Friday, January 16, 2009

Narendra Desirazu's "Noah's Ark" (short story, global warming, free): Containing the floods resulting from glacial melting

This is two stories, deftly weaved into one: search for some sort of bacterial life form among the buried ice deposits on Mars, & a solution to the problem of depleting glaciers on earth.

Story summary.

Sometime in 2064, the first Martian bacteria are found. But they behave in a weird way. They normally hibernate just below the freezing point of water, but the moment temperature rises enough to melt water, they get into frantic activity to multiply & soak up this energy - resulting in refreezing!

Problem is: how to safely introduce them into controlled regions on earth where glaciers are desired - but without contaminating rest of earth & without freezing more water than required? Much text is devoted to this.

Happy ending, after a lot of misery.

Fact sheet.

First published: The Scientific Indian, 11 December 2008.
Rating: A.
Download full text from publisher's website.

1 comments:

Paul said...

Tinkoo, I read this story and really enjoyed it. After re-reading the story, I concluded the title was well-chosen and exceptionally deep.