Pradeep Kumar S.
Pradeep is an M Tech final year student in Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
He can be contacted at spradeepmahadeek @ gmail.com
In this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair — Albert Einstein
The United State’s Department of Energy in 1991 commissioned a team of six experts- an architect, anthropologist, material scientist, linguist & archaeologist to design a marker for the nuclear waste repository that was proposed to come up in Yucca mountain, Nevada desert whose facilities would house waste at 1000 ft deep amounting tens of thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste.
The challenge for the team was that the marker should last for at least10,000 years & it should convey the following meaning
” No esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing of value is buried here. This place is a message & part of a system of messages. Pay attention. We are serious. Sending this message was significant for us. Ours was considered an important culture.”
(strong opposition from the local communities & revelation of inconsistent reports caused US government to roll back its plan in 2009)
Ten thousand years !
Is it such a long time?. Yes indeed! About 10,000 years ago we were living as a hunter-gatherer communities. Back then, there was no language, no writing, no currency, no bank, no capitalism, hence no exploitation of weaker sections of society. The life was filled with love, compassion, affection and sharing that was harmonious with the other life forms of the world.No one would have dreamed then, that this human race would one day pose a serious threat to the only habitable planet in the solar system.Thanks to industrialization & capitalism of 21st century.
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