"Nature is God's Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world" - Baha'u'llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Baha’i Faith

August 26, 2016

Human Cerebrum

Place your hands on top of your head. The part of your brain below your hands is the cerebrum. The cerebrum is the brain's largest part. It makes up 85 percent of your brain's total weight! Scientists often divide the cerebrum into different parts, called lobes. The lobes are the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes. The cerebrum has many functions. It controls your sense of touch, smell, hearing, taste, and sight. It also controls your feelings. When you are happy or angry, this is your cerebrum at work. The cerebrum oversees movement and voluntary actions, or actions you control. The cerebrum is also in charge of thinking and learning. 
- Shannon Caster  (‘Brain’)

August 18, 2016

Mammals - 4600 species

Animals that raise their young on milk. Most mammals are covered with hair or fur, and most have specialized teeth that help them to cut or chew their food. Compared to other vertebrates (animals with backbones), mammals have highly developed nervous systems, and they show an intelligence and resourcefulness that few other animals can match. Mammals include some of the most familiar members of the animal kingdom, such as cats, dogs, elephants, and whales, and also human beings — a species that now dominates life on earth.

With the exception of three highly unusual mammals called monotremes, all mammals give birth to live young. Some young mammals are completely helpless when they are born, while others are relatively well developed. Despite these differences, all young mammals initially rely on their mothers for food, and stay with them until they are ready to fend for themselves. This close link between mother and offspring produces strong family ties, and allows young mammals to learn by copying their parents' behavior. 
(Encarta Encyclopedia)

August 17, 2016

Some amazing facts about human eyes

  • The eyes are the second most complex organ in the body, after the brain.
  • Sight is such a demanding activity that it involves almost half the brain to accomplish.
  • Eyes start to develop two weeks after conception.
  • Newborns don’t produce tears. They may cry, but tears don’t start flowing until somewhere between 4 and 13 weeks old.
  • Each of your eyes has a small blind spot in the back of the retina where the optic nerve attaches. You don’t notice the hole in your vision because your eyes work together to fill in the other’s blind spot.
  • The cells in your eyes come in various shapes. Rod-shaped cells allow you to see shapes, and cone-shaped cells allow you to see color.
  • Of all the muscles in your body, the muscles that control your eyes are the most active.
  • Eyelashes having a life span of about 5 months, after which time, they fall out.  If you added the length of all those eyelashes together, it would be over 98 feet.

August 15, 2016

The "temple of the world" has been "fashioned after the image and likeness of the human body"

…as the human body in this world, which is outwardly composed of different limbs and organs, is in reality a closely integrated, coherent entity, similarly the structure of the physical world is like unto a single being whose limbs and members are inseparably linked together.  Were one to observe with an eye that discovereth the realities of all things, it would become clear that the greatest relationship that bindeth the world of being together lieth in the range of created things themselves, and that co-operation, mutual aid and reciprocity are essential characteristics in the unified body of the world of being, inasmuch as all created things are closely related together and each is influenced by the other or deriveth benefit therefrom, either directly or indirectly. 
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha  (The Compilation of Compilations vol. I, Conservation of the Earth's Resources) 

August 6, 2016

How hot is the Sun?

The temperature at the surface of the Sun is about 10,000 Fahrenheit (5,600 Celsius). The temperature rises from the surface of the Sun inward towards the very hot center of the Sun where it reaches about 27,000,000 Fahrenheit (15,000,000 Celsius). The temperature of the Sun also rises from the surface outward into the Solar atmosphere. The uppermost layer of the Solar atmosphere, called the corona, reaches temperatures of millions of degrees. The corona is the bright halo of light that can be seen during a total Solar eclipse. (http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/)

August 3, 2016

The temperature of the air around a bolt of lightning is 100 times hotter than a kitchen oven

The temperature of the air around a bolt of lightning is about 54,000 Fahrenheit (30,000 Celsius), which is about five and half times hotter than the surface of the sun.
(The Handy Science Answer Book, compiled by the Science and Technology department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh)