The History of Earth: The Indian Version

By Prashobh Karunakaran

Since ancient times, humans have been asking, why we are here, where we come from and where we are going? Science gives some clues. This book amalgamates information gathered from the ancient culture of India with knowledge gathered through modern science to decipher what has transpired so far. The book explains why the world will not end in nuclear conflict or global warming problems any time soon despite the overwhelming evidence for it. The time spans or yugas will have to finish. Another concern of people today is the increasing power in the hands of the few. This is not something new and what happened to people who tried to gain absolute power in the past is depicted in this book as a reference for today’s power brokers. Almost absolute power was in the hands of the few many times in the past and if these few follow wrong paths, God has consistently intervened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 28, 2005
• ISBN: 9781420872750

Prashobh Karunakaran

Dr. Prashobh Karunakaran is a Professional Electrical Engineer. He currently owns a technical electrical engineering school and a contracting business in Malaysia. He initially worked at a civil engineering company (Dragages Travaux), a Power company (SESCo), an American computer hard disk factory (Western Digital) before starting his own business. He hails from Malaysia and did his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at South Dakota State University, USA. He completed his PhD in engineering at University Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). He is married to Sreeja Haridas, who is also an electrical engineer and they have three children, Prashanth, Shanthi and Arjun. His interest in the material of this book stems from dedicated inquiry into the reason for life on earth, starting at the age of sixteen.

Book preview

ISBN: 978-1-4208-7275-0 (ebook)

Contents

Chapter 1

The very beginning

Chapter 2

Formation of

the earth

Chapter 3

The various ages of the universe

Chapter 4

Matsya

Chapter 5

Kurma

Chapter 6

Varaha

Chapter 7

Narasimha

Chapter 8

Vamana

Chapter 9

Parashurama

Chapter 10

Rama

Chapter 11

Krishna

Chapter 12

Buddha

Chapter 13

Kaliyuga Avatar

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my brother, Pradeep Karunakaran of Portland, Oregon, USA for helping me with this book.

I would also like to thank my wife, Sreeja and my three children, Prashanth, Shanthi and Arjun for putting up with my absence, while I wrote this book.

I would also like to thank my parents, Mr. Karunakaran and Ms. Premalatha for imbibing knowledge of this subject matter to me, as a child.

Preface

After Mahatma Gandhi was literally kicked out of his first-class train cabin, he said to himself, We cannot be treated like this; we came from an ancient culture.

Upon reading the book on Gandhi, or seeing the movie, most people will estimate that he was thinking of a culture that started around the time of Christ or a little earlier. But this is way from the truth. The actual fact is the culture of India gives details of happenings that date into the billions of years even prior to the big bang.

In the southern Indian states of Tamilnadu and Kerala, where destructive foreign rule (non-British – the British thankfully did not destroy temples or force religious conversions) failed to penetrate, the temples are extremely ancient. Rituals, which were performed by priests thousands of years ago, are still performed in the same spot by the direct decedents of the former priests.

This book aims to provide a history of earth from facts gathered through modern science as well as the ancient scriptures of India. The timelines discovered through scientific means are surprisingly similar to that extolled in the scriptures of India. Scientifically established facts like the Big Bang, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the theories of the formation of earth, blends very well with the facts elucidated in the ancient scriptures of India. This book narrates events, which started occurring more than 8.6 billion years ago to the present time.

Chapter 1

The very beginning

The Almighty God, Narayana, or Allah, as various people may call Him today, was the beginning. He split Himself into three, the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer. They were named Brahma, Vishnu and Siva respectively. Brahma started the process with a humongous explosion, which made the sound A….….….U….…….…..M…..………..

The last explosion happened 4,319,600,000 years ago. Basically what is happening is that Brahma wakes up and causes this huge explosion, which results in creation. This creation lasts for a period of 4.32 billion years.

He then causes the dissolution of everything, and sleeps for a period of 4.32 billion years. Thus as Brahma wakes up and sleeps, creation and dissolution occurs every 4.32 billion years.

Nuclear arms, pollution, the hole in the ozone, and the host of problems we have today, are things we need to work on, but they will not destroy the earth. It’s just not time yet; dissolution is only scheduled to occur 400,000 years into the future.

