentary flashes of joy unencumbered by the effort of trying to capture it. 

Able to flap their wings upto 200 times a second, they are incredible long-distance flyers too. The ruby throated hummingbirds can fly 500 miles non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico during their fall and spring migration seasons.

The hummingbirds weigh only about 3 grams and therefore the term ‘more than their weight in gold’ doesn’t mean much. What they are able to accomplish with that body weight is phenomenal. Apparently, they can consume half their body weight in pure sugars and eat upto 5-8 times an hour. 

More fascinating hummingbirds facts here:

https://nourishncherish.org/?s=hummingbird

That metabolism doesn’t come easy for the little ones are hardly ever sedentary, They take a maximum of 90 seconds per break and flit almost all day long. Gathering nectar, feeding their littles ones, building their nests, and generally making the world a more happening place. 

If hummingbirds fascinate you as much, try reading this book:

My Tiny Life by Ruby T Hummingbird – written by Paul Meisel. It is a beautiful book that captures the life of hummingbirds. The book is a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor winner and is a lovely informative little book.

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🪺On May 15th a tiny hummingbird hatches from its egg, and thus starts our marvelous journey with the little bird as it learns to fly, mature, meet and greet its fellow humminbirds and eventually enhance the circle of life by having its own little family to nurture and nourish.

🕊By June first week, the little ones in the nest are ready to fly with their mother, in a flurry of wings, and a soaring of tips. 

“Up, down, backward, forward!” 

🪷 By the first week of July, the bird is getting territorial and fending off its fellow hummingbirds. (Pic from the book, My Tiny Life – by Paul Meisel)

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🚁 By the last week of September the birds are getting ready to migrate before they return in March, sometimes flying upto 18 hours non-stop to get back home where its journey started a year ago.

The illustrations and content is marvelous and once again, I am enamored by artists able to capture the magic of light and movement in art. (Sample pic inserted above to get a feel of the beautiful imagery in the book)

Hovering 🚁 & Pondering 💭

The world as I see it, can be wondrous at times, and full of traffic jams at others. One such glorious day when the clouds were scudding and meandering in turns with the weight of moisture, I sat gloomily in the car, wanting more than ever to join the clouds above. The signals had all been acting up and I waited as cars patiently stopped and proceeded at a pace that is entirely unsuited for modern life. There were at least ‘n’ slack messages, ‘m’ voicemails and the gods-knew how many emails that had come up in that time for all the inhabitants in their little cars during this time. I mused, and let out a satisfied laugh that this is life. It is meant to have ponderous moments of quiet. 

I have often wondered about the ways in which we choose to traverse physical spaces and ensure our presence. In the magical world of Harry Potter, people apparate and disapparate, materialize with floo powder out of chimneys, fly on broom sticks, charm motorcycles and cars to fly, send messages via owls, patronus charms and so much more. The world of science fiction loves wormholes and time tesseracts. Any solutions that don’t come up with the limitations of the speed of light, against the physical ache of distances to traverse. 

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While we we may be faster that we ever were before, the human imagination is still active and thriving to do more. The stars and galaxies await, do they not? The next thrilling step in our glorious adventures forward?  

In our world, I looked around, what problems would arise if we were all to lift off into the air. The same as it would be on the roads for sure, if thousands of cars took to the air at the same time. Not to mention the hovering charms required to keep them hovering in mid-air traffic signals. A little dragonfly is capable of such magnificence! Feats as hovering that we find ourselves thinking about obsessively. 

The idle mind harked back to the section on how birds evolved for hovering in the Flights of Fancy book by Richard Dawkins. Size being against them, they still managed a variety of ways in which to achieve it – whether it was in the way their wings spread out to absorb the thrust from the winds, or reverse flapping to counter the surge of propulsion, it was obviously one of the evolutionary hacks that spurred life on earth (birds as nectar seekers and life spreaders).

