Well,
not so loftiest and not so lowliest after all, but in comparison still acceptable. The loftiest is about our Moon. According to the generally
accepted Giant Impact Hypothesis Moon
was born roughly 4-5 billion years ago when some heavenly body collided with Mother
Earth , while both were rather jellylike on the exterior. For ease of
referencing and interpretation the unknown heavenly body was named Theia, in scientific circles ; all for good reason.
In Greek mythology, Theia the titan, is
the mother of the lovely Selene, our Moon So in lighter vein we are investigating a Hit and Run case
between Theia and Gaia ( Gaia is the Greek name for Mother Earth) which formed Selene
But unfortunately we are approximately 5 billion years
late. Crime scene is no longer the same. But so what?
Positive way of thinking is that we have
5 billion years’ of accumulated evidence and
the investigating team has very powerful
tools and techniques . True, there is, as of now, no trace of Theia, but Gaia and Selene might
still be capable of providing useful information?
Can they answer 3 critical questions:
How big was Theia, what was she made up
of and how fast she was spinning?
So we now put together the pieces of evidence. Selene is 1/4th the size and 1/100th
the mass of Gaia. If we leave aside the inner core of Gaia, both have roughly the same chemical makeup.,
except that the Selene has a lower
density. This leads to several possibilities: either
Theia too had an almost similar composition or Theia was too small to have
caused any variation in the compositional
variation. Canup (Planetary Science Directorate, Southwest Research Institute
Boulder Colorado) would like to believe the former possibility and present computational data in support. On the other hand Cuk and Stewart (Planetary Sciences Dept. of
Harvard University) argue in favor of
the second possibility. Both agree that
the angular momentum issue could be easily settled by taking into
consideration the synchronization within the Solar system. So in any case the question is still far from settled and we can
expect more on this.
Now let us look at something more mundane, the
humble Chicken. It was Charles Darwin’s hypothesis that the
origins of the current domesticated
chicken could be traced to the red
jungle fowl who wandered along a rather wide stretch of land from the the foot hills
of Himalayas to the Sumatran islands. It
is indeed a great pity that the Gallus gallus,
the majestic, colorful red jungle rooster lost its
regal get up along the path of domestication to yield the current nondescript
chickens. The shiny and thick glistening orange mane, burnt red feathers covering most of its body with streaks of iridiscent blue or green, the carelessly bunched up tail of shiny black feathers. All gone and Gallus gallus of the wild type is an
endangered species now.
 |
| The majestic wild rooster Courtsey: wikipedia |
But the question remains: exactly where, when and how was the Gallus gallus of the wild type
domesticated.? Geneticists, ecologists
and surprisingly enough archaeologists have come together to solve this puzzle.
Tailpiece:
Would you like to enter your pet dog for an
aptitude test for just $ 59.95 ?
Do visit https://www.dognition.com/brian-hare
References
11. Origin
of the Moon A.N Halliday, Science Vo. 338, 23 November, p 1040-1041
2. Making
the Moon from the fast Spinning Earth : Cuk & Stewart Science Vol. 338, 23
November, p 1047-1051
3. Forming
Moon with earth-like composition via giant impact : Canup, Science Vo. 338, 23
November, p 1052-1055
4. In search of the wild chicken A. Lawler Science Vol. 338, 23 November, p 1020-1024