Formation of the universe

At first, the universe was an infinitely dense and incomprehensibly small fireball. Then the Big Bang occurred to form the fabric of the universe in a process called ‘inflation’, which lasted for only one millionth of a second. The universe quickly formed the basic forces in the sequence below:

1. Gravity

2. Strong nuclear force

3. Weak nuclear

4. Electromagnetic forces.

Thenceforth, the universe started to expand but at a much slower pace. After the first second, the universe was made up of the electromagnetic waves, and particles like quarks, electrons, photons and neutrinos. After three seconds, nuclear synthesis began to occur, forming protons and neutrons, this combined to form the nuclei of simple elements, predominantly hydrogen and helium. Even after 100,000 years, there was no matter, as we know today. Light, X-rays and radio waves dominated the universe.

Atoms were then formed by nuclei linking with free electrons. After 200 million years, galaxies and stars started to form out of pockets of gas, which condensed due to the force of gravity.

Scientist today, especially Stephen Hawking have calculated that the universe is actually continually expanding and contracting, which is Big Bang, Big Crunch, Big Bang, Big Crunch………….,which happens over billions of years.

According to calculation, contraction will happen when the critical density is reached. This figure is 1.1 x 10-26 kg per cubic meter or six hydrogen atoms per cubic meter. The ratio of actual density / critical density is equal to Omega. The universe expands when Omega is less than one. When Omega is greater than one, the universe collapses, in a Big Crunch. Atoms are continuously forming in the universe giving it larger and larger mass.

Hydrogen and helium are the main composition of the luminous component (the stars), which is continuously increasing in density value. But there is also a dark component, which can be detected only by its gravitational influence on luminous matter.

Currently the number of atoms in the universe is close to the critical number of 6 E79, needed for the universe to start collapsing. This is because contraction will happen in 400,000 years time.

Ripples caused by the shock waves of the Big Bang have been observed and measured. Observations using today’s instruments show that the universe is flat. The reason for this is understood from the following analogy: If three tiny ants are placed on a balloon, and the balloon is suddenly (before they can move) blown up, each ant will observe the other ant moving away from it. As the balloon gets to be very huge, each of the three ants will think they are on a flat surface. Current observatory instruments cannot detect the curvature of the spherical universe.

After the Big Bang, stars made of atoms formed the universe as our scientist and instruments can observe. But the initial light, traveled even further. This light formed the universe of light, which is very much bigger than this universe of matter. Even beyond this universe of light is the universe of truth. Some scientists today believe that the universe is more a thought than a physical existence. The first things out of the Big Bang are truths, which formed a huge universe, much larger than the universe of light.

Formation of the solar system

Among the zillions of particles that are moving away from the epicenter of the explosion, is the sun. The sun was a huge mass of heated gas, larger than the orbit of the current solar system. As the sun contracted, nine concentration of swirling heated gas and dust became the nine planets of today. The planets are held around the sun because of the strong magnetism of the sun. The molten iron flowing parallel to each other, round the sun causes this magnetism. This means free electrons are flowing parallel to each other, because electrons are easily dissociated from iron atom’s outer shell. Electrons flowing parallel to each other are the cause of gravity.

Chapter 2

Formation of

the earth

The third planet away from the sun is the earth we live on. It now has a diameter of 7908 miles (12,728 km) and has a mass of 6 X 10²⁴ kg. The earth was formed about 4 billion years ago. At first, the earth was like the sun, a ball of fire where nuclear fission continuously occurs. Today the earth spins at a very fast rate of 1038 miles/hr (1670 km/hr, the Indian scripture figure is 1000 miles/hr). To determine this speed, a few factors are used. The earth rotates on its own axis once every 24 hours. The radius at the equator is 3954 miles (6363 km) so the equatorial circumference is 24855 miles (40000 km), thus the speed of the earth’s surface, at the equator is 24855 / 24 = 1038 miles/hr (1670 km/hr). The earth moves around the sun at 66,487 thousand miles per hour (107,000 km/hr, the Indian scripture figure is 66,000 miles/hr).

