SCI-ART LAB

Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

Q: Can science explain why the flames in Jwalaji are always burning? Is it because of some divine miracle?

Krishna: When you are asking a Q on a science site, don't bring religion or miracle into it. 

I will answer the Q only from a scientific point of view. 

 The town of Jwalamukhi has been host to the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India. The area was first surveyed in 1835, and exploratory natural gas mines were drilled throughout the 1980s. Because oil was never struck, none of the mines were developed into commercial production, but a closer examination of the flames at the temple reveal copper pipes which are lit each day by the priests. Outside, a stone-lined pit of water bubbles constantly, revealing the natural gas' presence. 

So natural gas, originally lit by somebody or by a lightening, is the cause of the flames at Jwalamukhi.

There are many places like these around the world like the Eternal Flame Falls, Orchard Park, New York.

Q: Can we go for alternative medicines too while undergoing chemotherapy?

Krishna: Consult your doctor before going for anything. If the alternative medicines don't interfere with cancer therapy then the doctor might  give you a green signal. If s/he thinks they interfere with his treatment, s/he would say 'no'. 

Anyway, alternative medicines don't work as efficiently as chemo, radio or immune therapy work. Sometimes they might even cause more harm. Doctors say some alternative medicines might boost the patient's ability to cope with the side effects of chemotherapy. Some do more harm. 

Chemo and radio therapies are good for cancer treatment. Don't abandon them even if you believe in alternative therapies.  

Q: Does it represent good or bad luck if a temple bulb breaks?

Glass bulbs break all the time for various reasons. It is quite natural. It neither represents good luck nor bad luck. It just is your interpretation or perception.

If you are superstitious, you feel it is bad luck.

If you are scientifically inclined, you think all about glass, its vulnerability, scientific reasons behind breaking, and think there isn’t any importance attached to it and move on.

Q: What is the difference between the imagination of a scientist and the imagination of a layman?

Krishna: The imagination of a scientifically trained person will be based on information already available. It depends on the education he or she got. It is close to reality and fact-derived. It is based on critical thinking.

The imagination of a laymen depends on the strange perception he or she has about the world around. It depends on the stories he or she heard, not on reality or facts. 

A person of science thinks when he sees some planets revolve around the Sun,  the gravity of the Sun keeps the planets in their orbits. The planets are also moving sideways. This is the same as if you have a weight on the end of a string. If you swing it around, you are constantly pulling it toward your hand, just as the gravity of the Sun pulls the planet in, but the motion sideways keeps the ball swinging around. Without that sideways motion, it would fall to the center; and without the pull toward the center, it would go flying off in a straight line, which is, of course, exactly what happens if you let go of the string. 

And a layman imagines in this way - God, with some kind of magic, keeps the planets in their orbit! 

Do you know there is an interesting Story about Newton? Newton represents scientists of earlier centuries. At that  time  science just started to become a separate field. And religion had an equal hold on people's minds.  Although Newton thought about gravity as a scientist, he also thought God's hand 's responsible for the planets to stay in their orbits! And he stopped working on the problem because of this imagination and interpretation of his mind as he was satisfied with that answer. Weird!

Q: How can I remember things I learnt like you. I read several things but  forget all about them soon. How do you remember so many things?

Krishna: Your brain can cope with certain amount of information only. If you overload it, it will forget most of it. 

To remember important things, you have to declutter your brain. Train your brain  to differentiate between important things and non-important ones. Once you do that, it automatically removes clutter and remembers only the important ones.

Who says I remember everything I come across? 

My brain goes haywire sometimes. It is because of the cognitive load.

I am a polymath and deal with several fields. How does my brain cope with it?

I make several silly mistakes while doing ordinary things. This happens because I try to reduce the load on my brain and do ordinary things without thinking about them.

I forget several things, even the names of my close friends and relatives, several words while talking and stop sentences in the middle unable to recall the words. I mix up sentences while thinking and writing/talking at the same time and usually my verbs don’t match with the nouns of a sentence! This happens with the sentences of all the five languages I speak. :)

Your language gets funny and highly amusing - but who cares?

My mind becomes a strange and messy world sometimes but the experience of gaining knowledge and utilizing it is highly rewarding.

But if once I read something in the field of science with high concentration, it sticks to my mind forever, and I would never forget it in my life. "Science" has a special place in my mind and my brain recognizes it immediately when it comes across science information and stores it in a specialized 'never forget it' space in the box in my head. There is no place for unimportant things in that area.

"Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it’s a small price to pay for living a dream."

Read here how polymaths cope with all that they do: How the brain of a Polymath copes with all the things it does

Q: What will happen if you exaggerate your symptoms to your doctor?

Krishna : What do you mean by ‘exaggeration’ ?
Each patient is different. And each one’s experience with a disease is different.

If you take pain as an example, the pain threshold differs from person to person and it even differs in a single individual at various stages of his/her life. For people with fibromyalgia, it is even less and these people with the condition suffer more than others because of pain.

That is why while some people scream with pain, others won’t even utter a sound.

Each patient is different and what seems exaggeration to some may not be exaggeration at all in reality and that is exactly what a patient suffers. This is recognized by modern medicine and individual treatment plan is the new mantra.

