Creative Edge

Pahili Raja is a vibrant and unique festival celebrated in the Indian state of Odisha, marking the beginning of the much-awaited Raja Parba or Mithuna Sankranti. This festival is deeply rooted in the culture and traditions of the state and revolves around the themes of womanhood, fertility, and the rejuvenation of the Earth. The term "Pahili" means "first" in Odia, and it refers to the first day of the three-day Raja festival. It usually falls in mid-June and heralds the agricultural New Year for the people of Odisha.   The festival is based on the belief that Mother Earth, symbolized as the divine woman, menstruates during this time. Just as women rest during their menstrual cycle, it is believed that the Earth too undergoes a similar process and needs rest and rejuvenation. Therefore, all agricultural activities are put on hold for these days, respecting the sanctity of nature. This connection between womanhood and the Earth is symbolic and profound, showcasin...

Snake and phallus worship entered the Vedic religion through the assimilation of indigenous fertility and nature cults, such as those of the Dravidian and tribal peoples. Over time, these symbols were reinterpreted within Vedic and later Hindu cosmology, enriching its spiritual and ritual landscape. The incorporation of snake (nāga) and phallus (liṅga) worship into the Vedic religious framework represents a significant synthesis of indigenous, pre-Vedic fertility and earth-centered traditions with the patriarchal, ritualistic Indo-Aryan culture that composed the Vedas. In early Vedic texts like the Rigveda , there is limited direct reference to either phallic symbolism or serpent worship in a devotional context. However, as Vedic religion evolved during the later Vedic period and especially into the post-Vedic era (c. 1000–500 BCE), these elements began to appear more prominently, indicating a gradual process of religious assimilation and cultural exchange. Snake worship likely entered...

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...