Ramayana and Beyond: A study of Indian Epics: Wikipedia Trail: Baalbek to Deep Diving

This week, I'll be trying out a Wikipedia trail. I started with Baalbek, which was mentioned in the class twitter feed in a tweet about the temple of Jupiter in Baalbek. Baalbek is a city in Lebanon near Beirut. The area in which the city is located shows almost continuous habitation for 8 or 9 thousand years. During the era of Alexander the Great, the city's temple was used for worship of the Greek sun God Helios, which leads us to our second page.

Helios is the godly embodiment of the sun in Greek mythology. His siblings are Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn. In fact, Helios was actually a titan, not a god. Because Helios is associated with the sun, he ended up with an element named after him.

Scientist Edward Frankland named an element 'Helium' after the sun titan Helios when its signature was noted on a spectrum examined from the sun. Helium is a very commonly known element used for a wide variety of purposes from balloons to rocket fuel coolant to aiding in deep diving air production. Helium is added to this mixture to lower the density of the air which compresses at lower depths.

Recreational deep diving includes anything below 30 meters (98 ft). In professional diving, a diver must be 200 ft or deeper for the dive to be considered a deep dive. Swimming that deep requires special equipment and outfits so that the pressure doesn't cause permanent damage to the diver. Additionally air at those levels is toxic. It's interesting to read about the special requirements for diving so deep. It's also interesting to consider the connections between a temple in Lebanon and deep diving.