Formation of the various

layers of the earth

As the molten earth spun, dense material, predominantly Iron (Fe, about 80%) and Nickel (Ni, about 4%) moved to the center, and lighter material like molten silicon moved to the surface. There was constant bombardment by meteorites, intense volcanism, and a poisonous atmosphere. But unlike the sun, the earth cooled. The nuclear fission reaction that keeps the sun hot gradually ceased on the surface of the earth. After millions of years, the top surface cooled to become the crust. Today there are three distinct layers of the earth, the core, the mantle and the crust. The inner core of the earth is slightly smaller than the moon. It is made of a solid ball of iron. Then liquid iron and nickel outer core comes next. Surrounding this is the mantle, which is a hot and slightly viscous matter. On top of this, is the part that has enabled life, the cooler crust.

The core

The core of the earth is about 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below the earth’s surface. It is a dense ball of iron and nickel, which constitutes 30% of the earth’s mass. It is divided into two layers, the inner core and the outer core. The inner core, which is 780 miles (1,250 km) in diameter, is at the center of the earth and is a crystal of iron. The pressure at the center is 3.5 million times surface pressure, which causes iron to solidify, even though the temperature is believed to exceed 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of the sun. This solid crystalline iron is slightly smaller than the moon and spins faster than the earth. The outer core, which is 1370 miles (2,200 km) thick, is always molten.

Magnetism of the core

Magnetism is an intrinsic property of ferromagnetic materials like iron. But the iron at the inner core does not cause the earth’s magnetism or gravity, because the iron there is too hot to exhibit magnetic property. The solid iron core is thus not magnetic. However electric currents flowing in the earth’s outer core causes the earth’s magnetism.

In ferromagnetic materials the unpaired electrons spins to line up with one another in a region called a domain. Within the domain the magnetic field is quite strong but the orientation of the electrons in different domains may not be the same, so the overall magnetism is cancelled out. Ferromagnetism is caused when an electromagnet, for example, is used to cause the magnetic fields in the different domains to line up with each other, that is, all electrons in all domains moving in the same direction, either clockwise or anticlockwise. This causes the ferromagnetic material to be magnetized.

Similarly as the earth’s inner and outer core spins, molten iron flows parallel to each other in the outer core. This makes the electrons that easily get released from the outer shells of iron atom, also flow in parallel to each other. Electrons flowing parallel to each other are the cause of magnetism, which keeps us rooted to the earth.

The mantle

The mantle is about 1,800 miles (2,900 km) thick and makes up nearly 80 percent of the Earth’s total volume. The rock of the mantle is at about 1000 to 2000°C and flows like a very viscous fluid. Its viscosity is about 20 times that of water, so its velocity is only a few centimeters per year.

The crust

The Crust is the upper layer of the earth. The crust is fractured into more than a dozen overlapping tectonic plates. These tectonic plates have different thickness at various places on earth. The crust under the oceans is only about 3 miles (5 km) thick, of dense and heavy ballast rock, while the crust under the land mass can be about 40 miles (65 km) thick, of lighter granite rock. These tectonic plates continuously slide atop the hotter layers below. The overlapping points between plates are called subduction zones, and that is where the biggest earthquakes strike, destroying whole cities or causing huge tsunamis and changing Earth’s map slightly each time. Volcanoes also, most often erupt in the boundaries between the plates. However thankfully most of the meeting points of the plates are beneath the oceans, so they do not affect the population above it.

The crust moves at a rate of about 1 inch (2.5 cm) per year. The force of this movement is tremendous. As an analogy, a hit on a person by a toy car driven by a child will not really hurt, but a hit by a truck at 5 miles/hr could break a bone.

Millions of years ago the tectonic plate on, which India is sitting on started colliding with the Asian tectonic plate resulting in the formation of the Himalayas. This collision is still going on resulting in the current growth of the Himalayas by two inches (5 centimeters) every year.

Another case is the Pacific plate, which is drifting northward, scraping along the edge of the North American plate. The result of this tremendous force is the San Andreas Fault, which cuts vertically through the state of California for nearly 700 miles (1,125 kilometers). This 100 million years old crack in the crust between these two plates is 20 miles (32 km) deep.

Formation of the moon

After the earth cooled and formed its final structure, a meteorite, which had 10% of the earth’s mass collided with the earth and deposited most of its mass onto the earth. This collision increased the speed of the earth such that, the length of the day at that time was only five hours.

