Category Discoveries

What important discovery did Howard Carter make in 1922?

In November 1922, after years of searching, British archaeologist Howard Carter stumbles upon a buried flight of steps while working in Egypt’s valley of the kings and unearths the entrance to the 3,000-years-old tomb of Tutankhamun. In the months that follow, thousands of priceless artefacts are recovered in one of the greatest finds in the history of archaeology.

By the Spring of 1922, British Egyptologist Howard Carter, financed by George Herbert. Earl of Carnarvon, had spent six seasons – November to April each year, avoiding the intense heat of summer- searching for a royal tomb he believed was waiting to be discovered on the west bank of the Nile, in the famed Valley of the Kings. With little to show for his efforts, it was agreed that the quest would be abandoned after one final, short dig of two months only, to start in November of that year.

What Carter uncovered is now regarded as one of the greatest finds in the history of archaeology: a complete set of royal coffins from the pharaonic New Kingdom era, lavishly wrought and in a startling state of preservation, with, at their centre, the mummified remains of a teenage king beneath a gold and blue “death mask”, that would eventually be seen by millions in exhibitions around the world and which would come to represent the magnificence of Ancient Egypt.

It was on November 1, 1922, that Carter began clearing a row of ancient stone huts, formerly used by workmen and close to a much larger tomb, rubble from which was strewn around the site. Three days into the task, on November 4, a single stone step emerged-the top of a flight that had been dug down into the limestone bedrock some 3,000 years earlier to carve out a smaller-than-average burial chamber and surrounding storage rooms.

By sunset the following day, a blocked doorway at the bottom of the stairs had been reached. It was plastered over and, crucially, bore the seal of the royal necropolis. Carter sent a telegram to Lord Carnarvon telling him of his wonderful discovery in Valley a magnificent tomb with seals intact”.

It was another three weeks before a group consisting of Carter, Carnarvon, engineer Arthur Callender and Carnarvon’s daughter. Lady Evelyn Herbert, stood at a second doorway at the end of a corridor, cleared of debris, while Carter chiselled a hole to peer by candlelight, into the royal antechamber, filled with gold and ebony artefacts.

For the next three months, Carter and his team- including photographer Harry Burton from the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Met’s Egyptologist, Arthur Mace- continued their excavation until, in February 1923, they had reached the burial chamber itself, containing four gilded wooden shrines enclosing the sarcophagus that housed Tutankhamun’s mummified body. It would be another two years, the start of the season in October 1925, before Carter would come face to face with the now-iconic gold funerary mask, found in a solid gold coffin enclosed by two larger coffins within the sarcophagus. Carter’s cataloguing of all king Tutankhamun’s treasures would continue until 1932.

“Tutmania” spread across the globe as news of Carter’s achievement was reported. Amid the political fallout from the discovery – Egypt had been a British protectorate during World War I, but declared its independence in 1922 visitor numbers soared and the cult of “King Tut” was born. The death from a mosquito bite, of Lord Carnarvon in April 1923, fed into the popular belief in the “Mummy’s curse” – the inevitable downfall of those who disturb the pharoah’s resting place.

This autumn, Egypt will hope, once again, to attract world attention as its long-awaited replacement for its antiquities museum in Cairo’s Tahrir Square – home to the Tutankhamun treasures for many decades- opens only a mile from the Pyramids at Giza. The monumental Grand Egyptian Museum, 20 years in the construction and costing over a billion dollars, will bring together for the first time all 5,000 pieces painstakingly retrieved by Carter a century ago.

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HOW A CHOIR SINGERS IDEA LED TO THE INVENTION OF THE UBIQUITOUS POST-IT NOTES?

In 1968, an American undergraduate student named Art Fry who worked with a company called 3M, invented Post-It Notes-small pieces of paper that can be stuck to any surface, but leave no mark when they are peeled off. The company had been researching a super glue. An adhesive had been invented but its sticking power was so weak it was dismissed as a failure. Fry, who was a choir singer, used the weak glue to make flags for his hymn book. The flags could be removed when needed without damaging the paper, and reused many times.

Post-It Notes became all the rage among Fry’s colleagues, but it was not until 1980 that 3M began selling pads of notepaper with a strip of adhesive along one edge for office use. It was an instant success.

The chemist who actually invented the adhesive was Spencer Silver, Fry’s senior colleague at 3M. He did not know what to make of it until Fry accidentally discovered its utility.

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Where is the second deepest point of the ocean?

The Tonga Trench in the South Pacific Ocean is the second deepest trench on Earth, only behind the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. The Tonga’s deepest point called the Horizon Deep, is at 10,882  metres below sea level. The Tonga Trench is an 850 miles (1,375 km) long channel. Every point of the trench is not 10 km deep. The average depth is 6000 m or 20000 ft.

The Tonga Trench is situated in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean. The trench lies parallel with the eastern shore of Australia. It is can also be joined with islands of New Zealand with a straight line on a map. The Tonga Trench is followed by the Karmadec Trench in the south. These two forms the active Tonga- Karmadec subduction zone.

In the Northern Tonga Trench, the convergence between the Indo-Australian and Pacific plate is going on at a fast rate of 9 inch per year. It is too fast for a geological timescale where we have to consider millions of years?

