Henna History

"Believe it or not, the practice of Mehndi started out as an answer to the need for air-conditioning in the desert. The Henna plant, whose botanical name is Lawsonia Inermis and which comes from the Loosestrife family, has several medicinal properties, chief among them its ability to cool down the human body. 

When the desert people of Rajasthan, Punjab, and Gujarat became aware of Henna's cooling properties, they dipped their hands and feet in a mud or paste made with the crushed leaves of the plant. Even when the mud was scraped off, they noticed, as long as the color remained visible, their body temperatures stayed low. Eventually some women grew tired of bright red palms and found that one large central dot in the palm of the hand had the same effect, while being more pleasing to the eye. Other, smaller dots were placed around the center dot, which gradually gave way to the idea of creating outright artistic designs. To that end, a thin instrument made of silver or ivory (in India) or wood (in Morocco), then most commonly used for applying kohl to the eyes, became the instrument of choice for Henna applications, and it is still in use in desert villages today. Only in the last decade or so have the popular Indian cone (see Page 44 in Mehndi, the Art of Henna Body Painting) and Moroccan syringe, both of which are able to deposit the thinnest filaments of Henna onto the skin, come into play as modern counterparts of the simple.
Black henna In Africa and in Medieval Persia, black henna is considered the most beautiful. In India, red henna is more auspicious. Both come from the same plant, but are obtained in slightly different ways. If you have absolutely fresh henna powder, and apply it in very hot weather, with an overnight wrap, to your palms and soles, the color may go nearly black with no extra effort. The perspiration and heat will darken the henna. to deep burgundy or near black in many people, especially if they have calloused skin, and have skin that is very warm to the touch. To get henna velvet black on palms and soles in the traditional way, the skin may be treated with something with a very base pH just after the henna paste is removed. There are several things which will accomplish this, but all of them can be harsh on the skin, and should be used with caution. Email us for more information on this, and photographs of the results. . There are many products on the market that are labeled black henna. MANY PRODUCTS LABELED AS BLACK HENNA ARE VERY HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!! Natural henna is very safe.
Black henna In Africa and in Medieval Persia, black henna is considered the most beautiful. In India, red henna is more auspicious. Both come from the same plant, but are obtained in slightly different ways. If you have absolutely fresh henna powder, and apply it in very hot weather, with an overnight wrap, to your palms and soles, the color may go nearly black with no extra effort. The perspiration and heat will darken the henna. to deep burgundy or near black in many people, especially if they have calloused skin, and have skin that is very warm to the touch. To get henna velvet black on palms and soles in the traditional way, the skin may be treated with something with a very base pH just after the henna paste is removed. There are several things which will accomplish this, but all of them can be harsh on the skin, and should be used with caution. Email us for more information on this, and photographs of the results. . There are many products on the market that are labeled black henna. MANY PRODUCTS LABELED AS BLACK HENNA ARE VERY HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!! Natural henna is very safe.

Henna is the Arabic name of a bush of the botanical name, lawsonia inermis. Leaves are harvested from this bush, dried and powdered to make henna powder. The paste made from this powder, used to dye the skin, is henna paste. The pattern on the skin resulting from the application of henna paste is called a henna. If you have henna patterns on you, you have been "hennaed". Since many countries from the Atlantic coast of Africa to Malaysia use henna, there are many other words for both the bush and the adornment; though in every country, the plant and the skin pattern are known by the same name. In India, there are several words for the plant and the art, because there are many languages and dialects in India. Since the words in these languages were not originally written in a Roman alphabet, there is a great deal of difference in translation of the word from those languages to English. Mehandi is the translation favored by several companies who publish henna pattern books in Delhi and Mumbai. Mehndi is a translation favored in Hindi. There are over 20 variations of the word for the henna plant and art that have been used in publication...all are equally correct. 

Chances are you do not have the proper henna for Mehndi. Only certain areas of the laminus plant (henna plant) can stain your skin. Most henna powders come from the whole plant being ground up. These powders contain spores, which take on a sponge like consistence when mixed. Mehndi powders come from the top of the plant, the blossoms. This powder is very smooth and lays on the skin easily. We only carry such powders.

Black henna powders are toxic. Because they contain para phenyle diamine which can break the skin out in lesions. We do carry a safe black henna and other colors for the skin. None of our products contain para phenyle di amine Most designs of henna are very intricate, where do you begin? Begin in the middle, of circular designs, and simple work your way out. Break down the design, what every you do to one side do immediately to the other. This avoids getting lost in the design. 

short history of henna. There is very persuasive evidence that henna was used by the Neolithic people in Catal Huyuk, in the 7th millennium BCE to ornament their hands in connection with their fertility goddess. The religion these people practiced was the predecessor to the religions of all the people in the ancient Middle East, and henna seems to have been used by all of these people as part of their adornment and belief system. The earliest civilizations that can be proved to have used henna include the Babylonians, Assyrians, Sumerians, Semites, Ugaritics and Canaanites. The earliest written artifact that mentions henna being used specifically as an adornment for a bride or woman's special occasion is in the Ugaritic legend of Baal and Anath, inscribed on a tablet from about 2100 BCE, from north west Syria. Anath was a goddess of fertility and battle. In the legend, she adorned her hands with henna before battle, and brides ornamented their hands with henna as a preparation for wedding. As henna is mentioned as a part of a legend, may be inferred that henna was in use by the Ugaritic people, as a bridal tradition, and as a women's celebratory cosmetic along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean for many centuries prior to 2000 BCE. There are many statuettes from Crete and Mycenae from the period 1700 BCE to 900 BCE that show goddesses synchronous with Anath, with raised hands that appear to be ornamented with henna. Several of these goddesses also have facial patterns that are identical with scarification that was used to honor the goddess Anath, and identical to patterns are made in harquus (a cosmetic closely related to henna) have been used until the present time by Arabs, Bedouins and North African tribal groups. There are numerous artifacts from Iraq, Palestine, Greece, Egypt, Crete and Rome from 1400 BCE to 1AD that show women with henna patterns on their hands. The early center of the use of henna as a woman's adornment seems to have been the eastern Mediterranean, where it grows wild. It is mentioned in the Bible as "Camphire" in the Song of Solomon, and was used by the Canaanite women in pre-biblical times. A Roman wall fresco, "The Aldobrandini Wedding" from 30 BCE, shows a scene identical with a "Night of the Henna" celebration, in which the Mother has henna patterns on her hand. The Canaanites spread their traditions, including the use of henna, across North Africa between 1700 and 600 BCE, specifically establishing the Berber traditions of henna in Morocco. Henna was used in Palestine from the earliest historical period, and there are Roman records of henna being used by Jewish people living in Jerusalem during the historical period of the birth of Christ. When Islam began in the 6-7th centuries AD, henna was incorporated into the customs of Muslims from the western Middle Eastern women's henna traditions that were widespread and long established. As Islam expanded quickly into other countries, the use of henna went with it. Henna was grown and used in Spain, by Christians and Moors from the 9th century AD to 1567 when it was outlawed by the Spanish Inquisition. All of the countries that were part of the Islamic world have used henna at some time, most frequently as part of wedding celebrations. Most of them continued to celebrate the "Night of the Henna" and regard henna as a beautiful and suitable ornament for women until the present. The most complex and elegant henna patterning in the Islamic world was from 900 to 1550 AD in Persia, Turkey and Iraq. There are many miniatures and pottery pieces showing elegantly patterned black henna from this period. Such delicate and expressive patterning did not reappear in henna until late in this century. Henna use in all the Middle Eastern and North African countries continued, though it fell out of favor early in the 20th century as women sought to emulate European and American fashions. The earliest artifacts showing henna in India, that I have found, are from about 400 AD, in the Ajanta caves. Though there are several figures in the Ajanta caves that have henna, they are only a very small percentage of all the people depicted. Therefore, though henna certainly was used from an early period in India, it was not widespread. Also, the henna appearing in Ajanta appears equally on men, women and servants, and was done as dip henna, without patterning. Bright red dip henna, made from a paste of fresh leaves was used, not the orange / brown/ black/ patterned henna made from dried and powdered leaves as appears in the Mediterranean and Middle East. From 600 AD to 1300 AD, bright red dip henna appears frequently on Boddhisattvas and Buddhist clerics depicted in sculpture and wall paintings in Northern India, Nepal, Tibet, Ceylon and Burma. After 1500 AD, henna is seen frequently on women in miniature paintings in India, though patterning is very rare until after 1700 AD. In Hindu India during this period, henna certainly is part of the cosmetic routine used by wives and concubines to look their best. Henna is also depicted on Kali and other Hindu deities during this period, and up to the present day. By 1700, the bridal celebration of the Night of the Henna was a well established part of Muslim India's traditions, and married Muslim women in India frequently used henna to ornament themselves. A portrait of Mumtaz Mahal has one of the earliest patterned henna on her hands that I have found in India. During the 1800s patterned henna is seen frequently in Indian artifacts, though the henna is always represented as red and never black. Dip henna and simple patterns adorn most women portrayed in Indian art since 1800, as well as many Hindu deities. Henna patterning in India has become very complex and beautiful in the 20th century, and is used as part of the celebration of almost all holidays. Timeline This is a list of countries where women traditionally used henna to beautify their hands for celebrations and luck, during some period between 7000 BCE and 1900 AD. These dates are approximate, but are supported by literary or artifact evidence, direct or indirect. Henna use may greatly predate earliest artifact evidence of henna use..... also there may be other uses of henna that predate women's celebration use. Turkey 4000 BCE to present (very compelling evidence of use as early as 7000 BCE) Syria 3000 BCE to present (possibly as early as 5000 BCE) Israel 2100 BCE to present (possibly as early as 8000 BCE) Jordan 2100 BCE through Ottoman Empire (possibly as early as 3000 BCE) Lebanon 2100 BCE through Ottoman Empire (possibly as early as 3000 BCE) Arabia 1700 BCE through present (possibly as early as 3000 BCE) Crete 1700 BCE to 900 BCE, and when under Moorish influence Cyprus 1700 BCE to present, when under Moorish influence Greece 1700 BCE to 1400 BCE, occasionally under Moorish or Turkish influence Libya 1700 BCE to present Tunisia 1200 BCE to present Egypt 1400 BCE to present Iraq 1300 BCE to present (possibly as early as 2500 BCE) Kuwait 1200 BCE to present (possibly as early as 2500 BCE) Iran 1300 BCE to present (possibly as early as 2500 BCE) Morocco 1200 BCE to present Western Sahara 1200 BCE to present Algeria 1200 BCE to present Mali 1200 BCE to present Sudan 1200 BCE to present Yemen 1200 BCE to present United Arab Emirates 1200 BCE to present (or earlier) Italy 100 BCE, and occasionally through Moorish influence Afghanistan 100 AD to present (probable use much earlier, perhaps to 1200 BCE) Pakistan 100 AD to present (probable use much earlier, perhaps to 1200 BCE) India 100 AD to present (probable use much earlier, perhaps to 1200 BCE) Nepal 600 AD to present (probable use much earlier) Sri Lanka 700 AD to present (probable use much earlier) Turkistan 800 AD to present Uzbekistan 800 AD to present Tibet 900 to 1300 AD Burma 800 Ad to present Thailand 800 AD to present Ethiopia 800 AD both Muslim and Christian communities Nigeria 800 AD to present Armenia 900 AD to present, both Muslim and Christian communities Azerbaijan 900 AD to present Sicily 1000-1200 AD Spain 900 AD to 1560 AD Portugal 900 to 1550 AD China occasionally 1000 AD to present, in Muslim population Sub-Saharan African countries, in Muslim influence Bosnia during Ottoman Empire and in Muslim influence Malaysia 1200 AD to present, Muslim and Hindu population Indonesia 1200 AD to present, Muslim and Hindu population South Africa 1800 to present, Indian and Muslim population Gypsy populations (dispersed) used henna when in Muslim or Hindu countries 1100 AD to present.

