Radioactive Love

Marie Curie (born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland) is a woman that has been decorated numerous times for her contributions to science. Her work in the radioactivity field - she discovered radium and polonium - together with her husband has secured a place for her name amongst other great thinkers in history. How was her work so important to us, besides combating cancer and all, you ask? Well, she just invented a way to look into your body to find broken bones and injured organs without having to actually cut you open, that's all... X-rays, heard of it before?

Marie Curie and some of her buddies... You might have heard of the names Einstein, Planck and Rutherford, maybe?

Now, one cannot mention Curie without speaking about how she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Or the fact that she was the first person to win it twice, one for Physics and Chemistry each. In fact, if you read her biography, you'd see her name being associated to a lot of firsts. Pretty awesome right?

But aren't we forgetting something even more important here? Aren't we forgetting the person who had worked with her to achieve all these marvelous feats? Aren't we leaving out the person who won those Nobel Prizes with her (directly and indirectly)? Aren't we forgetting the 'Curie' in Marie Curie? Yes, her husband Pierre Curie. A physicist no less brilliant than her and just as passionate to do something for the world in the name of science.

And with that, I have finally arrived at my blog topic for today; Radioactive Love.

Marie Curie was born in a period of time where women in science were ridiculous notions. At that time, it was agreeable that women received some education, but not too much (no, that would be bad, of course.) She was born in middle-class family of scientific background, though they were just teachers. They earned enough to get by but did not dare dream of the riches. Pierre Curie was born in no better condition, but he was a man. That definitely made things slightly easier for him.

Their love story begins with them meeting as lab partners and eventually turning into life partners. Their marriage doesn't last long because Pierre dies in a tragic accident, but they have achieved enough to last many generations to come within that short frame of time, as you could probably already tell if you're reading this.

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.Epicurus

What I find most intriguing about this story is that Pierre saw this woman's potential and wasn't intimidated by it. Consider the era they were living in for a bit. Can you imagine a man being so accepting of a woman wanting to learn so much? Here is a quote from one of his love letters to her. (You can read the whole letter here.)

"It would, nevertheless, be a beautiful thing in which I hardly dare believe, to pass through life together hypnotized in our dreams: your dream for your country; our dream for humanity; our dream for science."- Pierre Curie. 

Doesn't it make you want to go 'Awwwww...'? But sighs of adoration aside, this brings me to something else I have been itching to talk about. Let me start with a question.

Ladies, are your guys treating you right? And guys, your ladies?

They say it takes two to make it work, this complicated mechanism that people often refer to as a 'relationship', or more specifically, a romantic relationship. Now, I may not be an expert in this field (not at all, actually) but I do have common sense and a pair of eyes and ears. I've seen and heard a lot to have come up with my own theories and hypotheses. (Bear in mind, these are no conclusions, as they would have to be backed up by experimental evidence if they were. These are the workings of my imagination.)

I am a feminist. And if that gets you off on a rant about how feminists are too 'extreme', well, the truth is that they have to be in order to integrate the radical into normalcy - something like what Marie Curie did to pursue her passion. If the thought that a woman has the same voice as you - just a few pitches higher - challenges you to immediately fight against that notion, then you sir, are at the wrong place right now. If I told you that women are strong and the first evidence you look to to refute that is that we run away from cockroaches, then you sir, need to be educated.

That said, I won't go into a rant about girl power and being equals in a relationship and whatnots. These are the things most people already know (and blatantly ignore.) No, what I wanted to say goes both ways, I'll speak for the guys too. Have you already found that one word that identifies you as a person? Because that's what you are, a person. *gasp* You are an individual, you are unique and you do not have to be like anyone else to be special, 'cause baby you were born that way. Why do most of us rush to build a unit, a family institution or a society even, before we even discover who we are first?

To put it more simply: If you identified yourself using your partner and what he/she wants of you, who are you when he/she is no longer there for you? A nobody?

I have nothing against first loves or dating. Far from it. I'm just like any other girl, who sobs at the beauty of it all when reading of it and smiles like a fool when watching it in real life or in movies. All I'm against is the thought that to be in a relationship, both individuals would have to have the same outlooks on life and essentially, just merge into one state of being. Sharing interests and passions does not equate to adapting the other's way of life, mind you. It just means that you have found the perfect one for yourself. Love can be strengthening and motivating, but to think you have found it with the wrong one could have toxic repercussions.

Love could be radioactive. It would be relevant to be noted here that Marie Curie died of overexposure to radioactive elements. Connect the dots for yourselves...

I respect the men that know how to treasure their girls for all their uniqueness and becomes her support system in achieving her full potentials. I respect all the women that stand strong behind their men, encouraging and pushing them to go that much further. I respect the couples that know how to work their individual minds into their relationship and let it strive, instead of letting it shrivel and die in some dark, lonely corner. I respect people who want more for themselves because they know they deserve it.

The Curie couple...

In conclusion, I respect the 'Pierre and Marie Curie' concept. This is the kind of love that blooms, flourishes, nurtures and withstands the tides of time. This is the kind of love story that should be inspiring the young ones and I speak not of their love for each other alone. I speak of their love for science, humanity and their countries.

So why the hurry? Why the need to tie that one girl/boy down the first chance you get? Why can't you wait for the right one to come? There are things you could be doing meanwhile. Like what, you're probably thinking. Ummm.... I don't know, something like focusing on figuring out your goals first, perhaps? Or finding out what makes you truly happy?