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“Forward propulsion by wings is achieved by a kind of rowing through the air. Hummingbirds go to the extreme of a rapidly buzzing (humming), sculling movement, in which the wing is turned almost upside down during the upstroke. The wing works almost as efficiently on the upstroke as the downstroke, and it enables hummingbirds to hover like a helicopter and fly backwards, sideways and even occasionally upside down. Hovering was an important evolutionary discovery for birds. Previously, insects had a monopoly in nectar because they could perch on flowers. Birds were too heavy until they finally invented hovering.”

A couple of days later, as we went walking around the green hills with the waxing moon on one side, the setting sun on the other, lupines, golden poppies and cranes glowing in this unique combination of light and moisture in the air, I found a hawk hovering. I stood mesmerized by all things light and wonderful. The shadows cast by the hovering bird, the winds changing speed, and the birds’s intuitive adjustment to its environmental influxes. 

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‘Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.’ – Carl Sagan 

A low rumbling in the distance indicated a flight coming into land at a nearby airport, and the spell was broken. I did not want to apparate out- I wanted to amble back towards reality.

The Infinite in Us

This week-end was extremely well suited for cozy pursuits. 

Rain slashed down, our surrounding hills sported snow caps and we proudly reveled in the rare beauty of green hills, snow capped peaks, gushing rivers, brimming lakes, rains that sometimes lashed down, other times, lulled and drizzled. In fact, one afternoon, we saw the sun light illuminate the clouds in so many different ways: there weren’t words to describe the crepuscular wonders anymore. The infinite ways in which watery sun and waxing moon can dazzle white, gray and thunderous clouds, is entertaining enough. 

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But as evening crept in, we found ourselves wondering whether a cozy family movie night might do the trick instead. 

So, we settled down on both week-end nights to watch two movies that we knew would fascinate the son:

∞ The man who knew infinity – a movie about Ramanujan Srinivasan, the mathematics prodigy. Thomas Hardy , a mathematician at Cambridge who helped Ramanujan publish his works. Ramanujan eventually was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. The movie, while it had its good moments also felt oddly fragmented in parts. 

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The life of Ramanujan for a person of Indian origin is fairly well known. The poor man who lost his health and vigor to tuberculosis and died at the age of 32 leaving a younger wife behind is tragic.

It is also unnerving to see how hard belonging is. Our immigrant experience is so vastly different from the one Ramanujan braved a century ago. Yet, some of the questions remain: Do we belong to a geography? A culture? Or with like-minded human-beings?

Human kind’s need for social connections is a fascinating aspect (introverts, extroverts, families, friends, colleagues, the importance of whimsy, the energy of youth, and the wisdom of those wiser – every aspect seems to play a part in the worlds we construct around us)

None of this seems easy, and in that struggle lies the beauty of messy human lives.

🚀 Hidden Figures – the movie depicting the lives of 3 African American women who worked at NASA and were stalwarts in their respective fields. 

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As we sat watching the movies, there were places where we stopped to thank the stars that things seem to have improved for the better. Progress is never easy and the ones who braved the struggles placed in their path with resilience, hard work and good humor, are truly inspirational. The movie was also a good reminder of the human spirit and its capacity for the impossible. With computers having far less than the computing powers in our cell-phones, humankind was able to leave Earth’s atmosphere, orbit the planet, land on the moon and launch space vehicles to explore the solar system. 

The movies were good reminders of a philosophy that is often not given as much importance as other aspects of philosophy: the pursuit of happiness via the pursuit of knowledge is tough, but endlessly rewarding. The truths we come to understand, the worlds we get to unravel are all gifts that keep on giving. 

2022 Reading

It is that time of year when we

  1. cannot believe another year has gone by and
  2. simultaneously ponder on what a long year it was.

The quixotic nature of time – once again making a fool of us all.

It is also the time I look back fondly on the books that lit up my inner world, and take a moment or two to jot down all the notable titles, read other people’s lists, and make jolly to-read lists for the coming year, and so much more.

I thought I was scatter-brained, had a lot going on, and therefore, my reading took a hit. But it seemed to be the other way round. Reading, once again seemed to have worked its magic in helping me through 2022.

