Singularity

The Making of our Golu 2011 :) !!

2011-10-09T11:08:00.005+05:30

After plans to buy a "slotted-angle steel golu stand" was scrapped, it was up to the tables, card-board boxes to make up for it. I managed 5 steps for our Golu (Navarathri) 2011. I wish to share with you how it came into being... I was pretty happy about the way it came into shape.. it was very close to what i had in mind..

Actually i could not take the pics when i made it.. So i took it when i removed it yesterday (and arranged it in reverse order)....

Staging a Comeback... TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE - JUNE 2011

2011-10-03T15:41:00.001+05:30

Hi All... Its been ages since we met each other through this window... I was kept busy in some work or other and above all i have been too damn lazy offlate.. am planning a comeback into the world of blogging.. wish to share my experiences with u all yet again...!!! As a prelude, checkout the mosaic i made off the JUNE 2011 TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE.... it occurred past midnight and had to sit in the pitch dark to get those shots.. it was a brilliant moment, "the total eclipse..", luckily for me this was the second such spectacle...! There are no words to express the moment of totally... with a bright orange moon in sky.... Fortunately it was a very clear night... wish i could see a total solar eclipse also.. which i have not got an opportunity to witness yet...

Anyways guys have a great NAVARATHRI and a HAPPY DIWALI... Cheeers

My first Lightning Bolt !

2010-04-29T08:12:00.002+05:30

Hey all... I have always wanted to shoot some subjects like, bees, lightning, panning shots..etc., One of them came true for the first time yesterday.. the setting was pretty gud when there was a huge thundershower area close to the western Horizon !... i could see the lightnings from my window and immediately rushed with my cam and tripod to shoot this out.. earlier this week i missed out on another such opportunity, i had to wait in the terrace for an hour to shoot nothing.. i have also tried them using my compact cam earlier, but never got one shot... so din wanna miss this one..

I must accept that.. this one has a lot of shake in it, my settings where not correct either... it was extremely windy and my not so sturdy tripod was vibrating in the wind... wish it came better, but neverthless wanted to share my first Lightning photo :) Please suggest optimal settings for Lightning shots ?

Above shot was taken using :

Canon 500D;

Shutter - 5.19sec;

Aperture -F/8;

ISO - 100;

Exp Compensation - 0;

What happened during the maiden flight of GSLV-D3 ??

2010-04-17T18:57:00.008+05:30

Sorry that i could not get this followup report soon after the launch as i was held up.. you ppl would have heard the story and what actually happened. This one is for those who din get to know!

Unfortunately for several scientists and Indians all over the world, GSLV-D3 failed to reach its designated altitude, following some glitches after the second stage shut down. The failure has partially hampered India's space race and is likely to delay its Chandrayan programme. The indigenous Cryogenic stage of GSLV-D3 (previous GSLV flights used Russian made Cryo stages) failed to ignite as per press release of ISRO. India is left with 2 more Russian Cryo engines and faces a great challenge ahead of it to get the Indian version of the engine up and running. I watched the launch on NDTV live from my laptop in office and was really tense as much as those ppl at mission control. And was shocked to see that the worm depicting the flight performance was deviating from the designated plot.... I felt immediately somethin is going wrong but never expected to worst to happen. The flight at this juncture also stopped sending signals (at an altitude of approx 65 Kms after 500 secs). Had to hear to the sad report from Dr.Radhakrishnan chief of ISRO. The ignition of first stage, First stage separation, Second stage ignition and Second stage separation happened as desired. Problems started to crop up immediately after that. According to official ISRO report, the engine was tested for all the conditions on land expect for vacuum environment as it was not possible to simulate the vacuum of space here on earth. Well somewhere there ISRO could have lost the plot.

Dr.Radhakrishnan promised in this statement that ISRO will work hard to get the GSLV and its indigenous Cryo engine back on track within a year. As a matter of fact India has been working on this technology for the past 18 years and this was its first attempt to fly. The onboard GSAT-4 was also lost in the process. The flight had a remote detonation procedure in case if malfunctions over land, but it was not used as the flight was safely over Bay of Bengal.

ISRO has bounced back with great performances before .. and lets believe it would do it this time too. Lets appreciate the scientists for their work and efforts to have brought the technology from drawing boards to this level... and wait till the next launch !

ISRO on world stage - Redy to Launch GSLV-D3

2010-04-10T08:27:00.000+05:30

It has been ages since I blogged...! I gotta re-discover my priorities and interests, laziness is taking over ;). So as a first push, lemme start off with my fav, ISRO. Information credit to ISRO website and The Hindu dated 10th April 2010.

ISRO is due to launch its first indigenously built GSLV propulsion system on 15th of April from Sriharikota. The Cryogenic engine was test fired successfully last year and has been chosen to lift the GSLV D3 with GSAT-4 onboard. The requirement for such a propulsion system comes with payloads exceeding 2 tonnes. We have been using Russian engines for the past 4 GSLV launches and have always faced the threat of losing the deal with constant pressure from USA for RUSSIA to stop offering the technology to INDIA.

The Cryogenic stage was built in Mahendragiri in Tamilnadu at Liquid Propulsion System Center. The team would have faced hardship in maintaing the propellents, liquid Oxygen at -183 degree Celsius and the liquid hydrogen at -253 degree Celsius. The development was done under the name CUSP or Cryogenic Upper Stage Project and has till date been the complex project taken up by ISRO.

With a successful launch on 15th April, India will join a group of 5 elite nations (USA, RUSSIA, EUROPE, JAPAN and CHINA). One of the payloads of GSAT-4 satellite will have a life span of 7 years and will aid aircrafts to land with pin point accuracy even under low visibility conditions. A PSLV launch is coming up next month on 5th May... Fingers crossed..... wishing ISRO best results from this launch. 5 days to go ! :)

Cometh the Eclipse - Anular Solar Eclipse,15th Jan 2010"

2010-01-10T20:56:00.001+05:30

Ok guys... India is on the path of a great show on 15th of this month... Southern tip of India is the lucky pick to witness the Anular Solar Eclipse when the moon comes in front of our parent star, "the Sun". Unfortunately, annular solar eclipse does not offer the, "view of corona" or "diamond nectlace". Anular eclipses occur when the moon is further away to cover the sun exactly. This means we can see the moon as smaller disk coming in front of the sun. A image of an anular eclipse can be seen above. The eclipse is visible from most parts of India, though the maximum eclipse (as seen in above image) is visible over a narrow band of region covering norther Srilanka and South Tamilnadu. Further more, the partial eclipse is visible over a larger area covering most of Africa and Asia. In Tamilnadu, the eclipse starts at around 11 AM on 15th Jan. Comprehensive details regarding this eclipse is given in the following NASA Eclipse Website.

Link: NASA Eclipse Page

Disclaimer: Please Do not watch the eclipse directly... infact even during
normal course, its certainly not advisable to look into the sun directly. During
an eclipse the sun's brightness is much lower which will cause the pupil in our
eyes to widen. The much wider pupil can now allow all the harmful uv rays from
our sun to fall into the eye and can cause permanent damage. Use gears like,
welder's glass or a custom built filter which can be bought at the nearest
Science Center. Safe Watching

I am sorry that i could not prepare a much vivid article on the same. I have been feeling extremely lazy over the past few days. I wanted to get this info across so that you will not miss this spectacle. This will be fun for people who have nothing to do (or do not want to get involved) with astronomy, for scientists and students its a great opportunity to do measurements of distances between sun, moon and earth... work on the activities relating to solar corona... and for the kids and enthusiasts its a great window to take their dreams to great distances... Happy Eclipse Watching.

Partial Lunar Eclipse - 31st December 2009

2010-01-01T08:38:00.000+05:30

I hope all your new year celebrations went well...wish u a happy new year once again. With it somethin for me to feel happy abt, It was the last eclipse of 2009 and also the first of 2010... It was a penumbral lunar eclipse lasting from around 11:45 PM on 31st December to 1:30 AM on 1 Jan 2010. Penumbral lunar eclipses cannot be made out as the reduction in brightness is very less. This eclipse though has a small portion of moon entering the umbral shadow also ! What does it mean..??? yes, we can see the eclipse as a small bit of the moon disappearing and reappearing after a while.. The image below will clearly explain the umbral/penumbral shadows of lunar eclipse. I consider myself lucky as i got the opportunity to document yet another eclipse in my life.... I guess it was my 4 th Lunar Eclipse. This one was not so dramatic as the earlier ones though. I am sharing some images which i got to witness on new years eve. I had used my DSC-T30 in VGA mode and used photoshop to organize it.

A more dramatic happening... "A Total Anular Solar Eclipse" is coming up on 15th of January.. I will gather the info abt that and upload it in coming days.

[Click above Images to view a larger version of the same]

The year 2009, as it was !

2009-12-31T14:52:00.001+05:30

The year 2009 has been full of mixed feelings for me... After completing my exams in December of 2008., 2009 invited me with the frustration of searching for a job in the peek of recession...though it was part of life considering the global market situations... After waiting for over 6 months i decided to head back home, where the job market was supposed to be better compared to Singapore. Well even with some helping hand from my uncle in getting interview calls.. i had to wait till September of this year to get my first core job... Atleast i was getting into a field which i wanted to be in.

The new job gave me an opportunity to revisit my birth place !!, "Coimbatore". The Irony is, i have never lived in Coimbatore but for i was born here. The job also pushed me into another 'first' in my life.. i am living alone. And above all i am realizing the value of University education, what all, i could have done in college, but i realized this only after facing several hurdles at work. I am slowly learning them now... I certainly feel its gonna give a much needed helping hand later in my career. But for the job fiasco, the rest of 2009 had been pretty comforting for me.

Each and every one of you would have had ur part of good and not so good things happening in 2008.. i wish that all the good things of 2008 will magnify as great ones in the coming year... well the the not so good things are always there... wish it dosent come in ur way much !!

WISH YOU ALL A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2010

Once in a Blue Moon !!

2009-12-28T08:46:00.000+05:30

The image above is blue and its a moon.. but the blue moon coming up on new years eve is nothing to do with the color "blue", at least it has a lot to do with the moon though :) ... and the image above is nothing real.. but a bit of Photoshop. Moons can become bluish but not to this extent and its pretty rare too !!! So what is Blue moon in this context... we have heard people quoting "Once in a Blue Moon....". The usage implies that the occurrence or happening is pretty rare. And so is the Blue moon coming up on 31st of December.

A Blue moon is the term used in Astronomy to indicate the second occurrence of a Full moon within the same month !! So i guess its clear now... Dec 2 was a full moon. December 31st is the second occurrence of the full moon in this month. The previous time when this happened was in June 2007 and the next time it would happen is August 2012. The occurrence has been averaged to one every 2.5 years (approx). A complete list of Blue moons is given in this site.

I guess many of you would have known this fact... i think ppl who had'nt, know it now ! Please dont believe in mails saying "Watch the moon on .... it will be big and blue in colour", well almost all of such messages are a prank ! We cannot avoid getting such messages, we can atleast do a small wiki or google on the subject and put the mail to rest for ever !

Image Courtesy: FreeDigitalImages.net

Missing earth under your foot...!!!!

2009-12-27T13:24:00.001+05:30

This article is to just express my concerns regarding a damaged portion of road here in Coimbatore. I have mailed to Corporation of Coimbatore along with the picture of the same. I guess they act on it to avoid a possible mishap, meanwhile please let me know which department i must convey this to ??? It would be great of any of u could help......

As it can be seen in the image, the road has just caved in at the end of this bridge near KMCH (Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital, Coimbatore). Similar damage is there on the other side of the road also and its even bigger there... The depth of the fall is arnd 10-15 feet and u certainly would get hurt if u fall into this unaware. Above all you will fall into drainage water..Even in broad day light you could fall into this as there is no foot path in this road and the pedestrians are pushed to the corner of the road (where the road has caved-in in the image) to save their lives from speeding highway traffic.

At night its even worse, with no lights in this stretch of the road and blinding headlights from approaching vehicles, its just matter of time before someone falls into this. I almost fell into this few weeks back... I badly wanted to convey this to concerned people... tried and got some contact mail id of Corporation of Coimbatore and have mailed them today... God only knows if they wil take the mail seriously to look into this. Suppose if they do it then.. i would regret that i could have mailed them earlier... Otherwise, i am determined to get this info to some capable people and see to it that its repaired...

Avatar - Living along side nature !

2009-12-23T08:59:00.000+05:30

On the day after its grand opening, i got to watch the costliest movie taken ever, but missed the 3-D experience on all accounts. This in my opinion must be watched in 3-D which will bring out every detail which was intended to be conveyed. By detail in mean, the perspectives, depth of scene, the extravaganza of an alien land etc., .. my cousin quoted from a programme regd this point and the speakers words go like this,

“Watch this movie in IMAX 3-D, even if it exclusively demands a travel to Hyderabad.”

With all this excitement and hype surrounding this James Cameron movie… lets explore the reasons, why this is a must watch movie.. may be not to get yourself educated, but for experiencing an out of the world experience for at least 2.30 hrs. According to me, this movie has loads to learn from for every category of people. Environmentalists (for it concentrates on damages caused by humans to its habitat), Biologists and zoologists (for several new plants and animal species have been imagined and recreated on CG), Astrophysicist (for several principles used in navigation and stay in an alien land), Astronomers (for the story is staged in a moon of one Jupiter like planet of Proxima Centauri), Children (for the awesome imagination of terrain and 3-D rendering) and the common men (for all the action, love and sense of victory)…. apart from this the movie also explores the future of weapons technology and warfare. Lets look into the creatures which make the movie very unique.

The crux of the movie stresses on human impact on nature… The way its told takes this movie to a new found dimension. Lack of resources on earth pushes a group of people to “PANDORA” – an earth like moon in Proxima centauri star system. This moon is abundant with a new found valuable mineral called the “Unobtanium”. The issue is the deposits of this mineral is found right below the settlements of the “na’vis” - human like aliens in that moon. The AVATAR project is aimed at working along the indigenous population and arrange for a relocation of the people so that the deposits of the mineral can be mined and brought back to earth. A group of people in the AVATAR programme have a mind of their own, and try to defeat the aliens to achieve their goals.

Sam Worthington playing Jake Sully is the lead role is a handicapped marine and is deputed in AVATAR programme following the death of his brother. Forced into the role… he is introduced to a un imaginable land of peculiar creatures and plants. The Amino tank shown above is used to grow the human-na’vi cross breed. This creature is just flesh and blood and has no brain power of its own. On pandora, the na’vi like creatures are wired to the equivalent humans and as the humans are put to sleep, their brains power the ‘na’vi like creatures’ and they try to get along with the indigenous species and try to convince them.

Pandora is a land of ever existent danger. Large territorial herbivores called the “Hammerhead Titanothere” always try to defend their territory and can be deadly, thanks to their huge size and agility.

Smaller but much fierce and one of the most dangerous creatures in Pandora is the “Thanator”. Thanator is a nocturnal creature and hunts any other animal which they consider as a threat.

The third dangerous creature on this land is called the “Viperwolf” which is a small but swift predator much similar to a Wolf. All these creatures unusually have 6 legs.

From land to the air.. meet the dragon line “Mountain Banshee”. Na’vis have this special ability to connect themselves to creatures like this Banshee and Horses through special neural interfaces, which will allow them to seamlessly ride on them. They are not required to physically ride them, they will be able to control them using their mind only. Banshees are very choosy in their companion na’vi. They pair with only one navi in their life time.

“Dire Horse” is a land animal similar to a horse but with six legs and a elongated snout. Unlike the Banshee, Dire horses can be rode by any na’vi. They are required to connect to them using their neural interface.

