Ice and Soot!

Both are very common items in every home. Ice is now on the shelf, at all times; thanks to refrigerators in almost all houses. So too is soot; when we burn any fuel anywhere; or smoke a cigarette! But can one imagine soot along with the ice high up in the Himalayan mountains where nothing is normally burnt! However, as a newspaper article noted recently, it is already there! Interestingly, soot samples in glacial ice, on the southwest Himalayan mountains has increased by 30 per cent between 1990 and 2003. It is reportedly the result of the recent growth in industrialization and power generation in India. However, all the heat so generated in the atmosphere will not make the glaciers disappear. However, it may give the glacial ice, an ash-coloured hue; no longer will it be all white. May be a century or two later, the simple fine particles of unburnt or partially burnt carbon material, which is soot, like the Himalayas will be there to stay! Ice and soot will coexist in the barren icy waste. Engr.S.A.Mansoor Dhaka. E-mail : sam@dhakacom.com