In English, there are no useful words to describe a henna stain ornamenting the skin, so henna are frequently called "henna tattoos". Hennaed skin is not tattoed. A tattoo is a permanent design in the skin, made by forcing pigment into the underlying layers of the skin, usually with a needle. Henna is a dye that colors the outermost layer of the skin. It does not go into the blood bearing layers. The skin is not pierced. It will not bleed. It cannot hurt. It feels about like having your skin decorated with pudding. Henna contains hennotannic acid, which dyes collagens (skin cells) and keratin (hair and fingernail cells) very easily. The dye is released from the vegetable matter and made available to dye skin at pH 5.5 or more sour. It takes time for hennotannic acid to bind with cells, so the henna paste must stay moist and in contact with the skin for a while. Heat makes the dye darker. The henna stain will last until that top layer of your skin exfoliates. All the skin on your body gradually exfoliates and is replaced by new skin in 1-12 weeks, depending on individual factors. The henna, then, will last as long as 8 weeks on the thick soles of your feet, or go away as quickly as 3-4 days on very thin parts of your skin. The newly grown in skin will not have a henna pattern on it. It is very very unusual for anyone to have an adverse reaction to natural henna, but it does happen. Henna is one of the safest cosmetics ever used, but a patch test is a good idea if you're unsure.

Henna is done by women to ornament and beautify themselves, and it is also done for special celebrations. Betrothals, weddings, the eighth month of pregnancy, at birth, 40 days after a woman gives birth , naming ceremonies and circumcisions, are all events celebrated with henna. Ids, and other religious holidays are occasions to be hennaed. There are also some healing ceremonies associated with Zar in North Africa which include the use of henna. Women henna themselves and their friends and relatives for most festivals in India, as part of the celebration....along with dressing beautifully, partying, and taking a break from work. It is especially a relief during very hot weather, as henna is cooling. It is certainly a part of wedding traditions for both women and men, best known in the "night of the henna" parties. It is used by Hindus as a part of preparations for weddings, as well as throughout the Islamic world. Sephardic Jews used henna in a night of the henna party, and in Armenia, Christian women and men also adorn themselves with henna. In the "night of the henna" parties, the bride is ornately adorned with henna, and instructed in the duties of her new status as wife. All the bride's friends and relations join to help her make this transition to womanhood auspicious and successful, wishing her many children and all happiness. In the groom's party, his friends and relations wish him wealth and prestige, as well as many children. There are a great number of henna traditions, of a wide variety over all the centuries that henna has been used. So, art of henna is expressive of the human love of beauty, and the hope for an abundant, loving life.