The other flora and fauna include unusually large trees with bio luminescence . These plants and animals emit light probably to attract their mates and to drive away any enemies.

The major portion of the na’vi clan live in the largest tree on Pandora – “The Home Tree”. The tree also rests on top of the largest deposit of “Unobtanium”.

The main concept which rules na’vis is that they are so closely linked to the natural world, they can interact with each and every other person on the moon using the intricate networks of neural synapses. The tees and plats can convey these information between na’vi populations.

The movie is all about the interaction between the humans and the na’vis. How the na’vis fight for their existence and did they succeed in their quest for survival.

Unlike other movies, in this movie the na’vis are completely created using CGI and yet they emote exactly like real creatures. The techniques used makes us believe that we are in middle of a real alien world. The 3-D certainly will make this even interesting. I saw the movie in normal screening. But i could see that each and every scene is made with lot of work into creating references in the scene to elevate the 3-D experience. Well i might see the movie yet again this week in 3-D. Please watch this movie and give ur comments.. The story line is not so unique.... have had escenece of such stories in the past.. I guess if not for the story, you will definitely like this movie at least for the enormous amounts of state of the art CG and the unique James Cameron touches and imaginations. I think i have not revealed any interesting shot in the movie.. i have tried not to... jus enjoy the movie.. Happy watching Avatar.

The "Accident" highway....

2009-12-05T19:53:00.000+05:30

Well... i offlate had really felt the improtance of life..., how important it is for u to keep vigil on ur next second. I had met with/heard of/seen a flurry of accidents over the past month... Infact i have never come across so many road accidents in my life in such a short period of time...

Its been 3 months since i moved to Coimbatore. I stay and work close to the highway connecting "Avinashi" and "Coimbatore". It was not long before the road was widened into a 6 lane highway. And as a new addition to curb increasing road accidents, they were adding concrete road blocks along the median. This was aimed at avoiding people crossing the road at which ever place they wish to. This created a new problem... the openings provided at certain places in the median proved to be a death threat to motorists and cars. Well.... i mean it by the word "Death Threat". To highten it all... 3 such accidents happened right in front of my eyes.

Unfortunately for me, these incidents happened just days after i met with a minor accident elsewhere in coimbatore. I had one of my rib bones cracked when i fell off from my bike, thanks to a foot-deep pot hole. And 2 days later i turn back at a screeching noise when i was walking along the road for lunch.... and what would you expect ?, a Maruthi Swift rammed in front of my eyes on a Scooty Pep.... the man, thrown atleast 25 feet away... I had no heart to get any closer to take a look. People gathered and an ambulance which was on the way, took attention... but the person who was alive and driving few seconds before is no more. The sound of tires-screeching was echoing in my ears for rest of that day.... Well this was the case when the motorist was trying to take a u turn in one such death traps, and the ill fated motorist was not wearing a helmet, i would certainly say dat he would have lived to tell a story if he had worn a helmet.... The openings in the median have actually been provided to regularise traffic... but for some reason its proving the opposite. I broke my head why !! The median is jus half a foot wide... and when someone tries to take a u trun, he is exposing part of his vehicle to fast moving highay traffic. Well, the highway must have been planned with a wider median.... Which is out of question now. Vehicles have to be slowed down near such crossings with some speed breakers and sign boards... neither is in place. These things seems a necessity atleast till the highway crosses the outer stretches of the brewing city.

After just few days.. heard about two motorists "head-on" near another such crossing, a motorist hitting the median and skidded all along the road to the other side..lucky dat he was wearing a helmet. And later, today the stretch of 1 km saw 3 accidents in one day.. one of them was a motorist who lost his life... The other two happened in front of my eyes yet again.. luckly, there were no fatalities. First of these happened when a fast Qualis hit the front of a lorry when he was trying to take a u-turn near an opening. The later happened when a State transport bus was not able to brake to a halt and rammed a motorist at another crossing... the Irony here is tht, the motorist had stopped as a police man stopped him to allow pedestrians cross the road... the Poor motorist must thank himself to have worn his helmet. The the front galss of the bus shattered all over the high way. It certainly is happening at several highways... People are losing lives every now and then.. so what can be done abt all this...

Atleast we can follow speed limits, where helmets and seat belts, respect fellow drivers on the road... and above all realize the value of life... It undoubtedly is the most valuable asset we have. The govt must also involve equally by strictly imposing rules. they must also respect the people on road and not just take advantage of the situation. Thanks to some thought on the same lines, Helmets and seat belts have been made compulsory starting 10th December in Coimbatore. The road conditions have to be frequently checked, pot holes have to closed closed and drainage has to be improved to avoid damage of roads due to stagnant water. The planning of such highways have to be done taking into consideration such as median width and foot paths. Lack of foot paths forces the pedestrians to take up the first lane and increases risk to vehicles and pedestrians alike. This list of what could have been\can be done will go unending.. when there is so much is at stake.... it certainly sparks in our minds, why nothing has been done ? the question has to be answered by each of us... The answer must come from every one of us.....

Note: I wanted to get this done when i got an internet connection.. moreover i had just seen the last accided on my way to my aunts place where i am writing this, So i had not edited it for mistakes. Please bear with it..

One shot which i am proud of...!

2009-11-12T08:32:00.000+05:30

A few of you would have seen this pic on my flickr page. I am so impressed by my own shot, that i am pushed to share it over this page. I think i am a bit too excited about this, but would need comments from readers... to justify my act. I would really be happy even if its a constructive criticism.. after-all i am jus a rookie in this field. Now for the story behind this image...

It was a routine morning time... this day was a bit different though....cos of the fact that i was gonna have only this little apple for breakfast.. This apple was either made to look shiny or may be it was naturally like it... but it looked really nice. I had put the apple and knife on my kitchen table and it was so ironic.. the nice looking apple and the knife which was goin to chop the glory off this little thing. I immediately thought, i had to shoot this instance in time. I tried first few shots using my cam and no flash, but the soft light from the window was not enough for the shot... the image was too dim or blurred. I had then put the cam on my tripod and shot a few.. it was still lacking somethin.. i realized that it could be the kinda dirty kitchen table ( :D ). Now i repeated the shot after pouring a cup of water along the table... It looked perfect now.

I though i cud have still improved up on some stuff.. like a cleaner and darker surface... cud have cleaned the knife a bit ( :P )... and the reflection of some part of the window on the surface cud have been avoided... This was shot in the morning when i was rushing to office and it was a spark in thought to take this up.. so din find the time to try all these things...

Anyways this the story behind it !!! please give your comments on this shot... how gud is it, how much more cud have been done.. things like it !

Hubble's new Avatar...

2009-09-10T20:32:00.000+05:30

So... it has been a while since we all witnessed the historic Hubble Servicing mission 4. Its time now to put it to test... well i was stunned by the first images released by Hubble team after servicing mission.. The universe today site released comparison of the new images against the older versions.... the result is pretty obvious even at the first glance... check them out in the link below

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/09/09/just-how-good-is-the-new-hubble-lets-compare/

The mission was the last of its kind to help Hubble extend its life... It featured installation of two new instruments, repairing of two other instruments and replacement of several other componest for giving new life to the ageing outpost... The changes have not only improved the qualtiy of images but also reduced the time taken to process the images.... So we can expect more stunning pictures from HST than from the primitive instruments which it was fixed with earlier...

Official Hubble Site link - http://hubblesite.org/

From the Novel to the movie – Angels & Demons

2009-08-21T20:07:00.001+05:30

After several months i atlast completed the book and the long wait was over… and i could watch the movie. I was determined to watch the movie only after i read the book.. but dragged the book over months due to several reasons… And u know wat, immediately i could feel dat the novel was compromised in the visual version… Above all this has not been the first time.. “The Da Vinci Code (2006)” also faced a similar fate… I understand that all the details of a novel cannot be recreated on screen.. but i felt this movie was nowhere close to justice… The director could have certainly added another half an hour of movie and held the actual story line intact…. We have seen movies like the Harry Potter and Lord of the Ring which used to extend into the 2hr 30 mins and 3 hr marks… Angels and Demons stretched only 2hr 18 mins. I felt the Book was much better than Da Vinci Code (I have not read the rest of Dan Brown yet) in terms of keeping the pace of the movie till the very end… and also in terms of the excitement and keeping the story sway from character to character… The movie had several parts cut off and was also disappointing in terms of several loose ends…

The next section would be better understood if you had already read the book… I suggest you don continue if you have plans to read the novel…. It might spoil the beauty of the story line.

I was struck hard by the missing scenes right at the start of the movie.. actually i was so impressed my the description of CERN in the book. I also thought immediately after the death of Leonrdo Vetra in the movie several questions arose creating doubts in the mind of the reader.. i personally doubted Kholer (CERN Chief) and even Vetra’s daughter Vettorria. It was more justified for Kholer to invite Langdon to CERN and they travel together to the Vatican.. You know what the whole part was missing in the movie… Langdon is taken to Vatican by a messenger from the Church and to everybody’s surprise Vettoria appears with Swiss Police…. Donno how on earth the Vatican called Vettoria there as they had nothing but a Canister in one of the CCTV footages… The Canister itself could have still carried a countdown as described in the book instead of the battery marker in the movie version.

In the book Dan Brown describes a futuristic high flying hypersonic flight which Langdon and Vettoria use to travel to Vatican.. as the CERN was not dealt in detail with, the flight was also skipped... Following their visit at Vatican, Vittoria and Langdon face issues in getting access to the Church Archive and get locked up before they try and get to speak to Camerlengo.. this again was skipped in the movie.

In the movie, as Langdon arrives at Vatican, he is briefed about a threat from some unknown person about branding the preferiti (preferred contenders for the position of new Pope) with 4 elements of nature - Earth, Air, Fire and Water and killing them. The book deals with this concept differently.

The chemistry between Langdon and Vettoria was portrayed beautifully in the Novel… It was subtle but very deep. In the movie, knowingly or unknowingly it was not dealt with. With Kholer out of the context.. in the movie, his place was taken over by Vatican Security head and fairly gud job was done creating the element of doubt in our mind about his involvement.

The role of the Hassasin and his telephonic conversation with Janus were explained in great detail in the book which was barely shown in the visual version… the only reference was a laptop which shows some fund transfer to the Hassasin’s account.. I felt the Hassasin was not as aggressive as i imagined from the description in the book. During the killing involving Fire, Vittoria is kidnapped as per the book.. there is an interesting interconnection between two different emotions in Langdon’s part as he wants to rescue Vittoria also concentrates on getting to the canister… Vittoria does not appear in the scene in the movie until Langdon reaches Church of Illumination which pulled the chemistry between them further down. In the movie the most probable candidature for next pope, Baggia is not killed (who becomes the pope at the end), Langdon and others manage to save him and Langdon does no big detective job to crack the location of Church of Illumination unlike in the book where Langdon along with the urge to save Vittoria and keeping fate the church behind his mind cracks the location…. It was certainly interesting than the movie.

The short fight between Langdon and the Hassasin in the Church of Illumination and Vittoria having the final smile by pushing the Hassasin off the Balcony and killing him was broadly changed in the movie…. Langdon and Vittoria jus try to speak to the hassasin.. where in he is betrayed by the master (Janus) himself and dies of a bomb in a car which he is asked to take… Now the 5th marker as per the book is one which has all 4 markers together making the legendry Illuminati Diamond… but in the movie the 5th one is crossed keys and moreover its also revealed much earlier….

As there is not Kholer.. the Head of Security takes his place… and a similar story unfolds inside the camerlengo’s office… I liked the way the the CCTV video was used in place of the Compact Video Camera Kholer uses to record the happening inside the camerlengo’s office…

During the climax, i feel the director must have stuck to the story line as in the book… it wasnt so… The way camerlengo acts as if he has been touched my god and runs to take and dispose the canister was gripping and realistic compared to the movie… Further the involvement of Langdon with the camerlengo during the final Helicopter flight, this was more interesting and stressed the part played by Langdon. The camerlengo jumps out of the Helicopter leaving Langdon back in the flight, i think Langdon also starts doubting the character of Patric (camerlengo)… Langdon escapes, survives the fall and comes back to Vatican…. as Langdon never takes the flight in the movie this part is not shown… I liked the way the explosion high up the sky was shown in the movie.. seemed close to being real..

Above all… one major side line in the book is the part played by 2 BBC reporters who play part in finding the canister also… These 2 characters had no part to play as per the movie… I missed this part a loooot.. i thought this part was very interesting as it had a vivid implication as the reporters keep chasing Langdon and Vittoria…

Overall.. i don think this movie was anywhere close to wat i was expecting… The movie was taken well, Vatican was shown in its full glory.. the procedures in choosing a pope and all that was dealt with nicely… I also liked the final explosion of the antimatter. I accept tat some part of the storyline could get cut when a movie is made out of a book… but i did not expect these many deviations.. Anyways its just my opinion, please share your opinion too…

Happy 62nd Independence Day…. JAI HIND !!!

2009-08-15T00:41:00.001+05:30

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance..... We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.

These words brought us the Independence 62 years back..and i believe this day must remind us all the value of independence, problem is offlate its not been making the impact it used to do. I donno if its because i grew old but over the past few years the whole joy and sense of pride that used to surround Independence day Celebrations is a thing of past.. its high time we concentrate on spreading words of national integration and feel proud of being Indians… the sense is already evident amongst u all.. but i suspect dat its been dipping slowly… Post independent India has seen several riots, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and diseases… We still move on and the challenges keep coming.... Coming years belong to the young people in this country and there is a lot to improve up on… several issues to be solved… numerous petitions to be attended to… thousands and thousands to be fed… Its us who can dig out a healthier, stronger and a truly “Independent India” out from the dirt we had shed all these 60 odd years…lets do it… Be a gud citizen.. tats all wat it takes to contribute…

Vande Matharam

Swine Flu "In Focus" - The Hindu

2009-08-14T09:51:00.001+05:30

Hi All, I thought this article which appreared in "The Hindu" dated 14/08/2009 was prtty comprehensive in explainings the oddities and facets of the so called Pandemic - Swine Flu. Many would me familiar with these points already.. but jus for those who need to know....

SWINE FLU - Could India have done more ???

2009-08-10T17:00:00.000+05:30

My first opinion is... current situation with respect to Swine Flu in India is not as worse as it looks... The point is that ppl were already infected, just that they din know it,.. Once the first case of a possible Swine Flu death came out... the infected were tested batch after batch and and the panic has gone up ever since...

From a layman's point of view i am several queries.... I feel the Government of India should have taken more concrete efforts prior to this panic that the people are into right now...

Too impressive... the government is on its toes and Hobl. Health Minister is giving codoling statements every now and then,..... We see several centers all around the country, and it seems like the Govt. was well prepared but only feels helpless because of the severity if the virus... If these are true then it raises numerous questions in my mind..

Firstly, did the Health dept predict the course of this virus properly ? Did we even predict this sort of a panic situation ?? We were not caught off gaurd like Mexico or the US, we had quite some time when we were still testing ppl (or atleast for tested namesake) at the airports. I saw several articles on the net and News about the virus possibly mutating into a far dangerous strain.. but that has not been the case. All the recent cases have been affected by the same old H1N1 virus strain.
We were boasting about the stock of Tami Flu, the only medicine which could hamper the virus' growth. But it was of no help when all of a sudden 6 ppl died in Maharashtra and TamilNadu.
Why were indegenous test kits not prepared and we are still depending on kits that have to be imported from US and Cananda (As reported by TN Health Seceratary in NDTV). Only center in Tamil Nadu (Chennai) ran out of Test kits, right when it meant the most... They ran out of test equipment soon after a 4 yr old kid died in Chennai.
It has been 4 months since the virus started spreading... and Indians known to solve several complicated diseases have not released any info about a Vaccince preparation...