To end this post, let me finish off with the kind of people I do NOT respect:

1. The kind that want to mould their partners to match their needs.
2. The kind that do not show respect themselves.

I'd like to hear, what kind of people do you not respect?

Thank you for reading!

The End of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

That's a TV show. If you've never heard of it, then you sure are missing out on a LOT. A follow up to Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, this is the kind of show for the people who have deep fascination for the cosmos but do not quite understand the complex physics behind the researches and discoveries that are made. People like me, for instance.

It's so sad that it has to come to an end so quickly. I have yet to watch the final episode but I know I'm going to be left wanting for more after it's done. Neil deGrasse Tyson did such a wonderful job conveying the messages about our magnificent universe to us in a way that we could all understand and appreciate it better. In one episode he is outlining every major event that has occurred since the Big Bang in the context of one Earth year. The next he is discussing how quickly we're depleting our resources and destroying the only home we have (as of now.) In other words; first he tells us how we came to be and then, gives us a gentle reminder that we're all going to die soon (my sister's brilliantly simple conclusion of that episode) if we keep this up... All relevant to us, all irrefutably important.

One of the many highlights of this show was the fact that the producers managed to keep it real and relatable to the ordinary Joe that had just happened to turn to the right channel on a weekend night. Neil manages to scale us down to almost nothingness when compared to the universe and yet, make us feel so special when he speaks of our race's greatest achievements. He also doesn't forget to tell us the stories behind the names that we only see in physics textbooks. With the stories attached to these names, we finally begin to see that Faraday wasn't just some lifeless guy that had nothing better to do than play with electric sparks. Or that Maxwell wasn't some math whiz that had numbers forming equations for him at the snap of his fingers. Or perhaps that Marie Curie must have been really unpopular as a kid to have been interested in radioactive whatnots (I swear, I've heard the likes of these presumptions about scientists all too often...)

They weren't gods, they weren't born with special abilities. They weren't even that smart in school. They were just some very ordinary people with extraordinary determination and even more unbelievably imaginative minds.

Let's step away from all the scientific mumbo-jumbo for a bit. Let's think about some things. How did people begin to make theories about things they weren't even sure was there? All those people that devoted their lives to something that only they could see while everyone called them the crazy loonies for having their head stuck up in the clouds, why didn't they just give up? Thomas Alva Edison failed 1000 times before the first light bulb came on. Some never even lived to see their dreams come true! (Da Vinci anyone?)

“Dream, Dream Dream
Dreams transform into thoughts 
And thoughts result in action.” 
― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Back to the topic of this blog. Neil spoke of his experience meeting Carl Sagan for the first time when he was just 17 years old in one of the episodes. Carl was his inspiration. And now he's mine - to be a bigger person that I can ever dare imagine. Just imagine how many others must have been inspired  by this show as well. The fact that Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow is one of the co-creators of the show just makes it all a tad bit more intimate and touching. A torch lit by that great thinker has been passed on to yet another generation - isn't that the greatest legacy one can leave behind once they're gone?

I end this blog with a fruit for your thoughts, in hopes that I have changed the way you saw scientists if you've ever just heard the names and not their tales.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes. - Nikola Tesla, "Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934)

Who Am I?

Who am I? 

It's a question I find myself pondering over all too often.  Do you remember that time when you were a child and you would be lying down on your bed trying to imagine what lies beyond the universe? Well, it turned out that this question would be so much more than just my overactive brain being reluctant to shut down at night. This question has had so much to do with me finding my identity, which I still am doing to this day...

When I was younger, I did not know the Sun was a star. So when I learned that it was from a book I read, I was filled with so much pride for knowing something that my peers did not. Fast forward a few more years, at the age of twelve, I found the most wondrous thing in my life in this book I picked up for a bargain at a book sale. Astronomy: The Definitive Guide To The Universe. I haven't looked back since.

The book that started it all...

The contents...

It's full of spectacular images such as this...

Now that I'm much older (and much wiser than my twelve year old self... I hope), I've come to realise that we're so, so, so tiny when compared to this vast universe we call home. SO tiny. Everyone must have wondered at least once in their life why we were chosen to be put on this tiny planet, at just the right distance from the perfect-sized sun to nurture life, in this exact solar system and in this exact galaxy. Why? Thinking on this scale, doesn't it make you feel so very small?

We're all infinitesimal beings. And wonderfully so!

Proof, you ask of me?

The fact that we know that we're infinitesimal itself is proof enough, don't you think? We, with our tiny hands and limited physical abilities, have seen the furthest stars and galaxies of this universe. We have built monstrous machineries to do our biddings, we've charted the plains beneath our oceans without ever having seen it face-to-face, we have harvested the power of something intangible to our senses and made out of it dangerous weaponries that won us wars. And we have suffered through the evils of it to come out stronger. What more, we continue to fight every day, never satiated with the glories of our past and ever thirsty for achieving greater heights.

I for one think that the greatest story ever told is of our survival through the passage of time. And I want to explore it by writing about it. I am not going to limit myself to any topic in particular because I'm fascinated by all great things that we have done. In writing down all my thoughts, I hope to discover at least a clue to the puzzle of my identity.

Who am I? I am infinitesimal and I am proud of it.