Non-Fiction

There were quite a few books in this genre. Only mentioning the ones that stood out in my mind for various reasons. (Not because of the content alone, but also time of year when it seemed to have been relevant, how much I managed to absorb of new ideas etc)

Fiction

  • The Alice Network – Kate Quinn (this one is a fictional account of real life events of female spies who used to smuggle messages across borders at considerable peril to themselves.) The daughter told me that Audrey Hepburn’s (Of Roman Holiday fame) was  also well known for her efforts during this period when she held underground ballet concerts and so on to help people during the miserable times of the Second World War, and many times risked being caught and hoping to get off easily because of her diminutive stature and size.
  • Women of Troy – Pat Barker
  • A Blizzard of Polar Bears – Alice Henderson (A good racing thriller for airport reading) 
  • Akimbo and the Elephant – Alexander McCall Smith 
  • The Blue Book of Nebo – Manon Steffan Ros (What happens after a nuclear war – I am sure many of us have pondered what the aftermath of an apolcalypse would be like. This book that does just that.)
  • Young Mozart – William Augel (hilarious! )
  • Plus my standard dose of R K Narayan, Miss Read & P G Wodehouse–  whose wise and irreverent view of the world, I find refreshing and a regular tonic to life. 

Science Fiction:

  • Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
  • Daughter of the Deep – Rick Riordan
  • Bewilderment – Richard Powers (This is one of the best books I’ve read – highly recommended. Stays with you for a long time)

Special Children’s Books:

Poetry:

How can there be no magic in the list?

Please share your reads with me. Would love to get started on my reading list for 2023.

The Gingko’s Wisdom

The gingko trees have all spoken to each other, and the lovely trees have shaken off their golden robes all at once. I passed the stark trees on my daily walk and stopped suddenly. I remember stopping to admire the fresh green gingko leaves as the year started out. 

One year. 

One paradoxical year.

One tumultuous year.

One <Please-fill-in-the-blanks> year.

Yet, the gingko trees went on as before. They grew leaves, they displayed them in their glorious green, and their resplendent golden yellows, till they went back to being stark stumps again. 

Another year. 

Another year of the unexpected?

Another year of surprises?

Another <Please-fill-in-the-blanks> year.

As I pulled the husband along on a cold, rainy walk, I told him that the same time last year when we stopped to consider the bare branches of the gingko tree, we had no idea what the year would bring. The same way that we don’t know what the year ahead would bring. I shuddered a little (I’d like to think it was the freezing winds of the storm). The young gingko nearby withstood the winds without a tremor.

“Well…”, I said, donning my philosophical face. “Whatever the new year brings, there is comfort in the fact that there is a constancy in nature. The gingko tree’s seasons.”

“Pesu (talk!)!” Said the husband and laughed looking at my sincere face. I joined him. It is so easy to say these things.  Why is it then so hard to practice?

Maybe we need the tree’s lessons to be more than philosophical. A little more neurological: Belonging with Trees.

Read also: The night of the Gingko : By Oliver Sacks in the New Yorker magazine.

The Origin of Dreams

It was a mild day in Jaipur. This time of year means one can walk among the structures of the Jantar Mantar without being fried to a crisp. The guide was explaining the scientific relevance of the structures in front of us. He explained how the latitude and longitudes were determined by the astronomers of centuries ago. As we stood there calculating the angle of the sun and subtracting it from the Indian Standard Time and so on, I missed the son. This is a place that would have interested him enormously – his unswerving curiosity and awe about the cosmos and the nature of time notwithstanding, it was also a propitious time for such musings. 

Earlier that day, I had cheered along with him as we sat on opposite sides of the world and watching the Artemis 1 launch and take off to the moon. Every time the launch had been delayed, he had had a small pang of disappointment. But this time, his eyes shone: “Amma, even if you have a meeting, please just make sure that you watch it. It will be at …”, and he went ahead and calculated the local time for me. Accordingly, I sat in my room watching the launch and cheering with the fellow.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-share-artemis-i-update-with-orion-at-farthest-point-from-earth

Image credit: Bill Ingalls: Image Source: https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/artemis-i-launch-0.html

His eyes shone, triumphant as he caught the excitement of the launch with periodic updates from NASA. I told him that I was going to a place that he would really like later that day and he asked me to enjoy it on his behalf. An astronomical marvel from centuries ago. A place where astronomers had mapped the skies with accuracy and skill. 