I understand that India is a large country with not so organized society.. Its always tough to tackle a communicable disease. But from a common man's point of view.. i wonder somethin better can be done to reduce the buzz....

Two Movies and a Trailer

2009-08-02T23:49:00.000+05:30

After a while i got to see couple of gud movies in Tamil… Loved them both. I had to travel to Coimbatore to attend an interview last week and got an opportunity to watch the much talked about hit movie, “Nadodigal”. I was always determined to watch “Achamundu Achamundu” in the theatres and also wanted to watch it along with my parents.. owing a lot to several nice reviews about the movie.. and bingo it was another great movie within a week… And the Trailer was of “Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince”. I actually liked the Trailer a lot and want to watch it too.. Lemme give you some insight abt the movies… Share your comments if u had watched them already, watch them otherwise and give me ur comments

As i had mentioned earlier, i watched Nadodigal along with my cousins at a theatre called “Central” in Coimbatore.. this one was a surprise to me.. this theatre was much better compared to many in Chennai.. So the stage was set. Samudrakani had it all.. his intentions about wat he feels a friendship must be like… Awesome acting from Sasikumar, Vijay Vasanth, Bharani, Ananya, Abirami and Ganja Karupu… I don wanna tel all the story here for the sake of ppl who are yet to watch it… But the crux as i mentioned earlier is about Friendship and how it could be taken for granted.. The first half had more than enough comedy scenes to laugh your stomach out and the second half was even better to bring out the potentials in each actor in the movie… Songs were typical village music and i admit dats wat the script needs… Nevertheless the songs along with the video were enjoyable and stayed close to the movie's flow… i wish to quote my aunts car driver who watched the movie along with us… he said “The carnival songs brought tears in my eyes and brought back my days in my village”. This is worth watching movie for every class of audience.

On Saturday i watched Achamundu Achamundu along with my family and it was yet another movie to remember for long time. I had more than a reason to watch this movie.. i read about the Red One camera on the net after i saw the Trailers of this movie and wanted to see the outcome… I like all of Prasanna’s movies and i was certain he did well in this one too.. and above all it was projected to be a thriller..

I would not want to tel anything about the movie here.. But for the performances of Sneha, Prasanna and John Seah (Emmy Award winner). All round performances from all three.. they have lived as the characters themselves… The director is Arun Vaidiyanathan who is a Software Engineer turned Director… Here is a Tamil movie Director with an active blog !!! with The screenplay seemed kinda slow in the first half but picked up in the second half…. Karthik Raja’s tunes are great and do not disturb the flow of the movie…. There are no 5 mins songs… Only one songs runs close to 2 mins and the others are just BGM’s. This i guess was done on purpose to help them keep the audience up with the screenplay. I guess this was the first movie in Tamil which has explored the Rural USA... which we have seen only in Hollywood movies so far. Red One camera has been used to shoot this movie.. and this is the first Indian movie to use this technology.. its a fairly new class of Video Cameras from a company called Red Digital Cinema Company. This is supposed to be a very high pixel camera… See the picture quality for urself.

And now the Trailer.. I have been wanting to watch the 6th movie in HP series.. I saw the trailer of it during the interval of Nadodigal and i loved the Special Effects and CG’s.. I am looking forward to watch the movie.. but heard dat its not too great… lemme see it soon and get back on the reviews

The Spectacle, as it was…

2009-07-22T19:43:00.001+05:30

The long awaited Total Solar Eclipse of July 22nd 2009 was witnessed by millions across the globe from Surat in India to Tokyo in Japan… Shangai in China was the lucky pick this time around to experience the totality for a whopping 6 mins and 43 seconds. It is interesting to note that China witnessed a total solar eclipse just 11 months back on 1st August 2008. We will now have to wait for 123 more years to witness a similar eclipse which will last for a long period of time…. A small village called Teregna in Bihar witnessed the total eclipse for 3 mins and 20 seconds. I am really surprised that in a country like India, so many people showed interest to come out to see the eclipse for themselves… Every town and city in the country made some arrangement or the other to aid people with the Sun glasses and telescopes… Chennai too did its part.. vivid arrangements were made at the Birla planetarium…

I was at the Beach to checkout the eclipse… I was dreaming about a great shot of the sun popping out from behind the seas, half eclipsed.. it was all in dumps.. It was around 15 mins after sunset and still no sun.. The horizon was clouded and i had to wait till 614 AM to catch the first glimpse of the eclipse, but it was for a brief time from behind the could cover… The clouds were off the spectacle post 630 AM and it was fairly clear till 7 AM, with the eclipse wrapping up by 715 AM… I have tiled up the pics along with the time in the picture below.. I certainly missed the total eclipse yet again in my life…. i am yet to see my first one still. This one was a much different experience for me, cos this is the first time i followed a solar eclipse from start to end…

Please do leave your comments on this article… share your experiences of the eclipse… Thanks

Am gonna miss the totality yet again... might be my last chance...!

2009-07-21T13:46:00.000+05:30

Hey guys , first the gud news... If you are in India or other south east asian cointries, we will witness the shadow dance of the celestial bodies as we wake up on 22nd July.. Yes we will witness a total solar eclipse. This eclipse will be the longest duration eclipse in 21st century.. its gonna peak at 6 mins and 39 secs of totality (somethin similar to the image next to this text). The unusual length of the totality is caused as the moon is close to its perigee position. In eastern part of our country (Bihar, India) the eclipse is visible for a period of around 3 mins and 50 seconds.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon comes between our line of sight of the sun.. The shadow of the moon falls on earth as a dark and a lighter circle. The dark region is called the Umbra and the outer lighter region is called the Penumbra. Now as the earth rotates and the moon revolves around earth, the shadow traces a path on Earth. The Umbral region will witness a total eclipse and the Penumbral region will see a partial eclipse. Our moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun and at the same time, the moon is 400 times closer to us than the Sun.. This allows the moon the exactly hide the sun from us for a brief period of time... If the moon is a bit far away, it will result in an Annular Eclipse (A ring of sun will be visible around the moon's shadow).

This eclipse is special for more than a few people....Several batches of scientists and loads and loads of tourists are flocking in Surat and Teregana village in Bihar, which will be best place to see the eclipse. Its to be noted that Teregana is the village which India mathematician Aryabhatta selected to camp and do his work.. its getting its part of fame, thanks to the total solar eclipse. Arrangements have also been made to take people to around 40,000 ft in a chartered flight to witness the eclipse from above the clouds.... and this has been tagged at Rs. 70,000 + each ticket. The scientists, this time will get more time to study the sun during its totality. The totality is the only time when the corona of the sun will be visible.. The corona is the outermost part of the sun (atmosphere) which is hidden behind the glare of the sun, as the whole disk is blocked during the eclipse, the outer corona is visible. Several scientific activities can be done during this one off celestial occurence. The size of sun, moon, gravitational strength of the sun.. etc can be determined with only simple observational equipments.

Now the bad news is.... The totality generally occurs in a narrow patch of earth, this time it starts in the Gulf of kacchh in India and ends in the middle of Pacific Ocean. A wider area around this narow patch will only witness a partial eclipse. Chennai will fall under a 63% shadow of the moon. I am missing the totality yet again... I remember a total eclipse which occured in Calcutta, India in the last decade of 20th century. I wish i can see a total eclipse sometime later in my life.. This time i am surely not gonna miss the partial eclipse...

For more info visit : NASA Eclipse Page or Wiki Page

Note: Please do no see the sun directly, irrespective of whether its an eclipse or not. Seeing the sun during the eclipse is not different from seeing the sun on a normal day. Use a filter or glass made for the purpose. The totality can be witnessed with naked eye, but before the totality is gonna end, we have wear the protective glass.. as the sun's light will rush into a diamond necklace stage and the brightness will increase quickly.

Chennai Scanner – Pallikaranai Marsh

2009-07-13T19:41:00.001+05:30

Here goes my first shot at “Chennai Scanner”, I am sorry for this long gap. I could not blog due to unavailability of Internet. I wish i could blog continuously…

View Larger Map

I have always had loads of expectations for this stretch of marsh land and adjoining road linking Velachery Main Road and The IT High way near Thoraipakkam. Very little has changed in the past 5-6 years in this region… the conditions have only gone down from bad to worse.. The IT Expressway is close to completion, and ever more companies are finding their piece of land along the highway to setup their offices, This has heightened the importance of this marsh lands and also the Road which cuts right through it. With all these improvements taking pace, the effective city borders are receding day after day, the quality of the road, the marsh and the Chennai corporation dump yards needs mandatory improvements and soon. As a common man i see no hopes for the road or the marsh in recent future. The above Google Map shows the road and the Marsh on either side of the road.

A simple drive on this road might actually surprise you… This is such a unique place just beyond the city borders. I have seen several ducks and cranes pecking out the fishes every time i got an opportunity to take the road. During the dawn and dusk we can easily spot several species of birds such as King Fishers feeding on the aquatic life… For more factual details here is what Wikipedia says about Fauna of Pallikaranai Marsh ..

It has been a home for naturally occurring plants (61 species), fish (46 species), birds (106 species), butterflies (7 species), reptiles (21 species) and some exotic floating vegetation such as water hyacinth and water lettuce, which are less extensive now and highly localized. Recent reports of the appearance of the White-spotted garden skink, for the first time in Tamilnadu, and Russell’s viper, the largest and the most widespread among Asian vipers, confirm its invaluable ecological status. Fish such as Dwarf gourami and Chromides that are widely bred and traded worldwide for aquaria, occur naturally in Pallikaranai. Besides, the Windowpane oyster, Mud crab, Mullet, Halfbeak and Green chromide are some of the estuarine fauna present in the marsh.

The towering lumps which can be seen in the picture aside are nothing but tonnes and tonnes of garbage dumped by Chennai corporation. Ever since i first travelled in this road, the marsh has been the official dump yard for Chennai corporation.. This has had enough impact on the quality of ground water in this region. For several years the newly appearing Apartments and IT buildings have been facing the dump yards and not much seems to have happened in tune with shifting the dump yards or to even change the waste processing techniques. The government not just dump the rubbish but also burn them.. this sets off the ash and un burnt waste in air which makes it really inconvenient to breathe. Every single motorist or resident of this region would have dreamt that this condition would change some time in the future. As a recent improvement, the dumps close to IT Expressway have been processed and hence the offensive odour has slightly reduced. But a complete shifting of the dump is required to improve the living condition of the people. Here in the picture a motorist drives past a garbage dump which is set in fire. Below we can see the garbage being dumped along the lake .. and we can also see the development in the background.

There has been tremendous development along the Old Mahabalipuram Road (IT Expressway). This road was due for completion for over 3-4 years and had dragged long enough due to legal issues. Today this road is close to completion but only with sev eral problems and unsolved issues, This is a separate topic all together, which i would like to deal with on a later post. Due to the government’s lethargic outlook, this development plan has taken a more uninspiring turn… The completion of the road has brought in more and more settlements and companies along the borders of this Wetland. And the above mentioned problems are sure to heighten with these developments.. The only solution would be to move the Dump Yards elsewhere.

Above all this stretch of road is devoid of even street lights… IT hub called “Chennai One” and Cognizant office are situated on this stretch of road and employees from the companies are forced to travel in this road in pitch darkness.. with the haunting calm of burning garbage by the side.

My Wishlist for this region…

Firstly, the dump yards haunting the marsh must be moved elsewhere. Even as the yards are moved, the garbage processing techniques have to re-looked and necessary changes have to be brought about to ensure more hygienic processing.
Parts of the marsh must be cleaned off the oxygen draining Water hyacinth keeping in mind the balance of the ecosystem.
The lake needs deepening in certain places which have been clogged my dirt and garbage.
Drainage and gates dividing the different parts of the lake have to renovated and repaired to ensure proper flow across them. This will ensure increased flow of water and aquatic life.
This lake can certainly be used as a water catchment area.
The road needs renovation and the borders of the road have to reinforced. Proper street lightings are necessary to ensure safer commute for the people. It needs well laid pavements on either side to encourage more people.
This place can further shape into a tourist attraction. With facilities such as a clean walk ways and a boat club this place will attract people seeking a calm day out.

I have no idea if this wishlist will be fulfilled but certainly these are thoughts of common men who travel every day thru this potential heaven on earth. But one things is certain… The Government, Corporation of Chennai and other social welfare organizations.. all alike have to join hands to make this a reality.

Note: All the images in this article were taken by me.

Swine Flu Pandemic – Ground Reality

2009-06-12T17:32:00.001+05:30

We are aware that the severity level for H1N1 Influenza (referred as Swine Flu) has been raised to Pandemic status (Phase 6) by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the 11th of this month. Its a frightening prospect as this has been pronounced to be the worst flu bug encountered since 1968. This is the first Pandemic alert in last 40 years and the first for this millennium. So lets break this down.. what is a pandemic ? why was a fairly less severe flu virus infection categorized as Pandemic ? Is the worst still at bay ? Are we prepared ? lets try to answer them….

WHO is authorised to issue alert status for diseases which are potentially harmful. WHO progressively increased the Swine flu alert levels all the way to 6 (which is the highest) on 11th June. So this is officially called a Pandemic. WHO has divided the world into 6 major Epidemiological Sub-regions. A Pandemic alert is issued if a disease is

New to a community
It causes infection in Humans and causes serious illness
It has the potential or has spread across the WHO regions and has confirmed cases in more than 1 regions. That is the illness has the capability to spread within communities and across communities.

Swine flu (H1N1) has been declared Pandemic as these criteria have been met. The declaration comes as a result of the widespread cases manly caused due to human travel. Higher numbers of cases are reported in countries like, USA, Australia, Chile, UK and Japan. WHO has released confirmed cases at 30,000 and possible deaths at over 140. In reality with a Pandemic status affected countries can choose to close their borders to trade and human travel. Further closure of whole institutions can be issued to prevent the spreading of the disease. WHO in this case have asked countries not to take such drastic steps as the bug has been fairly gentle so far. We have not seen fatal cases elsewhere apart from Mexico where the H1N1 possibly started spreading.

The worst out of this virus may still be lurking somewhere in the darkness waiting to strike.. countries like India have to vigilant now on.. Why ?? The virus has a very short life span, which means they can mutate into newer forms very quickly. With the monsoons and winter coming up in several countries across the world, we can expect the worst. The already fairly severe strand of the virus can potentially mutate in to a newer killer strand and prove serious. Its obviously not certain that this can happen, nevertheless this condition has to be avoided in reality. Lets take precautionary measures and hope for the best.

We all are aware of the panic which this disease created as it started reporting several deaths in Mexico during its initial days… Its been clear that, the swift response from several countries world-over has helped reduce the intensity. Many countries started to screen travellers from the infected nations for symptoms of this disease and prescribed quarantine for the safety of the rest. We must be hopeful that the 30,000 odd current cases of this infection will be cured and we should be able to wipe this threat off the planet.

India has reported 15 cases of H1N1 so far, of which 8 are from Hyderabad alone. India claims that they are screening travellers at airports and are preventing the disease from spreading into the country. The disease has not been reported to have spread within India, meaning all the 15 cases have been found in people or relatives of the people who travelled from countries like US and Mexico. Hence the alert within the country stays at a lower level of 4. Around 50 million doses of the only know medication to the disease, “TamiFlu” has been accumulated and are not made available at the shops. The government of India has requested to undergo the testing and confirm the case and take the medication only with prescription.

