Bible and Science

Laughter and Tears: Expressions of Joy, Anger, Sorrow, and Happiness

The movie Inside Out is an animation about an 11-year-old girl Riley’s five emotions that work in the emotion-controlling headquarters in her head; it’s about an adventure that her five emotions—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear—have to bring back happiness to Riley who’s having a hard time in a different environment. The film tells us that Sadness who cries about everything is as important as Joy who is always bright in life. Humans are animals of emotions that feel tens of different emotions. Human emotions cannot be categorized exactly like in the movie, but there is no objection that joy and sorrow are the keys that play pivotal roles. Laughter and tears are two ways that express the extreme feelings…

Amazing Animal Senses

How do animals see, hear, and feel the world? It is very difficult to imagine the world of animals on the basis of our senses. It is because various animals on the planet sense the world in different ways than humans do. For animals, their own unique world created by their special sensory organs spreads before them. Let’s take a trip to the wonderful world of animal senses. Sensory organs that feel the world more accurately: vision, hearing, smell Regarding sharp-sighted people, we say that they have eyes like a hawk. In fact, birds of prey such as hawks and eagles have extraordinary vision which enables them to see 4 to 8 times farther than the average human can. Hawks…

Mom’s Scent, the Most Comfortable Scent in the World

To newborns, their mom is everything. There is nowhere they feel safer than in the arms of their mom. It is said that “kangaroo care” was developed in a public maternity of Bogota, Colombia, to make up for the lack of incubators in 1978 when the mortality rate of premature infants was high. According to this method, a mother holds her baby naked against her bare skin to keep the baby’s body temperature warm. The wrapping of your infant into your chest looks very much like a mother kangaroo holding her baby in her pouch, which is where the name kangaroo care comes from. Kangaroo care is also called “the miracle of a mom’s chest.” That’s because just placing a…

The True Value of Sweat

There is something that always accompanies us when we run around with our friends, when we lie and feel guilty about it, when we take a bite out of a hot pepper, or when we have a bad cold with fever. It is sweat. We, humans, sweat in many different occasions throughout our lives. Particularly, we have big and small battles against sweat every day in hot summer. Many people regard sweat as something like an unwelcome guest that visits them in summer, or like some dirty and smelly waste. However, what will happen if we don’t sweat? We might have to walk around, panting with our tongues sticking out of our mouths like dogs under the scorching sun. Sweat…

Breast Milk, the Food of Life

The Morin khuur is a traditional Mongolian instrument. A mother camel goes through much suffering when it gives birth to a calf, and because of that, it sometimes refuses its young though the young is very little and barely walks. A calf has no way to survive without drinking its mother’s milk. Then the camel farmer plays plaintive melodies with the Morin Khuur to heal the mother camel’s stress. Then the mother camel sheds tears and breastfeeds its young. A mother goes through tremendous suffering until she gives birth to a baby. However, labor pains are not the end of suffering. Breastfeeding is also a tough job. A mother should become a picky eater of healthy food for the baby,…

Imprinting & Raising: Birds’ Love Towards Their Young (Ⅱ)

Cheep, cheep! When you were children, you might see yellow chicks chirping at a pet store and end up buying one of those cute and lovely creatures after staring at them for a while. Excited, you would do your best to take good care of it, but unfortunately it would get ill and die a few days later. Why did they die despite your efforts? Chicks hatch at around 37–38℃ [98.6–100.4℉], the incubation temperature of the hen, and the body temperature of the hatchlings is more than 40℃ [104℉]. After hatching, the hen continues to brood its chicks, because they cannot control their body temperature by themselves. That’s why a chick without its mom would die easily. It isn’t too…

Egg Incubation: Birds’ Love Towards Their Young (І)