As I stood there watching the different structures and listening to our guide as he explained how each worked, I also derived small pleasures in seeing that his own narratives often confused astrology and astronomy. (Humans have always been wracked by problems: If, along the way, they tried to understand the sources of their trials and tribulations as something beyond them, who could blame them? ) Nevertheless, it was humbling to see how the astronomers of centuries ago had managed to get their recordings and data accurate to such a high degree. 

That rocket launch of a few hours ago was a cumulative building of dreams and imagining worlds beyond what is known to us. Dreams that started with the ancient homosapiens wondrously mapping the skies, and millennia of human evolutionary interest in the heavens. 

Carl Sagan quote :

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”

– Carl Sagan

How many such dreams are being hatched as we speak? I read a children’s book: Ara, The Dream Innovator – By Komal Singh, that tried to capture the importance of Dreams. It was business-oriented even for a children’s book. The startup language of funding and patents and all the rest of it somehow did not quite capture the magic of dreams, but it was a good book nevertheless. 

We do not know how many dreams are being hatched today that have the potential of being realized in the near or far future. So, I am all for going to places that nurture these fantastical sojourns into our dream consciousness.

To infinity and beyond!

The Spider’s Vision

The son and I had embarked on a lovely bike ride. The autumnal equinox means that the sun sets earlier and earlier in the day.  It was still early enough in the evening and we biked along amicably talking of this and that. 

When we finally decided to take a short break by a lake, the son climbed a nearby tree, while I sat myself on a park bench. All was tranquil. The pelicans went about their ballet dance of coordinated fishing in the distance, the hawks and turkey vultures circled high above in the skies. Out in the distance, a dog ran on the shore chasing the birds and squirrels. Overhead, hundreds of ravens were flying and making their way home. 

It was in this world that I called out to the son and pointed out a visionary at work. We sat side-by-side in awe. For it was obvious, from conception to creation this would’ve daunted most competent engineers to undertake a project of this size alone, and here was this lone spider doing so : competently, peacefully and apparently with engagement.

In spider terms, it was the equivalent of building a bridge across a bay. From one tree to the next on the other side of the looming lagoon, a large suspension thread held the intricate web forming in the middle. How strong must the thread have been to sustain and hold the weight of the structure in the middle? Not to mention its prey.

When finally the spell was broken, the sun had set further and the spiders web was now bathed in a golden light. In those few moments of magic where nothing but weaving and creating was happening overhead, the earth around had changed its hue. From a bright blue sky, the pinks and oranges were thrown with abandon. Pretty soon, it would be getting ready to cloak itself in the inky blues of the night. 

The son and I got up – a sense of reverence and humility restored in our proud human spirits of achievement. Here was a lone spider, envisioning a humongous structure, creating a web of art and material integrity to withstand prey probably three times its own weight and going about it in a symmetric and beautiful light of the setting sun. What’s more? It was a design that was biodegradable and all the earth could be covered in this soft, silky web with nothing the worse.

Whether as materials for clothing, or structural integrity such as design of bridges, or the bio degradation of our products, a spider’s web is an inspiration for biomimicry based designs.

Biologically inspired materials could revolutionize materials science. People looking at spider silk and abalone shells are looking for new ways to make materials better, cheaper, and with less toxic byproducts. 

Janine Benyus, Biomimicry

Sometimes, a bike ride is all that is required for perspective to take its throne. 

Poetry

“How was your morning Amma?” said the son looking solicitous. He has taken to asking me this question every now and then knowing that I have been missing the companionship of the past few months. (The daughter went to college, the parents left for home, the niece left for her college, and what was a swirling whirlwind of wonderful social interactions suddenly quietened down to a buzz. I do enjoy solitude, but the suddenness of it took me by surprise )

That week-end morning, I answered with zest.