My Opinion on the screening at Chennai International Airport: The As i experienced the so called screening at Chennai airport for symptoms of the disease.. i wish to point out here that, it was not an effective screening procedure. As i entered the immigration at Chennai airport, i was handed over with a paper with a questionnaire and was asked to tick the appropriate.. which asked for symptoms like, cough, fever etc,. A doctor just got the paper and asked the same to me.. i said that i was fine.. and i was let go.. I donno if further screening can be done.. but i felt this was not an effective way…Opinions may defer though… I am not aware of the screening arranged in airports elsewhere in country.

I wish this disease bites the dust soon.. and a potential lethal pandemic averted..

Chennai Scanner

2009-06-10T10:29:00.001+05:30

So the first thing we come across when we talk about Chennai is, it’s very hot and humid... several comments easily tarnish the image of this historic city... We are familiar with the one like, "The winters in Chennai or hot and summers are hotter...", things like dat.... Nevertheless this has been a place close to my heart.... i bet there are millions for my company on this stand. Off late we are witnessing tremendous development, thanks to hundreds of new industries cropping up all along the borders of the City. The already large city now looks larger with more and more companies taking Chennaites to the outskirts of the City. Are we aware, that amongst all the improvements that look to be happening, we are in a way being kept in the dark and are being fooled..????

We are becoming progressively busy.. We complain about so many potential problems every day... and we barely do anything to let the concerned Government body or organization about them... The surge in adrenaline fades away after a short moment. I should admit dat there are not many issues which would be solved even if it is brought under the scanner of the concerned, but still... we are yet to take even the first step in this direction, have we ??. This is true for every City, Town and Village in this country. Sorry to state that, we are nowhere in the race to become a super power or challenge our continental rivals China in any walk of life. Starting from the basic common sense at the citizen's level, all the way to completing major projects by the Government bodies... we are never sincere... we just don’t understand the potential for development in this country... with so many below the poverty line, major portion of the population falling in the middle class category we are yet to put forth any realistic development plans... and already 62 years have gone past us.

I accept the fact that we have been though tremendous development, in the fields of communication and IT but... we are yet to explore the more basic development which each citizen can contribute by sincerely being a citizen and respecting the fellow people and foreigners alike.

I wish this new government at the centre with so many young faces and coming years will see the growth of the country in the right direction and we would fall on the track to become the super power sooner than later.

Chennai scanner will be a section where I like to vent out my opinions about projects in the City and express my ideas of where I think we have gone wrong and what we could have done better....

What would dinosaurs look like, if they were alive today…!?

2009-04-29T22:56:00.000+05:30

(Inspired from BBC Horizon - My Pet Dinosaur)

I saw this BBC Horizon episode on Yoututbe and thought its worth sharing. Most of us are very familiar with the notion that around 65 million years ago, at the end of Cretaceous period, a species which was so dominant for hundreds of millions of years was wiped out… the reason as claimed so far was a giant Asteroid impact and the victim were the Dinosaurs. The asteroid impact theory actually might bite the dust with newer findings relating to KT boundary (Cretaceous-Tertiary), but this is a whole different article.. (I would try to get back in-depth on the same in a future article). But its certain that a dominant species was erased off the face of our planet for some reason. Ok, now lets get into the topic of this blog… what would they look like, if they were alive today…!! the irony is, in the first place we might not live today if they were alive, as scientists think that extinction of the Dinos was the primary reason for the advent of Mammals…but for the sake of imagination lets assume that we evolved along side them. We would possibly be having a triceratops meat in place of chicken or mutton… the household pets would be replaced by some theropods and the world might have looked really messy and different.

Studies have shown that evolution would not have altered their basic structure... So a dinosaur today might look much similar to their forefathers 65 million years ago… In the programme, scientists quote the unchanged structures of Crocodiles, turtles and Dolphins to support their claim.
If the asteroid impact or even a planet wide volcanic disaster was not big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs.. They might not have survived the Ice ages as they were cold blooded. So at some point in the evolutionary past they might have passed the days of ice… and palaeontologists think that some class of dinosaurs like the theropods might have evolved to carry warm blood to cope with the changes.
Most dinosaurs walked on two legs unlike any reptiles today. They used their tails for balance. Of all the dinosaurs, the Theropods are predicted to be the most successful and amongst them the Troodons were the most cunning species. Their skulls reveal a well developed brain. They were walking upright on two legs and proofs of social activity of Troodons have also been un-earthed. So if Dinosaurs were to stay beyond the Cretaceous, the Troodons were the front runners.

So where do you thing the evidences are leading us ? Would you be surprised if i say dinosaurs are no-where close to extinction but are all around us ? That is the fact…, we just don call them dinosaurs anymore !!!! We call them “BIRDS”, yes.. like Humans and Chimps, modern birds are direct descendents of Theropod dinosaurs… still not able to believe ?

Dinosaurs laid eggs and so does all species of birds.
Dinosaurs like birds are used to lay eggs in a group to increase the probability of its survival.
Both birds and dinosaurs (the theropods at least) walked upright on two legs.
Modern Ostrich or Emu like birds and Theropods both have almost identical foot marks.
Anatomically, dinosaurs and modern birds are very close.
Movements of dinosaurs are much closer to birds like emus.
Birds developed feathers to reduce body heat loss.. which was the problem faced by small dinosaurs like Theropods.

Yaavarum Nalam…certainly made me scream within !!

2009-04-12T21:03:00.001+05:30

Director: Vikram K Kumar

Music: Shankar Eshaan Loy

Cinematography: PC Sreeram

Production: Suresh Balaji, George Bayas, Big Pictures

Yaavarum Nalam is a new movie starring Madhavan, Neethu Chandra (debut in Tamil) and co. The movie is one of its kind horror package where Madhavan strives to crack the mystery behind the spooky thinks happening at their new apartment (13B, which is also the name of the Hindi version of the movie) and eventually boils down to whether he saves his family or not.

Madhavan (Manohar) is a upper middle class engineer (son of Saranya). He buys a new apartment along with his brother. The family happily move into the apartment only to face one problem after other. The back-bone of the story is a TV serial called “Yaavarum Nalam” which is telecast at 13:00 hrs every day. Watch the movie to see for yourself, who is the reason behind all the happenings.

The movie, in my view was shot brilliantly, with all the flavours of a typical horror movie… Music by Shankar-Eshaan-Loy and Background by Tubby Parik were woven perfectly with the screenplay to create the sense of fright. Have to mention few lines about the legendary PC Sreeram… he has proven yet again that he is the best at what he does. One of the masters in shooting in dim lights and choosing curious camera angles, it seems he never ran out of ideas in this movie. Look out for the introduction of the members in Madhavan’s family… Craftsman-personified.

Its a must watch in my view… draws ur adrenaline to boil. There are a hand full of scenes which are pretty unexpected and frightening. But just not the horror, there is a nice plot and investigation running parallel to it.

Happy watching..! Please do leave your comments on the movie… I loved it, i believe u all will too…

Flip the switch during "Earth Hour"

2009-03-24T12:08:00.000+05:30

People all over the world have been invited to switch off all the non-essential lights between 8:30 and 9:30 PM on 28th of March 2009 towards a world event dubbed, "Earth Hour".

Started in 2007 as a local activity in Australia by WWF (World Wildlife Fund), Earth Hour has attained a Global status... Over 80 countries are participating in the Earth Hour in 2009. The concept was actually adapted from a similar procedure which was followed in Thailand in 2005. Similar occasion also appears in Canada's calendar. The basic idea as claimed by the WWF is to reduce the use of Electricity by considerable percentage during this hour. Every percent saving, saves tonnes of coal burnt for Electricity generation.. and further prevents dumping of Green house gasses into the atmosphere.

With Environmentalists predicting faster rates of melting polar ice and increase in world sea-levels, the need to make people aware of the same has also increased.. Lets answer one basic question..!, How much can we save by switching the lights for jus one hour every year.. In the first place, the assignment is not intended in saving electricity or reducing CO2 emissions during the hour...but, The idea is to give a sample of what we are counsuming and what we can save by avoiding this or using the alternatives.

I would like to point out one other minor occasion where a similar procedure brought out the implications of the Human effects on our environment....Am talking about grounding of all the flight in the US on the wake of 9/11 attacks...Though not intended, the harmful effects of the jet exhaust came to light... and the world is never the same from that day....!!!!!

On 28th of March we ll again see several environmentalists doing the math.. and coming out with numbers which will be indicators of what is in stake for us to improve upon..! Lets help them out and minimize the use of lights during the hour. In my opinion, we human beings have created this precarious situation... and its our duty to give a better place to live for generations to come...! Lets do somethin towards dat..., join hands, Lets save EARTH.

Myth - "BUSTED" !!!

2009-03-17T09:46:00.000+05:30

NASA claim to have landed men after men starting APOLLO 11 through APOLLO 17 on the Moon, coincidentally these were the only manned missions beyond Earths protective shields. Ever since, this topic has drawn interest from a group of conspiracy theorists... We have been shrouded by conspiracies and hoax claims over the APOLLO missions... their verdict, the 1960's technologies could have never taken man to moon.. and the whole APOLLO mission was staged in some secret movie set in the deserts of Nevada. To be frank.. if one sees these conspiracy videos, i bet he/she would think this was all a Hoax..! At this point, i do not want to fall on either side..., what i wish to say is.. people who see these hoax claims, do not probe into any explanations given for the claims by NASA or other experts.. Over the years NASA itself has complicated this issue by not allowing any of the Apollo astronauts to address interviews and stuff like dat... Iam certainly blind from that perspective.... may be this was all just a cold war stunt, just to beat the Russians in space race... and more so, could be the biggest hoax of all time...

But lets think again, I was impressed by one programme in Discovery Channel which introduced me to the concept of Retro reflectors. The programme is called the Mythbusters... they try and prove/disprove myths. Catch the episode on Lunar Hoax if you get to.. its pretty comprehensive.

Retro reflectors are type of mirror arrangement where irrespective of the angle of incidence, the mirror wil reflect the light parallel to the incident light.. this is similar to the reflectors used in Stop signs on road and in cycles (one which glows when we flash light at it). Apollo 11,14 and 15 astronauts seem to have placed such retro reflector panels close to their landing sites. Similar reflector is also present in the Russian lunokod and luna rovers. So how does this help, we can infact through a beam of extremely high power laser into the reflectors and they do reflect some photos all the way back to us.

The retro reflectors not only prove that man had at been there.. but also help in estimating the rate at which moon is receding away from earth. This could in theory affect earth's environmental parameters. The experiment can only be performed using extremely strong Laser equipment (like the one at McDonald Observatory, Apache Point Observatory...). In the Mythbusters programme, the 100GW laser at Apache Point Observatory was used to shoot a laser pulse at Apollo 15 reflector. Approximately 200 quadrillion photons are ejected from the laser and mere 3-4 photons are received back (considering the distances and the total size of the reflector its fair enough). The equipment receives the reflected photons and compares the wavelength and distance to drive the final nail in the coffins of consipiracy theorists. Lunar Conspiracy theroy - "BUSTED"

This image of the moon shows the landing sites of Apollo 11 (A11), Apollo 14 (A14), Apollo 15 (A15), Russian Luna 17 and 21.

The science behind Rainbows - Decoded

2009-03-04T09:33:00.000+05:30

Out of several astonishing and surprising tricks that nature throws at us.. the Rainbow has had its special position all along. Out of know where a streak of white light from the sun splits into the VIBGYOR colors. No explanation is required for this i suppose..., they are Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. These are the basic colour. The Violet/Indigo and Red/Orange generally are distinguishable in most rainbows. But on the right day with a perfect cloudy background and bright evening or morning sunlight we could get a brilliant bow with clear demarcation of each colour.

Idea of the blog is not to fantasize about Rainbows but understand this nature's trick ! So lets get into some serious science. First things first, most of us know that the rainbow occurs when light hits rain drops (which acts like little pyramids) and splits the white light into the constituent colours. So the basic ingredients are light from one side, intervening rain drops and a suitable back ground for better projection of the rainbow. So when does all this occur,.... it happens when there is a slight drizzle during dawn or dusk (when sun is at the lowest).

This is the basic science, but the explanation is complicated. Ok lets crack one by one...

The image on the right shows, what happens during a rainbow. It can be clearly seen that the rainbow is not formed in the direction of the incident light but its a result of a reflection off the internal surface of the rain drop and a refraction through its surface on the same side as that of the sun light. So in all of the cases, when we spot the rainbow, we certainly cannot see the sun at the same time. The Sun would be below the level of our eye in the horizon. As indicated in the diagram, we must make an angle of 42 degrees with raindrop and the sun to see the spectacle.
There are so many droplets and every droplet scatters the light, Why are we seeing only one rainbow and why is it curved in semi-circular form ! - A set of water droplets in a particular region of the sky cast the colours (Rainbow itself) on the other side. Similarly several droplets around the region falling within the cone of light from the sun also scatter the light. This cumulatively forms a giant arc in the sky. Theoretically rainbows must be giant circular formations in the sky, but this is restricted my the curvature our planet, we lose the rest of the rainbow below the horizon. A circular rainbow, in rare cases be seen from an airplane or high altitudes. The scattering also has to obey the laws and hence each drop scatters the red light at a particular angle only. This results in scattered red light falling in one continuous band in the sky. So does the rest of the colours. And another fact owing to laws of light is that red always appears in the outer most and blue on the inner (Due to wavelenghts of the individual colours).
Whats the mystery behind multiple rainbows visible during the same time ?? - This is interesting and most of us miss one observation when a twin rainbow occurs. I would appreciate looking at it closely to observe that the second bow is inverted. There are pictures of this kind of rainbow in my previous blog. That is, the red band of the second/lighter rainbow is on the inner side of the bow. Isn't this surprising ! These are called the Secondary rainbows. This is caused when the light from sun is reflected twice within the rain drop. The second reflection occurs at an angle of 51-53 degrees. It is a reflected projection, the reason why its inverted and lighter. Tertiary and quadruple rainbows are also possible but in the rarest of cases.
There are other forms of rainbows which are caused when their vanishing points are over water bodies. These are called reflection Rainbows. And there is Supernumerary rainbows. These are rare. Wiki has explanation for all these types. I would suggest another link for further understanding.

Colours - As natural as it can be... :)

2009-02-26T16:56:00.000+05:30

On 25th of Feb i was gifted with a spectacle of colours.. in the form of a Rainbow like never before in my life. I have seen so many of them before, but nothin close to how bright this was.. And it stayed for over an hour in the skies.. yet another first for me. Believe me, this is the first time i was able to see all the 7 colours... in particular, i have never seen the disticntion between Violet and Indigo which was pretty clear this time around.

I was not able to cover the whole arc in one picture, so i took mosaics of the rainbow and tried fusing them using basic imaging softwares, but only to fail. I wish i had a panorama option in my camera.. But my search on the net was fruitful when i came across this software called the Hugin which offers image stitching (as how they call it) free of cost for non-commercial applications. I have added 4 of those attempts above. And i loved it all.. Please leave ur comments :)

The Legend proves it yet again !!!!

2009-02-23T11:25:00.000+05:30

Yes.. He proves it yet again.. but this time only to be more extravagant and honored. Oscars reached out to AR Rahman for the movie Slumdog Millionaire on 22nd Feb 2009.

Congratulations to Indian music sensation AR Rahman to have clinched the prestigious Oscar for 2 on 2 categories for which he was nominated. The first one was for the Best Music Score for the Danny Boyle Film - Slumdog Millionaire and the second one was for the Best song for "Jai Ho" from the same movie. Infact for the category of Best Song, two out of three nominations were from Slumdog Millionaire, "O Saya" and "Jai Ho". In addition Slumdog Millionaire swept the Oscars winning all but one category to which it was nominated. The movie was nominated form 9 categories with a total of 10 nominations. The movie was the favorite at the Oscars after its stupendous performance at the Golden Globe and Bafta awards.

