Creative Edge

You’ll often hear it claimed that lobsters are biologically immortal. So is it true?  Not really, though this is partially an argument in semantics as you’ll soon see. (And while we’re on the topic of lobster myths, no:  Lobsters do not mate for life. In fact, the male lobster pretty much gets it on with every female lobster that comes a knockin’. And they do almost literally line up and knock on the male’s door .) So what’s the source of the staple of social media timelines that lobsters can’t die of old age? Cells make up all living creatures on Earth, from humans to lobsters. (Shocker, I know.) However, cell replication is limited based upon nucleotide sequences called telomeres which are found on the ends of chromosomes. In a nutshell, telomeres prevent the strands of DNA from coming undone and also prevent them from accidentally fusing with neighboring chromosomes. The issue is that these end caps get shorter each time the cell divides owing to the fact that the enzym...

  The real-life story of a small ball of plutonium, the people it killed, and the researchers who blew it up. THE BOMB On the evening of Tuesday, August 21, 1945, American physicist Harry Daghlian was working at the U.S. government’s ultra-secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He was performing a very delicate experiment: Daghlian was placing brick-shaped pieces of metal around a chunk of plutonium, the highly unstable fuel used in most nuclear bombs. And he was making it more unstable with every brick he placed around it. Daghlian (pronounced “DAHL-ee-an”) was part of the government’s Manhattan Project, which since 1942 had worked to develop the world’s first atomic bombs. And they succeeded: Just a few weeks before Daghlian’s experiment, two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs had killed at least 100,000 people immediately, and many tens of thousands more in the days that followed. Less than a week after those bombi...

CAPTAIN VIKRAM BATRA 13 JAMMU AND KASHMIR RIFLES (IC 57556) During 'Operation Vijay', on 20 June 1999, Captain Vikram Batra, Commander Delta Company was tasked to attack Point 5140. Captain Batra with his company skirted around the feature from the East and maintaining surprise reached within assaulting distance of the enemy. Captain Batra reorganised his column and motivated his men to physically assault the enemy positions. Leading from the front, he in a daredevil assault, pounced on the enemy and killed four of them in a hand-to hand fight. On 7 July 1999, in another operation in the area Pt 4875, his company was tasked to clear a narrow feature with sharp cuttings on either side and heavily fortified enemy defences that covered the only approach to it. For speedy operation, Captain Batra assaulted the enemy position along a narrow ridge and engaged the enemy in a fierce hand –to-hand fight and killed five enemy soldiers at point blank range. Despite sustaining grave in...

  The relationship between science and religion has evolved over time. Before the 16th century scientific revolution in Europe, religious traditions organized most scientific and technical innovations. Medieval Christian scholars and ancient pagan and Islamic scholars contributed to the scientific method. However, after the scientific revolution, science became a legitimate way to understand nature, and people began to question religion. During the Enlightenment, people believed that science and religion were in conflict. However, some historians of science argue that they complement each other and can help us understand the world. Both science and religion try to understand the mysteries of creation, but religion asks "why" and science asks "how". As scientific research has progressed, some say that religious beliefs lack reliable epistemic sources. However, scientists and theologians can collaborate to update beliefs based on data.  Tec...