Earth Science

Summary

Highlights

• Dr. Varshney's overview of Earth's 4.5 billion-year history was mind-blowing 🤯.
• The discussion on the Cambrian explosion and tectonics was fascinating 🌋.
• Questions from participants about future life adaptability made a compelling Q&A session 🤔.

Key Takeaways

• Earth Science sessions are crucial for understanding the planet's processes 🌍.
• Dr. SK Varshney provided insights on Earth's unique features and its ability to support life 🤓.
• Participants learned about Earth’s history, including the Cambrian explosion and plate tectonics 📜.
• Discussions on global challenges like pollution and future adaptability were highlighted 🔍.
• Engaging Q&A sparked curiosity about extraterrestrial life and human survival in altered environments 🛸.

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction The introduction welcomes participants to the second session of the VSSF Spot virtual classrooms. It reiterates the importance of returning participants and mentions a review of housekeeping rules for the session.
• 01:00 - 07:00: Earth Science Overview The first session emphasizes the importance of active participation and attentiveness, as questions from this session may appear in the final exam. It reminds participants to refrain from posting repetitive messages in the chat and encourages queries to be relevant to the discussion.
• 07:00 - 11:00: Keynote Speaker Introduction The chapter introduces the keynote speaker, setting the stage for a session on Earth Science, emphasizing its relevance and impact on daily life. The introduction outlines the scope of Earth Science, highlighting it as the study of Earth's structure, properties, processes, and its long history spanning over four and a half billion years.
• 11:00 - 18:30: Discussion on Planet Earth This chapter, titled 'Discussion on Planet Earth,' emphasizes the importance of understanding biotic evolution and various natural phenomena to sustain life. It highlights the challenges posed by an expanding world population which demands more resources, faces natural hazards, and increases pollution. The chapter stresses the necessity for scientific understanding of how the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere interact to support our existence.
• 18:30 - 28:00: Climate and Environmental Changes The chapter 'Climate and Environmental Changes' discusses the crucial relationship between the biosphere and various environmental factors at the Earth's surface. It highlights the role of earth scientists in enhancing society's ability to manage these interactions. Their understanding of the Earth's crust's structure and chemical composition is essential for locating resources, thereby sustaining and improving quality of life.
• 28:00 - 48:00: Question and Answer Session The chapter, titled 'Question and Answer Session,' discusses the importance of understanding the forces within the Earth's crust and the natural surface processes. This knowledge is vital for anticipating natural disasters such as volcanoes and earthquakes. Additionally, a deep understanding of geologic environments can help address issues related to damaging mining practices and improper waste disposal. A comprehensive understanding of earth sciences equips us to manage and mitigate environmental challenges effectively.
• 48:00 - 50:00: Conclusion and Closing Remarks The transcript provides a brief introduction to the keynote speaker, Dr. SK Varshney, who is noted as a scientist and head of the Department of Science and Technology in the Government of India. The context suggests a focus on the balance between technological advancements and environmental care.

Earth Science Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 to our spot good evening to all our spot qualifiers welcome to your second session of the vssf spot virtual classrooms we are so glad to have you back with us today before we proceed the housekeeping rules which i ran through even during our
• 00:30 - 01:00 first session kindly note that questions from this session could be part of your spot final exam all right so ensure that you are actively participating and listening and reflecting on whatever is being presented during our session today and a humble request to refrain from posting the same messages or the same queries in the chat box kindly ensure that every query that you post in the chat box is related and relevant to
• 01:00 - 01:30 our topic at hand so that our speaker would be able to answer it all right and as always i hope you enjoy our session today we'll move into the introduction our topic for today is entitled earth science its relevance and impact in daily life now earth science is i'm sure you all know it is the study of the earth's structure properties processes um and four and a half billion years of
• 01:30 - 02:00 biotic evolution now understanding these phenomena is essential to maintenance of life on the planet the expanding world population demands more resources it faces an increasing loss from natural hazards and releases more pollutants to the air water and land so sustaining our existence requires scientific understanding of the natural materials and processes linking the geosphere hydrosphere atmosphere and
• 02:00 - 02:30 biosphere life prospers or fails at the surface of the earth where these environments interact now the knowledge gained and the services provided by earth scientists help us as a society to cope with its environment in many many ways a scientist's knowledge of the structure chemical composition of the earth's crust would help us locate resources that sustain and advance our quality of
• 02:30 - 03:00 life understanding the forces in the crust and the natural processes on the surface would allow us to anticipate natural disasters such as volcanoes or earthquakes and geo geologic environments such as damaging mining practices or improper waste disposal to name a few so of comprehensive perception of our earth sciences will help us better deal with our environment to take
• 03:00 - 03:30 better care of it so that we benefit and we don't harm our earth as a result of all our technological advancements based on this i would like to introduce our keynote speaker for today dr sk varshney who is the scientist and head of the department of science and technology government of india i would quickly like to run you through some of the very very accomplished
• 03:30 - 04:00 i'm sorry is my voice breaking hello oh it's quiet it's fine please carry on i'm sorry i think my connection was unstable am i audible now yes you are yes okay all right thank you sir thank you suhassani yes um so like i was saying i'd like to
• 04:00 - 04:30 introduce you all to our keynote speaker for today dr sk varshney who is a scientist and head department of science and technology government of india mr varshney is a scientific officer with the government of india who works with the ministry or department of science and technology he has been working with the department since 1990 facilitating international scientific cooperation of india from the department with its bilateral
• 04:30 - 05:00 multilateral and regional scientific partners he has worked as a counselor with the embassy of india in moscow to facilitate bilateral scientific cooperation between india and russia during april 2008 to june 2011. he has also been contributing to the promotion of international scientific cooperation as well as scientific industrial cooperation he completed his msc in geology in 1984 from aligarh muslim university and was