This collision was at such an angle that 1/81 of the resulting earth’s mass went up to a particular orbit. There was one major concentration of mass in this orbit and other particles spewed in the same orbit due to the same initial force exerted. Eventually all the particles collided with the largest mass to become the moon as we see it today.

The diameter of the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but the moon is also 400 times less far away. This coincidence makes the moon and the sun appear the same size.

The moon’s composition came mostly from the mantle and crust of the earth, which explains why it lacks iron. The difference in the composition between the earth’s soil and the moon’s soil can be attributed to the material from the meteorite.

The probability of such an impact happening is very small anywhere in the universe. It is this collision, and the formation of the moon that stabilized the tilt of the earth, enabling the evolution of life forms.

Below is a comparison of a typical earth’s soil versus the moon’s soil:

Source: NASA

Below is a comparison of the dimension of the earth versus the moon:

Source: NASA

The atmosphere

The original atmosphere of the Earth consisted of hydrogen and helium. These light elements were however heated by solar radiation and escaped. The volcanoes formed the secondary atmosphere by spewing out effluents in the proportion of water vapor 55%, carbon dioxide 24%, sulfur 13%, nitrogen 5.7%, Argon 0.3% and chlorine 0.1%. Most of these effluents became clouds surrounding the earth. The large amount of carbon dioxide, which emitted from the volcanoes, is now mostly locked up in rocks such as limestones.

The effluents from the volcanoes became heavy clouds that enveloped the earth in darkness for millions of years. Then a downpour started, which lasted for a few hundred thousand years. This caused the formation of rivers, seas and the oceans.

The creation of the first

life form

The few-hundred–thousand-years of rain also came with a continuous stream of lightning bombarding the surface of the earth. This was caused by the collisions of the clouds of, dust and water vapor. This lightning caused reactions, which fused various combinations of gasses and elements to eventually form the first simple bacteria. Tidal forces caused by the newly formed moon were also a key in promoting the first stages of development of life.

Cyanobacterium was among the first microbes formed. It is the simplest single-celled life form known. This microbe first appeared at the bottom of the sea about 3.5 billion years ago. They were unicellular bacterium, which can be up to 0.5 mm long

Today cyanobacteria are a relatively big proportion of the marine plankton (tiny organisms, which wander in the oceans, they could be bacteria, plants or animals like jellyfish). In the tropical seas, there can be up to 100 million cyanobacteriums in a liter of water. They have a cell structure called the prokaryotic cell. The cell wall encloses a liquid called cytoplasm, within which is a single strand of DNA, attached at one point to the plasma membrane. There is very little internal organization within the cell.

These prokaryotes multiply by simple cell division, forming clones or exact copies of themselves. The offspring has exactly the same genetic code as the parent; imagine looking exactly like the rest of your family.

This explains why, even though the earth was filled with cyanobacteria, evolution to other life forms happened only after a billion years. Thus for a period of one billion years, cyanobacteria was the main life form on earth.

The cyanobacteria gathered on rocks, which are now called stromatolites. Later as other life forms evolved, cyanobacteria became food, and their numbers decreased. Today one can still find this moss like stromatolites thriving in Australia, at Shark Bay.

Production of oxygen by

cyanobacteria

It was the cyanobacteia that enabled other life to exist on earth, because after a billion years, they produced enough oxygen to satisfy the absorption by the minerals on the earth’s surface (oxidation), as well as to change the composition of the earth’s atmosphere. Cyanobacteria changed the earth’s atmosphere from a sulfur dioxide, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide rich mixture to the present-day air composition of gasses as shown below:

Other less common atoms and molecules include water vapor (which can range from 0 – 4%), hydrogen, ozone, methane, helium, neon, krypton, and xenon.

Evolution of cyanobacteria

The cyanobacteria eventually evolved into plants. Later, some of these plants started moving, for example, there is a plant whose leaf closes up upon touching it.

After millions of years, these moving plants became small animals, which evolved to become fishes. Many of the early fishes ate planktons, which was plentiful in the ocean. Thus fishes that depended on planktons for food eventually became huge.

Chapter 3

The various ages of the universe

Each day of Brahma is called a kalpa and each night is called a Pralaya. Each kalpa has 1000 cycles of 4 yugas (ages) whose time-spans are as below:

360 years X 4000 = 1,440,000 years