The movie won the Oscars in the following categories...

Best Picture
Directing
Cinematography
Film Editing
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Sound Mixing
Music (Song)
Music (Score)

It was Theme-India all the way this time around.. Best Short Documentary was awarded to Smile Pinki which is about a Indian girl who fights social challenges owing to her cleft lip. Congratulations to every one involved in these movies... And Thanks to ARR to have made India proud in world stage yet again....

Solar Eclipse from the Moon !!!!!

2009-02-21T08:11:00.001+05:30

By definition, Solar Eclipse on earth is when the Moon blocks the sun.... For an orbital satellite around Moon, a solar eclipse would occur when Earth blocks the Sun.. and know what thats what the Japanese KAGUYA satellite caught on Feb 10th.

This eclipse as viewed from the satellite was actually a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse for us on the Earth. That is, when the Moon goes behind, in the shadow cast by the earth. The HD cameras on the satellite caught the Earth "like a diamond ring" (similar to the one which we would see from Earth on a total solar eclipse). The earth's thicker atmosphere (compared to the moon) shows up like a blue ring around the planet's profile.

This is the first of its kind picture that we have taken of Earth. Thanks to KAGUYA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) to have planned such a shot.

Click here for the video ...

What have we done to our neighborhood !!??? :( :(

2009-02-20T15:18:00.000+05:30

We are bothered about our neighborhood.. we want roads and sidewalks to be clean...we fine ppl throwing wastes... but in this process we have lost track of the "bigger picture"..Ya, we are talking about our Earth and its millions of space junk companions.

The Dictionary meaning of "space junk" is "debris from spaceships and satellites that remains in Earth's orbit". Space junk can be as small as a needle or a micro chip to as big as whole satellites and sections of Rockets. So space junk is wholly artificial and nothin to do with tiny bits of rocks. It has taken us only 50 years to pollute the Near Earth Space...

If nothin much is done over the next century.... We would be putting our very dependence on satellite technology in jeopardy. Let alone staying in space and going beyond, our Unmanned satellites will themselves not stand a chance... So what is so serious about this fact ??? And is it so serious to invest time and money in it ???? lets dig in deep...

Humans have always wondered, looking at the skies and the first time we succeeded in reaching there was in 1957, when Russians launched the first man made object, "Sputnik 1" into orbit. I wanted to find out the number of satellites we have launched till date.. but could not get a definitive number. Check this link out and it really tips us off... its so damn surprising to see so many numbers... [Aerospace America Online]. The site is talking about the gruesome fact that at least one satellite is getting launched or abandoned every week. After going through a maze of numbers they have narrowed down at around 590 satellites that are operational at the moment. I found another blog link which has this info [Space Quest], seems we have launched around 8000 satellites since 1957.. in just 50 years. Wikipedia gives us more numbers.. US Strategic command are monitoring around 13,000 junk particles... and according to ESA Meteoroid And Space debris Terrestrial Environment Reference (MASTER 2005 model) there are more than 600,000 particles greater than a centimeter wide. We can see profile of space debris in orbit from the picture above, It gives us an idea of the density of material out there. Ok so we certainly know there are lots of rubbish out there.. so what is the impact ??? [Images:Source]

There is a chilling truth that satellites like the ISS (International Space Station) are oritented in certain ways to reduce impact from space debris during space walks. The smallest of the objects, at their velocities, can easily result in bad to catastrophic results when it hits a satellite or an Astronaut.. As quoted in Times of India article..

The average speed of space debris is 10 km per second and the maximum speed can be 16 km per second. An explosion could happen if the craft is hit by a large piece of space debris.Even a 10-gram piece of debris can generate a collision force equaling the crash of a car running at 100 km per hour

Imagine an Astronaut out in this dangerous place.. apart from the High energy particles from sun and cosmic rays from space.. he must be more bothered abt these killer particles... They can easily puncture one of these Astronaut suits and kill the person instantly when he is exposed to the vacuum of space. Whole satellites can be damaged from jus a single impact. The USA and other Space race countries are now keeping track of these material, atleast to warn or take preventive measures for Satellites and Humans.

So we now know there are so many of them out there and they are and we also know its very dangerous if we get hit by one. Are we serious about this matter yet ??? I don think so.. The latest addition to the tale is also the first of its kind. After so much of theoretical analysis, ther was a parctical incident stressing the danger... US satellite-Iridium 33 (Operational) and a Russian-Kosmos 2251(Junk) collided in space on 10th of February 2009. They resulted in a swarm of particles which sling-shot into earth orbit. Both satellites were completely destroyed. It was just matter of time before this would happen. The following Youtube video illustrates the crash in great detail

Satellites are launched by countries all around the world. We certainly don have a centralized organization to track these waste and to draft some means to remove them... with more and more countries getting into the space age.. we are in for more dirt and garbage.... It must not be too late before we face more serious issues... Hope things will be done towards dat..

One thing that every country can do is make some means to fit their satellites with some propulsion systems which wil put them on track to crash and burn on the way to earth once their life is over.. Some means must be figured out for other existing junk... The movie Wall-E shows the future of our planet, in terms of garbage on it and out in orbit... Thats not just fantasy and is happening right before our eyes....

Arthur Hailey's AIRPORT

2009-02-12T16:26:00.001+05:30

I am not all that gud with novels..., I have just had my hands on a very few of them till now... But, I recently completed this novel by Arthur Hailey.. "Airport". I atlast completed the book... after a 8 month period. I had completed half of it and after 7 months i picked it again to complete the rest... To my surpise every incident in the story was alive at once in my mind when i took it second time. This, i felt was the success for the autor. The descriptions were so gud that they had stayed scene by scene in my mind dormant yet alive. Thanks to my cousin from whow i borrowed the book. It was more like a movie than a novel.. the characters were etched so nicely and a simple theme wound around the cast with an Airport for the subject.

The story is about a fictional airport,"Lincon International" in Chicago. It has a simple story line which starts with several characters, and later converges to give us a nail biting climax. I don wanna reveal any characters here, which might spoil the curiosity when u get to read this. But i wanna tel u that this book vividly talks about so many issues (personal and professional), that could haunt an Airport General Manager and his colleagues. Things as petty as a theft to serious incidents which could cost lives, all of which that might possibly occur over a stormy night. The moments involving Airplanes were so realistic with stress on every technical detail.. I used to follow a programme on NGC called the "Air Crash Investigation" which talks about incidents that could turn a peaceful flight into a struggle for survival. This book reminded me of the programme, every time it talkd about any flight. This is a must read book for anyone who loves thrilling and suspense novels. Happy reading.....!

Crepuscular Rays

2009-02-09T21:45:00.000+05:30

Crepuscular rays or God's rays is a phenomenon which occurs when sun light is blocked my clouds or trees. It typically looks like streaks of light. The above image was taken from my college library on 9th Feb. The picture is of average quality as i din carry my camera and had to use my mobile-camera.

Click [1],[2],[3], to view more pictures of Crepuscular rays taken using Sony DSC T30

The "CHANGE" has come... or has it ??

2009-02-05T10:52:00.000+05:30

This is nothin related to US elections or Obama,.... its a much serious issue. Its somethin which is concerning communities world over.. starting from the central plains of USA till Australian outback.

I wanted to put together a set of events that have happened in the past year and in my view, not had enough attention. Its climate gone crazy in China, US, Europe and Australia....

Even though Europe went through the driest and hottest climate in 2006, i am not diggin it till that... Much later in 2008 Feb, China was hit by record winter storms.. its worst in half a century. The storm resisted and refused to abate for well over a week. This left transportation paralyzed and power grids frozen.

The storm was linked to abnormal atmospheric circulations and were not directly related to Climate change. The month was the coldest in past 50 years and the temperature was 2.5 degrees below normal which is very high. [source]

Now into 2009. Singapore is known to get a lot of rainfall in the month of January. That was not people in Singapore got as New Yea's gift. Singapore just went past its driest January in atleast 10 years. The image alongside shows a bush fire in certain part of the country. There was barely one gud shower in the island where it wud rain every day.

The weather pattern was blamed at unusual weather in Siberia. The cold front arrives over Asia and Europe during winter and affects the climate in northern hemisphere. This time around the cold front arrived earlier and advanced the dry patch which Singapore used to experience from Feb to Jan. Yet again the people were cautioned against concluding this as a sign of Climate change. It was suggested that a climate change must be arrived at only after taking records of atleast 10 years. Singapore recieved 600mm of rain in 2004, January and just 38 mm of rain in 2009. So its not giving us a pattern yet.. this is wat climatologists are claiming. [source]

January 29th 2009, Tasmania in Australia experiensed its highest temperature in recorded history. Flinder island recorded 41.5 degrees. Previous high was 40.8. Hot winds from the main island is predicted to have raised the temperature of Tasmania. Know wat, Scamander islands broke this record the [source]

From Australia we now move to London, UK. London was hit by worts snow storm in 18 years. It recorded 20 cms of snow in one day. As was teh case in China, London was not prepared for such a severe storm and normal life was put to a toss. It was also the coldest winter in 13 years. Met department in this case blamed the Northerly winds for the sustained chill. Rain in general is the usual form of winter precipitation for London. But the snowstorm was made possible by a strong high pressure system over Scandinavia, whose clockwise flow pumped cold air from western Russia westward over the North Sea and into Britain. A trough of low pressure that formed in this cold air mass moved over Britain, bringing heavy snow. As the cold air accompanying the trough passed over the relatively warm waters of the North Sea, it picked up moisture and instability, enhancing the snows over England in a manner similar to Lake Effect snowstorms over the Great Lakes of North America.[source,
source1]

With every incident, the cries of the Global Warming supporters is getting louder and louder. I am not a meteorologist, so i am not sure about these incidents. But as far as the News reports, these are not signs of any sudden change in climate. Its rather a random climate pattern which has been common. Even then, we cannot be sure of ruling out the hand of Global Warming, all this can end up being a part of a bigger picture... It will take some time before we come to conclusions. The idea of this blog is to bring to light about these shoking incidents, which would not be taken too seriously as they were reported at diff places on earth at diff time over the year.

Stargazing - need and deed !!!

2009-02-01T08:49:00.001+05:30

First assignment in Star gazing is knowing the constellations...With this we will also learn where some of the major stars are. Once we are familiar with the sky in terms of constellations and stars, its easier to start off with galaxies and other heavenly bodies. Understanding the sky is important as they form the background for every other object such as Asteroid, Comet or Planets... All the deep space objects such as galaxies are also referred based on the constellations.

If you ask me one gud reason for this... It will be the famous "Death from the Skies"... Earth is threatened by a certain impact from space (comet or asteroid) some time in the future... Its just a matter of time... The problem in this is we are pretty blind against these objects as they are small... They start to shine only when they are too close to comfort. We "do not have" a plan to avert one such impact now. So its very important to study and keep a gud watch at the skies. This is being contributed my millions of amature astronauts around the world... We today know several instances where comets spotted my rookie astronaut. We have a heck of a size sky and it need so many to look for some change...

If a new object comes closer to us, it wil start to move with respect to its background stars - basic clue to spot a NEO (NEAR EARTH OBJECT)... With this information its possible to predict the orbit of the comet, meteor or asteroid and make necessary decisions. We are very apprehensive because of the complex gravitational fields out there in the solar system.. Any planet or moon can just sling an object into a lethal orbit....things can happen and we will be helpless to just watch it happening...

If we stay near a Shark attack coast.. its always important that someone keeps watch for the predator... if its too dangerous we can even pull out of that place.. its not the case with Earth, we have this little home and infinite space around us.. we have no-where to go... So we require two groups of people, one who have to keep vigil on the skies and the other who have to draft a plan to avert such a disaster if its coming our way.

There are several ways it can be done... we today know that its not a gud idea to shoot a rock in space as it can break into several pieces and still continue in the same path.. Now it wil be a global impact rather that one big rock. Scientists and Astronomers have several theories to do this.. it will be another blog article if we start to discuss them....

Its very easy to say all "this is waste of money..!!!" but ,by stargazing we start our definition right at the grass root level... amateur astronomers in their backyards with a small telescope, every bit helps. Comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 was co-discovered by David H Levy, Comet Hale Bopp was discovered by Thomas Bopp and Alan Hale.. who were all amateur in their standards. Several such rookies are amongst the discoverers of Comets and Asteroids over the past century.

The need for astronomy as science is a whole new topic and shall be discussed later. But for STARGAZING as such is a savior.. may be we don have a proof yet.. But people will certainly accept the deed as it unfolds.. Its not too far and could easily happen within this century. Lets hope we are abreast with the technology to avoid or defend such an incident.... After all we are humans and we want to sustain our species into the distant future...

My "First of its kind" shot....

2009-01-31T09:10:00.000+05:30

I have developed interest for Photography over the past 2 years, ever since i bought my Sony DSC-T30... I have always been impressed by pictures of Insects on flowers... Honey bee in flight... Dragon flies... Ants...Bugs... But rarely got an opportunity to take my one snap in the first place.... I had around 60-70% satisfaction in a shot which i got to take in Singapore Zoo. "A Honey Bee hovering around a flower"...... Even though the shot was not "picture perfect", I loved it as it was my "First of its kind" shot....

Visit my Flickr account for more pics...

Dreams on Fire from Slumdog Millionaire....!

2009-01-28T14:12:00.000+05:30

"Dreams on Fire" is a song from the movie Slumdog Millionaire...I loved the lyrics of this song and not to forget, ARR's musical treat !

The Lyrics of this song goes like this...

You are my waking dream
You're all that's real to me
You are the magic in the world i see

You are the prayer i am saying
You brought me to my knees

You are the faith, that make me believe
Dreams on fire
Higher n higher

Passion burning
Ride on the pyre
Once for forever yours
In me
All your heart
Dreams on fire
Higher n higher

You are my ocean rage
You are my thought each day
you are the laughter from childhood games
You are things further down
You are where i belong
You are the ache i feel in every songs

Dreams on fire
Higher n higher
Passion burning
Ride on the pyre
Once for forever yours
In me
All your heart
Dreams on fire
Higher n higher

The Ring of Fire.... 26th Jan Annular Solar Eclipse !

2009-01-27T14:09:00.000+05:30

On 26th January, several countries from Africa all the way till South Korea and Australia got to witness a Eclipse of the Sun. The Eclipse was of Annular type..During a total annular eclipse, the moon would be seen as a disk in front of the Sun.. our moon would not be close enough to block the sun perfectly...and hence the sun will be bigger in perspective to the moon. Annular eclipses will present a "Ring of Fire" in the sky for the observers.

Click to view the maximum resolution available

Few criteria have to be met for a Solar Eclipse to occur,

Sun, Moon and Earth must be on the same plane so that the shadow of moon can fall on earth. (This is not common as, Orbit of moon is slightly tilted with respect to Earth's orbit)
For a total eclipse to occur, the moon must be at right distance to cover the sun completely. (This does not occur all the time, as moon orbits earth in an elliptical path)
If the moon is any farther, it will result in an Annular Eclipse.
A Partial eclipse occurs when only a part of Sun is blocked by our Moon.

Great collection of the Eclipse

From the above image these three cases can be clearly understood. The region of complete shadow is called the Umbra. During an Annular eclipse, a ring of sun is visible around the moon resulting in a less darker shadow.. this is called Antumbra. And any region on earth where only a part of Sun is blocked is called the Penumbra. During the January 26th Eclipse, the Antumbra of the Sun swept a narrow path from south Atlantic till Indonesia. The partial eclipse was visible over a wider region covering Southern Africa, South India, Western Australia, South China and whole of South-East Asia.