• 05:00 - 05:30 awarded the university medal for obtaining the first position he also pursued a doctoral research at the university of delhi between the years 1985 to 1990 on himalayan reverse systems sedimentation diagnetic and tectonic modifications he qualified for the ugc net in 1985 for the junior research fellowship and lectureship he was also awarded the dr d n wardea research fellowship in 1986 for his
• 05:30 - 06:00 research on the himalayan geology he is also a life fellow of the geological society of india in bangalore the nepal geological society kathmandu and member of the international association of sedimentologists at oxford apart from all of this he also has numerous certifications to his credit and he has also been a lecturer at shaitra university in 1990 so it's an absolute privilege to have you spend time with us today i hand over the session to you
• 06:00 - 06:30 thank you so much for joining us thank you very much for the introduction and for the invitation and for the interaction with my young friends and congratulations to all of you for a qualified sport round one so it is already a kind of achievement that you have been filtered and you have come to this stage so if you can unshare your screen then i can probably share my screen
• 06:30 - 07:00 yeah thank you very much today we are going to discuss about this planet earth and how it could be what it holds for us and how we could see various processes that are taking place and how it goes on and then in the first part we will discuss about the processes and in the second part we will discuss
• 07:00 - 07:30 about some of the uh beautiful landscape we could see on the earth surface i think all of you know this particular picture i need not to elaborate upon that we are part of the solar system headed by sun we are number three in terms of distance from the sun we are the solid planet
• 07:30 - 08:00 one of the solid planets and the uniqueness which we bring is that we are the only known planet to sustain life now when i say life it does not mean that only you and me only human being it means animals it means fishes it means reptiles it means insects it means plants all trees
• 08:00 - 08:30 shrubs halves any kind of plants so in any form life is possible at least so far we know that this is the only place on the in our solar system to have light now is there life outside our solar system uh of course we have been discussing that if there is life outside our planet in our own solar system and
• 08:30 - 09:00 so far we have got absolutely no clue of course some of the planets have got water on their surface which is one of the vital factor in sustaining life even on earth we are thankful to the presence of water which makes life possible and if i could say uh that life originates near the water source or in the water
• 09:00 - 09:30 that would not be very uncomfortable saying that but so we require water we require moderate temperature and when i say water it does not mean absolutely the cold water or frozen water but we are looking for liquid water what we see normal room temperature or something like that so we have several conditions on this planet earth which makes life possible so including
• 09:30 - 10:00 liquid water moderate temperature free oxygen in the atmosphere appropriate sunlight now remember that there are two other planets which are much more closer to sun as compared to us but they have very high temperature and they do not have oxygen so the amount of sunlight the some amount of sun heat we get is moderate
• 10:00 - 10:30 and that is why life is possible here and we do not have any toxic substance in our atmosphere of course we are changing it with our day-to-day life and we could discuss it little later and then we do not have any lethal radiation we are protected by ozone layer in our atmosphere so these are several factors which makes earth as a unique planet in the solar
• 10:30 - 11:00 system and as far as life is concerned uh we are wondering if there is life in other galaxies so like we are part of milky way galaxy but is it possible that some other galaxy might have life so still there is no concrete evidence and then in the picture the lower picture i have tried to show you that
• 11:00 - 11:30 how life could have begun on this earth so just to understand how we look like from the surface uh there are three parts uh lithosphere hydrosphere atmosphere i think you might have heard about them lithosphere is the solid part of the earth hydrosphere uh is the water body all around and then atmosphere upper atmosphere what we see on the sky
• 11:30 - 12:00 and these three together create environment which is conducive for the life which we call biosphere so biosphere is not a part of the earth but overall the life system which is supported by earth is called biosphere so first question what we could think about is how is it so that when there is no life
• 12:00 - 12:30 on other planets why earth is unique and why it was signaled out to develop life and when did it happen what is the age of our own earth when did the uh life started how it got complex do we have all these species excuse me sir if i may interrupt yeah yes sir um your slide is still on the first page
• 12:30 - 13:00 oh it's not moving uh no sir now yes now it is now it is okay let me just reduce this part so that you can see more of it would it be possible for you to present it on full screen sir no i was trying that but then you are saying it's not moving do you see this light where did all the water come from yeah yes sir
• 13:00 - 13:30 and is it moving now no so it isn't no that is a problem i'm i'm so sorry but you may have to compromise because i cannot do much but fortunately there are very few slides with more of text which is more of pictures so i think we can alright all right no problem at all yeah so question is uh how did we get life on this uh planet
• 13:30 - 14:00 and why we do not have life so water was the first major factor uh which made it possible that there could be life on this planet so earth is believed to be have formed uh nearly four and a half billion years ago and when it was formed as a result of big bang
• 14:00 - 14:30 it was a dry rocky planet there was no water on this planet and there was no life and then we got several falls of asteroids which were filled with ice now when ice is coming they are coming from cold in older environments and when this ice came to earth because of our moderate temperature
• 14:30 - 15:00 we started getting it warmer and warmer so we had it in the liquid form and once we started having it in liquid form uh it provided a basis for the life to origin remember the life is started in the simplest form like unicellular uh life
• 15:00 - 15:30 so we have lot of uh amoeba and those kind of things which are unicellular but then slowly and slowly it started growing and it became multicellular and then we had uh amphibians or uh aquatic animals peptides and then we have actually complex things uh like vertebrates including all amphibian and existing
• 15:30 - 16:00 initially unicellular multi-cellular invertebrates then we got vertebrates and invertebrates also life started in the sea so equity amphibian and then terrestrial animal came and most of the mammals are much later developments now question is whether uh all these species are constant or are living
