The other Taj Mahal

A long time back, there lived a Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal. All of us of course, know this story. Few however, know the little known saga of the other Shah Jahan -- Begum Shah Jahan – the Begum of Bhopal and her Taj Mahal. It’s a tale that has for long, been covered under the cob-webs of time, although Begum Shah Jahan, like her Mughal namesake, was a great patron of architecture and the ruins of her Taj Mahal – the magnificent palace that she built in Bhopal on the banks of a lake — even now, tell silent tales of the grandeur of her times.

Click here to read about the woman who built Taj Mahal.

The curious saga of cold fusion

Can nuclear reactions happen at room temperature? Can mercury be successfully converted into gold? Can electricity be generated at home? These are tantalising questions, whose answers can be a resounding "Yes" in case research into cold fusion becomes a reality. What exactly is cold fusion, by the way? It's a controversial scientific field that came into prominence in 1989 because of the experiments of two researchers from the University of Utah. Ancient Indian texts have however always had plenty of references to alchemy, an extreme form of cold fusion. In fact, I recently heard about an inscription on one of the walls of the Birla temple in New Delhi, that gives a detailed eye-witness account of an experiment conducted in the early 1940s where mercury was converted into gold in front of a few prominent people of that time. Read the following story for the details.

Click here to read about the curious saga of cold fusion.