Happy Lunar New Year - The Year of OX

2009-01-25T17:48:00.001+05:30

Wishing you all a
Happy and Prosperous Year of OX/Chinese New Year/Spring Festival.

Yet another day to wonder if the world is going to change.. and lets hope it will change for good this time around. Lets hope for Peace, lesser stress on Mother Nature, Respite for billions around the world from the economic strain and well being.....

26th January 2009 is Very Special !!!

2009-01-24T21:52:00.000+05:30

I feel coming 26th is very special for the following reasons....

India and Indians are poised to celebrate the 59th Republic Day on 26th January. The self less efforts of NSG and Police in their struggle to reclaim Mumbai from the curbs of Terror will make the Highlight of this Republic Day. Another important thing for this R-Day will be that, our PM will not be able to attend it... We must feel elated and happy about the fact that his by-pass surgery has been carried out successfully and his condition is stable [ref] .

An Annular Solar Eclipse is visible in South and South East Asia on the same day. Its certainly not safe to look at the sun directly.. please take necessary precautions to view the eclipse. Click here to know if the eclipse is visible from your region. This is an annular eclipse, meaning the Moon comes between Sun and us, but the moon is bit far away to exactly block the sun light.. This will give rise to an annular ring of sun as the moon will appear as a disc infront of the sun. Studies have told us that Moon is moving away from Earth at a steady rate.. and after a few centuries we'll never have total solar ecplices.. Thats sad, but atleast we can be happy abt the fact that we are lucky enough to see Total eclipses.. this though is not a total eclipse. The totallity starts in the South Atlantic and Ends in Indonesian Islands.

The Chinese year moves from Year of RAT to OX on this day.... its generally termed as Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year [ref]. The festival is celebrated over 15 days from the 1st day of the first lunar month to the 15th, the closing ceremony is called the lantern festival. Here in Singapore the festival is celebrated in real spirit, thanks to lot of native Chinese people who live here. China Town is a place to be on New Year's eve... Chinese gardens also will mark spectacular decorations and lightings to correspond it. The colour Red, Ornages, Lanterns.. generally dominates the decourations. Wishing you all Advance Happy Lunar New Year.

26th January will also complete 2 months since the gruesome terror attack on Mumbai. People are slowly recovering from the horrors but the cat and mouse game between India and Pakistan on possible link of Pakistan based terror establishments has been keeping the news board reserved. Lets all pray for the families of people who lost their lives in this tagedy and also wish a peaceful world without such attacks on innocent people..

What's our place in this Universe ??

2009-01-22T20:58:00.000+05:30

^ This image is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field taken from the orbital telescope, Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Its a small portion in the Constellation of Formax, and would cover an area in the sky behind a penny held and arms length... and the Image contains around 10,000 Galaxies.

We are unique amongst the animal kingdom for a specific reason.... cos we have always wondered where we are and why we are here...?! With our current technology we can hardly get the full picture, but we have atleast got an idea of the magnitude of the answer....

In this article...We will try to get an insight of where we are with respect to rest of the Universe and how big we are...

Where are we ...??? Before starting to complicate the topic with cosmic distances involved lets make clear as to where we are.... Earth is our home and Earth is one planet amongst 8 revolving the Sun in the Solar System. Sun is one amongst 400 billion Stars in our Galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way is one amongst 35 Galaxies in the group of Galaxies called the Local Group. Guess wat ??? The Local group itself is a part of a larger group of galaxies called the Virgo Supercluster. Few Superclusters together form a Galaxy Cloud. And several such Galaxy Clouds form the Large Scale Structure of Universe.

As we talk astronimical, the distances are very large and needs other units called Light Years and Parsecs.

1 Light Year is the distance traveled by Light in one year - 9,461,000,000,000,000 (meters)
1 Parsec is equal to 3.26 Light Years (Ly)
1 Astronomical Unit is equal to the distance between Sun and Earth - 149,600,000,000,000 (meters)

Now its time to get into some numbers.... Earth is just the 5th largest planet in our solar system. Jupiter, the largest planet in our system has a diameter 11 times larger than Earth. The savior of all life and our parent star, the Sun is around 110 times the radius of Earth. The Solar System is a vast region of space spanning 50,000 AU's. That is 50,000 times the distance between Sun and Earth, which totals to about 0.8 Light Years. Here on we'll deal distances in Light years.

Our nearest star beyond Sun is Proxima Centauri and is approximately 4.2 Light Years away... Now i believe u can get a picture of how empty space is...! Solar System owns the out skirts of our Galaxy at 26,000 Light Years from the center (Milky Way extends 100,000 Light years in Space). And not to forget we are mere one amongst 400 billion stars in our Galaxy.

Our Galaxy is not even close to being big compared to certain other competitors... (The largest has a diameter of 6 million Light Years). The so called Local Group covers a dia of 10 million Light Years.

Not to forget what 10 million Light Year actually implies.. its 94,67 0,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters

And the Edge of the Observable Universe is now and 78 billion Light Years away and is expanding.... The surprising part is, It has been predicted that only 1/10000th of the whole Universe is observable and just 4% of the Observable Universe is visible to us. The rest is termed as Dark Matter (Part of the Universe which according to theory has mass and is not visible).

Two basic things have to be noted :) First, How sparse the Universe is actually is and secondly...how small we are compared to the Universe... If some one asks me where God is ?.. i wud say we live within him...! Its so surprising and admirable, the sense of size is unbelievable.....

Congratulations Barack H Obama !!!

2009-01-20T23:30:00.000+05:30

As the whole world watched.... by far most covered public event till date and one of the costliest inauguration ceremonies in the US, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th President of United States of America and also the first African-American President of the country. Am not gud at world politics and cannot comment at the kind of impact that this would have in India and rest of the world but would certainly invite you to share your comments. I understand that this is the toughest of times for a new President to take office in a country like the US. Challenging days are ahead for the new President and the government. All the Best Mr. Obama....

Now abt the Inauguration..I had the opportunity to see the sworne-in ceremony live, thanks to sevral live streaming and live coverage by news channels. It was one of the best public addresses that i have ever heard... He clearly made his stand in terms of putting the US back in the driver's seat... the speech never failed to inspire the people of US and every word of it did churn up the confidence and emotions in the people who were gathered at Washington... The boldness, determination and strength in the delivery were unbelievable... I am clearly longing for such a leadership back home in India... woud love to see the whole world, including the US to witness a new leadership in India... Hope the Winds of Change will blow over India too....

The game of CHANCE which brought us here...!

2009-01-18T22:26:00.000+05:30

This game has been on for over 3 billion years now.. and would go on till our planet could possibly sustain some form of life. Well there is a name to this game, and its called the "Evolution". It is hard to believe the way Evolution is known to have brought us here, but its even harder to realize that we, knowingly or unknowingly have actually been playing with nature in this context.. we humans, have infact started to manipulate Evolution, "as it has been".

By 1850's Charles Darwin was well know for his works on his publication, "On the Origin of Species". He studied the part played by Natural Selection in Evolution and also proposed an explanation of how every species on earth could have evolved from one single spec of life. A tree model of several branches with each node marking a newer species suited all his assumptions, and he thought that the trunk of this tree will lead to one common ancestor to every known living species on this planet. So why does different species had to branch and change from its ancestors. This is simple logic, they wanted to !

We today know that the planet is not quite static and has been reshaping itself by tectonic activities. Several of today's highest mountains were depths of the seas millions of years ago and the land masses have been moving and colliding with each other to shape and reshape this planet over its 4 billion year history. The changes on the planet kept altering the environments of animals and plants... this would mean, if am not able to survive in the new setup i lose and cannot sustain my species to the next generation.

A possible surviving tactic for an animal in a cold place would be thicker skins and fur covered body, and this according to Darwin happened by chance - a possible mistake in birth of some animal. This animal which was born with an anomaly would have fought the cold in a much better way compared to the rest of the group.. and guess wat ? The females in the group would have liked this particular animal and will chose to mate with it. This will take the "mistake gene" to the next generation and more such mistakes will make a better and better adapted species. Over several thousand generations a well adapted and newer species will be born. This is also termed as the "Survival of the Fittest"

A polar bear is one such example, where it has adapted to its environment in cold climates. It might have to re-adapt to rising temperatures or might go extinct. Nature has been really harsh on these grounds.

So more and more changes which changed earth's climate fueled more and more variety of flora and fauna. The first species were born in the seas and slowly started moving to land giving rise to Amphibians and Reptiles... from Reptiles, Birds were born and Reptiles gave way for Mammals. Today DNA analysis shows that Humans and Chimps have a 98% common DNA profile. This 2% change in the DNA made us to think and resulted in an enlarged brain and we had no stopping ever since. Today Humans are the top of the food chain, but the hard truth is over several thousand years anything could happen and an entire species could easily be wiped out in extinction. This is very clear from fossil records of species over the past 500 million years. Newer species keeps occupying the weaker ones ever now and then.

We today have been playing with such anomalies which have been keeping Evolution in check, we can with today's technology alter a defective part of the DNA and prevent a child from a life threatening condition later in his life. In sense we have taken Evolution in our hands, atleast in terms of Human Species' future, it will no longer be "Natural Selection" but "Artificial Selection". We will most probably be choosing which quality to pass on using our intellect rather than giving it to the mighty "CHANCE" which had brought about a species called "Homo Sapiens - We Humans". We are very uncertain of the distant future, but atleast the near future seems to belong all to Humans.

PS: Please be free to comment on this and correct me if i had gone wrong on any info.

"Walking with... - The Trilogy"

2009-01-15T17:01:00.001+05:30

I recently had the opportunity to see this Trilogy on pre-historic animals by BBC.. Thanks to NTU library, i could borrow these DVD's from there. This was a series of documentaries made to give the viewers some idea of how several species of animals lived and died over the past 300 million years. The trilogy starts with the monsters of the pre-dinosaur age (Walking with Monsters, in th picture above) followed by the age of dominance of Dinosaurs (Walking with Dinosaurs) and ending it up with the coming of Mammal beasts (Walking with pre-historic Beasts). This draws me to put it up here on the blog cos of the amount of work which had gone into making these programmes. The CG and animatronics was done by Impossible Pictures which was also the makers of the famous TV series "Primeval".

I still remember seeing a programme called "Paleoworld" on Discover Channel.. but it was way back in 90's, i remember it to be in 1998, Paleoworld used to explain about several fossil sites and narrates the possible fates of the dinos buried over there. Movies like "Jurraisc Park", and "Walking with..." have really brought these story lines to life. These programmes have in a way done a mutual gud to the scientists and the movie makers. The animals came to life giving the movie makers their profit at the same time the zoologists learnt more about the constraints and habits of their bony fossils.

Here is some crux of the trilogy... The order of release was "Dinosaurs", "Beasts" and "Monsters", but the order of the same in terms of time line, it would be Monsters, Dinosaurs and then the Beasts. The Walking with Monsters dates back to the Paleozoic Era (500-250 million years back) and pictures mammoth sea creatures. The sea was assumed to be so deadly, that a supreme predator soon became a helpless prey. The world was teaming with life (infact the first complex ones to rule the world) including the first fishes and giant sea arthropods. This era also witnessed the movement of the sea creatures towards shallow and moist land which was very warm for these creatures till then. Life at the end of this era moved far into a newly grown undergrowth of trees and it became much more diverse than ever. The age of Amphibians and Reptiles had arrived.

The next is the age of Dinosaurs.. which ruled this world for approximately 200 million years... The story lines of the show are based on real fossil records for example, a fight between 2 T-Rex on the show was inspired from the fossil remains of these creatures close to one another and evidences of mutual confrontation. Dinosaurs dominated the land and sea in large numbers and was the top of the food chain at the time.. Other creatures at this time where small mammals, smaller reptiles and insects. The birds were still to be seen. The Mesozoic Era in short belonged to the mighty Dinosaurs. A series of unfortunate events.. large volcanic activities on Earth and a colossal Meteor impact drew curtains for the dominant Dinosaur Era. If this has to be called a blessing in disguise, It truly marked the start of a new age.. The age of Mammals. The largest of the reptiles are no more to be seen.

The "Walking with Beasts" traverses the last 50 million years called the Cenozoic Era. The small mammals which lived as prey with dinosaurs survived the Meteor impact (clearly due to their size) started to become big and over the next 20 million year earth will witness some of the largest land mammals. It was just 50,000 years ago that Man (Homo-sapiens) took over the top of the food chain with a large brain in the making unlike any other creature on this planet. The "Walking with the Beasts" illustrates some of the large and fierce land mammals such as the Smilodons (largest Sabertooth cats) and the more familiar Woolly Mammoths. The Whales and Sharks by now have taken over the seas.... And us "Homo-Sapiens" have taken over the whole planet ever since...

As the curtains are drawn.. it implies one important thing.. its pretty clear that no species on this planet has a permanent place... Life keeps on coming and goin in different forms...

My Question on Astrocast Podcast

2009-01-04T22:21:00.001+05:30

Hi Guys... this was a very exciting moment for me when i got to know that my question was gonna be answered in a podcast called Astronomy Cast. I had posted my question way back in September and got it replied in one of their "Questions Show" on the 3rd of January. The Astronomy Cast team is flooded with several questions and queries everyday, so 3 months was not a long wait for me :). The Podcast is complied and presented my Pamela L Gay (Faculty at Southern Illinois University) and Fraser Cain (Universe Today Webmaster). With over 100 episodes and still going strong, the quest for topics has still not dried out.. The questions show is a special episode dedicated to listener questions questions. I got lucky and coincidentally on the first episode of 2009.

The question was "When i was chating with my friend he astonished me with a question which i was not able to answer him.. Would be great if i get a response from you. Here it goes. If twinkling of stars is caused by Earth's atmosphere, why are planets not twinkling ? This has been the clue people used to suggest to distinguish a planet from a star. Could you explain why ?"

Please download the answer to this question which i have uploaded here...

You are welcome to hear to the complete episode here...

I would suggest this podcast for any one who is interested in Astronomy, and this is available for free...

Visit - http://www.astronomycast.com/ and http://www.starstryder.com/ for more information.

Happy New Year 2009 !!!!

2008-12-31T16:17:00.000+05:30

Wishing all, a great and HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009. Lets hope this year would bring with it joy and fun. And most off all.. the need for the hour, some PEACE......

- In terms of my blogging, i wud like to continue this work..., actually if asked on 1st Jan 2008 i wud not have had any idea of a possible blogging by me !, but today it exists.....so things are at stake to happen this new year too... I wish you all success in the coming year... Expecting to share more information with you all in the New year, Thanks for the support and encouragement.

In my Opinion - "Top 10" moments of 2008

2008-12-30T21:07:00.000+05:30

The year 2008 has been 365 days of mixed emotions and responses. The world saw stupendous highs, unexpected lows, great strides and scary downfalls. I have in my opinion arranged some events of 2008 which made headlines in India and the World. Please feel free to comment on them. There might be some topics where i am weak... so correct me if i crapped ;)

10. Recent elections in the country

Recent trends in the country was projecting a change in government in the center with elections three months away. But Assemble Elections in Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram, Delhi, Rajasthan and Madya Pradesh had different touch to the expectations. Even with terror attacks rocking the country through the year being the decider, Congress has still managed to get an edge over BJP and what has this done ?? It certainly has insured an interesting General Election next year.

