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SPEAKING OF SCIENCE

— Photo: AFP

Lonely planet: What is special about Earth that has made life possible?

It has challenged over 40 state-based community science groups across the country to come out with projects and programmes, engaging school-age children.

It is hoped that these activities will help them appreciate and respect Mother Earth — her special features which on one hand support and sustain life, and on the other its increasing fragility due to human and non-human activities.

I had the pleasure of interacting with these community science activists. When asked about what can be done to provoke the youngster to think about some of the special features and facts of Planet Earth, I thought asking them a dozen set of questions would be of interest.

It is the natural thing for youngsters to imagine things. Provoking them to imagine and do ‘thought experiments’ will thus be an appropriate and enjoyable game. It would be different from doing the routine teacher-suggested projects and model building. So, here is the set of twelve theme questions.

1. Of all celestial bodies in space, Earth seems to be the only one where living beings exist. We are thus on the ‘lonely planet.’ Are we? What is special about Earth that has made life possible?

Are there other planets, moons where life exists? How do we contact them if we wish to? By what means and in which language, so that our message is a signal, not just noise, that ‘they’ can make sense out of?

Such questions force one to use the method and laws of science that the youngster has learnt in school, and go further, immerse him/her in wonder and think ‘out of the box.’

They make him/her think about the fact that the earth is the only place for us to live and therefore respect, cherish and protect Mother Earth. Some of these have no definite answers. They are not in the syllabus. Textbooks or the Internet do not provide the answers but help you get started.

2. We humans are but one species of life on earth. There are millions of other species — microbes, insects, plants, and animals. How many species are there in all — a million, 10 million, a billion? How do we estimate this? Is there a final total number?

3. Why are they all called ‘organic?’ Realise that this word is used specially for molecules, materials and their assemblies (particularly living beings) made with carbon as the backbone, primarily of carbon.

What has made carbon, which is but one of over 100 elements of the periodic table, so unique? Are life forms possible, built primarily of any other elements?

4. Of the millions of life forms on earth, which is/are more important than others? Why? Some of them like the dinosaurs and the dodo bird are gone forever from earth.

Some more, like tigers or whales, will soon vanish, thanks to us humans. Even if they cause us harm, shall we eliminate them? What use are tigers, snakes or scorpions? What will happen if they disappear?

5. Should we protect all life? Even poison plants, snakes, deadly spiders, evil people?

6. Why are palm trees found only in tropics, and near the coast?

Why are kangaroos seen only in Australia, jaguars in South America, chimpanzees in Africa, polar bears in the Arctic, penguins near the Antarctic, or mangroves in certain coastal areas?

7. What are ecosystems? Tamil Nadu has 5 — Mullai, Marutam, Palai, Solai, Karai. How many ecosystems are there in your state? In India?

8. Do we need all these ecosystems? Why not make them all uniform, to suit our needs and likes? Do we protect each of them? How?

9. We hear a lot about climate change. Has this always happened? Is it a natural cycle? Have we affected and modified climate? What are the results of such climate change?

Why would the sea level rise? By how much? If it does, what will happen to islands and countries? Which countries in our region would suffer most? Will they exist as sea level keeps on rising?

10. Given this, how do we slow down such climate change? How do we protect these countries and people? How do we protect Mother Earth when a huge meteor or comet is on a collision course with it?

11. Mother Earth has allowed the birth of millions of life forms and has nourished each of them in her womb, and each in her own way. Thanks to her, and our ways of life, we humans have exploded in numbers.

When your grandparents were born, we were only 30 crore people in India, and 160 crore people on the whole of earth. Today, we are over 110 crore people in India are 650 crore on earth. How many people can Mother Earth hold? What natural resources will we need? What is the earth’s carrying capacity?

12. All people are ‘organic’, use the same ways to be born, eat, grow, make babies, live and die. We look different, eat different things, follow different customs, and think different thoughts.

But the basic chemistry of life, our biology and its mechanism, the ‘operating system’ of our bodies, our ‘hard disk,’ also called our genomes or DNA content and sequence, are remarkably the same.

Castes, communities, countries, tribes and races are not based on our biology or DNA contact. They are a product of the ‘dreary desert sand of dead habit.’ Why then do we discriminate, think one group is superior to another? Is that not wrong?

These then are the 12 points to ponder. They cannot all be posed at one time. Each of them needs to be separately asked and discussed with groups of youngsters, by engaging them in a dialogue.

Language is not important, models do not matter, let each of us start the dialogue, much in the tradition of the Upanishads. We would be surprised, hopefully astonished once in a while, by the reaction and the answers. Happy dialogue!

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