You can prepare your own fresh henna paste and henna yourself very easily with things you already have in your kitchen. Exotic ingredients are part of many people's recipes, but are not absolutely necessary. Purchase the best quality and freshest henna you can. If the henna powder is green and richly fragrant, it is fresh. If it is tan and odorless, it is stale. If your henna is fresh, you will get a dark brown or burgundy stain. If your henna powder is stale, you will get a pumpkin-colored stain. A fancy recipe will improve stale henna somewhat, but not much. If your henna is fresh, a simple recipe is all that's needed. Sift your henna powder through a tea strainer. Henna powder often has twigs and plant scraps left from processing, and some henna powders have sand and dirt in them. If you want to make henna patterns with fine lines, sift the henna powder again through the control top part of pantyhose. When you are sifting henna powder, avoid inhaling the henna dust. When your powder is sifted, mix enough fresh lemon or lime juice (strained) into it to make the power into a paste as thick as mashed potatoes. Let that sit at cool room temperature over night. This will make the plant cells release the hennotannic acid. After the thick henna paste has begun to release its dye, thin it out so it's easier to draw with. The best consistency for henna paste for decorating is softer than toothpaste but thicker than stirred-up yogurt. You can thin it out with more lemon juice, you can use coffee, tea, or you can make your own special mixture. If you boil cloves with strong coffee, and strain that and mix it into the henna paste, the cloves will make the henna slightly blacker. Cloves contain gallotannic acid, which helps the hennotannic acid make a darker dye. Coffee and tea contain tannin, but not in sufficient quantities to change the color of the henna stain very much. There are many other things that henna artists add to their henna pastes, and there is no one perfect recipe. Try things and develop your own recipe! Stir your henna paste well to get out all the lumps! When your henna paste is at room temperature and at a useable consistency you can make patterns on your skin with it. Many traditional henna artists apply henna with a thin twig, porcupine quill, kohl stick, or wire. Just dip the stick into your henna paste, and draw with it....the henna should be a little viscous so that you can pull out a line as you draw it along your skin. Many contemporary henna artists use little squeeze bottles with metal tips, that fiber artists use for gutta lines on silk. Many on-line henna suppliers and fiber arts suppliers carry these bottles. If you haven't done henna before, practice drawing with henna on a paper towel to get used to medium. If you're unsure what you want to draw on yourself, or if you're not confident that you can get it right on the first try, sketch in the pattern on yourself with washable children's markers first. You can henna over the marker lines. If you want to practice hennaeing without wasting henna, try using your cones or sticks with toothpaste or cake decorating gel. Wash your skin with hot water and soap to remove lotions, oils and dirt before you henna. If your skin is clean, oil free and warmed it should take henna well. If you are trying to henna skin that is naturally oily, like a man's upper arms or back, you will need to use rubbing alcohol or witch hazel to remove as much of the skin oil as possible. Henna will stain darkest on palms and soles. The skin there is thickest and most absorbent. Where the skin on your body is thin, henna does not stain as well. The poorest places for henna staining are chests, heads, oily skin or sunburned skin. If you make a mistake with your henna on your skin, scrape off the mistake quickly with a toothpick, or wash the area. Henna begins to stain your skin within the first minute. Let the henna dry on your skin. Be very careful to keep the henna pattern perfect as it dries. You will need to keep the henna on your skin for at least 6 hours, very warm, and slightly moist to get a good henna stain. If you can keep it on overnight, and get it hot, that is best. There are several ways you can accomplish this. Try different ways and see what works best for you. You can sit perfectly still in a very hot humid room. This is traditional, and works very, very well, but is inconvenient and uncomfortable. Here are some ways that are more compatible with contemporary urban life: You can seal the henna with New Skin spray to prevent smudging, and wrap the henna with toilet paper, plastic wrap and tape. This is very effective where the weather is cool, and where it is difficult to get the skin really warm. Your perspiration under the wrap will rehydrate the henna, and the wrap will darken the henna color by warming the skin. There are many variations on wrapping, try several to see what is most suitable for you. The most important things are that the henna must remain undisturbed, even through sleeping overnight, and that the skin be warmed and slightly moistened with perspiration. Other useful wrapping materials are cotton, gauze, paper tape, ace bandages, and liquid latex. Each is wonderfully useful for some specific purpose. Liquid latex is especially useful for bosoms and navels, and other places where wrapping would be clumsy or impossible. You can also seal the henna by dabbing it with a lemon juice and sugar mixture that has been boiled into a syrup, going over it several times carefully until there is a sugar-candy crust holding the henna in place. This is most effective in very warm climates, where a wrap would quickly become uncomfortable and overly sweaty. If you warm your hennaed skin near a fire, or rest for an hour or two with a heating pad over your wrapped henna, your henna will be much darker. Your henna will be darkest in hot summer weather. It will be most difficult to get dark henna when the weather is cold. After the henna has been on your skin several hours or overnight, you can remove the green paste to see the orange-brown stain underneath. If your water supply is not strongly chlorinated, you can just rinse off the henna paste, and the henna will darken with exposure to air. Rain water and distilled water will not harm your henna. If you suspect that your water has a lot of chlorine, scrape the henna off with a dead credit card, and let it darken without rinsing. As your henna stain is exposed to the air, it will oxidize and darken gradually over the first 48 hours. If your henna paste was made from really fresh henna, it will darken on your skin easily, and with no particular assistance. Oil may help your henna look its best, but it does not actually make the henna darker. If you have used New Skin to seal your henna and prevent smudging, oil such as cocoa butter will remove it easily.

Though henna is used in the context of many celebrations, some of which religious, henna is not in itself sacred. Henna is applied by mothers, sisters, and friends, rather than by clergy. Henna it is most frequently applied in a home, rather than in a church, synagogue, temple or mosque.... The application of henna is considered auspicious and lucky, but is not required as a sacrament in any religion. Henna is a cosmetic women use to make themselves attractive to their husbands, for good luck and as a part of looking their best, rather than as a sacred decoration for a spiritual purpose. Henna is part of the social celebration of life's events: weddings, births, naming, circumcisions, festivals, funerals....and is very frequently used between the women of a family to strengthen friendships and familial bonds. Henna is nearly always regarded as beautiful, blessed and lucky, even as being effective in repelling malevolent spirits, rather than being specifically sacred. Henna is a part of the world of household magic, not religious sacrament. In all of the countries that have traditionally used henna, it has been sometimes very fashionable as women's adornment, and sometime out of fashion. The patterns used in henna generally reflect the interests and tastes of women at the time, and are not usually regarded as magical, though they may be considered lucky. Women have changed the use of henna every time it has moved from one country to another, to suit their tastes, needs and sense of beauty. There is no one correct tradition of henna. Henna has changed many times over the last 5000 years, and been used in many ways by very different people. The resurgence of henna in the late 20th century, and its introduction into Euro-American culture is just one more phase in the history of henna. The contemporary use of henna as a body art, at its best, is no less valid than at any time before...it is just very new, and still taking shape.

The best henna is made fresh from the freshest henna powder, finely powdered, and free from twigs and crud. The more quickly the henna gets from the bush to your skin, the more dark and beautiful the color. If you purchase henna at a store, its hard to tell how long the box has been on the shelf, and how long it was in warehouses before that. If you can get henna from an Internet supplier who is getting it straight from the growers, that is probably your best source, unless you have a friend or relative who can bring you some directly from the country where it is produced .... or ... if you can, grow your own. If you do have very fresh henna powder, you can prolong it's usefulness by keeping it enclosed, lightproof and damp proof in your refrigerator. In a store, look for 100% pure henna powder with no added ingredients, that is meant for skin, not hair. Do not purchase any powder labeled "black henna" that seems to be a hair dye. It will not dye your skin black, it will just leave a grubby smudge.

The green in the henna paste is chlorophyll. The hennotannic acid stains your skin some color in the range of maple leaves in the fall. Maple leaves are green in the summer, when you see the chlorophyll. In the fall the green is gone, showing the other colors. When the green leaf paste is removed from your skin, you see the stain color. Why is my henna stain a whimpy orange? If the henna powder sat for a long time in a shop window, (prominently displayed because it is so trendy), in a warehouse, in a customs depot, or on a store shelf, it will become very stale. Whimpy henna color comes from stale henna.

For our premixed henna colors only leave the color paste on for ONE HOUR. If using the henna powder kit, we recommend at least four hours for paste on or around the hands or feet. Areas other then hands and feet, like navels and biceps leave the paste on for 6 hours. The reason for leaving the paste on longer for parts that are not hands and feet is henna works off the heat of your body. The hands and feet loss a lot of heat, therefor making the henna take faster. So keep those henna areas.

If you need to get rid of your henna pattern quickly, you will need to bleach and exfoliate that area. Acne medications that have alpha-hydroxies and anti-bacterials will help remove henna. Facial scrubs with exfolients will help. Frequent washing with bleach will fade henna quickly from your hands. It is better to wash and exfoliate several times gently over 2 or 3 days than to try to remove the henna all at once. Do not scrub so hard that you hurt yourself.

Very, very few things will easily dye skin. None of the above will improve or significantly change the color of your henna pattern. They might stay on top of your skin briefly, but they will not dye your skin as henna does.

Oil your skin frequently to deter exfoliation. Go over the henna patterns with new henna every several days, carefully retracing the lines. In many traditions, a bride does no housework as long as her hands are ornamented with henna. In Rajasthan, women who always excuse themselves from doing housework to preserve their beautiful henna are referred to as "Mehndi spoiled".

Henna mehndi

For thousands of years man has wanted to paint his body. Before even primitive clothing came about mans means of being part of a tribe or to be dramatically different would be to stain the body with plant dyes.

The results were fantastic and henna alongside other dyes like indigo was a temporary yet extremely satisfying way of creating a deep colour on the skin.

Henna (from the plant lawsonia inermia) is known as many names and is predominantly found in North Africa, Eygpt, India and parts of the Middle East. It is best known for its dried, ground leaves that produce a colourfast dye in shades varying from pale brown through to dark russet reds. It can be used to dye hair, skin, clothes and even finger nails, and has long been used as a treatment for sunburn, for its astringent qualities and also as a sedative.
The art of Henna has been practised for thousands of years in the countries mentioned above but in the last 5 years there has been a surge of interest from Western countries. It is now widely accepted as an art in self expression and individuality.
There is evidence of tattooing dating right back over 5000 years and the Egyptians were the culture that totally embraced it. They were probably the vainest of cultures when it came to beauty and personal hygiene. Henna was used in many ways to stain hands, hair and nails.
Henna is a life giving and therapeutic experience for anyone who wants to get in touch with their inner self. It has a history of spirituality and is linked with marriage, birth and death, and is probably the oldest art form known to man.
There is something deeply satisfying for an Indian Bride to have her hands and feet painted on the day before her wedding with beautiful intricate Menhdi designs. She is revered by the wedding party and henna is used as a means of idolising her. She is not allowed to do any work before or after her wedding until all the stain has disappeared.

