Bibliotheca Alexandrina WINTER 2015 | Year 8, Issue 1
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Bibliotheca Alexandrina Planetarium Science Center WINTER 2015 | Year 8, Issue 1 IN THIS ISSUE... 4 Earth’s Cousin 5 Home Lost Home Planetarium Home Sweet Home: Science Center 6 The Beginning Indeed, Necessity is the WINTER 2015 8 Mother of Invention Year 8, Issue 1 Luxuries Turned 9 Necessities Cultural Outreach Sector Minimalism vs. Educational & Promotional 10 Publications Unit (COPU) Consumerism Top 10 Necessities Maissa Azab 11 of Modern Life Head of Unit Editorial Team 12 A World Without Internet By: Maissa Azab Shahenda Ayman In my humble opinion, if enough to give us a sense Hend Fathy When Death is Essential 13 anyone wants to learn how it of security, and warmth. Esraa Ali Mankind has always had Hygiene: Your Gateway all begins, one should watch to fight for these bare Sara Khattab 14 to Better Health Cast Away! Watching this Moataz AbdelMegid agonizingly great movie, it necessities; fights that sadly, Lamia Ghoneim never fails to scare and shock but inevitably, have and will Jailane Salem 15 Water Also Kills invoke ugly wars. me; I mean to be reminded of Basma Fawzy our utter vulnerability. With However, the truly sad Omar Raafat part is that, with all the Water Scarcity: all the comforts and luxuries Ahmed Khaled 16 we splurge in, we definitely development, progress, and The Battle of the Future forget that what Mankind prosperity we have achieved, we should have matured Design Team really needs to survive at Malnutrition: enough to make sure we all Asma Haggag 18 the core of all things is fresh A Growing Threat water, food, some kind of get what we need without Maha Sherin shelter, hopefully fire, and— hurting each other or future Fertilizers Battling World generations. As things stand, Faten Mahmoud 19 if we are really lucky—a Hunger companion, even if it were an that is not the case by any Publishing Department imaginary one. means; not even the most Language Revision 20 Astronomy of the Arabs This brilliant movie, arduous Earth lovers’ efforts among so many deep have been able to bring Contact Us: The Necessity of meanings, boldly underlines us closer to this seemingly [email protected] 21 Expression the Bare Necessities, the utopic state. SCIplanet simple bare necessities. Wait, In this issue, we simply Exploring the Human are they really so simple? tackle the bare necessities; 22 Civilization Enigma - 05 Sitting on my couch, in my the original necessities, warm apartment, a bottle of Mankind’s struggle to secure mineral water by my side, a them, the challenges they | WINTER 2014 new year begins; bowl of delicious munchies still present to us. We also A and with every new at hand’s reach, they sure tackle new necessities that | WINTER 2015 For additional information beginning, we look back seem simple. Unfortunately, modernism has both blessed and reservation, please at how far we have come, that is not the case; not by a and damned us with. contact: where we started, and where long shot. We hope you enjoy the [email protected] we are now. The truth is we Mankind has struggled for new issue and the new year, Tel.:+(203) 4839999 all start at the same place; millennia to secure sources and to hopefully make a new, Ext.: 2350, 2351 only we do not know it, or at of fresh water, catch food, more sustainable, beginning Fax: +(203) 4820464 least do not recognize it. find or build shelters strong out of it for yourself and others. www.bibalex.org/psc 2 By: Dr. Jaidaa Gawad Hamada Lecturer, English Department Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University Once upon a time, from the swirling comfortable; hence, setting his creativity have enabled man to alter the very dusts of a nascent solar system, and to work to come up with a plethora of course of life on Planet Earth, yielding far- with an oxygen-rich, life-sustaining inventions. Not only are these inventions reaching consequences in all walks of life. atmosphere, there emerged a gigantic a tangible manifestation of Man’s On the other side of the spectrum, abode for Mankind called Planet Earth. ingenuity, but they have also proven to be drastic changes in climate; ever- Once the newborn organized itself a measuring yard for charting the history increasing population growth; mounting among its brethren into concentric shells, of human development. levels of pollution; devastating nuclear its continents, oceans, and atmosphere Bare necessities they have become, contamination; shortage of water supplies; came into being, and eventually life thereby necessitating their being scarcity of food; among a barrage of emerged on it. Of all its siblings in the solar broached in this issue of our newsletter. other manifestations