“Good kanna. I listened to galaxies, and then went rock climbing to solve a few problems. Then, I closed my eyes and went to some wild, wild places to hobnob with some wild, wild things. “

“Right!”, he said rolling his eyes just like his teenaged sister taught him. “So you read a couple of children’s books!” 

“Yep! Which ones did you like best?”

I looked at the cosmophile and gave him my truthful answer.

“Listening to the Stars – the life and story of Jocelyn Bell Burner who was credited with discovering the first 3 neutron  stars, but denied the Nobel Prize for the discovery. They gave it to her male colleagues instead.Ugh!”

“Yes..I read that book too. It was awesome! I wish she won the Nobel Prize too.”

We then shared a moment or two about the unfairness of it all. Then to lighten things up, I said, “But I also realized that the fragile tendrils of love tethering us to Earthly existence are very strong!”

“Ugh! Cheesy! Which book is that?”

“Forgotten poems of Pablo Neruda.” I said grinning.

He chuckled as he walked away. “Poems by Pablo Neruda!”

“You can’t just be an astronaut – you also have to have poetry in your heart so you can share it with the cosmos my man! Remember how folks would’ve liked that from Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin?”

“And music too. Remember you might to have to interpret whale song for other lifeforms! Our life as a kaleidoscope!” I said with a grand gesture of the world with my hands.

“Yes..yes! Well – good to hear you all chirpy. Have fun ma!”

A Question of Time

The past week has been an interesting one in many ways. Emotions aside, what this meant in practical terms was that the nourish-n-cherish household ran on a clock. 

The map says it takes 45 minutes at peak traffic, but surprise of surprises, it took 62 minutes, neatly shaving off the buffer we had baked in for grabbing a snack. 

At 10:45, we would have to be there at Y parking garage so that we could get to X building at 11:00.

At 4:45, the flight leaves from Airport Here. That means, the time at Airport There would be x-12.5, but there is x+7.5 stop-over in between.

By pure chance during this time of frenzy, I had with me a slim book, Longitude – The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dave Sobel.

It made for an interesting read on how we managed to get time down to a science. Dava Sobel creates an excellent narrative around the problem of Time and Maritime navigation.

“Time is to clock as mind is to brain. The clock or watch somehow contains the time. And yet time refuses to be bottled up like a genie stuffed in a lamp. Whether it flows as sand or turns on wheels within wheels, time escapes irretrievably, while we watch. Even when the bulbs of the hourglass shatter, when darkness withholds the shadow from the sundial, when the mainspring winds down so far that the clock hands hold still as death, time itself keeps on.”

Longitude by Dave Sobel 

While many astronomers tried to solve the mystery of keeping time using the astronomical events in the sky such as mapping Jupiter’s moons and their eclipses etc, one man, John Harrison set about solving the problem mechanically with a superior clock design. Clocks of the fifteenth and sixteenth century lost time because their pendulums lost their swing with the swaying of the ships, the internal mechanics rusted with the moisture at sea, and numerous other problems.

Reading about Time and how difficult it must have been to measure, has always fascinated the son & myself.

I suppose Time has become such a cornerstone of our existence that it makes for a refreshing read to hark back to the times when time was an indicator and not as much of a martinet as it is in our over-scheduled lives today.

I was reading Mrs Pringle of Fairacre by Miss Read – every time when life demands a slowing down and it is physically hard to do so, a dip into the lovely village green of Thrush Green or Fairacre does the trick. In the Fairacre books, Mrs  Pringle is the competent school cleaner who is also a bit of a virago. Her scatter-brained niece Minnie Pringle is often featured – incompetent and maddening as she is, she helps(or hinders) Miss Read out now and then. In this snippet, Miss Read learns that Minnie Pringle, a mother of 3 and stepmother to 5 young children, never really learnt to look at the clock and read the time.

Mrs Pringle of Fairacre: About Minnie Pringle 

I had not really taken in the fact that she could not tell the time

‘Well, I never sort of mastered the clock”, she said vaguely, implying that were a great many other things which she had mastered in her time.

‘But how do you manage?’ I enquired, genuinely interested.