Using henna for many women in poor countries was an inexpensive way of adorning herself and becoming exotic, to set herself apart from others. To paint ones friends was also very popular and the ritual that went with it drew you closer to them.
In the Middle East it is said that Arabs will not present their hand for henna if they are not speaking the truth and it is generally brides who are painted. Henna is known as a symbol of good luck in countries such as Turkey, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
In Morrocco there are unique designs used for many different things. Pregnant women have designs painted on their ankles to protect them throughout childbirth and designs are passed down within the families, secret styles being kept in families for generations.
African designs have a geometry to them that is quite distinct and are less intricate than the very ornate and floral Indian or mehndi designs.

Celtic Art has beautiful intricate knots and animal designs that are more complicated to do in henna but can be mastered. Celtic designs are very spiritual and magical and have many deep meanings to many anglo Saxons.
Japanese and Chinese Art is used by western countries practising henna bodyart and the Japanese symbols are probably some of the most in demand designs for henna. The yin yang sign and all its variations is also very popular. Henna influences reach far and wide and never more so than in the fashion fields. Look at all the crazy designs of designers in the late sixties and early seventies such as Ossie Clarke and Zandra Rhodes. Their flamboyant textile designs are making a huge comeback on the catwalks today and the new 'hippy chic' looks that incorporate not only henna body art but rich textile designs pulled from many cultures... menhdi designs in particular... show that henna bodyart is not dead!
Many professional henna artists today work from designs pulled from all these cultures and infuse their work with a modern slant of their own.

Henna

Africa and the Middle East.There is some documentation that it is over 9000 years old.  Because henna has natural cooling properties, people of the desert, for centuries, have been using henna to cool down their bodies.  They make a paste of henna and soak their palms and soles of the feet in it to get an air conditioning affect.  They feel it's cooling senstaion throughout the body for as long as the henna stain remains on their skin.  Initially, as the stain faded away, it left patterns on the skin surface which led to ideas to make designs for decorative purposes.  In the ancient Egyptian times mummies wore henna designs and it is documented that Cleopatra herself used henna for decorative purposes.

Henna was not only a popular adornment for the rich but the poor, who could not afford jewelry, used it to decorate their bodies as well.Henna in the West Cultural & Medicinal Uses medicinal Properties. Today people all over the world have adopted the ancient traditions of adorning their bodies with the beautiful natural artwork created from the henna plant.  It became a very popular form of temporary body decoration in the 90's in the US and has become a growing trend ever since.  Celebrities like Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Yasmine Bleeth, Liv Tyler, Xena, and many others proudly adorn their bodies with henna and show them off in public, movies, videos, etc. People throughout the west have adopted the eastern tradition in their lives by having their hands and feet painted for weddings, bellies painted while in pregnancy, heads adorned with henna while going through chemotherapy, scars camouflaged to make them unnoticeable, etc.

Henna is used for many reasons including: self-expression; celebration of special occasions like weddings, holidays & birthdays; inspiration; reminders; beauty; cosmetic treatments; medicinal uses; blessings & well-being; to be part of an ancient tradition; and an alternative or precursor to a tattoo.

It can be found in the hot climates like Egypt, Pakistan, India, Africa, Morocco, and Australia.   The plant grows best in heat up to 120F degrees and contains more dye at these temperatures.  It wilts in temperatures below 50F degrees.   It also grows better in dry soil than damp soil.  The leaves are in opposite decussate pairs and vary in sizes from approximately 2-4 cm. long.  The flowers are fragrant, produced in conical panicles 1040 cm long, each flower 5 mm diameter, with four white petals. The fruit is a dry capsule 68 mm diameter, containing numerous 12.5 mm seeds.

The henna plant contains lawsone which is a reddish-orange dye that binds to the keratin (a protein) in our skin and safely stains the skin.  The stain can be from pale orange to nearly black depending on the quality of the henna and how well ones skin takes it.  A good henna, fresh from hot & dry climates, will stain the darkest.

For body decorations, the leaves of the henna plant are dried, crushed into a fine powder, and made into a creamy paste using a variety of techniques.  This paste is then applied to the skin, staining the top layer of skin only.  In its natural state it will dye the skin an orange or brown color.  Although it looks dark green (or dark brown depending on the henna) when applied, this green paste will flake off revealing an orange stain.  The stain becomes a reddish-brown color after 1-3 days of application.  The palms and the soles of the feet stain the darkest because the skin is the thickest in these areas & contain the most keratin.  The farther away from hands and feet the henna is applied, the lesser the color.  The face area usually stains the lightest.   The designs generally last from 1-4 weeks on the skin surface depending on the henna, care and skin type.

Henna works on all skin types and colors.  It looks just as beautiful on dark skin as light skin but because some peoples skin may take the dye better than others, it can look more prominent on one and not as much on another (even lighter skin).  But nevertheless, henna is a symbol of beauty, art, and happiness and is meant for EVERYONE!

Because henna acts as a sunblock, there is an added benefit to having henna designs in the summer. For those who love to get a tan It leaves tan lines!  In order to benefit from this, it is best to get a henna design, let its natural color stay on for 3-5 days and then go and get a tan.  This way you can enjoy the natural henna color on your body, the henna color with the tan, and then tan lines in the shapes of the design (once the henna fades away)!  The tan lines last as long as the actual tan!

Henna is considered an herb, and has long been known to posses healing qualities.   It is used topically and usually not ingested or inhaled.  In ancient times it has been applied to the skin surface for such ailments as headaches, stomach pains, burns (including sunburns), open wounds, as a fever reducer, athlete's foot and even the prevention of hair loss.   It is also a sunblock and has been used on the noses of animals to prevent sunburn.  Another use of henna would be to apply it to goat skin bags, after they have been salt-cured.  It "insect-proofs" or "moth-proofs" the bags by making the skin poisoned or inedible.

Henna is traditionally used for special occasions like holidays,

India, and the Middle East.  The most popular of the traditions is the Mehndi (henna) Night where the bride, her family, relatives and friends get together to celebrate the wedding to come.  The night is filled with games, music and dance performances that may have been rehearsed for months prior to the event by those closest to the bride while the bride gets extensive henna patterns done on her hands and feet that go to her elbows and sometimes, knees.  The bridal patterns can take hours and are often done by multilpe henna artists.  The guests will usually recieve small designs(tattoos) on the backs of their hands as well.

Today, brides prefer to have their henna done prior to the mehndi night so that they can enjoy the festivities and also have a deeper stain by the wedding day.

Tradition holds that for as long as the henna stain appears on the bride, she doesn't have to do any housework!  Also, the darker the stain the better the marriage and the better the mother-in-law will be!  So you can imagine why the bride would want the stain to come our dark and last as long as possible!

Is just a

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was this guy named Aristotle. Pretty sharp fellow; he thought up a lot of good things. But, occasionally he made a mistake.

One mistake he made was to toss an orange up in the air and watch it come straight back down to his hand. Aristotle reasoned that if he was moving, the orange would have flown off to one side as soon as it left his hand. Because the orange did not do so, Aristotle concluded he was not moving. On the basis of this one observed fact, and the assumption that there was no other explanation for what he observed, Aristotle concluded that the Earth does not move and that therefore the rest of the universe had to move around it.

Aristotle was a very sharp guy, but the fact is that there was another explanation for why the orange fell back into his hand, and it would wait about another 2000 years before another smart man, Sir Isaac Newton, explained just what it was Aristotle had overlooked, set forth in Newton's laws of motion.

But for the early church, Aristotle's conclusions fit in rather well with their theology, which had the Earth created as the center of the universe, unmoving, with the rest of the cosmos spinning about it.

Of course, there was empirical evidence available to all that cast doubt on the church-approved version of the Cosmos. One could see during eclipses that the Earth was not flat. The curved shape of the Earth's shadow as it crossed the moon was the same no matter which place in the sky the eclipse took place. A spherical Earth was the only shape that could produce such a result. Ships sailing over the horizon clearly vanished over a subtle curve ( an observation which eventually inspired Columbus' voyages). Nobody could explain the behavior of a Foucault's Pendulum other than by the Earth spinning beneath it.