• 16:00 - 16:30 i think all of you know that several species have been wiped out from the earth since its origin and the most famous one is dinosaurs so you knew the dinosaur came here on this earth nearly 200 million years ago and disappeared 65 million years ago now it is very interesting that when we are talking about earth we are talking in terms of million and billion like earth was formed
• 16:30 - 17:00 4.5 billion years ago dinosaurs were here 200 million years ago disappeared 65 million years ago so you can imagine that if we have to count human life maybe 100 years then how long it will take how many generation would have taken since we came so of course on this planet we are nearly 10 000 year olds our species
• 17:00 - 17:30 uh 10 000 years old but processes of earth are very very slow and it takes a lot of time to achieve anything now just to give you an idea uh like mount everest is getting its elevations higher and higher in the order of about four millimeter for every 100 years so you can imagine that how slow are the processes
• 17:30 - 18:00 and normally they are unnoticeable by the naked eyes i think all of you are familiar with this picture how water comes on the surface and how do we make good use of this so this is the water cycle that it a lot of water flows down to the ocean then it is evaporated condensation and then again in the form of precipitation we get it
• 18:00 - 18:30 now just to give you an idea that if this is the total water only 2.5 percent of the total water is fresh water so remember when we say that a major part of the earth's surface has got water but still we have got only 2.5 percent which is fresh water and if we talk about fresh water
• 18:30 - 19:00 most of it is frozen as a glacier in permafrost region and some of it nearly 30 percent is in the ground water and very little is what we are calling as surface and atmospheric water now surface and atmospheric water means water you see in lakes water you see in the rain water you see in the river or other water bodies
• 19:00 - 19:30 and like that and in air moisture clouds so that water is very very limited groundwater again is a very very subjective issues because in several cities we have got notice that they have overdrawn groundwater and groundwater is no more available so including cities like delhi mumbai bangalore gurgaon there are several cities several
• 19:30 - 20:00 indian cities not only indian cities but for example you might have heard stories from south africa where they do not have the groundwater so you may be covered or you may be approximated by a sea or a ocean but when it comes to the groundwater you are having very little of it so we need to make judicious use we need to harvest rain water so that groundwater remain
• 20:00 - 20:30 recharged and we make good use of it now when we are coming to surface water so most of it is in the form of lake then air moisture or in atmosphere and then other water body river has only one point six percent of the total fresh water in the system now second criteria what we needed was oxygen because that is another important element for life to be supported on this
• 20:30 - 21:00 planet and nearly 2.4 billion years ago when the first life started the initial creatures were microbes i think you might have heard microbe in recent times we are all affected by a micro which we are better calling as covet virus so virus we can't see
• 21:00 - 21:30 so these are very very small creatures you can see normally under microscope or under magnified lenses and there used to be a cyanobacteria which is releasing oxygen as a base product now let us come back to today we know that for our survival we need plants why we need plants because nature has created a system
• 21:30 - 22:00 what is considered waste by the plant is used by us and whatever is considered waste by us whatever is exhaled by us is absorbed by the plants so there is a natural balance which nature has created so oxygen which we need is discharged by the plants and they need carbon dioxide to make their food which is released by us so this is
• 22:00 - 22:30 a automatic balance so what happened nearly 2.4 billion years ago this micro started getting formed and they were releasing oxygen as a waste product filling atmosphere with nearly uh with oxygen now imagine earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago and this form of life
• 22:30 - 23:00 uh micro cyanobacteria 2.4 billion years ago and slowly it started adding oxygen to the atmosphere and it took time and we realized that first life major life got formed on earth's surface nearly 540 million years ago and since then we are maintaining it so
• 23:00 - 23:30 this is just a slide to show you the oxygen balance so not oxygen balance the carbon balance and carbon is consumed by the plants for the photosynthetic processes and also absorbed by the sea the sea water whereas we are releasing it through variety of sources so there are some natural sources like volcanoes like uh
• 23:30 - 24:00 our respiration processes but then there are a lot of anthropogenic activities like um we are use of our auto vehicles use discharge by air discharge by our factories which are adding up so what is happening we are saying that this may disturb our carbon cycle so as long as the processes are natural so if only from natural sources we are
• 24:00 - 24:30 doing it it is fine but if we are discharging any particular gas in this case carbon uh and we are adding up carbon then it would happen that we may become toxic very soon so something important in the history of earth we are calling is cambrian explosion so that was a time when life had been
• 24:30 - 25:00 consisted in the form of bacteria eukaryotes and simple plants and this period cambrian marked it this boundary that we are before that it was only simple life but cambrian period which started nearly 550 million years ago it started having seen
• 25:00 - 25:30 life which had drains eyes and skeleton and these are mostly invertebrate so availability of oxygen earth temperature and development of shallow aquatic environment contributed for this thing now just to have a look on our atmosphere we talked about oxygen and carbon dioxide but there are two more things which are worth noticing
• 25:30 - 26:00 one is that temperature in the atmosphere is not moving in one particular directions there are several atmospheric layer and at each layer when we go up when we go high away from the earth's surface higher and higher so either temperature starts increasing or decreasing so like what we see from our home we are normally seeing troposphere
• 26:00 - 26:30 which is the lowest layer uh of the earth which has got all kind of disturbances all kind of smokes everything and here temperature keep rising as you go up and then we have got a boundary which is called tropopause beyond which we have got stratosphere and this is where the flow of air is laminar uniform and
• 26:30 - 27:00 there is no disturbance and this is where we will see most of our flights would be operating and when we go to top of the stratosphere we have got another boundary called stato pass and then we have got mesosphere and mesosphere has got most of the asteroid foils that are coming they are absorbed here reduce to ashes before they are