9. The starting of Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider or the LHC is the worlds largest High Energy Particle accelerator. The facility is maintained by the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research and is located near Geneva, Switzerland. The accelerator will be capable of accelerating particles like protons to as much as 99.999999 % of the speed of light. The main idea of the research is to study the particles emitted during High energy particle collisions like the Higgs Boson Particles etc., It also simulates the early stages of our Universe and thus more insight into Research relating to formation of the Universe. The controversy arose when it was predicted by certain group of scientists that the starting of the accelerator and the following collisions could result in what is called micro Black holes. The Micro Black hole will increase in size as it consumes matter and increase in size to ultimately eat the whole earth. This was just a theory but in such experiments, the probability of this happening could not be completely ruled out. With great odds the go to start the LHC was given and it was partially started on 10th September. Nothin catastrophic happened but some serious damage to the instruments forced its shut down on 19th of September. It has now been shut down till summer of 2009. So we have to revisit this topic in next years hit lists too.. to check what happens when LHS is fully operational.

8. Unfortunate situations concerning Sri-lankan Tamils...

We are aware of the Sri Lankan tamil issue for a while now. But this took center stage in this year when we had Politicians, Cinema artists and Actors jumping into protests to extend their support against ill-treatment and killing of innocent Tamils in northern Sri Lanka. They also demanded the government of India to intervene and ask Sri Lankan government to stop any indiscriminate acts against the tamils. More so the Tamil film fraternity also protested against the Hogenagal issue supporting the state.

7. India's Winning streak in Cricket and the downfall of the giants !

It has been the best of the years for Indian Cricket... Winning, offlate seems to have become Indian Cricket teams habit. We were able to see players learning from every game... As Dhoni used to say, the players were enjoying their game rather than becoming tense about it. The touch of aggressiveness was evident too. Defeating Australia at Perth started a frenzy of victories for India in both forms of the game. India won ODI series against Australia in Australia in Feb, Won ODI series against Australia again when they were in India, won the ODI series againts England against 5-0, ODI series victory against Srilanka in Srilanka 3-2, Test series against Australia 2-0 and Test series against England 1-0. Overall it has been a great year of cricket for India and more records (individual and team) to add to the tally. Meanwhile we are seein a possible end to the Australian Era in cricket....we never know they can bounce back. But 2008 saw back to back series loses for Australia against India and England. They are surely in a spot of bother now... Lets see how they have to perform in coming seasons.

6. India's firsts in the Beijing Olympic Games and Phelps' dominance of the waters

Beijing hosted the Onlympic Games 2008 officically called as the Games of XXIX Olympiad, between the 8th and 24th August this year. China leaded the medals taly with 51 Golds followed by USA with 36 Golds. This Olymics marked a milestone for India when Indian Shooter Abinav Bindra claimed India's first ever Onlymic gold. India ended with 3 medals including two bronze medals in Boxing and Wrestling. This was a quantum leap in terms of confindence for aspiring atheletes and players. Now that we have started out account... Lets hope to continue the show next time around in London. This task will not be easy without the government and private bodies encouraging upcoming talents. We can do more...!

5. Barak Obama elected as the President of USA

Barak Obama became the 56th President of United States of America after winning the presidential elections against his Republican counterpart, John McCain in November. This victory has earned Obama the status of first African-American US president. Earlier this year Obama rose his way up to beat Hilary Clinton to contest the elections as Democratic candidate. With the new government to officially sworn in by Feb 2009, There are several questions hanging over the heads of countries world over including India. (Obama had promised newer policies in terms of outsourcing of IT operations) It will be a challenging time as president of the US with economic recession, Increasing tension in Indo-Pak relations, worsening Israel-Palestine relations and environmental concerns reaching all time high. Will the "Change we need" arrive on time for US and rest of the world ?? we all will get the answers in the coming year.

4. India's place in Space Race

With the launch of Chandrayaan 1 to Moon being the Icing in the cake.. India had earlier proved its capabilities after launching 10 satellites in one launch. By launching 10 satellites on April 28th from Sriharikota in one launch India broke the world record for most satellites launched in one go, set by Russia (8 satellites). Chandrayaan 1 which is the cheapest and most effecient Moon mission Apollo is cosidered as a milestone and rightly so. It needs to be noted that this was India's maiden mission to moon. The year also saw lots of developments in space science like success of the Phoenix polar lander probing Mars for Ice, Most space shuttle flights in one calendar year since 2002, a Decade since ISS construction started, China's first spacewalk, NASA's 50th anniversary and many more... Scientists had observed more Earth like planets, peculiar comets and most distant star explosion. We have understood Dark Energy better this year. Media records of couple of bright meteor crashes shocked several people...... This year has been full of excitement in terms of Astronomy and Space science.

3. World Economic Roller coaster

With current economic situation in India and worldover, we just can't believe the fact that Indian Stock markets reached their all time high of over 21,000 pts in this year (Jan 8th, Indian economy seemed like its really shining bright).... the sensex has crashed till date by over 10,000. The world countries are facing even worse scenarios.. with US, UK, Signapore... declaring recession officially.. the economy has lost the strength and collapsing at alarming rate.. This year has witnessed shut down of several automobile and other companies.. Bankrupty in several banks... Retrenchments in almost all fields.... Its surely not on the bright side as the condition is predicted to penetrate well in to 2009. There are certain countries including India which have not been affected as much as the developed nations of the world. Gobalization really stung us in this aspect... anyways as we are reaching the lows in economy... the coming decade is sure to see development... Let hope for a better future.

2. Fighting Terror - Bomb blasts in the country

Its depressing to think the number of blasts that rocked several cities of India this year... preceding the November Mumbai blasts, we had 18 targets in Assam on 30th Oct, Powerful blast in Manipal on 21st Oct, Melagaon attack on 29th Sep, 6 blasts rocked Delhi on 13th Sep, around 20 bombs went off in Ahmedabad on 26th July, 15th July saw low intensity blasts in Bangalore and Serial bombing in Manipur on 13th May... There were other low intensity attacks elsewhere in the country. Irrespective of who plotted these, they are not humane, brutal beings....! The government was under tremendous pressure to react.. but the attacks still kept comming.. one state after the other... Are we really safe in the country any more ??? There needs to be more stringent action against such in-human acts of terror, and hope as always keeps us goin.. and this time into 2009...

1. Terrorist Attack on Mumbai and following War cloud - since 26.11.2008

It has been a month of recovery for Mumbaikars and Indians from what has been termed as the worst Terrorist attacks on our country killing atleast 180 citizens and forigners. Anyways, one month will not be enough.. and this time people are demanding real action against terrorism. Fortunately ir unfortunately we had fingers pointing to Pakistan based groups (With evidences which Pak says India is not sharing with them...). With series of accusations from across the borders of either side.. today we have a cloud of uncertainty shrouding the international borders. We need an answer to this brutal culture... to bring justice to the several thousand innocent people who lost their lives to terror attacks and to create a sense of security for the coming generation. What will be the cost, will now depend on the way the on going negotiations and decisions are made between New Delhi and Islamabad. Let 2009 bring peace and the uncertain cloud lift below a joyous friendly border.

Heights of Joblessness

2008-12-29T15:20:00.000+05:30

hehe...worthless conversation between me and my friend....

Santhosh: and i ll think if i have to give it to u

"Not at my Desk"

Ajay: apadina ?

Santhosh: am not gonna be at my desk

niw

Ajay: oh. ok,, appo yaar irupanga?

Santhosh: i meant am not gonna be at my desk...

Ajay: :)

Santhosh: that implies u are not supposed to ask.... as i am not at my desk

if u still ask anythin to someone who is not at his desk

Ajay: ana as u reply.. it seems ur at ur desk. :)

Santhosh: then the replied wil still be that he is not at his desk

as he is not at his desk

if he is still at his desk when u ask who wlse willl be ther at the desk

the answer will again be that he is not at his desk

as he is not gonna be at his desk

Ajay: but the answer can be who is goin to occpy the desk

instead of the original person who is not at his desk

Santhosh: if some one is gonna occupy the desk.. the answer wil be hows gona occupuy the desk.. but

Ajay: but somebosy is at the desk

Santhosh: if the person whos occupying the desk is the prson who aswers the questions.. then the answer to whos gonna be at the desk wil still be he is not gonna be at his desk

Ajay: thats was i asked in the brginning

Santhosh: if are still wondering whos gonna be or not gonna be at the desk..

Ajay: who else is at the desk

Santhosh: better u go and take a nap or coffee.. and come back when i might be at my desk

as am not at my desk now

Ajay: i jus woke up

and had a cup of cold coffee

Santhosh: whether or not u slept.. am not at my desk.. me at my desk and ur sleep are invariably independent thinks,, and me not at my desk is the fact

so even if u had slept some time back,. my verdict is am not at my desk

and don expect such crap replies when one says he is not gonna be at his desk,. as i ll not be at my desk

Santhosh: please don think abt copying this and putting it in ur blog uder the topic "when someone does not want to be in his dsk"

Ajay: :)

Santhosh: even if u don wanna do that ... the person who is not at his desk might want to do it.. as he is now not at his desk,.. and wud want ppl at their desks to know what is great about not being at the desk

Ajay: nice of tat

........ PS: Sorry for grammatical and spelling errors, this was anyways a worthless chat :P

One Year in Singapore !

2008-12-25T22:58:00.000+05:30

I still cant forget the pleasant morning, when i landed in a foreign land for the first time, yes i meant my arrival at Changi Airport, Singapore on 26th December 2007. This has been one year of varied experiences and challenges.... I wil try to re-visit my life through the period in this small space... :)

.... It takes me back to Christmas day 2007. I visited the Marundeeswarar temple in Thiruvanmiyur in bitter cold (at Chennai's standards :) ) at 6AM with appa. I had to hurry up with my final preparations for my journey that night. I was heading to Singapore to do what i completed last week.. MSc in Power Engineering (or Biomed or Signal Processing). Packing was all done and we hired a call taxi and reached the Anna International Airport. This was the first time i had to stay away from home in my 23 years since. Hearts were heavy... though the excitement of goin to pursue my Masters and traveling to a new country was keeping the emotions in the balance. As always i was frightened about flying and this time around it was 4 hours of flying over the seas. I was a bit terrified, but the 4 hours flew off quickly and Singapore was in sight followed by a flaw less landing. It was pretty straight forward for me to tel the taxi driver to go to Block 19 opp to Jalan Bahar Police Station, as my roommates had arrived couple of days ahead of me and occupied the apartment. Now it was a new home and new friends around.

Infact i had not met my roommates before that day, I got to meet Shyam first who had his registration with me on the next day. I had to wait till end of that day to meet Shashi and Barath when they came back from their respective course registrations. The next few days went as expected.. with a bit of excitement, admiration and a bit of missing home. These days saw off my course registration and other formalities too. We now had around 2 weeks before the college commenced. It was time for some exploration of the new place. I could still vividly remember us visiting the Orchard Road (this can be quoted the Time Square of Singapore), the city, Sentosa and more of the college campus... I found my University so beautiful and huge (also allowed me to play with my camera :) ).. its pretty confusing initially, i mean finding out places... nevertheless a great campus. Then we got the great opportunity to welcome the New Year 2008 along with the country.

We were at the Marina Bay where a countdown and fireworks was arranged... Must mention the dosa shop - Dosa Deli, we atlast had a gud dinner on new years eve. As the clock inched towards midnight, it was getting more crowded and noisy... and came a 5 minutes firework at the stroke of 12.

We had to wait till the 7th of January to kick start the course. Initially i was in a dilemma of whether to take Biomed or Power Engineering, but made up my mind to take Power Engineering. Our classes were in the evenings from 6:30 to 9:30. Well it was much different from my previous experiences. But it was kinda gud too.. could use the whole of the day to either study (which wil mostly not happen) or for the Dissertation work... We gotta talk a bit about the Dissertation :) , we were supposed to choose the dissertation and the Professor incharge in the first 15 days of the term and so did i ! "Optimal Fuel Cell Power Extraction" under Prof. Ali Iftherkar Maswood who is a Bangladeshi. As always i was missing home and friends and this was showing clearly in my Mobile bills :). But thanks to my parents and all my friends back home who gave be the support and confidence to get back on track.

The term then crawled slowly with the same routine every day till Chinese New year. Chinese new year for us brought with it 3 days off and what would we do ?, more tourism :). We then got to visit the Singapore Zoo, Night Safari and the Jurong Birds Park. It was some experience of life time. The "we" here included Mrinal, Barath and Me. As we were recovering from the excitement we found that we were closing in on the exams....! We already had to tackle cycle tests in every paper (4 of them) which accounted for 20% marks of the final exams. I could still remember, in couple of these tests we were barely writing anythin but watching each other's faces. But then days just passed away and we had just 1 month to got for the exams.

This was time for some serious slogging :). This was very different to me, i used to stay back in the college for the whole night to study and leave home to sleep for 4 hours or so, and then would hit university for lunch. So went the days preceding the examinations. Exams were a spot if bother to me all my life, The sense of not having done the exams well was more than the excitement of going home after them. Ya i was heading back home to visit home and take up an internship at Banglaore. It will be 2 months in India and, back to S'pore one month ahead of reopening date as I had to buck up with my project work. It was all excitement all of a sudden. I must mention that i brought a nice Merlion (icon of Singapore) show piece for my home and chocolates for sis.

Now it was some serious shuttling for me between Chennai and Bangalore. I also visited Hyderabad to my meet Shankar anna and Ramya akka.. and the cute little Sriram. Days is Banglaore were of another dimension... I stayed at my peripa's (Prof at IISc) house and went by bus to my Internship center. I used to walk half the distance (around 4 kms) back as i din like the bus. But it taught me how to adjust to situations and also something about work at a Power Electronics firm. This was my first work experience in a core company as i was employed with Infosys earlier. I was proud about the fact that i was staying in IISc staff quarters amongst some of the best Professors in the country and opposite to ISRO head office at Bangalore. It was a great month and a half in my life. Also that i got my semester results when i was in my Interns... to everybody's surprise it was a great result, contrary to what i was expecting... Unfortunately i later had so many problems with my friends with respect to the marks i scored. But it was part of life ! I wish to apologies to them, if i had hurt them.

As my sister was expecting to join TCS some time later in this year, we planned a trip to Kodaikanal and Udumalpet (Aunt's place, i stayed ther for few years too). The trip was awesome as it was around 2 years before we went out as a family. We covered Kodaikanal and Vaalpaarai.. it was a breather from Chennai's heat. I had a nice present from appa for my birthday... a Casio Watch. But even before i could realize, days jus went off.. and on 6th, July (day after my birthday) i had to leave back to Singapore. It was not much of an issue when i left at chennai airport, but after i came home... i could feel the pain.. i was feeling lonely and bored. Yet again my friends came to my rescue... This time around it was very bad, i even planned to go back home... with a bit of advice from Appa i controlled myself. Also should mention Ajay who have be nice company in this one month period before my roommates came. Some project work and lots of worry about completing it.. the month slipped away and second semester came in sight. What next same old routine :). But this time around the semester was a bit shorter and the project work kept it occupied. This time more friends to the existing lot... Mrinal's friends, Ajay's friends.... , Karthik and Sathik.. it was also keeping the days ticking.

We were onto some great moments in life like.. Singapore National day fireworks, Dr. Abul Kalam's visit to NTU for a honorary degree (First time i saw this legend), First ever night Formula 1 race (First for Singapore)....Second semester was topped with a great trip to Pulau Islands (Pulau Ubin).. it was a bigger group now.. Me, Barath, Mrinal, Sudarsan, Karthik, Gaja, Ananth and Jashwanth.... And the trip was equally great.. We had to cycle around this place.. and it was a tiresome, adventurous and cool trip. It also got myself closer to these guys. So in terms of entertainment this semester was great.. but what about the academic side ? :)

Ya as usual we found exams too close for comfort. But we managed it all along till the exams.. lots and lots of night outs this time with Karthik Sathik or alone.... The exams got over and came the hurry to complete the project and submit the thesis. This gave a really memorable finish to the year long journey, when i submitted my thesis last week.. So its all over in terms of the degree. Towards the end i got to meet Gats (Gayathri Murthi) who had come down from USA and Mul (Sharmila). It was another unforgettable evening for the year, with my sweet seniors.