But by far the most troubling problem for the geocentric (earth centered) universe was the strange behavior of the planets. In an age before TV, or even books, the night sky was something every person was quite familiar with, even those who were not sailors or fortune tellers. Watching the night sky over time, the paths of the planets were easily seen to occasionally pause, move in reverse for a time, then proceed forward. This behavior was called retrograde motion. Ah, but this was a problem. The church did not have an explanation for this behavior. Indeed in the King James Version of the Bible, the word "planet" appears only once, and then only as an object to be sacrificed to.

There is a very simple explanation for retrograde motion. As the Earth, moving in its inner orbit, overtakes an outer planet, it will appear to hesitate, reverse its path across the sky, then resume its normal path. But the idea that the Earth moved was contrary to Church Dogma and to Aristotle. What education was tolerated by the church was "encouraged" to find some way to explain retrograde motion in a way that did not conflict with the religious needs for a universe centered on an unmoving Earth. Rather than re-examine Aristotle's basic claim, the learned men of the day grabbed onto a suggestion made by Claudius Ptolemy called "epicycles". This theory explained retrograde motion around a motionless Earth by suggesting that the planets moved in large orbits called deferents, upon which were superimposed smaller orbits called epicycles which produced a "wobble" as seen from Earth.

Epicycles were extremely popular with the church, and scholars at universities with religious affiliations were "encouraged" to refine this theory. And it needed refinement, badly, because the epicycle theory did not accurately predict what was being seen in the sky. Generations of effort was expended trying to figure out why the models did not predict the actual motions of the planets. At one point, it was even suggested that the epicycles had epicycles. No matter how many times the observed results did not match the predictions, the approved course of action was to refine the theory, but never to question the basic assumption. Those who dared point to the evidence suggesting that Aristotle (and by extension the church) were in error in postulating a geocentric universe were "discouraged". Galileo was tortured into recanting his conclusions that the Earth moved. Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the stake for suggesting that the sun was really just another star, only close up, and that the other stars had their own planets.

In recent times, our expanding technology has confirmed that Galileo and Bruno were right, and Aristotle and the church were flat out wrong. The Earth does move. There are no deferents or epicycles, or even epicycles on the epicycles. The models of the universe which are based on a moving Earth are quite accurate and able to predict the behaviors of the planets as evidence by the fact that we send spacecraft to those planets on a regular basis.

The theory of a geocentric universe and the theory of epicycles were not science. It was religious doctrine masked as science.

The church has never really dealt with the reality of the universe very well. They only apologized for their treatment of Galileo recently and still refuse to discuss Bruno. The Bible, presumed to be the perfect word of a perfect God, still teaches that the Earth is flat, rests on pillars (Job 26:11), and does not move (Psalms 19:5-6 93:1 96:10 104:5).

It seems that some mistakes are destined to be repeated again, despite our technological prowess.

In 1929, a Cal-Tech astronomer named Edwin Hubble observed that objects which appeared to be much further away showed a more pronounced shift towards the red end of the spectrum. Scientists building on Hubble's discovery concluded that the farther an object was away from Earth, the faster it was receding, and calculated the relationship between distance and velocity, called the "Hubble Constant" and concluded on the basis of this one observed fact and the assumption that there was no other explanation for that observed fact that the universe was expanding.

Religious circles embraced the idea of an expanding universe because for the universe to be expanding, then at some point in the past it had to originate from a single point, called the "Big Bang". Indeed, the concept of the Big Bang did not originate with Edwin Hubble himself but was proposed by a Catholic Monk, Georges Lema'tre in 1927, two years before Hubble published his observations of the Red Shift. The "Big Bang" coincided nicely with religious doctrine and just as had been the case with epicycles (and despite the embarrassment thereof) religious institutions sought to encourage this new model of the universe over all others, including the then prevalent "steady state" theory.

Then history repeated itself. Evidence surfaced that the "Big Bang" might not really be a workable theory in the form of General Relativity, and its postulation that super massive objects would have gravity fields so strong that even light could not escape, nor would matter be able to differentiate. Since the entire universe existing in just one spot would be the most super massive object of all, the universe could not be born.

Needless to say, this suggestion that the Big Bang could not happen provoked the same exact reaction as the suggestion that the Earth might not be the center of everything. Instead of questioning the basic assumption, great effort was made to find a way to evolve the new data in terms acceptable to the assumption of a universe spawned in a single moment of creation. A complex Cosmology theory sprang up, encouraged by those invested in the "Big Bang" to explain why the basic foundational principles of physics behaved differently in the first few milliseconds of time. The math work is impressive, as impressive as that which supported the theory of the epicycles, but it is really just a polite way of saying "The rules just didn't apply when we need them not to apply".

An attempt was made to prove the Big Bang by searching for the "Cosmic Background Radiation", the presumed energy echo from the primordial explosion. and indeed a radio noise signal was picked up. Like Aristotle, and like Hubble, the discoverers of the Cosmic Background Radiation assumed the signal meant what they thought it did and could have no alternative explanation. The discovery of the Cosmic Background Radiation was then heralded as final proof of the Big Bang theory, and those institutions invested in that theory celebrated.

But just as the theory of epicycles did not accurately predict the observed motion of the planets, the Big Bang Theory turned out to be less than accurate about the radiation signal detected in space.

For one thing, there is the "Horizon Problem". At present, the known universe spans 28 billion light years and is assumed to be 14 billion years old. (Obviously unless we actually ARE the center of the universe, it may be assumed that the universe probably extends even further in at least one direction). Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have traveled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.

When the satellite COBE was sent up to analyze the Cosmic Background Radiation, it discovered instead of the smooth featureless glow predicted by the cosmologists a highly complex and detailed structure. Yet again, rather than question the prime assumption that the signal being analyzed was actually from a supposed "Big Bang", research was encouraged to find a way to fit the data into the existing theory, again on the assumption that the signal detected could not be from any other source. And yet, an alternative explanation for the signal was right at hand, indeed literally on all sides.

Our Solar System and planets have heavy elements (without which you would not be here) because at some time prior to the creation of our Solar System another star in the immediate vicinity exploded, creating the heavy elements and scattering them into the universe. Every star that explodes creates a planetary nebula, such as the one easily seen with amateur telescopes in the constellation Lyra. A planetary nebula is a bubble of debris in space, and given the presence of heavy elements in our own Solar System, then somewhere out in space there must be the tenuous remains of a billions of years old planetary nebula, the result of the not-so-very-big bang, viewable from our unique point of view near the center. This model of Earth lying at the center of the remains of a supernova predicts exactly the sort of structure that COBE found in the presumed Cosmic Background Radiation. But as was the case with Galileo and Bruno, challengers to the "approved" creation myths face a tough time, albeit funding cuts have replaced torture and being burned alive at the stake.

So pervasive is this bias to see the universe as created in a Biblical-consistent "Big Bang" that when William G. Tifft submitted his first article on the quantization of the observed Red Shift to Astrophysical Journal, the Journal published it because they could not find errors in it, yet still felt compelled to editorially distance themselves from the conclusions.

The conclusions derived from quantized red shift are devastating to the conventional view of the universe created in a single Big Bang, as devastating as Galileo's first telescope was to the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe.

Georges Lemaître (like Aristotle) assumed there was no other explanation for the red shift he observed than the motion of the observed objects relative to Earth. But given the theory that the universe is expanding uniformly, the amount of red shifts would have to be uniformly and randomly distributed.

But they aren't.

The observed red shifts in the sky are quantized, falling into discreet intervals. This is not explained by the theory that the red shift is produced solely by relative velocity. Some other effect is at work. And that means that the assumption that the universe is expanding based solely on the red shift is invalidated. Some other effect IS at work that explains the observations, quite possibly one that triggers a quantized red shift over vast distances without respect to relative velocity.

Which means the universe is not expanding. Which means there was no moment of creation, no "Big Bang" with an epicycle-esque cosmology to explain why the greatest black hole of all didn't behave like a black hole. Which means that the background radiation mapped by COBE which didn't quite fit the Big Bang model is probably the remnant of the stellar explosion that created the heavy elements making up that computer you are reading this on.

But the lesson for our time of just how much our society remains dominated by religious superstitions is revealed by the fact that the quantized red-shift is NOT a new discovery. The first article regarding the observed data appeared in 1976, a quarter of a century ago. Since then, scientists as much in the service of superstition as were those scientists who "studied" epicycles have repeatedly tried to disprove the observations of Tifft and Cocke, only to confirm and re-confirm the truth, that there is a quantized red-shift, which casts doubt on the theory of an expanding universe and a "Big bang" creation.