• 27:00 - 27:30 gifted to earth's surface and then we have got the top layer is called thermosphere and it is also quite uh interesting because we have a very unique phenomena here which is called uh aurora just to see that what is aurora arora lights you can normally see on the poles and these are very very specially
• 27:30 - 28:00 attracting and you can see both on the north and southern poles in also in countries which are very very close these are natural display of light which is seen in high altitude regions and arora display dynamic pattern of brilliant light that appears as cutting rays spiral or flickers and it is primarily because of ionization and excitation of atmospheric
• 28:00 - 28:30 constituents that emits light now that was the higher side but when we come to the interior uh the surface where we are standing this lot of earth is below us and what we have concluded based on several geophysical activities that we have a huge
• 28:30 - 29:00 landmass below us which could primarily be divided into three part earth crust earth mental and earth core earth crust is solid it could be of a thickness of 5 to 10 kilometers and it is mostly a platform which is full of silica and aluminum
• 29:00 - 29:30 mental on the other hand is something which is in between solid and liquid we call it molten state and their temperature is very high pressure is high and then lot of things are in liquid form and if you see some of the volcanoes including one picture which you saw in the beginning
• 29:30 - 30:00 when you were being told the house rules it brings out material from mental so when we are talking about volcanoes it brings in material from there and then we have got core so mental is liquid uh semi-liquid and is called primarily silica and magnesia and core is the main part of the earth which is full of nickel and
• 30:00 - 30:30 iron now question is how do we know what is the thickness of each layer and whether we have got only these three layers or how because nobody has gone inside the earth nobody knows that how it should look like what should be the mineral composition what should be the raw constituents and how it should be so all the information which we have got
• 30:30 - 31:00 is through indirect methods direct method of course when volcano erupts they show us they are the window of the earth interior and they will show us what kind of material it is and that help us whenever we are making indirect studies so in direct way what we are doing is that we have studied earthquake earthquake has got two kind of waves primary waves and secondary units and
• 31:00 - 31:30 with the differentiation in their flow pattern we can realize what is inside is it uniform is it not uniform if it is solid liquid or gas if uh it is then what could be its thickness and we have experimented this thing on several mineral deposits so identification of mineral deposits seismic surveys or some other
• 31:30 - 32:00 geophysical service help us a lot in defining the load load is primarily what we are saying in normal language the what amount of mineral deposit they have got in a particular location so geologists are not magicians who can tell you where you will find oil where you will find gold where you will find coal where you will find
• 32:00 - 32:30 copper or zinc or iron so it is based on several geophysical and geochemical studies so as far as structure of interior of the earth is concerned it is primarily based on geophysical studies which we are making use of now earth is a very very dynamic planet evolving planet it is not same at all the places so you will find that
• 32:30 - 33:00 agra is different from coimbatore or chennai is different from mumbai similarly you will find several processes happening on the earth's surface at the same time somewhere it is snowing somewhere it is very harsh winters or summers somewhere it is raining somewhere it is dry and it all happens at one time so uh and it keeps changing the life form life
• 33:00 - 33:30 form as we know we from where we started and where we are so from unicellular to complex one thing is associated with all this evolution that is if climate is changing and whether it has happened in history of earth that climate has changed if you go by earth history yes it is possible and there are several episodes
• 33:30 - 34:00 of climate reversal there are but as i said earlier natural processes are very very slow so what we are worried when we discuss about carbon cycle also that how much of it is because of human endeavors how much we are contributing to the disbalance of gases in our atmosphere
• 34:00 - 34:30 and will it fasten the process or how we will get it so this is some of the occurrence of the earth's surface and you will feel that all days are not seen and sometimes somewhere some part of the world will get a earthquake so this is a picture from bhuj where we got a massive earthquake in
• 34:30 - 35:00 2001 and you will see that building could very high rise building could get damaged not only buildings but even railway lines could get changed not only line even river track could get changed because of earthquakes so there are several possibilities when earth energy is released and it causes several deformations now another form of uh
• 35:00 - 35:30 release of energy is following earthquake is tsunami now i hope some of you have already seen uh or heard about the tsunami that is struck in india also it is very common phenomena in japan what happens as we saw in the previous picture that when earthquake comes on the land it normally damages the buildings or the outer structures
• 35:30 - 36:00 uh and because of uh outer structure damage there could be some life loss also but when earthquake strikes in the sea then the energy is released and because of that energy water starts flowing in a huge big way and causing tsunami and it could rise several meters over the normal water flows
• 36:00 - 36:30 then another example of earth expression or earth's release of energy is volcanoes so this picture is from andaman and you can see some smoke coming out of it but molten material also comes out of it and it all depends that how it happens so scientists have tried to studies that what are the earthquake sites
• 36:30 - 37:00 and what are the volcanic activity sites and these are volcanic side activity sites are called ring of fire and you could see that while they have nearly 70 to 80 percent overlap so if you see our himalayan region where we'll see a lot of tectonic activity but no volcanic activity but in
• 37:00 - 37:30 a major other part you will see that we could correlate earthquake and volcanoes happening at the same places and which shows that those are the weak places from where earth find it easy to release the energy now what has happened because of this several activities there is a theory which says that we were not the same all the time
• 37:30 - 38:00 and our continents what we see in the map today they were not like that in geological past and there are evidences that continents have moved and how it has moved so one first explanation was that if we see their boundaries the continent boundary then they could be fitted one over the another as a jigsaw puzzle
• 38:00 - 38:30 and then came the theory of plate tectonics now plate tectonics means that the entire continent is divided into several plates and each plate is floating so if we see here you will realize the boundary of plates is much bigger than the continent and it is spread all over the sea