Thomas Edison, the king of invention, was curious since he was young. One day, Edison disappeared and his family got in commotion. It turned out that he fell asleep while curling up to brood goose eggs. Contrary to his expectation, however, no eggs hatched. Why did the goose eggs fail to hatch? Nest: home for the young Brooding and hatching are the most important part of avian reproduction. Making a nest is the first step to incubate eggs. Just as a man needs a shelter from rain and wind, a bird too needs a nest where it can protect its eggs from natural enemy and raises its soon-to-be-born baby birds. For this reason, birds put all their efforts into making…

Gravity, the Earth’s Safeguard

Mankind lives under the influence of gravity. Not only apples from the trees, but all objects fall down from above. We try to jump high up in the air, but we don’t stay there even for a few seconds; we fall right back down, far from reaching the sky. We don’t feel it because we always live under the influence of gravity, but we are always caught up by gravity. Even at this moment, gravity constantly works for the trees, chairs, air, etc. Mankind has not been sparing endless efforts to get away from gravity for a long time. In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers travelled in the sky in a hot-air balloon. About 100 years later, the first powered airplanes…

Animals That Overcome the Cold

Whenever winter comes, people hesitate to go outside because of the biting wind, and prepare winter items for the cold weather. It is easy to see people walk in a hurry, hunching their shoulders, in down jackets or fur coats. Then, how do animals, which have no houses to prevent the wind or thick clothes to wear, endure the severe cold? The coldest place on the earth is the Antarctic. Only 2% of the surface of the Antarctic exposes the soil, and the rest of it is covered with 2-kilometer [1.24-mile]-thick ice. The average temperature of the Antarctic in winter is -56.7℃ [-70.06℉] and it can go down to -91.2℃ [-132.16℉]. Sometimes, the wind of over 50 m/s [112 mph]…

Secrets Hidden in Eggs

Eggs are common food to us. However, since eggs are living cells, a chick gets born out of a fertile egg like magic when the hen sits on it for just three weeks. Out of an egg that showed no sign of life, a living creature gets born. This mystery of life in eggs moves us. An egg that has life also conceives a lot of secrets. First of all, let us take a look at the structure of the egg. At a glance, the inside of the egg looks very simple—yolk, egg white, and shell. In fact, however, the egg has quite a complicated structure embraced by several layers. The hard shell is mainly composed of calcium carbonate which…

Art of Disguise: Insect Camouflage & Mimicry

A giant hole at the center and a log bridge over it looks perilous. The scene that chills your blood is a painting—a work of trick art. Making use of optical illusion caused by reflection of light, trick art makes you mistake a planar work as a three-dimensional structure. A painting on a flat surface when seen in close-up can remind you of real situation in long-shot. Amazingly, just like this trick art, there are masters of disguise who are hidden around us, deceiving everyone’s eyes. They are insects. For defense and predation, animals blend in with their surroundings or mimic other species. This is called camouflage—the use of any coloration or conformation for the user not to be easily…

Rediscovery of Human Hands

Charles Bell, a British surgeon, said, “We must confess that it is in this that we have the consummation of all perfection as an instrument.” Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, regarded this as a visible part of brain, and Jacob Bronowski, a British mathematician, biologist, and historian of science, highly praised this as the “cutting edge of the mind.” What on earth is this? This is the human hand. Actually, as the hand is very close to us as a part of our body, it is not getting much attention. However, if we just put on mittens, it is inconvenient to use the fingers for most activities and then we feel the importance of the hand. The world with no…

Atmospheric Pressure, the Weight of Air

“I think it’s going to rain, ’cause my knees hurt.” Whenever my grandmother said her knees hurt, it rained without exception. When cloudy days continue, some people say they feel down or their bodies ache. It is not just their imagination. When somebody says, “I’m a little under the weather,” his body is actually responding to weather changes. When atmospheric pressure, weighing on our bodies, becomes low, the pressure inside the knee joint becomes high relatively, which causes pain in the knees. Moreover, when atmospheric pressure is low, it becomes cloudy and the sky becomes darker. As a result, people get less sunlight comparatively. Then, serotonin, a chemical produced in your brain that makes you feel happier and calmer, decreases,…

