Understanding our Earth while we march towards conquering Nature

Pangaea and its break

In another 250 million years almost all continents of the world except Australia and Antarctica will come together. The Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean will become a lake, a bigger lake than our Chilka Lake. Like East Coast Road we can have a circular road that can make us travel around this Chilka Ocean, we can even name it in advance.

But in immediate future let us have a look at the picture of hotspots of the world. It becomes clear that our Himalayas and beyond are extremely vulnerable regions. A day when it becomes sea will not be a dream. It must be recalled that Nepalese call Himalayas as sagarmatha, which means Mother of seas. Once it was sea and in future it will be sea again. May be millions of years away, but it is bound to happen. India will be again Island nation. Once it remained so hence in Tamil it was called Navalantheevu in Pingala Nigandu, the Tamil thesaurus written hundreds of years ago.

Not all plate movements   lead to collision. Three types of movement are recognized at the boundaries between plates namely convergent, divergent and transform. At the divergent boundaries new crust is formed when lava flows out pushing the plates away from each other. Convergent boundaries on the other hand lead to plate destruction as one plates sub ducts under another. The typical convergent plate boundary is between Indo-Burma plates where Indian plate moving at a rate of 5cm a year relative to the Burma plate came together collided and Indian plate sub ducted under the Burma plate. As a result you will see Bay of Bengal shrinking now but in future when whole of Burma becomes sea we will have wider sea.In addition to the classification based on the nature of plate interaction at the boundaries, plate tectonics is also built on the premise that there are two types continental and oceanic plates.

And the plate interaction could thus be continental-continental convergence, oceanic-continental convergence, and finally oceanic-oceanic convergence. The subject is an ocean but here we have known few drops.

Well understanding our Earth and its inherent dangers too is need of the hour while we march towards conquering Nature.

 Conclusion

Nowadays we have science reaching all homes by television channels. Years before weather forecasts by All India Radio stations would be mocked at. But the visuals now presented in television screens reaches every mind and now every one is alert to weather forecasts. Earthquakes some think are not a regular phenomenon and they did not bother about it. It is not so. In some part of our Earth quakes are occurring everyday but since they are in lesser Richter scale it does not cause alarm. We must know that quakes occur in the plate boundaries and it travels along geo-fracture or fault zones. United States Geological Survey has a mailing facility. If you enroll your email within seconds of earthquakes happening anywhere in the world you get an alert. I would urge students, housewives and elders to bid adieu to tele-serials and to spare time to watch National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel and History Channels. While science reaches our homes we are not availing knowledge at our doorstep. It is high time in national languages these channels are dubbed and knowledge is taken to the common man. Instead of using computer and Internet for satiating sex urges let our youth use it to empower them with knowledge. A day is not far off when the poorest farmer from Kalahandi or a Tribal from Malkangiri or a Student from Balasore goes before a computer to connect internet to his brains and download all education he or she needs. Instead of school and colleges from our Internet café’s even illiterate can become literate. Let us make our nation the vehicle for the progress of mankind and its knowledge based society.

Speech delivered by N.Nandhivarman , a politician heading Dravida Peravai.

[Paper presented at the National Seminar on the Concept of Scientific Temper organized by True Rationalistic Union of Samaj-seva Trainers (TRUST) led by Nihar Acharya at Jayadev Bhavan Bhubaneswar on 18 th December 2005] concluded.