• 38:30 - 39:00 so if it is african plate its boundary are much much bigger then indian plates has got boundary up to here and what is happening indian plate which was in southern hemisphere it has moved northeast and today we are completely in northern hemisphere and origin of himalaya also
• 39:00 - 39:30 is because of collision between indian plate and eurasian place so what is happening that eurasian plates are here indian plate is striking and because of this it is rising like this so this is because of this we are having himalaya but then these boundaries it could happen
• 39:30 - 40:00 that there are lot of moments lot of disturbance at the plate boundaries and earthquakes and volcanic activities we will notice that most of them are near the plate boundaries now what are the other evidence of movement of continents so you will see that one major evidence is the fossils
• 40:00 - 40:30 i hope you are aware fossils are the lives which are no more there but only through their skeletals or their impression we try to study and then we see there are several animals which are found in more than one region so for example today if you see elephant elephants are found in india and south africa so
• 40:30 - 41:00 whenever the species elephant started being was formed that time india and africa must be together and there are several fossils which we have tracked and in this slide we have tried to show how it is formed another major important thing which earth has got is earth magnetic field so as i said earlier the
• 41:00 - 41:30 core of the earth is full of nickel and iron which results into the magnetic property of the earth of course we have made use of this property also and today lot of navigation is happening with compass where all air movement even today our car movement which we are taking help of google maps or any other navigation
• 41:30 - 42:00 device which keeps on telling us how to move which direction we should we we can go and that is where uh geomagnetic property of earth help us but one thing we should remember that there is a difference between geographic north and magnetic north so we keep on getting magnetic storm on the earth so magnetic north keeps on
• 42:00 - 42:30 moving and today it is at a distance of nearly 11.5 degree from the geography north now if you see earth you can see several part of earth having different conditions of the atmosphere different condition of the soil different conditions how temperature is there and this is a series of them so uh
• 42:30 - 43:00 this is the first slide i'm just showing you you can correlate it with one of the your place and then this is one of the cold places uh which we find normally near the poles or in subpolar region so like places like canada norway or nordic countries or siberia in russia they are known to be like this and of
• 43:00 - 43:30 course antarctica sorry and then some other part of the earth could be as dusty or as heated one like this this is mostly in desert some of the areas are so thickly populated and having disturbances and then this is a common side which we have this is flood and uh
• 43:30 - 44:00 we lose lot of life we lose a lot of properties when our rivers get inundated and it happens because of either cloud burst or very heavy rains or some burst of water bodies like dams and another reason why we are having floods that we are not cleaning your channel and we are polluting it with several things so naturally water
• 44:00 - 44:30 whatever it comes in the channel it is not finding adequate volume in the channel and it gets flooded lightning is another major thing which is happening of course in our part of the world lightning is happening only during the monsoon period or the raining period but then there are several parts on the earth surface where lightning happens virtually every day
• 44:30 - 45:00 then these are very very important structures called stalactite or stalagmite and these are formed in the caves when river flows through a water soluble surface it starts dropping and drop by drop it [Music] these deposits are getting accumulated
• 45:00 - 45:30 and giving shapes to such things and one of the very popular uh such deposit is amarnath caves so you remember in each summer we are having a special jatha which is going to kashmir for darshan to amarnath and this is nothing but the form of ice which results in formation of structure like
• 45:30 - 46:00 stalactite top to down and now i'll take you on a very interesting journey i'll show you some pictures that how earth surface in different part is so one of the recent discovery is
• 46:00 - 46:30 siberian craters now this is a found uh in the gray jumble of eyes and clothes in permafrost regions so roots of the plant newly exposed around the rim shows sign of scorching it gives some ideas of just how violently the this hole in the middle of siberian would have materialized
• 46:30 - 47:00 from the air the freshly exposed dirt is stand out against the green tundra and dark lake around it the layer of earth in rocks exposed further inside the cylindrical hole are almost black and a pool of water is already forming at the bottom and this was discovered as recently as 10 years ago just a moment
• 47:00 - 47:30 then i think i need not to tell you about bermuda triangle it's there are a lot of stories already in the media and i think this is one of the most uh discussed or debated topic and it is believed that there are
• 47:30 - 48:00 a lot of magnetic storms and ships and aeroplanes that disappeared in this area because of these magnetic regions then this is a very interesting place called crooked forest in poland and here what is happening that most of the trees you will see are not straight and these are nearly 400
• 48:00 - 48:30 pine trees which is located in west pomerina region and what is happening that there is a 90 degree sharp bend northwards and then a curve back to grow straight into the sky this is very very unnatural and we are not sure how it has happened so there are several interesting questions which are still unanswered and these are one of those questions
• 48:30 - 49:00 which need to be answered now this is a richard structure from sahara and it looks like a very fabulous disc but this is the result of erosion i hope you have read in your classes about the erosion which happens because of air water and heat it also it could happen and because of erosion the top layers
• 49:00 - 49:30 are chiseled out and they are removed in the process and what we are seeing here in sahara this is a because of continuous edition all the top layers have moved away and you see only the bottom part and which is forming a circular rim then the blood falls of antarctica you know whenever we think of antarctica we
• 49:30 - 50:00 are thinking it of this white continent full of ice but then there are some lakes and these lakes because of their mineral compositions have got some color and here we are talking about this taylor glacier and wesley which has lot of iron rich material and because of this this is got red color and it is called blood fall
• 50:00 - 50:30 and then we have got darwaza crater now darvada crater is a place in turkmenistan which is always on fire and it is also known as gate of hell and why it is always on fire because this is a methane gas field and some how purposely because of military purposes it was lighted
• 50:30 - 51:00 and it has remained lighted despite so many years and today we find it it's a tourist place but it is always on fire because of methane gas underneath and then in new york we have got something what we are calling as eternal flame and you can see a flame uh just below the waterfall and this is because
• 51:00 - 51:30 of the leakage of natural gases from the system so it's a leak and this leak has caused this uh waterfall to have this thing and then we have got fairy circle in namibia which is another very interesting place and here it's a huge grassland in the namibia desert and fairy circle are typically
• 51:30 - 52:00 bonus pacific grassy vegetation where conditions are added and associated grass has commonly are species in the gene genus stipa grows this and study shows that these circle pass through a life cycle of 30 to 60 year they became noticeable only when they grow in diameter two meter and above and achieving a peak
• 52:00 - 52:30 and then we have got this great blue hole in belly jay uh near [Music] it is because of several sinkhole operations uh it's a reef structure so reef have got surrounded it and this water body has become receiving very little of
• 52:30 - 53:00 fresh water so most of the water in it is accumulated and it is green it is blue and then we have got this place in indonesia which is having volcanic activity inside the lake and you could see the smoke coming out of volcanoes and the lake then we have got a beautiful structure
• 53:00 - 53:30 in lake alberta and this is humanly made and you can see only in canadian summers when what you are seeing below the water is the bubble of methane gas which keeps on releasing from various time and forms a very very unique structure and you don't find it during the winter time because it is frozen
• 53:30 - 54:00 and then we have got lake hillier and you can see that a huge water body the indian ocean and then we have got a small lake which is red in color and this is primarily because of the [Music] mineral compositions and the plants it has got in it then we have got lake merciful in venezuela and this is a place where we get lightning virtually
• 54:00 - 54:30 every day in fact this is the place where you will get lightning uh maximum time in the world so if you this is the place uh you can study lightning and then we have got lake norton netro in tanzania this is highly alkaline and when i say highly alkaline it has a ph its water has a ph value of
• 54:30 - 55:00 12 so any life here is not possible so if any bird or any uh other animal falls in this water immediately it gets petrified and then we have got this wado island in mauritius and you will see lot of light of course there are some human activity also you can see but our focus idea was to show you
• 55:00 - 55:30 this light which is coming from several sea animals and we are calling it bioluminescence so in night you will see lot of light emanating i am not sure if you have seen night fly in india called jugnu and [Music] you can see uh such lights from the waters making it very very attractive for the tourist purposes and
• 55:30 - 56:00 you will find it very interesting so with this i would like to close my talk today and i would be happy to take some questions uh which may be summarized uh by their foundation and we could discuss it thank you thank you so much sir thank you for such an interesting session we will move on to the question and answer section right now i will take
• 56:00 - 56:30 questions that have come in through the chat box kindly ensure that when i call out your name you introduce yourself your class and your school all right our first question is from vijay rohit vijay rohit can you kindly unmute your mic and pose your question
• 56:30 - 57:00 all right we'll move on to our second question tamogna shivatsa can you please unmute your mic and pose your question yes ma'am yes please go ahead i have a question for you what do you think would be an effective way to reduce pollution especially air pollution which can be done by everyone i mean people of all
• 57:00 - 57:30 standards of life as well as doesn't disturb our daily activities thank you i think it's a very very interesting question and all of us are worried that when what we are leaving for the future generation as a earth and today if you see we have polluted our air we have polluted our water we have polluted our land
• 57:30 - 58:00 and everywhere there are signatures of human activities disturbing or disbalancing the nature's creature so if we talk about atmosphere there is a lot of increase in carbon dioxide released from the surface and there would be some consequences if we are talking about rivers or water
• 58:00 - 58:30 we have overdrawn groundwater we have given several kind of waste to the rivers and when i see several kind it is not only because of our water discarded from homes but also from industries which is full of chemicals and that is going into this river water then
• 58:30 - 59:00 if we see our so question is that how we should make efforts to sustain the earth so lot of discussions are already in place and you might have heard terms like gob discussions which is basically climate discussions there are several decisions like kyoto declarations uh brazil declaration the rio one rio declarations
• 59:00 - 59:30 and each time lot of new ideas are discussed how we can reduce so for example lot of pollution is created by units using energy and for energy we are using either the hydrocarbons which is coal petroleum diesel gases
• 59:30 - 60:00 or we are using wood which results in release of lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere so what we are trying to do we are trying if in place of carbon rich energy we could go for some alternate routes so now you might we have seen in several
• 60:00 - 60:30 bigger cities we have started electric vehicle which would be used based on batteries and just like your phone so you would be charging them after substantial run and once that run is done so idea is that you will not be releasing carbon dioxide but again in formation of phone also we are using
• 60:30 - 61:00 lot of carbon so we are now talking about net zero solutions so this is for the air for water we are trying lot of biological interventions that before discharges from several sources goes and meet river water the water should be treated in such a way that it does not damage
• 61:00 - 61:30 riverwood i am not sure how many of you have seen river mussi in hyderabad or river yamuna in delhi the way they are treated they have become something like drain they are not no more look like rivers they looks like drinks we have not seen saraswati reversal we know uh through our books it was there
• 61:30 - 62:00 and maybe in another hundred year or a little more we will not have yamna and musi also because the way we are putting all our discharge so now coming to our approach of course we need to see that what kind of waste we are creating and how we are giving it back to the system it should be our idea that we should not pollute now how we are polluting for example we are
• 62:00 - 62:30 at home so we are giving soapy water we should know where that soapy water is going so it could be from our bathroom or from our kitchen but wherever it is going [Music] we should see how it is treated similarly from the factory i think it should be responsibility of each industrial unit that they should
• 62:30 - 63:00 get adequate treatment of uh their discharges whatever discharge they are religion to the system they should make sure we should also look for uh uh water budgeting for our uh crops now there are uh several
