Hidden Unseen

The Mingun Pagoda in Myanmar

The Mingun Pahtodawgyi or Minigun Paya in the town of Mingun, approximately 10 km northwest of Mandalay in central Myanmar, is a massive unfinished monument on the banks of the Irrawaddy river. The monument began construction in 1790 by King Bodawpaya, but had to be stopped before it could be completed. Had the monument been finished, it would have been the world’s biggest stupa. Even with just the bottom third of it complete, the unfinished pagoda is a mighty brick edifice, about 50 meters tall and 70 meters wide.

The Mingun Pahtodawgyi is an impressive sight. At the center of the 50 meter high pagoda facing the river is a huge richly decorated entrance. Inside it is a small shrine with a Buddha image. In front of the pagoda facing the river are the remains of two giant lion statues about 29 meters high, guarding the temple.

The door to Mingun Pahtodawgyi.

A stairway to the right of the structure takes visitors to the top of the pagoda from where one can have a commanding view of the area with the nearby Hsinbyume Pagoda, several other pagodas, the Irrawaddy river and the mountains to the back of the pagoda. Access to the stairs, however, is currently restricted after an earthquake in 2012 caused damage to the stupa.

The Mingun Pahtodawgyi was also damaged during a large earthquake in 1838. Several large cracks developed in the structure and the heads of the giant lion statues broke off and rolled into the Irrawaddy river.

Construction of the massive pagoda was ordered by King Bodawpaya, the 6th King of the Konbaung dynasty. King Bodawpaya had acquired a sacred Buddha tooth relic as a gift from a Chinese delegation that visited the King’s court. To enshrine a Buddha relic of such great importance, the King wanted to build the largest pagoda in the country and probably in the world. The King intended the pagoda to be 152 meters high. The impressive scale of the Paya also meant to serve as a demonstration of his power.

The building of the pagoda was such an important project for the King that he left the matters of state to his son and had a new residence for himself built on an island in the river to oversee the construction project.

Bodawpaya used thousands of prisoners of war from his expansionist campaigns and slaves working on the construction of the stupa, and in seven years the pagoda had reached a height of 50 meters, or one third of the intended height. Because of the massive size of the stupa, the heavy burden of building it had fallen upon the people of the kingdom and the state and there was too much dissatisfaction among them. Taking advantage of the King’s superstitious nature, a prophecy was allegedly created, in order to stop the project. The prophecy went that as soon as the pagoda was finished the Kingdom would come to an end.

Some historians speculate that there might have been other causes, such as technical difficulties, insufficient labor and lack of funds that prevented the King from completing the stupa. When the King died in 1819 the project was indefinitely halted and none of his successors resumed work on it.

King Bodawpaya probably had high hopes that the stupa would be completed, because in 1808, he had an enormous bell made that was meant to be installed at the top of the giant stupa. It was the world’s largest ringing bell for nearly two centuries until it was eclipsed in 2000 by the 116-ton Bell of Good Luck at the Foquan Temple, in China.

The Mingun Bell is 12 feet (3.66 meters) tall and 16 feet (5 meters) in diameter, and weighted 90 tons. The bell is housed in an intricate Burmese style pavilion a short walk from the Paya. Standing on the river bank near the pagoda is another smaller Pondaw Pagoda, which is a scale model of the original Mingun Pahtodawgyi yielding a clear idea of what the great stupa would have looked like had it been completed.

Pon Daw Pagoda situated near Mingun Pagoda is the 15 feet-tall model of completed model of Mingun Pagoda.

The Mingun Bell.

The Mingun Bell in 1873.

Inside the bell.

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The Smoking Hills

In 1850, British Captain Robert McClure was sent on an expedition aboard the Investigator to the Arctic to search for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin who had departed England five years earlier. It was the second search party who went looking for the 129-crew Arctic exploration team, and one of many dozens that were to follow for the next four decades.

