NUMERICALLY YOURS

 In the digital world everything big and small, including living things as well as non-living things are represented in numbers. We shall start with the Universe first.

THE UNIVERSE IN NUMBERS

• 14 billion years ago the universe materialized out of nothing.
• It took 400,000 years for the particles to cool down to form atoms.
• Took another 300 million years to form planets, stars and galaxies.
• Expansion of the  universe began 13.8 billion years ago.
• The diameter of the observable universe is 570 thousand million million million miles.
• 200 billion stars in the milky way.
• Once in every 200 million years our solar system orbits the centre of the galaxy.
• 7 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
• 6000 years are required to count the Milky way's stars at a rate of one a second.
• In 4 billion years our galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy.
• The brightest stars emit  6 million times more light than the sun.
• 13 billion years is the age of the oldest star.
• A handful of 5000 stars make up the Pleiades cluster which can be seen with the naked eye.
• In 250 million years time, the stars will have disappeared and the cluster will no longer exist.

SUN

• The diameter of the sun is 13,93,684 kilometres.
• Distance from Earth150 million kilometres
• Surface temperature 5,500 degree Celsius
• The sun is large enough by volume to swallow 1.3 million Earths.
• It contains 98.8% of all the matter in the solar system.
• In the core region the temperature soars to 15 million degree Celsius.
• The gaseous matter in the sun  is 150 times more dense than water.
• The energy out put from the sun is 385 million billion giga watts per second.
• It takes only 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach Earth.
• It takes 100, 000years for energy released in the sun's core to travel to the surface and emerge as light. (It takes such a long time  because the energy is absorbed and re-emitted by trillions of atoms as it passes through the dense radiative zone.)
• The equator takes 25 Earth days to rotate once, but polar regions take 34 days.

PLANET EARTH

• Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago
• 250 million years ago earth's continents all joined together an enormous super continent known as Pangaea.
• One fifth of earth's landscape is mountains
• Solid surface of the earth below sea level is 10,900 meter deep.(The Mariana trench)
• The highest solid surface or point above sea level is 8848 meter high Everest summit
• The surface of most land areas is less than 500 meter above sea level
• Earth's elevation over 4000 meter
• Sea depth below 4000 meter
• 130 million years ago India escaped from the southern land mass, and is moving north, towards Asia.
• 70 million years ago South America split from Africa, while in the north , North America is splitting from Europe
• Continental plates move at a rate of 2.5 centimeter in a year. That is as fast as your finger nails grow. Some move faster, up to 10 centimeter in a year
• Earth's surface and atmosphere contain 1.39 billion cubic kilometer of water
• During ice ages sea level was 120 meter lower than it is today, exposing the continental shelves as dry land
• Temperature of earth's inner core is 5500 degree Celsius
• 1.5 million species of plants and animals live in tropical rainforests
• The length of under water mountain chains formed by mid ocean ridges is 65000 kilometers
• 55 million years ago the Indian and Asian plates crashed together  creating the Himalayas 
• Deepest point on Earth is 10911 metre below sea level.
• Most of the Mid Atlantic Ridge (2500 metres) is under water. Iceland is the only part of it above sea level
• 60 volcanoes erupt in an average year the world over
• Ash cloud from a large volcanic eruption can be up to 60 kilometres high
• 75% of the world's active  volcanoes are under water
• Southern California experiences 30 small earthquakes everyday
• The distance that the whole planet vibrates back and forth in space during the very largest earthquake is one centimetre
• The largest earthquake ever occurred off the coast of Chile in 1960 caused devastating tsunami.
• The length of the rupture under the sea floor that caused the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was 1600 kilometres

ANTIOXIDANTS

 Antioxidants affect free radicals, which are atoms that have many or too few electrons. They roam the body and damage cells by collecting or dropping off electrons. Free radicals can be formed by exercise, by sun light, or during metabolic processes(all of the above).

What are antioxidants?

Antioxidants are substances that can prevent or slow damage to cells caused by free radicals.

What are free radicals?

Free radicals are unstable molecules produced in the body as a reaction to environmental and other pressures. The sources of free radicals can be natural or artificial. Free radicals are unpaired electrons.

How many free radicals are produced in a day in  our body?

Over 20 billion free radicals are formed by each of our body's cells every day.

What do they do in our body?

Free radicals annihilate vital cellular components , including our cell membranes  and our all important DNA. A prominent theory of aging blames the unpleasant process on free radicals. Eventually enough damage accumulates from these relentless molecules that we simply fall apart.

INFLUENCE OF MICROBES ON HUMANS

•  Trillions of microbes affect every stage of life of humans from birth to old age. Our health and well-being are really driven by the bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa that live in our intestines, in our lungs, in our skin, and even on our eye balls. The bugs are essential for establishing the basic nature of who we are. 

Escherichia coli 

• Escherichia coli is a bacteria which inhabit the human gut and perform essential functions.
• They make vitamins K  and B12 .
• They also repel disease causing bacteria.

The effects of microbiomes can be profound.

• A child's temperament might be related to whether the bacteria in an infant's gut are predominantly from one genus : the more Bifidobacterium bugs , the sunnier the baby.
• There are 38 trillion microbes for a typical young adult male, slightly more than the number of actual human cells.

EPIDEMICS AND PADEMICS

• Diseases spread  throughout populations are considered epidemics when more than 400 people out of every 100,000 are affected.
• Pandemics are those that sweep across wide geographic areas, such as the influenza pandemic that followed  the World War 1.,killing more people than had died during the war.