Monday, April 23, 2007

Earth Day - April 22nd.


The above picture is copyrighted by NASA, and is a real image from space. A very high resolution image is available in NASA’s official website which can be downloaded freely. See how blue our planet is!

April 22nd is Earth Day. Not sure how many environmental activists are aware about this. Many of you who have opened Google.com today may have noticed that the picture of Google.com is made out of an ice-berg floating in the Ocean. Google may be thinking of making people aware of the Global warming that is happening increasingly and the after effects of it – “Ice from polar region being melt more”. Some people consider March 21st as the appropriate earth day, where the day and night is equal in duration, due to the equinoctial position of earth – the time when spring starts in the Northern hemisphere and Autumn starts in the Southern hemisphere of earth.

We all are aware of many kinds of pollution and disorders, we humans are causing to the nature. Many international communities are now bothered about some new kind of pollution.

One is light pollution – polluting the dark sky. Yes, people like me who came from a village to a city life can understand the pollution that happened to the dark sky without any brainstorming session. Sky was dark in my native. But sky is purple or rose in cities. I am no more able to enjoy the dark black or blue – black sky with stars and moon decorating it. Neon lamps and all other lamps are making sky polluted with light. Many a times, I was not able to sleep in the city, not because of noise pollution, but because of light pollution. The lights peeping into my bedroom from near by street lights and other sources where annoying my sleep. Now I got used to it. It is indeed interesting to search in Google about dark sky and organizations working towards ensuring that dark sky will exists in future. You can get so many such links from NASA’s official web site.

One other kind of pollution, that the modern society is facing is the pollution caused by radiation or Wi-Fi networks. Wi-Fi network is such a great technology that people are enjoying enormous mobility with their PDAs, notebook computers and many other electronic gadgets. But there are many reports that the radiation caused by such networks are creating many problems like headache, nausea, sleeplessness, lack of concentration etc to people who are continuously exposed to such radio magnetic signals.

During the time of life emerged on our planet, the only source of radiation or electromagnetic waves where the sunlight as well as the cosmic rays. A major percentage of cosmic rays are blocked by atmosphere. Yeah, it is very dangerous to be in space without a very high protective suit. Space is not at all empty. A very small amount of radiation was emitted from radio active elements on earth, but that was negligible.

At present, Wi-Fi Networks, including mobile phone networks, radio signals, TV signals, satellite signals and a lot of other kinds of communication signals are emitting enormous amount of radiation energy into the air. Electromagnetic radiations are one billion times stronger than the natural electromagnetic fields in which living cells have developed over the last 3.8 billion years – a recent study revealed. Many of our “bio-encoding” may have undergone mutation to accept it or creating a new defect. Many schools in UK and Australia are asked not to enable Wi-Fi networks in the institutions because of this. Children’s skull is thinner than others, more vulnerable to radiation, that is one of the reason they raise against it. Masts, in many countries are used to set up wireless signal transmission points, are asked to be moved because of local people facing issues like this. Hope the future community will be concerned about Wi-Fi pollution also and will take necessary actions.

Let us look towards a greener earth, and let our planet be blue for ever for all Astronauts who look from above.

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