“I looks out for the Caxley’, she replied. ‘It gets to the church about the hour.’ (The Caxley is the local bus)

‘But not every hour.” I pointed out.

‘Yes…but there is also the church bell.’

‘It still seems rather hit and miss,’ I said.

Mrs Pringle – By Miss Read

When I read the above snippet, I threw my head back and laughed. Almost subconsciously, I glanced at the various apps on my smartphone to remind me about the day : there were calendars synced with my meeting schedules, alarms to remind me of certain events and classes for the children, timers to help the rice cooker turn itself off, the world clock app to let me know when it is okay to call my friends in the different corners of the globe. 

Maybe John Harrison (The man who came up with the design of a clock that could hold time during maritime vagaries such as storms and tidal waves without rusting or losing momentum in the sixteenth century) did not quite anticipate the extent to which the world would adhere to Time, but it is refreshing to think of a few people who are not ruled by the ticking of the clock.

Maybe we should have Do-Nothing Days in which neither the phones, nor the passing of time intrude. It will be a refreshing change for sure.

Note: The obsession with Time is called Chronomania and those who live in perpetual fear of time ticking, time passing have Chronophobia.

Feeling Blue?

Fascination with the color blue I realized on picking up the books, BLUE – In search of Nature’s Rarest Color – Kai Kupferschmidt, is not a nourish-n-cherish household trait, but a universal one, and what a lovely revelation that was. 

Blue – In Search of Nature’s Rarest Color – By Kai Kupferschmidt

There are blues that are particularly attractive in clothing. For instance there was a deep sea blue nickname M S Blue, for the famed singer, M S Subbulakshmi first stylishly wore saris win that rich blue to concerts. Then there was the copper sulphate blue, turquoise blue, peacock blue, sky blue and navy blue.

I understand the yearning to write about the color blue. Who hasn’t been uplifted by the blue waters of a lake or ocean, or the sight of the blue skies first thing in the morning? Blue seems to assure us that we are here. We Belong on Earth – on this Pale Blue Dot.

Nevertheless, the book has many interesting aspects to the color blue. Starting from ceramics to precious stones and textile colors, the color blue has always enamored artists and patrons alike.

I found myself gleefully reading about the color, YinMn (pronounced yin-min) blue created by Dr Mas Subramanian that was later honored by having a color of its own created by Crayola the Crayon company.  Made from Yttrium, Indium and Manganese, the color created a blue wave in the world of colors.

The chemical formula of YInMn Blue is YIn1-xMnxO3.

You can read about its serendipitous discovery here: https://chemistry.oregonstate.edu/content/story-yinmn-blue

YinMn or Oregon Blue – Image from Wikipedia link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YInMn_Blue

As I sat watching the son in his swim class, I felt a forced sense of ease settle upon me when I opened the book to read. The swimming pool was tiled with light blue tiles, the white lighting overhead made it a calm enough locale even though there were about a hundred people in the pool area. Waters do have a calming influence if you let it. This summer, we have been swimming a little so we could appreciate the wonders of the underwater 🗺 world 🌎 in the Pacific Ocean. Closing my eyes, I can still visualize the vibrant school of fish and the large turtle in the blue waters. 

The Sea Turtle near Kauai, Hawaii

I always imagined the creatures of the ocean having an even higher frequency range of light perception than humans. So I envisioned them swimming and living in a brilliant world of coral reefs and kelp forests with the myriad shades of blue contributing to its beauty. Imagine my disappointment then that the book while explaining the cones that are present in our eyes to detect color indicate that whales, seals and many denizens of our blue seas cannot perceive the color blue and may well see the teeming coral reefs as grey on grey. 

Image from the book as given on the Amazon page

That made me feel blue – I am not going to deny that. (Though I must admit the color blue has never made me feel blue, so I wonder where the expression comes from.)

Art work by Daughter

This book has re-awakened a dream of two science-based books that I have been meaning to write for children.  One on colors and another on how different creatures perceive our world. 

When can I become a mermaid?

To explore the forests of kelp

Or a butterfly

Or a blue jay or a hummingbird

So I can see the gardens of life abound through their wondrous roving eyes.