Clinical decision making, consequently at times becomes confusing and there is need today to look at individual variability in genes, environment, lifestyle, age, his or her other medical conditions before a patient is treated. Evidence based decision making (EBDM) is based on tests, statistical and or epidemiological data generally gathered through systematic studies and analysis are taken into account. Personalized therapy is based on a better understanding of health and disease attributes unique to each individual. A case-based reasoning rather than a population-based approach in order to arrive at the best treatment for an individual patient is highly important to a good doctor. 

Q: Can placebo effect cure diseases?

Krishna: No! All diseases can not be cured by only placebo effect.  A patient might 'feel better' because of the effect, but will not be actually 'cured' of the disease. Some serious problems where time is an important factor, delaying the correct treatment because of this effect can be detrimental or fatal too.

For example, if a cancer patient feels better if he takes homeopathic medicines, it just is his perception. He can't actually get rid of cancer with homeopathic treatment. But the delay to get the evidence based medicine  might cost him his life if it enters the metastasis stage.

Steve Jobs ( of Apple Inc. ) made this mistake of going for alternative medicines when he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. He felt better in the initial stages and refused the right treatment  but died soon after. Before dying, he himself admitted he made a mistake.

Q: What is the secret of Anesthesia?

Krishna: Secret?! Do you mean how it works?

The earliest examples of general anesthesia include ether and chloroform. But, there is a fine line between the amount of these drugs needed for surgery and the amount that can be fatal; these drugs were often administered with nothing more than a soaked sponge to the nose, which made it hard to control the dose.

Today, the most common modern general anesthetics are mixtures of inhalable gases, which include nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and various derivatives of ether, such as Isoflurane, Sevoflurane, and desflurane. Skilled anesthesiologists administer the drugs via machines that measure the specific amount necessary to keep the patient out for the surgery, but not forever. Additionally, because the drugs interfere with breathing, patients are often intubated — meaning a plastic or rubber tube is inserted in the trachea to keep the airway open — and kept on a mechanical ventilator.

Despite their necessity in modern medicine, scientists aren't sure exactly how anesthetics work. The best theory suggests that they dissolve some of the fat present in brain cells, changing the cells’ activity. But, the precise mechanisms remain unknown.

Drug combinations that ease pain, relax muscles and, in some cases, put us in a deep state of hypnosis that gives us temporary amnesia. Today, there are two primary types of anesthesia drugs: those that knockout the whole body (general) and those that only numb things up locally.

Local anesthetics block the nerves that connect a particular body part or region to the brain, preventing the nerves from carrying pain signals to your brain. Examples include novocaine shots, which dentists use to numb the nerves in your mouth during a root canal, and epidurals, which allow for a (relatively) painless childbirth by blocking the nerves that originate at the base of the spinal cord and serve the pelvic region. 

 Local anesthetics, such as Novocain, block nerve transmission to pain centers in the central nervous system by binding to and inhibiting the function of an ion channel in the cell membrane of nerve cells known as the sodium channel. This action obstructs the movement of nerve impulses near the site of injection, but there are no changes in awareness and sense perception in other areas.

For serious surgeries that require a patient to be completely unaware, doctors turn to general anesthesia. This renders patients unconscious with no perception or memory of the surgery (though pain from the surgical procedure will be apparent once you wake up). It also limits the physiological responses to surgical cuts, keeping blood pressure, stress hormone release and heart rate constant during the procedure.

Their primary site of action is in the central nervous system, where they inhibit nerve transmission by a mechanism distinct from that of local anesthetics. The general anesthetics cause a reduction in nerve transmission at synapses, the sites at which neurotransmitters are released and exert their initial action in the body. But precisely how inhalational anesthetics inhibit synaptic neurotransmission is not yet fully understood. It is clear, however, that volatile anesthetics, which are more soluble in lipids than in water, primarily affect the function of ion channel and neurotransmitter receptor proteins in the membranes of nerve cells, which are lipid environments.

Q: Why do politicians court Godmen instead of scientists?

Krishna: You should ask politicians this question!

Q: Sometimes we feel that something is walking on our skin, but there is nothing. What is the science about this? 

Krishna: Usually people with Fibromyalgia and Celiac disease will have these sensations.

But formication is what’s called a tactile hallucination and can affect almost anyone. What isn’t very obvious is why exactly the brain produces this hallucination in the first place. Essentially, your brain is registering the sensation of something crawling on or under your skin when this isn’t actually happening. So your nervous system, which usually determines when something is crawling on you and sends that information back to the brain, is sending those signals without the external influence of something touching you.

It is a communication problem with the nervous system. This might explain why it’s so common in people with the above conditions mentioned. Fibromyalgia sufferers often deal with other nervous system problems like irritable bowel syndrome or chronic itching. So with a clear link between all of these different nerve system disorders and fibromyalgia, it seems like the pain of fibromyalgia might actually be rooted in the nerves. Usually, your nervous system sends signals to the brain, which in turn interprets these signals. Your brain simply registers pain that isn’t there in certain conditions. And in cases of formication with fibromyalgia, those same faulty neural pathways are registering a sensation of bugs under your skin that isn’t there.