Active tectonic activity around the Tonga trench results in frequent earth quakes around the area. The island of Tonga experience around 350 quakes per year. Often, the large earth quakes generate tsunamis.  The Tonga trench is so deep that the light of sun never reaches to it. As a result, the water inside the deepest parts becomes very cold around 1.1 degree C (34 degrees F).  Due to the abysmal depth of the place the water pressure here is extremely high. Due to the high pressure, no light and lack of oxygen, common sea animals cannot survive here. But there are some special fishes and invertebrates that thrive in this ecological niche.

Credit : All Five Oceans

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How was PARAM supercomputer discovered?

When India built its own supercomputer, PARAM, it took the world by surprise, especially the U.S. In the 1980s, India was buying supercomputers from the U.S. but it had to fight constant battles with it over license. The then George H.W. Bush administration in the U.S. denied to export Cray supercomputer to India fearing we could use it to make nuclear weapons and missiles. This forced India to develop its own supercomputer. It set up the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), with Vijay Bhatkar as its director, in Pune, in March 1988, to develop a HPC system to meet high-speed computational needs in solving scientific and other developmental problems. Within three years, Indian scientists succeeded in creating a supercomputer, PARAM 8000, with a capability of one giga floating point operations a second (1 Gflops). This was 28 times more powerful than the Cray supercomputers, India was supposed to import from the U.S. Apart from taking over the home market, PARAM attracted 14 other buyers. It set the platform for a whole series of parallel computers, called the PARAM series. The success in supercomputers catapulted India to new heights in Information and Communication Technology, space science, missile development, weather forecasting, pharmaceutical research and much more.

 

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How was Crescograph discovered?

Crescograph is a highly sensitive instrument used in the detection of minute responses by living organisms to external stimuli. It was invented by Indian plant physiologist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose in the early 20th century. Crescograph is capable of magnifying the motion of plant tissues to about 10,000 times of their actual size, Using this, J.C. Bose found many similarities between plants and other living organisms. He demonstrated that plants are also sensitive to heat, cold, light, noise and various other external stimuli. He also invented several other instruments which would help in detecting even the slightest of change in plants. Crescograph helped make a striking discovery such as quivering in injured plants, which Bose interpreted as a power of ‘feeling’ in plants.

Also a physicist, Bose pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics and extensively researched the properties of radio waves. A crater on the moon has been named in his honour.

 

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How was Raman Effect discovered?

On 28 February 1928, physicist C.V. Raman led an experiment on the scattering of light, when he discovered what now is called the Raman effect. When light interacts with a molecule, the light can give away a small amount of energy to the molecule. As a result of this, the light changes its colour can act as a ‘fingerprint’ for the molecule. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect. The wavelengths and intensity of scattered lights are measured using Raman spectroscopy has a wide variety of applications in biology and medicine. It is used in laboratories all over the world to identify molecules and to analyse living cells and tissues to detect diseases such as cancer. It has been used in several research projects as a means to detect explosives from a safe distance.

Sir C. V. Raman remains the only Indian to receive a Nobel Prize in science. Three Indian-born scientists, Har Gobind Khorana, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, won Nobel Prizes, but they had become U.S. citizens by then.

 

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When is national science day celebrated?

India celebrates National Science Day every year on February 28 to mark Sir C.V. Raman’s discovery of the scattering of light, also known as the “Raman effect”. For his discovery, physicist Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930. The recognition put India on the global science map, but proofs to India’s scientific acumen go all the way back to the 5th century A.D, when ancient Indians developed the concept of zero. Zero, the cornerstone of modern mathematics and physics, is seen as one of the greatest innovations in human history. There are records of ancient Indians being among pioneers in irrigation, veterinary medicine, cataract surgeries and atomism. Indian astronomy also has a long history stretching from pre-historic to modern times.

Colonial era exposed a number of Indians to foreign institutions. Scientists from India also appeared throughout Europe and their work saw recognition and acceptance on a wider platform. Since Independence, India has built a number of satellites and sent probes to the Moon and Mars, established nuclear power stations, acquired nuclear weapon capability and became self-sufficient in the production of food and medicines. Not to mention the developments in meteorology, communication and Information Technology.

 

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What is the Background of the Keezhadi excavation?

Excavations at Keezhadi, an archaeological site in Sivaganga district near Madurai, Tamil Nadu have brought to light significant details about the Sangam era. The report on the fourth face of the archaeology survey, undertaken at the site in 2018, was released by the Tamil Nadu Archaeological Department (TNAD) last month. It describes the findings are turning point in the cultural historiography of the ancient Sangam era.

As many as four phases of excavations have been carried out in Keezhadi, while the fifth one, which began in June 2019, is underway. The first three faces were conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the fourth and the fifth phases are under the ambit of the TNAD.

In 2013-2014, the ASI begin exploration in Tamil Nadu, along the banks of the river Vaigai. More than 290 sites were identified in Theni, Dindigul, Madurai, Sivaganga and Ramanathapuram districts for excavation, Keezhadi, a village 12 km south-east of Madurai in Sivaganga district, was one of them.

