Lavan Vajra & The Art of Rain-making
I was alerted to this wonderful story by my brother-in-law, Prashant. An excerpt from Burnt tyres and salt leads to rain? (emphasis mine):
…Dr Raja Marathe, IIT Bombay alumni and a former Naxal leader who returned to India from the United States a few years ago, may as well be known as Nanded’s rainman. Armed with burning tyres packed with salt, Marathe has single-handedly floated his own rain seeding project in the villages of Nanded (constituency of CM Ashok Chavan) called Lavan Vajra that has now been sanctioned by the collector of the district.
Marathe, an engineer by profession, a doctorate in ‘Lasers’ from RICE university, Houston and one of the architects of the ‘Param Super computer’, heads the project that has managed to get an additional 100 mm rainfall and in some cases also hit 200 mm, in three weeks.
…Refuting the claims of the rain being a coincidence, Marathe says, “If we only had rain after the first or second attempt, it might have been a coincidence. But we’ve done this 14 times now with good results.”
The process is quite simple. “We burn discarded tyres and sprinkle common salt on the flames. The salt vaporises and goes up in the sky riding on the fumes and provides cloud condensation nuclei, as a result of which rainfall usually occurs within four to 96 hours of the warm cloud seeding,” says Marathe. The project could be the many-fold solution to several problems including the drastically low water levels of the Lower Manar Dam that is an irrigation source.
Will this project pollute the environment? “Had the sulphur and the nitrogen levels been high in the tyres, it would have caused the damage but the levels here are negligible. The amount of smoke released by the tyres will not affect the people as it is done in open space. The smoke directly moves upwards in the sky, thus there is nothing to worry,” says Marathe.
The story of how it all began is itself quite fascinating and I would urge those of you on a good broadband connection to watch Dr Marathe’s presentation at Innovations 2010 here.
Image courtesy: Varun Singh, Mid-Day
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wow! a bright idea
Thanks for sharing . Very useful and scientific . Must for every farmer in the village . The Govt. of all states should come forward to adopt such economic practices . NGOs can do a lot to train and bring awareness among the farmers . I will show this PPT to my students specially students coming from rural background .
Thanks Aparna, Sunil: Pl do share.
Hi Shantanu,
I too learnt that our ancestors were adept at making Silver Iodide reach the clouds for cloud seeding. The havan meant for this is very interesting. Usually large homam(Havan) altars are build over a large area spanning several KMS. IT is very very scientific because modern cloud seeding is done using Silver Iodide.
This is pretty fascinating stuff, if real. The problem is that we don’t yet know whether it is real or as mentioned, just a coincidence. Dr. Marathe’s observation of a close correlation between the seeding fire and actual rainfall are a little bit of evidence that it might be working, but it isn’t a real experiment; it is not statistically sound yet. It is important to know whether it is really his fire that is causing the rain; otherwise we might have hundreds of villages unnecessarily burning tires when the rain would have come anyway.
What should really be done is a blinded experiment. It’s pretty simple: an assistant (not Dr. Marathe) goes to a village with the instruments Dr. Marathe usually uses to measure ideal conditions. He reports the readings to Dr. Marathe over a phone, and Dr. Marathe tells him when to light the fire. If Dr. Marathe tells him to light the fire, the assistant flips a fair coin. If heads he lights the fire, otherwise he doesn’t light the fire. In either case Dr. Marathe is not informed whether the fire was lit or not. Subsequent rainfall in the 24-96 hour window is measured by the assistant. This is repeated several times in each village, for a variety of villages. The total number of experiments that need to be done can be calculated, but most likely we need a lot more than 10 or 20.
If we want to be really careful, the subsequent rainfall should be measured by a second assistant who is also not aware of whether a fire was lit or not — this is called double-blinding.
Now we compare subsequent rainfall in the cases where the coin came up heads to the subsequent rainfall in the cases where it came up tails. If they are the same, the fire doesn’t do anything — essentially Dr. Marathe has a way to tell whether it will rain soon. That would be disappointing but it is what it is. If the precipitation under heads is statistically significantly higher than the precipitation under tails, then the fire is causing the rain. This would be a great positive result.
I really do think it is important to find out experimentally whether the fire is causing the rain.
PS. I forgot to mention: when doing the analysis, meteorological scientists and a statistician should be consulted to identify and devise methods to deal with potential confounding variables that may bias the results.
Valid points Armchair…I believe these were also raised by someone at the conference. Not sure if any follow-up was done.
In any case, I believe Dr Marathe has asked for some govt grants to do more research. Hoepfully that should validate the hypothesis.
Intriguing nevertheless.
This experiment is very much inline with an experiment conducted by Charles Hatfield. popularly known as rainmaker you can get his information on the web by googling the word charles hatfield the rain maker of sandiego.
A similar and more advanced science was known to the ancient indians of vedic period who used yagna/Homa(fire altars or prairie fires) to generate Rain. while today’s scientific community due to lack os statistical validation may term these yagnas as unscientific, a little deeper understanding of the process involved would reveal how much real science was behing this.I have personally been investigating and researching this from a purely scientific standpoint and the revelations are just stunning. For example instead of burning tyres, certain specific woods are burnt and the purpose of smoke particles is the same. To act as CCN(cloud condensation nuclei). Some of the specific materials that are burnt in the yagna can lead to particles in the aerosol which has specific effect on the surface tension of water particles in the cloud thereby resulting in quicker condensation and precipitation. The vapours of ghee that rise up with the smoke acts as a catalysts. I have tried conducting this experiment at home(not with a religious belief) but to test the science behinds this and the i tell you… It works!! Very soon I would be posting a video on the web which can demonstrate and can also be statistically validated with data!!
Just to add a few points, there is a prescribed method of conducting the parjanya Yagna(Rain making operation) In Yajurveda Samhita which outlines
Process,Materials involved in conducting the Yagna. Even the shape o the fire altars that have been proposed(Round ones for Rain making Yagna) The science behind that is the shape of the altars impact the temperature attained by the Kunda during the yagna process. This can control the rate of oxidation of materials put into the homa kunda leading to release of certain chemicals like formaldehyde and poly saccharides. A deeper study of Cloud chemistry will reveal how the chemicals from Yagna reacts with the ones already present in the clouds that result in particle/Nuclei build-up and precipitation. I am trying to research if the gases eveolved from Yagna have an impact on the rain making bacteria. If these fumes impact the bacterial content in the aerosol positively, there is a good chance that the increase in bacterial count to certain threshold can lead to god rainfall. I will let you know post my investigation.
Sri: Thanks…this is very interesting. I will look forward to more details.
Pl do share on the blog.
Dear Gentlemen
After reading this , I am started believing in our tradition and vidhis . I request all of yu to invoive me in your group to be part of your revolutionary project.
You can very much reach me on my obile no. 9769617772/ 9921100009
regards
Vishal sonawane
Very interesting. One more example could be the agnicayana ritual : http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2011/04/12-day-athirathram-ritual-ends-with.html
Click on the link to read about the fascinating way in which water-starved communities high in the mountains in Peru are now able to get water…
From Fog Catchers Bring Water to Parched Villages,
“…As far back as 2,000 years ago, desert villages and other rain-starved communities around the world may have started harvesting fog that collected as water and dripped from trees, said Robert Schemenauer, executive director of FogQuest, a Canadian nonprofit organization..”
**
Has anyone heard of (or knows about) anything similar in India (ancient or contemporary)?