B'luru planetarium show on Darwin's trip to Galapagos

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium is currently making a forty-minute audio-visual presentation recounting Darwin's trip to the Galapagos Islands that figure in his famous book, "On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection."

The event which began on December 2 will continue till January 31, 2023. Additional scientific hypotheses such as those involving supernovae, neutron stars, and black holes were also presented briefly at the audio-visual programme.

The program is available in English, which is scheduled for 10:30 AM, and the one in Kannada is scheduled for 11:30 AM. On December 27, 1831, Charles Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in Plymouth, England. He was appointed as the ship's naturalist when he was 22. Sailboats were used to travel mainly through South America.

Darwin spent much time on the shore there, gathering plants and animals. In notebooks, Darwin meticulously recorded his observations of various flora, fauna, and geology. The journey lasted almost five years, and on October 2, 1836, the ship sailed back to Falmouth, England. Darwin gathered a range of bird species from all around South America.

He made an important discovery while examining the specimens from the Galapagos Islands. He observed that while the finches on the island and the mainland were similar, they each displayed unique traits that aided them in finding food more quickly in their respective habitats. He gathered a lot of finch specimens on the Galapagos Islands.