Jantar Mantar: Stars, Not Seuss

Keywords: Jantar Mantar, India, Observatory

The Story: When I first saw footage of these maze-like Dr. Seuss-ian stair cases, I got pretty fired up. First of all, I had never seen or heard of them before. Secondly, they look so mysterious and random! The stairs in this photo are part of the ancient Jantar Mantars in India - a network of astronomical observatories built in the early 1700's. I have seen two translations of the words Jantar Mantar - "instrument of calculation" or in sanskrit: "magical device" - and I think they both fit. There are 5 of these elaborate mulit-piece masonry, stone and metal observatories in India, all commissioned by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. Among other things, they were used for tracking stars and planets, and predicting eclipse events. They represent the best of midieval science and they are the best observatories of their kind. Large in scale, yet amazingly accurate, the sundial is capable of telling time down to 20 second intervals. These observatories are not very well known or publized despite their history, beauty and grandeur. (Perhaps that is the real mystery.)

See more!
http://www.jantarmantar.org/
http://www.art-and-archaeology.com/india/jaipur/jan1.html
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Jantar_Mantar.html
Check out these amazing panoramas: http://www.jantarmantar.org/JMpanos.htm#

The Suspension is Killing Me

Keywords: Suspension Trauma, Ropes, Hanging

The Story: Literally! "Hanging out" can kill you. Situations that force someone to stay upright without standing are very dangerous. People who use harnesses for recreation, work, rescue, or otherwise - take note! After being upright and sedentary, the blood begins to back up in the legs. This is because the heart can't suck the blood back up from the legs; it needs a bit of help from the one-way valves that are in the leg veins. In turn the one-way valves need muscle contractions to squeeze the blood up. Typically your body has a time honored tradition for occasions when there is not enough blood making it "upstairs", which is fainting. Fainting returns your body to horizontal, and making it easier for your heart to pump blood. If you're stuck upright, fainting doesn't work! Plan B is to pick one of two strategies - bring the thighs up into a sitting position, or get the legs moving (however, once you start moving them, you cannot stop!) Plan C is a slow death as blood pools in your legs instead of circulating to the heart. This process can start in as little as 3 minutes. Next time I have a student on a high hanging rappel, I will certainly keep this in mind. "Can I stop and look at the view" "Yes but kick your legs around!" ...or maybe: "Yes, the view is to die for!"

Additional Reading:
http://www.suspensiontrauma.info/

...post some comments! Don't leave me hanging...

Playing the Higgs Field

Keywords: Higgs Field, Quantum Particles, Mass

The Story: I quite enjoy having some mass, now that I know the alternative: to exist as a collection of waves travelling at the speed of light. (Talk about boring! Ak!) When scientists smash up atoms into smaller and smaller pieces, the smallest possible pieces - quantum particles - are supposed to exist without mass. Instead they were found to have relatively tremendous mass. In 1964 Peter Higgs stepped up to solve this important riddle - why do particles have mass? Higgs essentially back-calculated how much of a force, kind of an invisible, ever-reaching thick soup, it would take to slow down quantum particles enough to give them mass. This was named the Higgs Field, and it comes out to be 1 trillion tons per cubic centimeter. Now, before you congratulate your own strength, there is an unknown ad hoc negative field (a.k.a the "cosmological constant") that cancels out most of this force. Why? Because if there weren't, the universe would be expanding exponentially faster than it is right now. Lucky for us, there's just enough positive energy (the Higgs Field) to give us a little mass, and just enough cancelling negative energy (the cosmological constant) to keep the universe from wrecklessly flying apart. Between the two forces, there is only the thinnest margin that makes us possible. Phew.

See for yourself:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5601491934104934085&q=Atoms+to+X-rays

Profess your love for the Higgs Field in comments.