• 63:00 - 63:30 region for example in punjab which was typically a weed grown area we have suddenly started paddy growing petty and this means that this has caused uh more and more withdrawal of water from the groundwater similarly in construction industries lot of water is taken away so we need to make cautious use
• 63:30 - 64:00 of water groundwater so that there is an appropriate amount of it and i am sure that even our small steps would help us in improving the earth quality and in reducing pollutions we can take biological routes of plants which are our friends and lot of plants can absorb atmospheric carbon
• 64:00 - 64:30 and even particulate matters and we should see that we ourselves are not contributing to this effort thank you sir our next question is from deep nil deeply could you kindly unmute your mic and pose your question all right we'll move on to the next
• 64:30 - 65:00 student yash agarwal yash can you kindly understand who is not allowed to fund me okay deeply can you pose your question yes good evening sir i was currently working on the fermi paradox and i would ask i would ask you that what are your views on the farming can you repeat your question that i was working on the fermi paradox
• 65:00 - 65:30 and i saw that it is uh quite a counterintuitive what i found it and sir what is your thoughts on the or views on the fermi paradox you know these are considered to be some estimations uh about extraterrestrial life as we all know that uh word uh over a lot of people who are trying to study origin of life
• 65:30 - 66:00 they are also studying if life is possible outside our planet and if yes where it could be what are the uniqueness of earth can we have a similar model on some other planet but pharma a fermi paradox is a conflict actually because of lack of clear and obvious evidence for extraterrestrial life
• 66:00 - 66:30 and various high estimate for their existence so it is something we say not so easy but of course science survives on some hypothesis you need to prove or disapprove so fermi paradox is one of them and it discusses about possible life on other planet maybe in our milky way or outside of making it somewhere in the celestial system
• 66:30 - 67:00 uh so this question even today is not fully understood but as far as we know we are unique we are the only internet to have life thank you sir our next question is from e can you kindly so my question was that why do we always look for the things that humans or the living organism on earth
• 67:00 - 67:30 need like water nitrogen carbon and not look for life that could exist without them oh you see uh let us if i could say that we are very selfish people and we are very much worried about our life so if you ask uh yourself whom you are most worried to you it
• 67:30 - 68:00 would be you then your family then your bigger family your external family than your city then your state and country and then they are earth so unfortunately we are not worried about life which can do without uh several of the parameters which are needed for human and animal life
• 68:00 - 68:30 but if you see food cycling everything is important and if you miss any element of the food cycle it is broken as we discussed in the beginning when earth was formed there was no life but because of oxygen released by cyanobacteria it start and atmosphere becoming more conducive to sustain life
• 68:30 - 69:00 we started the cambrian explosion where more developed animals started being formed and of course each animal each species has a different requirement even in the plants requirement of various plant is different so each species has their own unique set of requirement and they could sustain only in a particular place there are some animals some plants which
• 69:00 - 69:30 are known only for a specific region they cannot survive outside human being has adapted itself if you are living in kerala you can survive in kashmir you can survive in russia you can survive in africa you can survive in antarctica because we have developed tools for that and we are very much worried about our life and we in order to keep our life on
• 69:30 - 70:00 it is important we allow biodiversity now why another example you can understand why why biodiversity is important is scoped now if all of us on the planet would have been roughly the same then the virus would have erode cleaned all of us but because human beings on the earth are having different immunity label
• 70:00 - 70:30 different food habits different clothing styles different protection gears impact of cobit was different in different areas somewhere we were more cautious somewhere we were less causes can you imagine in a continent like africa which houses most of the poor countries where still vaccination has not been done we did not have amount of casualties
• 70:30 - 71:00 as high as we had in america or europe which are claimed to be technologically more developed it is because of the immunity label because people in africa had a better immunity as compared to people in europe and in america similarly if you see our own place our animals did not suffer because
• 71:00 - 71:30 of this thing of course there are some reports that in cat family and in some dog family so feline and canine both have reported some kind of covet infection but not to that great extent all other species are unaffected so this is primarily because of biodiversity and we must sustain it so for food cycle we need everyone
• 71:30 - 72:00 for our own survival we need biodiversity and let us welcome it and let us what would be happening to earth if there is no life it would be like another planet uh full of rocks and waters and no life and that is possible also if we continue polluting it maybe another 500 600 years we may not have life that is also a
• 72:00 - 72:30 possibility if we are polluting it as much as we are doing now thank you sir our next question is from madhumalar would you like to answer to mike and pose your question it is a very interesting question yes ma'am so uh so my question was that we've noticed that life is always changes on earth so would it be possible for us or other
• 72:30 - 73:00 organisms atmosphere because of global warming uh i'm sorry i couldn't get your voice can somebody repeat her question yes sir i will read out the question yeah the question is we've noticed that life has always seemed to adopt to the ecological changes on earth so would it be possible
• 73:00 - 73:30 for us or certain other organisms to evolve to live in a carbon dioxide environment yes so it's a very interesting question you know adaptation is the key so we know if we do not adapt we cannot survive why did we lose dinosaur because it is believed that there was a massive volcano
• 73:30 - 74:00 eruption which we are calling as a deccan plateau in our part of the earth you see black soil so because of that volcanic eruption lot of dust was added into the atmosphere an amount of dust was so high it took nearly three years to settle in that means that for three years there was no sunlight on this earth's
• 74:00 - 74:30 surface and many of the major life's major species suffered because without sunlight they could not get things like plants not dinosaurs although you have seen them in several recent movies but most of them were herbivorous and they were eating plants and if plants are not growing
