Friday, February 25, 2011

Earth and Gaya - Observations from a simple experiment

An interesting thought came across my mind the other day.. and a very
simple experiment with observations brought me a bit closer to
understanding the complexities of gaya and earth's self healing
abilities.

Bangalore is also called the silicon city.. mainly cause of the IT
companies but I think its cause of the amount of dust that flies by
here... have an open veranda and you can see how, literally kilos of
dust can pile up in a few weeks.

Now what is dust? when we were kids, we learnt about soil erosion..
when we grew up.. we learnt about silicone oxide being sand and other
such oxides forming what we can hold and call dust.

My experiment was simple.. I collected a quarter kilo of the dust that
i talked about and put it in a pot, with water and some seeds, hoping
to watch it germinate.. experiment failed miserably..

My inference: Silica is not all that matters.. in fact I've never
heard of a plant or any organism having silica in their bodies except
women with boob jobs and some maybe bacteria that orient themselves in
a north south manner cause of certain magnetic minerals in their
bodies and their intricate physiology.. Plants.. none that i know of.
Plants need nitrogen, potassium, calcium, carbon, water, a bit of
phosphorus, sulphur etc.. none of which was there in the almost pure
silica and other oxides that I collected.

My observation: a bunch of people with shovels came by to unclog
drains and clear roads. They happen to clear out a stone corner and
leave it barren. I observed this for months.. at least 5 kilos of dust
collected there and along with water from the monsoons, this dust
turned to abiotic mud... pure wet crystals packed together. Algae and
Cyanobacteria thrive on carbon dioxide and water. When water clogged
in the monsoon, within two weeks, you could see patches of these
wonderful creatures growing, forming beautiful little bubbles of
oxygen. The increased carbon dioxide content in atmosphere, increases
it in the water too. This means more food for them. Every time water
collected, these dried microbes would come back to life and within no
time.That abiotic mud, turned green

Over and over again I noticed before this that grass started
sprouting. And over and over again, with nothing to hold on to, this
grass would soon dry up and the roots wouldn't hold to anything and
just fall off and be carried away. With the heavily interconnecting
cyano bacteria and algal growths, these roots now had substance to
hold onto. Algae and cyano bacteria play a very important role in the
nitrogen cycle.. and within no time.. this mud had heavy nitrogen
content.

Humans throw all kinds of wastes on the streets, soap (Small contents
of phosphorus in the soap accelerated algal growth like crazy), paper,
shit, banana peels, food, puke. etc. this mud has been quietly
collecting all this and developed fungus all over.
Fungus helps a lot in the break down of all these decomposing material
and gives the plants a rich source of phosphorus, potassium nitrogen,
calcium and a lot of other elements in forms that a plant can take up

Every time it rained, the smell of fresh rain, caused by Geosmin, which
is secreted by actinomycetes was very evident. Actinomycetes are sold
at agricultural institutes as a high grade biological manure.

The silica had nothing to do with the soil. It was just a matrix for
everything else to fall upon. What helped silica be an ideal matrix
is.. its inert crystalline form. At a higher level, one learns that a
crystal matrix exists only so cause of a certain charge that they
carry individually at the silica atom and the oxide radical. At the
same time the fact that it didn't decompose into water enough to
matter to react with other physiology matters equally.


Within a matter of two months, dust turned to soil that i can't
  differentiate from that in a pot

The earth healed herself in a matter of two months? do you have any
idea how long it took to turn hard rock into dust? years.

I have new hope for our planet cause I believe it is stronger than we
have misjudged it.