In Keezhadi, the first phase of excavation begin in 2015. The site began yielding rich artefacts such as potsherds with Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, deep terracotta ring wells, big storage pots, pots with spouse, decorated pots, white-painted black ware, black and red pottery and beads made of semiprecious stones. Further excavations at the Pallichanthai Thidal in Keezhadi pointed to an ancient civilisation that thrived on the banks of the Vaigai.

Major findings mentioned in the latest report

The Sangam area could be 300 years older than thought. Culture deposits on earth date back to a period between sixth century BCE and 1st century CE. This is the first time the date has been officially announced by the TNAD.

The Keezhadi site provides overwhelming evidence of the presence of an urban settlement. The artefacts suggest that urbanisation took place on the Vaigai plains in Tamil Nadu around 6th century BCE, making it contemporary to the Gangetic plain civilization. The discovery of brick structures with classical features such as platforms, ring wells, rectangular tanks, square tanks with extended structures, and channels vouches for the presence of an urban culture there.

Sangam people may have participated in recreational activities as many as 110 dice made of ivory have been unearthed.

The Keezhadi findings push back the date of the Tamil-Brahmi script to another century, i.e., 6th century BCE.

Fifty-six Tamil-Brahmin inscribed potsherds have been recovered from the site of excavation undertaken by the TNAD alone. These suggest that the residents of the Sangam era attained literacy or learned the art of writing as early as 6th century BCE.

There are also other markings alongside the Tamil-Brahmi symbols which apparently suggest a connection with the Indus Valley civilization. Artefacts with ‘graffiti’ or ‘markings’ establish a possible link between the scripts of Indus Valley Civilization and Tamil Brahmi, which is the precursor to modern Tamil.

Skeletal fragments of  animals were used to predominantly for agricultural purposes.

Pottery specimens confirm that water containers and cooking vessels were shaped out of locally available materials.

 

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Who discovered the radioactive element radium?

 

                         Marie Curie and her husband Pierre began their research into radioactivity in 1895. They soon discovered the new element thorium, and in 1898 they discovered two other elements — polonium and radium. They received the Nobel Prize for physics for this work in 1903, although they shared the prize with Henri Becquerel, who researched the same subject. After her husband’s death, Marie continued her research, winning a second Nobel Prize before dying in 1934 of cancer caused by unprotected exposure to atomic radiation. A new element discovered in 1944 was named curium in her honour.

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Who developed the theory of relativity?

   

                      Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a physicist who was born in Germany but lived in Switzerland and the USA in later life. He developed the theory of relativity, which led to the famous equation E = (which very few people actually understand).

                     Einstein’s work is the basis for most of our theories about the nature, history and structure of the Universe. He laid down the rules that govern objects moving close to the speed of light, and explained why travel at this sort of speed could distort time itself. His work also proved invaluable in the development of the atomic bomb.

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How did frogs’ legs lead to an understanding of the nervous system?

                              Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) was an Italian scientist. He accidentally noticed that severed frogs’ legs twitched when the nerve was touched with a pair of metal scissors during a thunderstorm. Alessandro Volta (after whom the volt is named) explained why this happened. It was because an electrical current was produced between two metals, which provided the stimulation to the nerves. This discovery later led to the realization that the nervous system works by means of electrical signals.

 

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Who discovered the double helix?

 

                    The scientists James Watson and Francis Crick studied genes in an attempt to find out about their structure. The genetic material DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is a complicated molecule, and it had been difficult to understand how DNA could copy itself when cells reproduce. Watson and Crick found that it was shaped like a stepladder twisted into a spiral, and that if the two sides were pulled apart the ‘rungs’ of the ladder would automatically reproduce the rest of the molecule.

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Who first understood lightning?

 

                      Ben Franklin (1706-1790) was an American with many talents. He was a printer, scientist and politician who played an important part in founding the United States. He discovered the nature of lightning while flying a kite during a thunderstorm. Franklin noticed sparks jumping from a key tied to the end of the wet string. This could easily have killed him, but it did not. He went on to invent the lightning conductor, a strip of copper that is run from the top of a building to the ground in order that lightning can earth itself safely.

 

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Who invented the scientific method?

         

                   Archimedes was a Greek mathematician who lived between about 287 and 212BC. Unlike many Greek philosophers of the time, Archimedes believed in making experiments to prove that his theories worked. He made practical inventions, such as the Archimedean screw which is still used today to lift water for irrigation. He also worked out the laws which govern the use of levers and pulleys.

                Archimedes is most famous for allegedly leaping out of his bath in excitement shouting ‘Eureka!’ (The Greek for ‘I have found it!’). He did this when he realized that his body displaced a volume of water equal to its own volume.

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Who invented the modern science of astronomy?

 

                Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) built several telescopes and observed the movements of the Moon and planets. He was the first person to discover that the surface of the Moon is rough and cratered, and not smooth as had been supposed for centuries. He also found that he could use the swing of a pendulum to measure time.

               Galileo got into trouble with the authorities when he claimed that the Earth moved around the Sun, rather than the Sun moving around the Earth. This idea was thought to be a threat to biblical teaching, and Galileo was placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

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