Yet even though hard evidence exists to warrant a full re-examination of the basic assumption of the expanding universe, our science classes and TV programs still promote the "Big Bang" view, just as the erroneous theory of Aristotle continued to be promoted even after Galileo proved it wrong, because one theory fits into a theology, and the other does not.

Man's progress is not measured by the reaches of his science but by the limits of his superstition. The truth is known. But the truth is unpopular.

The assumption that there must be a beginning to the universe is merely a human invention. We believe that we see things have beginnings and ends before us, but in truth we are seeing matter change form. A particular configuration may have a beginning and an end, but that the actual matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed is an axiom of physics. Miss April may be only 20 years old, but the atoms in her heavenly body are indeed heavenly bodies, being the remains of ancient exploded stars, and in THAT form for billions of years.

Ancients believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. But while we grudgingly admit that Earth orbits the sun and that our sun is nowhere near the center of the milky way, the idea that Earth is the center of all remains at the heart of the assumptions of the Big Bang theory. The "Bangers" describe the furthest objects we can detect (currently 13 billion light years) and from that calculate the age of the universe (currently set at 14 billion years).

But that only works if we ASSUME that the Earth is the center for all the cosmos that we can see. It is true that we are seeing objects out to the edge of our technological limits 

and we are seeing them in all directions. We do not see an obvious end to the universe. Logically, the odds are far greater than what we can actually see is really just a tiny bubble in a far larger universe, rather than we just happen to be that one in googleplex worlds that wound up at the exact center for the expanding field of debris from the Big Bang (i.e. the location of the original singlularity). And if we abandon the assumption that we see most of the the universe from a fortunate position near the location of the original singlularity, then we cannot really know how large the universe really is, and the mathematics by which we claim to know the age based on the size break down completely. We truly are trying to calculate the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

  Perhaps the biggest contradiction with the Big Bang Theory is the question of the singularity. The "primordial egg" had to be a super-massive black hole. Therefore no amount of "bang", no matter how big, is going to thrust the universe out into, well, the universe. 

  Cosmologists eager to promote the Big Bang Theory have hit upon the "explanation" that the laws of physics, gravity., etc. simply did not apply in those first few moments of the universe. The present Cosmology theory is that the universe enjoyed a period of "rulelessness" of about  3 seconds, after which the elements formed and the fundamental forces of the universe, gravity included, were functioning as we see them today.

  Ah, but there is a problem. The singularity formed by the primordial egg turns out to be rather large.

  Estimates of the total mass of the universe vary wildly, given that the ends of the universe have not yet been determined.

  From the mass, you can calculate the diameter of the event horizon by finding the distance from a point mass that will have an escape velocity of c. Use sqrt(2GM/r) where M is the mass of the hole (the entire universe in this case) and r is the radius (classical), and G is the gravitational constant. Work it backward starting at c and you get c^2=2GM/r.

  This works out to an event horizon light years across! 

  In short, at the moment in time when the Big Bang theorists claim the universe was functioning as it does today, complete with all fundamental forces, the entirety of the universe's mass was still well within the event horizon of its own gravity well. That the well was not the product of a true singularity is irrelevant, Newton's equation provides an equivalent gravity field for a singularity or a super dense mass in a localized region.

  Therefore the Big Bang, as currently described, could not have produced the universe as we see it today. At three seconds, the time the theorists claim the universe started operating as we know it, it would have come under the influence of its own gravity and unable to reach an escape velocity exceeding that of light, collapsed back into itself. 

The "Bangers" get around this paradox with the theory that when the universe was created, it had no mass at all. Therefore, so the theory goes, there was no gravity and no reason the the bang matter (or "batter") not to escape the bang into the universe. Then, after the matter was conveniently far away from the singularity, it interacted with a particle named the Higgs Boson. Like the two tubes that come with epoxy, the Higgs Boson blended with the massless "batter" and produced normal matter with mass. How all the matter in the universe knew just when to mix the tubes together is still open to speculation, but usually the proponents of this theory start whispering about God under their breath at this point.

With the exception of one false alarm out of Fermilab, there has been no evidence that the Higgs Boson exists. The Large Hadron Collider was built specifically to look for the Higgs Boson, nicknamed "The God Particle", thereby revealing the religious agenda that is actually behind what may be history's most expensive church. It must be pointed out that even if the LHC, in the unimaginable fury of the high energy collisions it generates, succeeds in producing a particle that matches the description of the Higgs Boson (absent a piece of "massless matter" to test it with, how will we know?) that does not prove such a particle ever existed before, nor does it prove the Big Bang. The scientist-priests at the LHC will not be able to prove that their new particle is not itself a creation of the LHC rather than a part of nature.

Particle physicists like to joke that studying matter with colliders is like smashing two mechanical clocks together and trying to guess what the clocks looked like based on the springs, gears, and levers that fly out. Let us take that analogy one step further and speculate that given enough speed at the moment of collision, individual teeth from the clock gears will come flying out as seperate distinct pieces. But clearly, prior to that moment of collision, they never did exist as seperate distinct pieces. Their separateness is created by the collision at that very moment. The same may well be true of the ultra-tiny particles generated by the collisions of the LHC, including whatever we may be asked to accept on faith as the "God Particle." They may be artifacts of the collision, and not of natural processes.

ANOTHER PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

For the purposes of this thought experiment, let us assume that God waved a magic wand and the universe popped into existence from a Big Bang, and that "somehow" the universe escaped from it's own gravity well. With the entire 2.6*10⁶⁰ mass/energy of the universe confined to that small region, the temperatures and pressures amount to a super-supernova. We already know that in the cataclysm of a supernova, the heavier elements are created. That is where all the heavy elements in your body were created; inside an exploding star. Therefore, in that moment of super-creation called the Big Bang, as the universe started to operate by the rules we know today, the expanding universe should be creating all the known heavy elements.

So, how to explain the Population II stars?

Population II stars are stars with no heavy elements in them. When they explode at the end of their life cycles, heavy elements are created. These are swept up by stars that form afterwards creating Population I stars, usually with planets around them. Population I stars have heavy elements. Population II stars do not.

If the Big Bang had happened, the universe would be filled with heavy elements created in those first few moments the universe started to operate under the rules of physics we know today. There should not be any stars in existence devoid of those heavy elements. And yet there are.

The existence of Population II stars, devoid of heavy elements, directly contradicts the theory of the Big Bang.

YET ANOTHER PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

The Big Bang is currently imagined to have occurred 14 billion years ago.

The farthest object seen in the sky by the Hubble and Keck Telescopes is 13 billion light-years distant, and is assumed to have been created when the universe was just 750 million years old. It would take at least that long (if not longer) for the material from the theorized Big Bang to coalesce into stars and for those stars to form a rotating galaxy.

But here is the problem. We are seeing that object 13 billion light-years distant not as it is today and where it is today but as it was and where it was, 13 billion years ago, 13 billion light-years distant from earth.

In other words, for this galaxy to lie 13 billion light-years away from Earth only 750 million years after the Big Bang, it would have had to travel 13 billion light years in just 750 million years' time. That requires the galaxy in question to travel more than 17 times faster than the speed of light, a speed limit which according to the Big Bang supporters was in effect from the moment the universe was 3 seconds old.

AN INTRIGUING QUESTION

We see in the night sky that all galaxies rotate. Stars rotate. Planets rotate. Bodies orbit around other bodies. A dimensionless singularity posited by the Big Bang cannot have rotation. So where did all this angular momentum come from if the universe emerged from the Big Bang singularity? For that matter, how do we get a variation in velocity or density emerging from a singularity

UPDATES: In 2011, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was finally switched on in the experiment it was built to carry out; to prove the existance of the Higgs Boson, the hypothetical particle necessary to reconcile the Big Bang with Special Relativity. CERN concluded that the Higgs particle does not in fact exist. The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics went to three American scientists who demonstrated that the rate of expansion in the expanding universe is accelerating. Even taken at face value, this means some other force is at work other than the initial impetus of the supposed moment of creation. Something else is being seen and possibly misinterpreted! It is time to question the prime assumption that the observed red shift in the sky is attributable only to relative velocity.

Astronomy

he world.  Science on the grandest scale has felt great impedence from religious dogma and pontificators, specificly, the relationship between Gallileo and the Catholic church.  The entire history of cosmology is a subject too broad for a small project to contend with, so I want to explore.

10,000 Years After The Big Bang: Radiation Era: Most energy was in the form of radiation -- different wavelengths of light, X rays, radio waves and ultraviolet rays. As the universe expanded, these waves of radiation were stretched and diluted.

