Half-life of Atoms and Other Things

‘HALF-LIFE OF ATOMS’

There is a fairly good reason to believe that like the 'half-life' concept of radio-active decay of materials, most aspects of life too doubles or triples its speed of aging, going empty or burning out, at geometrical acceleration after the half way line. In 1993 my friend Sam took me for a drive in his car from Nairobi to Nakuru in Kenya. Talking and laughing and enjoying the country side we were not much bothered about the fuel in the tank as the needle showed above half way line. However within less than a quarter of the time it took to reach the half empty level, the needle showed a tendency to hurtle towards the 'empty' position. My friend philosophised that the phenomenon was familiar to him, in all the cars he sold from the car dealership he manged. A Kenyan gentleman whom we befriended at a tea stall helped us to fill up petrol from a Private Club in the middle of bush-land.

Now with my 62nd birthday about to dawn in July this year the same phenomenon of 'fuel tank indicator' seems to surface. Till my 50th birthday, weeks months and years went by at a speed I was familiar with, though while in school and college time passed at a rather slow pace. These days the weeks and months fly at the speed of sound.

Pretending to be a nuclear physicist, who has mastered the half-life concept of atoms, l have observed that even candles ( during power cuts, in Bangalore) burn longer till their half length and then accelerate to burn-out the lower half in no time.

Even the curry-leaf plant at my back yard in Shanti Nagar, Bangalore, took one month to dry down from the top branches to mid level but the bottom half died in a week !

I wonder if I am on to some new cosmic truth !