Prakash Shenoy's Diary

 

Narendra Modi is the first Prime Minister to visit Isro’s Thiruvananthapuram-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in four decades, where he met the four astronauts-select — Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Angad Pratap, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla —who have been shortlisted for the Gaganyaan mission. At VSSC, PM Modi bestowed ‘astronaut wings’ on the four test pilots after introducing them to the world and called them “the pride of today’s India” who “who will take the aspirations of 140 crore Indians to space”. The profiles of the four astronauts-select: Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair: A native of Nenmara in Palakkad in Kerala, Nair completed his schooling in Kuwait where his father was employed. After coming back to India, he did his engineering from NSS College, Akathethara, in Palakkad and joined the NDA course in Khadakwasla and then entered 163rd pilot course at the Air Force Academy from where he passed

Time of the Universe The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st, it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July, and August, but our sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. Everything humans have ever done occurred in that bright speck at the lower right of the cosmic calendar. The Big Bang is at upper left in the first second of January 1st. Fifteen billion years later is our present time: the last second of December 31st. Every month is 1¼ billion years long. Each day represents 40 million years. Each second stands for some 500 years of our history. The blinking of an eye in the drama of cosmic time. At this scale, the cosmic calendar is the size of a football field, but all of human history would occupy an area the size of my hand. We’re just beginning to trace the long and tortuous path which began with the primeval fireball a

Gazing our Universe By 1600, the long-forgotten ideas of Aristarchus had been rediscovered. Johannes Kepler constructed elaborate models to understand the motion and arrangement of the planets; the clockwork of the heavens. And at night, he dreamt of traveling to the moon. His principal scientific tools were the mathematics of the Alexandrian Library and an unswerving respect for the facts—however disquieting they might be. His story, and the story of the scientists who came after him, are also part of our voyage. Seventy years later, the sun-centered universe of Aristarchus and Copernicus was widely accepted in the Europe of the Enlightenment. The idea arose that the planets were worlds governed by laws of nature, and scientific speculation turned to the motions of the stars. The clockwork in the heavens was imitated by the watchmakers of Earth. Precise timekeeping permitted great sailing ship voyages of exploration and discovery which bound up the Earth. This was a time when free inq

Sustaining the legacy of wisdom Today, Alexandria shows few traces of its ancient glory of the days when Eratosthenes walked its broad avenues. Over the centuries, waves of conquerors converted its palaces and temples into castles and churches, then into minarets and mosques. The city was chosen to be the capital of his empire by Alexander the Great on a winter’s afternoon in 331 B.C. A century later, it had become the greatest city of the world. Each successive civilization has left its mark. But what now remains of the marvel city of Alexander’s dream? Alexandria is still a thriving marketplace, still a crossroads for the peoples of the Near East. But once, it was radiant with self-confidence; certain of its power. Can you recapture a vanished epoch from a few broken statues and scraps of ancient manuscripts? In Alexandria, there was an immense library and an associated research institute. And in them worked the finest minds in the ancient world. Of that legendary library, all that s

The desire to learn drives scientific inquiry In Alexandria, at that time, there lived a man named Eratosthenes. One of his envious contemporaries called him “beta”—the second letter of the Greek alphabet—because, he said, “Eratosthenes was second-best in the world in everything.” But it seems clear that, in many fields, Eratosthenes was “alpha.” He was an astronomer, historian, geographer, philosopher, poet, theater critic, and mathematician. He was also the chief librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria. And one day, while reading a papyrus book in the library, he came upon a curious account. Far to the south—he read—at the frontier outpost of Syene, something notable could be seen on the longest day of the year. On June 21st, the shadows of a temple column, or a vertical stick, would grow shorter as noon approached. And as the hours crept towards midday, the sun’s rays would slither down the sides of a deep well which on other days would remain in shadow. And then, precisely at