• 300,000 Years After The Big Bang: Matter Domination Era: The average temperature had cooled to a mere 5000 degrees Fahrenheit. The energy in matter and the energy in radiation were equal. But as the universe continued to expand, the effects of the stretching of the light waves continued driving them into lower and lower energy, while the matter continued outward largely unaffected. Electrons could now remain in orbit around atomic nuclei. These hydrogen and helium atoms would eventually form the fuel for the stars.

• 300,000,000 Years After The Big Bang: Stars and Galaxies Form: The force of gravity began to affect the irregularities in the density of the gaseous matter. As the universe continued to expand more rapidly, pockets of gas formed, becoming more and more dense. Within these pockets, stars ignited, and as they formed, groups of them became the earliest galaxies.

• 5 Billion Years Ago: Our Solar System Forms: Our sun formed within a cloud of gas in a spiral arm of what we now call the Milky Way Galaxy. A huge cloud of gas and debris surrounded this new star gave birth to planets, moons, and asteroids.

• 3.8 Billion Years Ago: Life Appeared: The Earth cooled and an atmosphere formed. Microscopic cells began to form, which were neither plant nor animal.

• 700,000,000 Years Ago: Animals Appeared: Mostly flatworms, jelly fish and algae. 130 million years later large numbers of creatures with hard shells suddenly appear.

• 200,000,000 Years Ago: Mammals Appeared: These early mammals evolved from some reptile who had begun developing mammalian traits.

• 65,000,000 Years Ago: Dinosaurs Became Extinct: An asteroid or comet crashed into the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This catastrophic event brought an end to the long age of the dinosaurs, providing mammals with a chance to expand their ranges.

• niverse continued to expand but not nearly as quickly. It became less dense and cooler. Gravity emerges. Matter forms. Building block particles of quarks, leptons, photons, and neutrinos, form. The universe is now about the size of a melon. Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons form the nuclei of all atoms. Protons and neutrons combine to form the atomic nuclei of  hydrogen, helium and lithium.niverse continued to expand but not nearly as quickly. It became less dense and cooler. Gravity emerges. Matter forms. Building block particles of quarks, leptons, photons, and neutrinos, form. The universe is now about the size of a melon. Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons form the nuclei of all atoms. Protons and neutrons combine to form the atomic nuclei of  hydrogen, helium and lithium. 

Steady state

Revolutionary advance in cosmology. And in the early 1940s, world war limited cosmological advance. But the war that temporarily absorbed scientific resources also promoted technologies that would lead to fundamental scientific advances.

Advances in nuclear physics helped transform cosmological speculations into quantitative calculations. This line of investigation, begun in the late 1940s, was at first pursued mainly by physicists, not astronomers. In the 1930s Georges Lemaître had suggested that the universe might have originated when a primeval "cosmic egg" exploded in a spectacular fireworks, creating an expanding universe. Now physicists found plausible numbers for the cosmic abundances of different elements that would be created in an initial cosmic explosion. But the theory of an initial cosmic explosion was soon challenged by a new hypothesis—that the universe might be in a steady state after all.

In 1946 the Ukrainian-born American physicist George Gamow considered how the early stage of an expanding universe would be a superhot stew of particles, and began to calculate what amounts of various chemical elements might be created under these conditions. Gamow was joined by Ralph Alpher, a graduate student at George Washington University, where Gamow taught, and by Robert Herman, an employee at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where Gamow consulted. Both Alpher and Herman were American-born sons of émigré Russian expansion and cooling of a universe from an initial state of nearly infinite density and temperature. In that state all matter would have been protons, neutrons, and electrons merging in an ocean of high energy radiation. Gamow and Alpher called this hypothetical mixture "Ylem" (from a medieval word for matter). Alpher made detailed calculations of nuclear processes in this early universe. For his calculations he used some of the first electronic digital computers—developed during the war for computing, among other things, conditions inside a nuclear bomb blast. It seemed that elements could be built up as a particle captured neutrons one by one, in a sort of "nuclear cooking."

The contribution of this theory was not to set forth a final solution but, no less important, to set forth a grand problem—what determined the cosmic abundance of the elements? Could the observed abundances be matched by calculations that applied the laws of physics to an early extremely hot dense phase of an expanding universe? Gamow did succeed in explaining the relative abundances of hydrogen and helium. Calculations roughly agreed with observations of stars—helium accounted for about a quarter of the mass of the universe and hydrogen accounted for nearly all the rest. However, attempts to make calculations for other elements failed to get a sensible answer for any element beyond helium. It seemed that piling more neutrons onto helium would hardly ever get you stable elements. Gamow joked that his theory should nevertheless be considered a success, since it did account for 99% of the matter in the universe.

Indeed his theory was not wrong but only incomplete. Astrophysicists soon realized that if the heavier elements were not formed during the hot origin of the universe, they might be formed later on, in the interiors of stars. The theory depended on a special property of carbon, which British astronomer Fred Hoyle measured and found as predicted. Cosmology had entered the laboratory.

There is a charming story, not taken seriously by all historians, about how steady state theory began. The idea came in 1947, Hoyle claimed, when he and his fellow scientists Hermann Bondi and Tommy Gold went to a movie. The three knew each other from shared research on radar during World War II. Hoyle was versatile, undisciplined and intuitive; Bondi had a sharp and orderly mathematical mind; Gold's daring physical imagination opened new perspectives. The movie was a ghost story that ended the same way it started. This got the three scientists thinking about a universe that was unchanging yet dynamic. According to Hoyle, "One tends to think of unchanging situations as being necessarily static. What the ghost-story film did sharply for all three of us was to remove this wrong notion. One can have unchanging situations that are dynamic, as for instance a smoothly flowing river." But how could the universe always look the same if it was always expanding? It did not take them long to see a possible answer—matter was continuously being created. Thus new stars and galaxies could form to fill the space left 

in stellar interiors fell outside the theory in which elements were created at the very start. It was interpreted as favoring a rival theory. And Hoyle did favor a rival theory, which he had played a large part in inventing and developing. In this theory the universe had always looked much as it does now. There never had been a "big bang"—a phrase that Hoyle invented in 1950, intending the nickname as pejorative.

Steady-state theory also had an observational advantage over big-bang theory in 1948. The rate of expansion then observed, when calculated backward to an initial big bang, gave an age for the universe of only a few billion years—well below the known age of the solar system! That was certainly an embarrassment for the big bang theory.

For some time cosmologists had measured ideas against a "cosmological principle," which asserted that the large-scale properties of the universe are independent of the location of the observer. In other words, any theory that put we humans at some special place (like the center of the universe) could be rejected out of hand. Bondi and Gold insisted that the universe is not only homogenous in space but also in time—it looks the same at any place and at any time. They grandly called this the "perfect cosmological principle," and insisted that theory should be deduced from the axiom that we are not at any special place in either space or time.

Hoyle was less insistent that the perfect cosmological principle was a fundamental axiom. He preferred to have theory follow from a modification he proposed to Einstein's relativistic universe, adding the creation of matter. The two different steady-state theories had enough in common, however, to be considered one for most purposes.

Much of the later development of steady-state theory came in response to criticism. In Great Britain, especially, scientists gave considerable attention to elaborating the theory. Their arguments were largely of a philosophical nature, with little appeal to observation.

The cosmological debate acquired religious and political aspects. Pope Pious XII announced in 1952 that big-bang cosmology affirmed the notion of a transcendental creator and was in harmony with Christian dogma. Steady-state theory, denying any beginning or end to time, was in some minds loosely associated with atheism. Gamow even suggested steady-state theory was attached to the Communist Party line, although in fact Soviet astronomers rejected both steady-state and big-bang cosmologies as "idealistic" and unsound. Hoyle himself associated steady state theory with personal freedom and anti-communism.

Astronomers in the United States found the steady-state theory attractive, but they took a pragmatic approach. The rival claims of big-bang and steady-state theory must be settled by observational tests. One test involved the ages of galaxies. In a steady state, with continuous creation of matter, there would be a mixture of young and old galaxies throughout the universe. In a big bang, with only an initial creation, galaxies would age with time. And astronomers could look back in time by looking at more distant galaxies, for observing a galaxy a billion light-years away meant seeing it in light that had left it a billion years ago. Observations reported in 1948 purported to find that more distant galaxies were indeed older. Score one for the big bang. Bondi and Gold reviewed the data carefully, and in 1954 they showed that the reported effect was spurious. Score one for steady state. The age test might be able to distinguish between the rival theories in principle, but in practice it could not.