(After reading the above answer of mine, another person asked me this Q: 


The other type may be called nondirective meditation, where the person who is meditating effortlessly focuses on his or her breathing or on a meditation sound, but beyond that the mind is allowed to wander as it pleases. Some modern meditation methods are of this nondirective kind.

Nondirective meditation leads to higher activity than during rest in the part of the brain dedicated to processing self-related thoughts and feelings. Nondirective meditation allows for more room to process memories and emotions than during concentrated meditation.

When we sit to meditate there are many processes at work. Some of them happen all the time but we are usually too busy or distracted to notice them. Others happen only when we sit still and focus our attention, as in the case of meditation.

A small drop in blood pressure is common when meditating. This is an automatic response to slower breathing and a decreased heart rate. The result can sometimes be one of feeling light-headed or dizzy.

Emotions have a funny way of being processed and can sometimes cause very strange feelings as they are discovered or released. These feelings range from intense heat or cold to aches and pains, and even to involuntary twitches.

If we sit to meditate with a very quiet and calm mind, we will likely experience a similar feeling in the body. But when we sit to meditate with a very busy mind, it can cause the body to feel irritable, sometimes even itchy and scratchy and that sensation of something crawling on your skin. Misfiring nerve signals?

I never meditated , so don’t really know how people feel these sensations but read a few articles in science magazines about them. The work is still going on and we need to wait to learn more deeply how these sensations are caused.

Read about one of the experiments here: https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/f...

Q: How can we get rid of superstitions?

Krishna: When you develop critical thinking. Scientific analysis of everything helps you in the process. Read these articles that help you in getting rid of your superstitions:

Critical Thinking

Science's rules are unyielding, they will not be bent in any way fo...

Science and superstitions : How rational thinking can make you work...

Q:Can the new power in science always be under control of and proportionate to human understanding? Can we use them wisely?  

Q: Should scientific research proceed even when it might be used for immoral purposes?

(Art work by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa

http://www.kkartfromscience.com )

Q: (This Q and the following messages came all the way from Africa sent by a person whose initials are KW!): Why do I have this feeling that there is something unhuman or occult about my female friend?

  1. You must have a suspicious mind.
  2. Your friend is behaving suspiciously.

Now analyse the situation neutrally to find the truth.

Human beings can’t be supernatural. If the second one is true, your friend is having delusions about her powers.

You are dancing to her music unnecessarily, if the first one is correct.

KW: It’s just I knew her since pre k (now 11th grade) and I always felt a dark presence surround her, now that we live together the feeling is stronger. She has a crush on me and me being shy went along with it so I guess you could say we are super close. Thing is my great grandpa is a shaman for a Navajo tribe and he has always felt a weird force around her. Positive to me and dangerous to those who threaten me he says. What can you make of this?

Krishna: Just a belief, nothing else. No such things exist in reality, according to science, the field I come from.

KW: Seems like I asked the wrong person then, but I respect your answer none the less. But I must say there are somethings science can’t explain, guess I just have to figure this out on my own. Maybe I will update on the stuff I found out. Your also talking to someone who excelled in science and doesn’t believe in most things until I had strange experiences with said beings.

Krishna: You have asked the right person and you have got a right answer too! But people think if the answers or facts don’t confirm their opinions or beliefs, they are wrong. But science mentions facts and don’t appease confirmation biases. Sorry. What some people think is science, is actually pseudo-science and we don’t deal with it in our world. Science doesn’t endorse occults. Period!

KW: Well I was going to say that I found a scientific explanation about my problem. She had some sort of radiation exposure due to her father working at pantex which contributed to a mutation where her hair was born white but not her skin like albinism and bright green eyes. She has low levels of ionizing radiation in her body which does the cells good surprisingly enough. She is perfectly healthy. So I did my own research with her parents and I’m satisfied though this does tie into our beliefs.

Krishna: There is no connection between your friend’s father’s radiation exposure and her ‘occult’. You are connecting unrelated things to confirm your beliefs.

KW: I thought maybe she was there was a chance she could be something else but it was due to radiation not beliefs. I’m connecting my grandpa’s religion to this situation. Those people they believed to be reincarnated gods because of their hair and eye color was due to uranium and radiation. Explaining centuries of misconception. I just wanted to know what made her so special and mystical but it is due to uranium and radiation from the parents and slim luck she looked the same as the supposed goddess’s.

Q: Why is Nature so secret about its working that scientists can't find answers to several Qs of its nature?

Krishna: The limitations that stand in the way of comprehension are ours, not Nature’s. We have the limitations of funds, equipment, sensory inputs, biases that restrict our mental analysis and several other things.

Q: Earlier people used to have trust in science. Now that trust is eroding. Why is this? 

Krishna: When science is becoming powerful more and more, some vested interests feared it might dethrone them one day. So they started to malign science. People who can't think properly on their own started believing these vested interests. 

There are some more reasons too. Read them here: /trust-in-science-what-makes-people-waver

and my explanations why they are wrong... here: standing-up-for-science-showing-reasons-why-science-should-be-trusted

Q: Why don't scientists believe in reincarnation?

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