Amazing Perception of Plants

In Korea, you can sometimes see the expression, “The National Assembly in a vegetative state,” on the newspaper. It is a sarcastic expression indicating the National Assembly which causes a high social cost without doing its duty. A patient who is in coma and whose brain does not function is also described as “being in a vegetative state.” Like this, something or someone that has lost the ability of performing functions is likened to a vegetable. Then do plants really have no ability to perceive anything as we assume? Mimosa pudica which is also called “sensitive plant” challenges our prejudice. Mimosa pudica’s leaves quickly fold when touched; it seems that they react to being touched. The secret of its movement…

The Umbilical Cord and Placenta Which Connect Mom and Baby

The umbilical cord and placenta which were once considered unsanitary and were treated as infectious waste are now receiving much attention in the medical world. The reason behind this is that they have discovered abundant stem cells in them that can transform into various types of tissue. Particularly, cord blood, which is blood from the umbilical cord, contains blood-forming stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells that form bones, muscles, and organs; it is currently being studied for treatment of diseases, and some techniques have already been commercialized. In 2000, a six-year-old girl named Molly living in the United States was suffering a fatal genetic disorder called Fanconi anemia. The only possible treatment was a stem cell transplant, but they could…

Photosynthesis, Natural Solar Energy Generation System

The Sun produces a tremendous amount of energy, and emits most of the energy into space in the form of light. Only 2.2 billionth of the sunlight that the Sun emits to all directions reaches Earth. 30% of it reflects back to space, and only 70% of it is absorbed into Earth. Still, the total amount of energy that the people of the world use for a year is equivalent to the solar energy that enters Earth only for one hour. All living creatures need energy for survival, but the light energy cannot be used directly. It has to be transformed to the form of organic matter. Except some microorganisms, however, it is only plants that can store the light…

Life Starts from Life

There was a lonely girl who liked painting and whose only joy was observing insects. The girl found a solid object on a tree branch, which looked like a stone or a seed. She observed the changes of that object for the whole season and drew them. When the spring came, the object flew away into the sky with light wings. It was a pupa that molted and became a butterfly. This girl who observed the magic-like metamorphosis for the first time was Merian, a German painter and the first female entomologist of the 17th century. Now we know that a gross-looking caterpillar that comes from an egg will turn into a beautiful butterfly in a little while, but people…

Collective Intelligence, Wisdom Learned from Insects

An ant colony marches in an orderly manner, carrying crumbs. A line of ants quickly connects the starting and ending points as if they know the precise route. The sweets which are dozens of times bigger than the ants disappear in a flash in the movement of the swarm of ants moving in perfect order. However, when you watch an ant moving alone, it moves in all directions desultorily, awkwardly avoiding whatever is blocking its way; it doesn’t look that smart. However, when these ants gather together, they collect food at once. It is amazing. Ant, an excellent mathematician The intellectual ability that is gained through cooperating or competing is called collective intelligence, which exerts tremendous power far beyond the…

DNA, the Blueprint of Life

“Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.” On June 26, 2000, an initial draft of the human genome was released. The then U.S. President Clinton left the statement above while announcing the completion of the initial draft of the human genome project which had been the biggest issue in the field of science for the last decade of the 20th century. Let’s look into the mystery of the human genes which even brought awe to many people. Gene, the key of mystery Genome is a compound word of gene and chromosome, indicating all genetic information that…

Apoptosis, Wisdom of Emptying

Autumn is a season of tinged leaves. The trees that boasted about their green leaves in midsummer and made dense forests change the color of their leaves one by one. Tinged leaves present the final magnificent view with all their strength and become fallen leaves. The falling leaves may look lonely, but the trees are preparing the cold winter when they cannot get enough water and nutrients by dropping the leaves. It’s also preparation for the upcoming spring because the leaves make space available for new sprouts. An action that is similar to the leaves falling in the autumn is also taking place inside our bodies. It is the programmed death of the cell, called apoptosis. Apoptosis is derived from…