The Investigator sailed north through the Pacific and entered the Arctic Ocean by way of Bering Strait, sailing eastward past Point Barrow, Alaska to eventually link up with another British expedition from the north-west. When McClure’s search party approached the mouth of the river Horton on Beaufort Sea near Cape Bathurst in Canada's Northwest Territories, he noticed smoke in the distance. Suspecting the smokes could be from campfires, perhaps from Franklin, McClure at once sent a search party to investigate.

The party found not flames from Franklin's campfires, but thick columns of smoke emerging from vents in the ground. The sailors returned with a sample of the smoldering rock, and when they set it down on McClure's desk it burned a hole in the wood.

McClure assumed the rocks to be volcanic, but the truth was something else. The mountains contain large deposits of sulphur-rich lignite (brown coal) which ignite spontaneously when the hills erode and the mineral veins are exposed to the air. The fumes they give off contain sulphur dioxide, sulphuric acid and steam, all of which has acidified the surrounding shallow pools creating a pocket of distinctive acidic biota, in contrast to the typically Arctic biota in adjacent alkaline ponds.

The Smoking Hills is believed to have been burning for centuries, and will do so for many more.

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Pele's Hair and Tears

Pele's hair are naturally occurring fine fibers of volcanic glass that form when hot molten lava is thrown into the air during explosive eruptions. The strands are formed by the stretching or blowing-out of molten basaltic glass from lava, the same way a glassworker makes thin strands of glass threads by pulling a blob of molten glass. Pele's hair usually form in lava fountains, lava cascades, and vigorous lava flows.

The liquid rock is stretched thinner than a millimeter, some as thin as human hair, and can be as long as 2 meters. Being extremely lightweight, they often get carried away by the wind to places several kilometers away. Fibers of Pele’s hair has been found lodged on high places such as the top of trees, electric poles and radio antennas. They have golden yellow color and looks almost like hair or straw.

This is not a bird’s nest. Its Pele’s Hair. The dark blobs are Pele’s Tears.

The term “Pele’s hair” comes from Hawaiian mythology where Pele is the goddess of fire, lightning, wind and volcanoes, and is said to be the creator of the Hawaiian Islands. Pele’s hair is not limited to Hawaii and can be found near other volcanoes of the world. They are usually found in crevices in the ground or areas where rocks form a corner where the blown Pele's hair can collect.

Touching Pele’s hair with bare hands is not recommended as they are very brittle and very sharp, and small broken pieces can get into the skin of your hand while you are examining it.

Pele’s hairs are sometimes found entangled with the little blobs of hardened volcanic glass called Pele's tears or Achneliths, as geologists like to call them. They are formed the same way Pele’s hair is formed — by the ejection of tiny droplets of lava from a lava fountain. Researchers have found that that the velocity of the erupting lava decides whether Pele’s tears or Pele's hair is formed. If the velocity of the erupting magma is high then Pele’s hair is formed and if the velocity is low the formation of Pele’s tears is favored. Sometimes Pele’s tears are found attached at the tips of Pele’s hairs.

Pele’s tears can tell volcanologists a great deal of information about the eruption. Examination of bubbles of gas and particles trapped within the tears can provide information about the composition of the magma chamber. The shape of the tears can provide an indication of the velocity of the eruption.

Lava fountain draws lava into thin threads which cool to form Pele’s hair.

A sample of Pele's hair from the lava lake within the Halemaʻumaʻu Overlook vent, Hawaii.

Pele’s hair from a Hawaiian volcano.

Strands of Pele’s hair picked up at Hawaii.

Pele's tear with two attached threads of Pele's hair recovered from a pre-1940s eruption of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii.

Pele’s tears. From left to right, specimens are 9 mm tall, 10.5 mm tall, 9.5 mm tall, and 18 mm tall.

Some odd shaped Pele’s tears recovered from Hawaii.

Pele's hair on a pahoehoe flow at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaiʻi, March 27, 1984.