• 74:30 - 75:00 they had no food for themselves so adaptation is a key and we have to find solutions now of course if our atmosphere become rich in carbon dioxide what are the solutions you might have seen already we have got home purifiers home air purifiers office air purifiers we have started
• 75:00 - 75:30 getting oxygen cylinders which could be put on each one of us if we live in an environment which is not good of course nature will take time to make our bodies more susceptible to increased level of carbon dioxide but for immediate support we have already developed gadgets of course the number is not that high but there are solutions which we have kept but nevertheless we are trying that if we could return to
• 75:30 - 76:00 earth to its natural shape that would be wonderful uh of course if increased carbon dioxide is there for very very long uh say for very long period that we do not get oxygen to be produced either naturally or synthetically it would be difficult for human beings to survive on this earth
• 76:00 - 76:30 all right sir thank you ananya sheena would you like to post the next question ananya i've requested you to unmute but you've muted it again yes yes so do you think it's possible for humans to adapt themselves gradually to living in outer space or in conditions they're not familiar with because maybe we can
• 76:30 - 77:00 alter our genes a bit to make that application possible like genetic modification what do you think about that uh i request someone to re [Music] say her question because audio was little poor alright so ananya was asking if what is your opinion on the ability for humans to sort of genetically modify themselves to survive in other conditions oh yes lot of experiments are on
• 77:00 - 77:30 and we are working on as i said earlier we are selfish we would like to see human race surviving on this planet whatever be the conditions so not only this external gadgets of air purifier oxygen cylinders or some plants which we have discovered in recent past which could produce extra oxygen we are looking for devices which could help us sustain
• 77:30 - 78:00 in highly carbon rich environment and only thing i could say of course you can't beat nature but we struggle if such a situation comes and we will do everything possible adaptation is already on to the newer emerging situations gadgets are coming
• 78:00 - 78:30 so if we cannot live naturally without any external support we can do it with the help of some support thank you so much sir and our last question from today will be from triti giri raj pp could you finally unmute your mic and pose your question
• 78:30 - 79:00 can you hear me mom yes probably we are not getting your ways pretty we are not audible right now i've requested you to unmute your mic now can you hear me man yes yes now you are my name is sir uh good evening from international school class nine so my
• 79:00 - 79:30 question is uh before stephen hawkings dies uh he said that within 100 years the earth is going to destroy so in your point of view uh what's the reason sir you know there are several stories and several assumptions and several times people would like to uh make some ideas which may or may not be accepted by
• 79:30 - 80:00 everyone immediately so when stephen hawking was talking he was talking in terms of various conditions which we have created ourselves which are not good enough to survive and he felt if we continue our activity in the same base as we are doing now without development of any solutions or without development of any correction
• 80:00 - 80:30 then we may have very limited life on this earth now in past also several people have tried to work out what could be the life of earth as a planet now as i mentioned little ago the processes of earth are very slow and 100 year is very very small time
• 80:30 - 81:00 compare we are talking about millions and billions of years so i don't think personally that hundred year we may lose the human race on this planet or the earth planet will go no i don't feel that way i feel it would be done very slowly and if we correct ourselves we can prolong our stay on
• 81:00 - 81:30 this earth maybe for another thousands of years so human beings are here since 10 000 years ago and as you remember it is only last 300 years since the industrial revolution started when we started polluting our air our water and also agriculture contributed to it to an extent by withdrawal of various
• 81:30 - 82:00 things like groundwater so these are recent developments so you compare earth history nearly four and a half billion years life on earth nearly 2.4 billion years human species on the earth for nearly 10 000 years and what we have done in last 300 years is changing but changing changes the nature of the earth
• 82:00 - 82:30 but it has expedited it has hurried up so we are concerned that it must be corrected and if we could correct it or find solutions or could develop devices that will help us in survive in those conditions our life on this planet would be little longer than hundred years thank you
• 82:30 - 83:00 thank you so much sir that brings us to the end of our question and answer session sir on behalf of bssf and all our participants thank you so much for spending time with us um like you said towards the end change is inevitable our planet will keep changing we have to keep evolving however it is uh disturbing and distressing to know that the change is happening at a much rapid pace then what would be considered natural if i may say so and like you said it is in our hands whether we can prolong this
• 83:00 - 83:30 and slow it down and restore it to its natural cycles of change and evolution thank you so much sir on behalf of everybody for spending time with us it was an absolute pleasure to have you thank you all and my good wishes to all of you i hope you will find succession more curious developing more curiosity rather than answering all of your questions science is that you should have more and more curiosity more and more questions
• 83:30 - 84:00 and then you start exploring it the answers with the help of books and other study material with the help of your teachers your parents and platforms like this vikram saraway science foundations and i'm sure if you remain curious uh curiosity remains inside you and you work on those curiosity you will become not only good thinker but also a good scientist my good wishes to all of you
• 84:00 - 84:30 have a nice evening namaskar thank you sir a humble request to all our students kindly let us know what you thought of our session today uh you can review us on google you can log on to our facebook page and post your reflections or your queries or any questions that you have please ensure that you like share and comment and even follow our pages if you haven't done that already your next session will be tomorrow so you have two sessions tomorrow your
• 84:30 - 85:00 session the third session and your fourth session your third session is at 2 p.m and it's entitled medical science dr subramania iyer the head of the department of neck head neck and plastic and reconstructive surgery would be your keynote speaker and the session after that is at 4 30 pm entitled astronomy or window to space and dr vp joy who is a scientist the isu secretary government of kerala and also an author will be the keynote speaker i
• 85:00 - 85:30 hope to see you all at our sessions tomorrow have a good evening and thank you so much for participating in today's session you