Another possible test involved the rate of expansion of the universe. In a big bang, the expansion rate would slow; in a steady state universe it would remain constant. Data from the Mount Wilson Observatory seemed to favor the big bang, but not certainly enough to constitute a crucial test.

Meanwhile there was a solution to the embarrassing calculation that put the age of a big-bang universe less than the age of the solar system. Walter Baade showed that estimates of the distances to galaxies had mixed together two different types of stars. As a result, the size of the universe had been underestimated by about a factor of two. If galaxies were twice as distant as previously thought, then calculation with the observed rate of expansion gave an age of the universe twice as great as previously calculated — safely greater than the age of the solar system. That argument against the big-bang universe thus dissolved.

The most serious challenge to steady-state theory came from the new science of radio astronomy. Fundamental knowledge in the techniques of detecting faint radio astronomy signals advanced greatly during World War II, especially with research on radar and especially in England. After the war, research programs at Cambridge, at Manchester, and at Sydney, Australia, built radio telescopes to detect signals from outer space. They dominated radio astronomy for the next decade.

The program at Cambridge was led by Martin Ryle, who in 1974 would receive the Nobel Prize in physics for his overall contributions to radio astronomy. In 1951 Ryle believed that radio sources were located within our galaxy, and hence were of no cosmological interest. But over the next few years he became convinced that most of the radio sources he was detecting were extragalactic. His observations, then, could be used to test cosmological models. Ryle argued that his survey of almost 2,000 radio sources, completed in 1955, contradicted steady-state theory, because more distant/older sources seemed to be distributed differently from nearby ones. But he overstated the significance of his initial data. Only after more years of work would radio observations argue strongly against steady-state theory.

Big theroy big bang

The Teaching Company
(48 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)Course No. 8050Imagine you are traveling through time. Consider the following episodes: * At 13.7 billion years ago, the Universe suddenly appears, growing from the size of an atom to the size of a galaxy in a fraction of a second. * At 10 billion years ago, hydrogen atoms and helium atoms fuse at the center of a supernova to create the building blocks of the physical world. * At 4.6 billion years ago, a cloud of matter collapses to produce a star?our Sun. Earth and the other planets in our solar system form out of the remaining bits of matter swirling around the new star. * At 67 million years ago, an asteroid collides with the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, and leaves territory open for the rise of a minor order of organisms, the early mammals. * At 100,000?60,000 years ago, a species of hominines?bipedal ape-like creatures? begins to move out of its home territory in Africa and into the Asian continent. * Today, the descendants of those first hominines?homo sapiens?live in nearly every ecological niche. We fly through the air in planes, communicate instantaneously over immense distances, and develop theories about the creation of the Universe.Each of these scenarios is just one episode in an ever-evolving story: the history of everything. It's a story you'll hear?in its monumental entirety?in Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity.Taught by historian David Christian, Big History offers a unique opportunity to view human history in the context of the many histories that surround it. Over the course of 48 thought-provoking lectures, he'll serve as your guide as you traverse the sweeping expanse of cosmic history?13.7 billion years of it?starting with the big bang and traveling through time.Have you ever wondered: How do various scholarly discourses?cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, history?fit together? Big History answers that question by weaving a single story from a variety of scholarly disciplines. Like traditional creation stories told by the world's great religions and mythologies, Big History provides a map of our place in space and time. But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian. This is a story scholars have been able to tell only since the middle of the last century, thanks to the development of new dating techniques in the mid-1900s. As Professor Christian explains, this story will continue to grow and change as scientists and historians accumulate new knowledge about our shared past. Eight "Thresholds" To tell this epic, Professor Christian organizes the history of creation into eight "thresholds." Each threshold marks a point in history when something truly new appeared and forms never before seen began to arise. Starting with the first threshold, the creation of the Universe, Professor Christian traces the developments of new, more complex entities, including: * The creation of the first stars (threshold 2) * The origin of life (threshold 5) * The development of the human species (threshold 6) * The moment of modernity (threshold 8). In the final lectures, you'll even gain a glimpse into the future as you review speculations offered by scientists about where our species, our world, and our Universe may be heading. Getting the "Big" Picture While you may have heard parts of this story before in courses on geology, history, anthropology, biology, cosmology, and other scholarly disciplines, Big History provides more than just a recap. This course will expand the scope of your perspective on the past and alter the way you think about history and the world around you. "Because of the scale on which we look at the past, you should not expect to find in it many of the familiar details, names, and personalities that you'll find in other types of historical teaching and writing," explains Professor Christian. "For example, the French Revolution and the Renaissance will barely get a mention. They'll zoom past in a blur. You'll barely see them. Instead, what we're going to see are some less familiar aspects of the past. ... We'll be looking, above all, for the very large patterns, the shape of the past." Thanks to this grand perspective, you'll uncover the remarkable parallels and connections among disciplines that remain to be explored when you view history on a large scale. How is the creation of stars like the building of cities? How is the big bang like the invention of agriculture? These are the kinds of connections you'll find yourself pondering as you undergo the grand shift in perspective afforded by Big History. Fascinating Facts Along the way, you'll encounter intriguing tidbits that put the grand scale of this story in perspective, such as: * The entire expanse of human civilization?5,000 years?makes up a mere 2 percent of the human experience. * Approximately 98 percent of human history occurred before the invention of agriculture. * All the matter we know of in the Universe is likely to be no more than 1 billionth of the actual matter that was originally created. * The Earth's Moon was probably created by a collision between the young Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet. * At present, we cannot drill deeper than about 7 miles into the Earth, which is just 0.2% of the distance to the center (4,000 miles away). * Between 1000 C.E. and 2000 C.E., human populations rose by a factor of 24. * Traveling in a jet plane, it would take 5 million years to get from our solar system to the next nearest star. The Story We Tell about Ourselves "To understand ourselves," says Professor Christian, "we need to know the very large story, the largest story of all." And that, perhaps, is one of the greatest benefits of Big History: It provides a thought-provoking way to help us understand our own place within the Universe. From humankind's place within the context of evolutionary history to our impact on the larger biosphere?both now and in our species' past?this course offers a broad yet nuanced examination of our place in creation. It also poses a profound question: Is it possible that our species is the only entity created by the Universe with the capacity to ponder its mysteries? There is, perhaps, no more profound question to ask, and no better guide on this quest for understanding than Professor Christian. A pioneer in this approach to understanding history, Professor Christian has made big history his personal project for more than two decades. Working with experts in a variety of fields, he designed and taught some of the first big history courses, and has published widely on the topic. Accept his invitation to get the big picture on Big History, and prepare for a journey through time and across space, from the first moments of existence to the distant reaches of the far future. David Christian, D.Phil.Professor of HistorySan Diego State UniversityDavid Christian is Professor of History at San Diego State University, where he teaches courses on big history, world environmental history, Russian history, and the history of Inner Eurasia. From 1975 to 2000, he taught Russian history, European history, and world history at Macquarie University in Sydney. Professor Christian was born in New York and grew up in Nigeria and Britain. He completed his B.A. in History at Oxford University, his M.A. in Russian History at The University of Western Ontario, and his D.Phil. in 19th-Century Russian History at Oxford University. As a graduate student, he spent a year in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during the Brezhnev era. In the late 1980s, Professor Christian developed an interest in understanding the past on very large scales. With the help of colleagues in astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, and prehistory, he began an experimental history course that started with the origins of the Universe and ended in the present day. Within two years, after his students persuaded him that it was a shame not to deal with the future after studying 13 billion years of history in 13 weeks, he introduced a final lecture on prospects for the future. In 1992, he wrote an article describing this approach as ?big history.? The label seems to have stuck, as similar courses have independently appeared elsewhere, and there are now several courses in big history at European, Russian, Australian, and North American universities. In addition, Professor Christian has written on the social and material history of 19th-century Russian peasantry, in particular on aspects of diet and the role of alcohol. In 1990, he completed a study of the role of vodka in Russian social, political, and economic life. Professor Christian?s recent publications include: Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege and the Challenge of Modernity (Macmillan/St. Martin?s, 1997); A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Vol. 1: Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire in The Blackwell History of the World (Blackwell, 1998); Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (University of California Press, 2004), which won the 2005 World History Association Book Prize and has been translated into Spanish and Chinese; and This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity (Berkshire Publishing, 2007). Professor Christian is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. He is Affiliates Chair for the World History Association and was one of the editors of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.