Pele's hair caught on a radio antenna mounted on the south rim of Puʻu ʻŌʻō, Hawaiʻi,

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Zaatari Refugee Camp

When civil war erupted in Syria in 2011, more than three and a half million Syrians fled the country to the neighboring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq, to escape the violence. Overwhelmed by the increasing number of refugees that crossed the borders, the host countries began constructing temporary refugee camps with the aid of the United Nations. One such camp – the Zaatari refugee camp, located 10 km east of Mafraq, in Jordan, is gradually evolving into a permanent settlement. Sprawling over an area of 3.3 square kilometers, it is the world's second-largest refugee camp, behind Dadaab in eastern Kenya. Since its opening in July 2012, more than 430,000 refugees have passed through the camp while 83,000 inhabit here permanently, making Zaatari the fourth largest city in Jordan.

The refugees live in tents and portable tinned-roof shelters – some 30,000, in total, provided by the United Nations, which also provide all core relief items such as food and water, health and education. Some 17.8 metric tons of bread and 4.2 million liters of water are distributed daily. In addition, each refugee receives a monthly allowance of 20 JD via debit cards which they can use to buy additional food and other goods at the two supermarkets, operated by two private supermarket chains, Safeway and Tazweed.

There are three schools within the camp with an estimated 28,000 school age children enrolled. Medical services are dispersed through three hospitals and numerous clinics, also inside the camp, treating residents suffering from diseases ranging from diarrhea and hypertension to cancer and diabetes. The maternity unit has so far delivered more than 3,000 babies, and thousand more mothers are expecting. About 13 children are born every day in the camp.

Life inside the camps is harsh, but the refugees have made themselves as comfortable as possible. Entrepreneurial residents have set up more than 3,000 different shops and businesses along the camp's roads selling groceries, wedding dresses and mobile phones. There is even a travel agency and pizza delivery service. These small scale entrepreneurs are generating an estimate 10 million JD per month. The Ministry of Trade and Commerce is now planning to legalize these of shops including gradual integration of environmental and health standards. 60% of the refugee population earns some form of income within the camp.

Like any bustling city, Zaatari has its share of internal problems. Gangs are known to operate across the camp and women are particularly vulnerable to violence. Once a new police station set up inside the camp literally disappeared overnight as residents took away the bricks to shore up their own houses. When the camp installed electricity pylons and lights to make the streets safer, residents started stealing electricity to light up their houses.

The camp authorities envisage handing over certain responsibilities to the residents by appointing representatives from the camp's 12 districts, to encourage a sense of ownership and more control over their lives.

A shop in Zaatari. Residents and aid workers have named the camp’s main boulevard "Champs Elysee", after the famous shopping thoroughfare in Paris.

A team of Koreans giving taekwondo classes to children in the camp.

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Crown Shyness - A Peculiar Natural Phenomenon

Crown shyness or canopy disengagement is a phenomenon observed in some tree species in which the crowns of neighboring trees of similar height do not touch each other, but are separated by a gap. This forms a persistent and striking border around individual crowns that are visible from the ground. The phenomenon is most prevalent among trees of same species, but also occurs between trees of different species

The phenomenon of crown shyness has been discussed in scientific literature since the 1920s, but what causes it is not fully understood. One theory suggests that this empty space around the crown might be caused by breakage of
twigs and branches from violent collision that happens during storms and high winds. Experiments show that if trees with crown shyness are artificially prevented from swaying and colliding in the wind, they gradually fill in the
empty space in the canopy.

Crown shyness in Dryobalanops aromatica (Kapur trees) in Forest Research Center - Kuala Lumpur.

Researchers have also found that crown shyness is absent when the trees are young and short, but develop later once the trees grow in height and are able to sway in the wind. Trees with slender trunks have relatively small crowns because of their lesser ability to resist deflection in wind. They therefore sway widely in wind and are more likely to collide with neighbors.

One Malaysian scholar who studied Dryobalanops aromatica, however, found no evidence of abrasions due to contact in that tree. He suggested that the growing tips were sensitive to light levels and stopped growing when nearing the adjacent foliage.

Some suggest that trees exhibit this phenomenon to prevent leaf-eating insect larvae from spreading.

One of the handful of places where you can see the crown shyness phenomenon is the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur. All the pictures accompanying this article were taken there.

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