of environmental system, Planet Earth had proven to be the In this context, one cannot but highlight impairment, have come to pose a potent most benevolent, endowed as it was with the widely propagated proverb “necessity threat to Man’s relationship to Planet varied assets that made it habitable, and is the mother of invention”. Practically Earth. This, in its turn, necessitates a by implication, welcoming to Mankind. speaking, it is impossible to study the systematic plan to counter the setbacks of There was an even broader dimension history of human science and development technological innovation. to those privileges; as far as humanity without turning to a set of bare necessities In short, these bare necessities have was concerned, its resources made it a that have become part and parcel of become indispensable to the point of their congenial milieu for laying the groundwork Man’s existence. being interwoven into the very fabric of of civilization. Nonetheless, to be In each and every age and culture, our daily existence on Planet Earth. As habitable, and even hospitable, did not inventions form the pinnacle of human you navigate through this issue of our mean that it had always been the land of development. Occurring in varied contexts newsletter, we wish you a most stimulating | WINTER 2015 milk and honey. Planet Earth was never within the continuum of technological reading, underpinned by a most bare utopian! development, the nature and scope of necessity to explore some of our bare Over the centuries, and up until this man’s inventions reveal how imperative necessities. present day, Man has been incessantly they are to our modern lives. Throughout endeavoring to make his existence more human history, these bare necessities 3 A COSMIC POINT OF VIEW By: Sara Khattab Several months ago, NASA announced which means it is on a tighter orbit than that its Kepler Telescope has uncovered a Earth is. new solar system about 500 light years This planet receives one-third of the Since its launch in 2009, NASA’s away from Earth and they gave it the energy from its star as what the Earth Kepler Space Telescope has been hunting name Kepler 186; this star is an M-dwarf, receives from our Sun; it would still be planets that could be other Earths. Each also called a red dwarf. M-dwarf stars are warm enough to prevent liquid water from discovery is a significant milestone in usually cooler and dimmer than sun-like freezing, in case it has an atmosphere that humanity’s efforts to find evidence of life stars; that is why their habitable zones provides a substantial greenhouse effect. elsewhere in our galaxy; astronomers are are located much closer to the star. These At high noon, the planet’s surface is only looking for a planet that mimics the Earth’s stars also gravitationally interact with their about as bright as the Earth is at sunset. characteristics to be able to support life. planets, causing tides that heat the planet The planet’s size influences the Some of the previously discovered planets and often cause their rotations to be tidally strength of its gravitational pull, and were found in the habitable zone of its solar locked, which means one side always its ability to pull in abundant gases as system, but are all at least 40% larger than faces the star and the other faces the old hydrogen and helium. At this size, Kepler- Earth’s size. The habitable zone is the open space, much like our moon is tidally 186f has a small chance that it could have region around a star within which a planet locked with Earth. gathered up a thick hydrogen and helium can sustain liquid water on its surface Researchers had previously thought envelope, so there is a good chance that it given the right atmospheric conditions; that tidal locking would make a planet does have a rocky surface as Earth. being in this zone does not mean that the inhospitable to life; as such a world would Actually, it is not easy to know if the planet is habitable though. have one scorching-hot hemisphere and planet is habitable; astronomers need Life on a planet requires the presence another freezing cold hemisphere. More- to get a sense of the atmosphere and of liquid water; so a planet with the recent modeling work suggests that air its greenhouse effect. Still, Kepler-186f, potential for life would not be too close or water currents could transport heat nicknamed “Earth’s cousin”, is considered to the star, which would be too hot that around such planets, evening out their a huge discovery that proves the existence the water vaporizes, yet not too far than temperatures. of worlds that might be similar to our the star, where it would be too cold that There are five planets orbiting the own, and will undoubtedly shape future the water freezes.