Now some respite is just a job away :)... Thanks to the recession, I am still looking for one. On the positive note, the jobs around the corner.. and the journey will continue........

This bit of text does not capture the whole essence of this year.. there is more which is tougher to put in words :) I have several context in mind but the blog will become longer .... and If i had left out any names, please forgive me guys...

What is special about December 21 ?

2008-12-20T06:41:00.001+05:30

Most of us will be knowing that December the 21st is called the Winter Solstice ! So what exactly happens on this day or after this day ? Why is the date so talked about ? I am not sure too.. this is the first time am probing into the topic beyond the fact that Winter Solstice is the day when "Winter" starts in the northern hemisphere..! :)
Basically the Solstices have been in place owing to Earth's tilt on its axis and the fact that earth is revolving around the sun. With certain tilt to a spherical object towards the sun, we can interpret one basic point, that one half will be closer to the sun at any point of time. On the earth, we say the part closer to the sun experiences summer and the part away goes through a winter period. The set up reverses after half revolution around the sun. Winter/Summer occurs because the angle at which the sun strikes the surface changes when each hemisphere is closer to the sun. This angle means more/less warmth to that place and hence the seasons.

When the northern hemisphere is closer to the sun, the southern part is away and vice-versa. This means there are 2 separate winter solstice, one for the Northern hemisphere and other for the Southern. Northern regions experience solstice around 22nd December and Southern regions between 19-23 June. Lets talk about Equinoxes and Magara Shankaranti (Pongal in Tamil Nadu) later as they come. :)

Repercussions of Excessive Melting Polar Ice - Decoded !

2008-12-17T15:02:00.000+05:30

This was a news article in Times of India dated 17-12-2008. It seems serious when a news hits the headlines often. At least in this case the crux of the news is pretty serious. Many of us donno why this problem of melting ice is a "big issue". Lets try to crack the code now. The explanation would take us in a big journey... lets start....

Disclaimer - I would like to be outside the debate of what is causing this increase in polar melt. Considering the fact that this has increased exponentially over the decades and that, we have already started facing the "repercussions", we will see just, how these repercussions are giving way to some of the most powerful weather phenomenon human race has ever seen.

Earth is a Ocean planet and rightly so, Oceans control our weather pattern. So how does the oceans keep track of the climate ?? It all lies in a giant engine ! Yes its termed as the Thermohaline Circulation. This is a giant ocean current carrying cold and warm waters around our planet and the waters take as much as 1000 years to complete this journey once. This conveyor is kept alive by the property of water called density. The colder/more saline the water, more dense it becomes. Denser water sinks to the ocean floor, while the warm water current tends upwards to the surface. We know that the warm water currents (Red in the image above) are pushed into the mid Atlantic ridge towards the Greenland from south Atlantic. Polar ice is mainly made of fresh water, The warmer water which is salty cools and sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is again taken downward, around Africa towards Indian Ocean. Here it gets warmer again as it approaches the mid latitudes and joins the above mentioned current towards Greenland. The rest of the current graces the Antarctic waters and gets warmer as it approaches the Pacific. This has been keeping the climate of our planet under complete control. In short this current will decide when to hit Indian coast as Monsoon or when to lash the US coast as devastating Hurricanes.

The real problem is this conveyor could shut down ! Yes, i said SHUTDOWN. With more and more fresh water from the melting ice the salinity of the water is reduced in the North Atlantic (Where the cycle kick starts). Less saline water is less dense and might not sink as much as it used to do. This means the gradient for water currents to move across the oceans will be reduced. The shut down of this can prove devastating, the consequences are not yet clear. Since every climatic phenomenon on the planet depends on ocean currents.. its tightly coupled to the thermohaline circulation.

This issues comes with some more bad news. With increased melting, the sea level has distinctly increased and is expected to increase more rapidly with current data. Polar ice does an important job of reflecting sun's light rather than absorbing. This means the planet is kept cooler. With these Ice shelves meting away, they are exposing land and water surfaces which, unlike the ice will absorb the heat and trap it, thus further increasing the already risen global temperatures. This will act as a positive feedback and will cause more melting. This is purely the last thing we want, as most of the important cities are located on the rim of land.

New Year delayed by a "Second" ???

2008-12-16T22:25:00.000+05:30

Complaining about not having time..??? you ll get it by end of this year. :) A leap second will be added to the world clocks at 23:59:59 on 31st December (UTC). This is not a new happening, there were several such occasion before this starting from 1972. The latest before this was on December 31, 2005. World over, we follow the UTC (Coordinate Universal Time) and this keeps lagging the mean solar time occasionally. If this happens, then IERS (International Earth Rotation and Reference Service) decides to add a second to the Atomic Clocks which maintain the UTC.

Traditionally the universal time was determined using the earths rotation with respect to the celestial bodies. This was replaced my a more precise atomic clock in 1972. This clock is independent off Earths rotation. They use the frequency of spectral lines emitted from the element Cesium (Isotope Cs-133) which is 9,192,631,770 Hz. Integral of this frequency used to give us the fundamental unit of time. We today observe that the Earths rotation speed is reducing slowly. Since these clock do not take into account this parameter, we have manually add some time to compensate for it. This is what is being done since 1972. So plan for the extra second that we will get, ;) and be happy.

Fact, Feasibility and Fiction - "The Day Earth Stood Still" !

2008-12-16T08:18:00.001+05:30

I watched this movie called "The Day the Earth Stood Still" which is a remake of an earlier version of the same movie released in 1951. The lead roles are played by Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly. This one falls under the Sci-Fi/Thriller category. I wanted to bring out what in the movie is already happening (or) could happen (or) might never happen (in my opinion after certain references).

In the present day story, several engineers and scientists are moved to military outposts by the FBI. One among the clueless scientists is Jennifer Connelly whos a Astro-Biologist. They are surprised to hear about large structures hurdling towards earth at mammoth speeds, and are moved to the region of impact for immediate scientific help. Ironically, the craft soft lands. And spits a shapeless being out of it... As the police shoot the being by mistake a huge robot, Gort comes out of the glowing sphere which landed and attacks the people with high frequency sounds. The being is rushed to the hospital and find that its a fast growing embryo inside.. which grows into Klaatu (Keanu Reeves again). The military wants to interrogate him, but he refuses. Meanwhile Jennifer Connelly helps him escape and later finds that they (Gort and Klaatu) have come down to save the Earth and kill all of the human race. A punishment rather to have pushed the planet to the tipping point. As mentioned my Klaatu, the mission rescues as many lives in large sphere like structures from all over the world. The visitors also release some sort of intelligent insect robots, which eat off all the metal structures and kills humans.. As this is happening, the Jennifer Connelly tries to explain to Keanu Reeves and asks him to stop the invasion. Was she actually heard.. and did the attack stop.. ???

Now for some shot at how much the movie can survive a scientific probe? Given below are the facts (Things which are happening and are already possible), feasibility (Scientific research are going on and experimentally possible things) and fiction (Purely hypothetical and imaginative)

Facts:

The Climate pattern in our planet is really going crazy. We have seen some of the maximums in past few years. Highest levels of CO2, Large chunks of the ice caps are drifting off, Global rise in temperatures, Stronger hurricanes... the list in too big to say it all. So the "reason" for Klaatu and Gort to arrive at earth is a fact.
And again, Have we reached the tipping point (or fast approaching one) ? The answer is yes according to scientists (highly debated...though)
According to the movie, the object is spotted only hrs before it was going to rendezvous with earth. This is also explained in the course of the movie, the unidentified object is said to be traveling at very high speeds of 3 raised to the power 10. So "if we accept" that objects can travel at such speeds, then spotting them earlier will be a tough ask.
Can a country prepare for such a situation with only an hour to spare... This also seems to be a fact, yes countries like USA can react this quickly as they have rapid action forces for the backing.
The Giant robot, "Gort" attacks the forces using some sort of high frequency directed sound waves, well this is possible.. USA has already employed such weapons in Iraq. These are non-lethal weapons. This also supporting the fact that Gort is a peace seeking robot, it attacks to just stop the violence.

Feasibility

How is it possible that the genes from the 1928 Keanu Reeves were used by some civilization to make a similar species (we have no idea what the alien species actually looked like, certainly not like us) ? We can argue that in the 1928 visit, the aliens picked samples of Keanu Reeves' DNA and assuming that they are intelligent enough, they can recreate an embryo similar to that. This like the Cloning that we had achieved on our planet.
The robot is diagnosed to be made of some carbon composite. This a valid point as we today know that Carbon composites are multiple times stronger that steel and is that much lighter. We are infact slowly starting to use Carbon composites in many applications.
The aliens enter the military air space by disabling their radar using electromagnetic waves, this is feasible too.
The swarms of metallic species which consume on metals and divide on their own, well this can partially be accepted, as we have been doing several research to develop such small robots to probe into our body to find affected parts or enter into war zones to take samples.

Fiction

We have not yet discovered any object travelling at speeds mentioned in the movie. And with our present knowledge we are not sure if any object could survive such speeds.
Klaatu, in the movie has been portrayed doing things which look like magic rather than scientific. The way he uses only some sort of concentration to attract the metal insects or when he was interrogated. We were shown that Klaatu was having a physiology similar to human beings, but he seemed to control the electricity and magnetic waves. This seems pure fiction.
The several glowing bubbles was pretty much looking odd. In my opinion they were the spoil sport. Its fine that they are rescuing all the animals and dont want them to get killed during the attack. The means that were followed was very unlikely.
The most fictional thing is that a group of species are trying to save earth. And they have been watching at earth from several million light years.

Well i would give 3/5 for the movie overall...... If you had already watched the movie , please leave your comments.

Do we really have to be prepared for a "collision" ?

2008-12-15T17:17:00.000+05:30

Collision ???, we are talking about those killer impacts, from asteroids and comets. How certain are these events and do we have to be prepared for one such impact ? That's a sensible question.

Some old stories now.... it wil help the rest of the article though :)

Asteroid: Asteroids are chunks of rocks that were formed amidst the planet formation when our solar system was young and revolving the sun between orbits of Jupiter and Mars. These range from diameter for few meters to as much as 975Km (Ceres). Most of the large ones have already been cataloged. Nevertheless, they are still being fished out from the darkness of space.

Comets: Comets are the fairly larger ones, these are mainly made of volatile material (all sorts of ice like water, ammonia, methane etc.,) Comets are the messengers from the outer edges of the universe called the Kuiper Belt (Belt of particles beyond the orbit of Pluto..similar to the asteroid belt) and from the much distant Oort cloud. These regions are the backyards of our solar system. Comets have highly eccentric orbits around the sun.

Have we been hit before? At least we have a really confident answer to this. Yes indeed, but our planet has been reshaping the surface all time (unlike the moon), we have lost many of the scars from these impacts. We still can find many a impact craters all over the world. We are pretty much familiar to the meteor crater in Arizona. This is a massive 1,200 m diameter crater and 170 m deep. This is just wat a 50m rock can do. We now have theories which suggest that the Dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid impact. The latest known big impact was in Tunguska in Siberia on June 30, 1908. The region was pretty much inhabited, the 30 mega tonnes worth impact leveled 80 million trees over a region of 2000 sq.kms. The impact as such din happen as the comet/asteroid exploded around 5 miles above the surface. Impact like this today can wipe out whole cities.

There are the larger ones which are capable of wiping off a whole continent off any life. These are 10kms wide mountains tumbling trough space. The equation says impacts are certain and its only matter of when ! We have been painstakingly studying every single Near Earth Objects as they are called. These are the object which are on orbits around the sun and often visit the inner solar system. We still cant predict the path of these objects exactly as they are small and can get affected my any planet in the solar system. NEOs become easier to spot only when they are too close for comfort. The odds for any realistic impact in the next few decades is very slim , but the odds can never be trusted in this case.. there could be some approaching from towards the sun and wil barely reveal itself till its too close or it could be that a known asteroid can change its course influenced by gravity of some other planet.

An observation has determined a asteroid to pass by our planet in the year 2029. This certainly is not going to hit us, but our own planet can affect the asteroid's orbit and pull it into a different orbit if its at a window called the key hole and that will cause this object to slam into out planet in just 7 years in 2036. So we are slowly understanding the odds one after another. So what can we potentially do about this ? Can we avoid one such impact ???

We have seen in movies like Armageddon or Deep Impact where the asteroid/comet is blown apart using nuke on its surface. This according to scientists is not a gud idea. What are the options available to handle such a situation.. have a look..

First place, we have to find whether the object is on a collision course and also calculate the time left with us. If the sufficient time of around a decade is left in hand, the we can do a number of things like

A rocket can be sent to land on the object and it can use its rocket power to jettison the object away. Even a small amount will be enough to deviate the object in a path to miss earth.
Otherwise rocket can create an explosing near the surface of the object and the enegy would vapourise some part of the comet, this vaporisation will act as a rocket and nudge the object in different trejectory.
Astronomers also have idea calles the Gravity Tug.. This is the case where 1 or a 2 tonne satellite will just randevous the astroid/meteor and then just stay along for several years. This will cause a slight gravitational pull on the object and pull it aways from the lethal path.

Though these are are possible, we cannot employ any of these if the object is too close. We the have to look at explosives to help (Not a great idea though). Most of the objects are large iron rocks and can end up radioactive when hit my such high intensity explosion. Large groups of asteroids are also classified into whats called as rubble pile, any explosion will just be absorbed and the asteroid will continue in its path. So studying the nature of the object before we do anything is important. We can also use laser light to vaporize the object slowly and reduce its size. These are still theories and we have not tried any of it in large scale. We might only get to know when D-day arrives. We are not well prepared, but we are not sitting idle either. If all goes to plan, we Humans wont get listed next to the dinosaurs in the fateful list. Certainly we have no stories of possible impacts now. Things can change with new object found every now and then.

For further learning please visit the following links (or jus google it out :) )

Most Impressive Impact Craters
Asteroid Caught on Camera
Blowing up Asteroids
Gravity Tractor (Podcast)
Death from the Skies (Podcast)

2008-12-14T06:34:00.000+05:30

[I captured this moment from my house on 12th December. Depicting the closest full moon for this year along with the up-beat preparations for Christmas-Newyear in Singapore - Sony DSC T30]

Moon has been the icon for poetry and love over centuries. We barely realized that its size varies over the course of an year. So why was the moon closest to earth on 12th December ? The answer to this question is straight forward, Moon like planets revolves around earth in a slightly elliptical path. This property of lunar orbit means, the moon will reach a point where it is closest to us and another elsewhere, when its farthest. These points are called the Apogee and Perigee respectively. Our moon was at the perigee position on 12th December 2008 which is about 364,397 kms while the farthest is 406,731 kms. This difference causes a 12% increase in size and about 14% increase in brightness at its closest point. We were barely able to make out this difference as we are seeing the moon every now and then, the brightness has been increasing gradually over the year (as the moon was getting closer and closer). To silence any hoaxers, this is the brightest moon can ever get in out skies. Please do not believe any mails which says moon will occupy half the skies.. or anythin of that sort. If any such peculiar happening is reported, Google it out immediately, our universe is of course strange but not as much as these mails claim :) . What do we get from these information ?, well.. its a lot of scientific data for some ppl, for some one else it could mark a great day for photography.. neverthless our moon has yet again revealed its beauty and elegance, and lets hope such full moons will bring peace and well being to this world.

A Vicious Circle..!

2008-12-11T11:56:00.000+05:30

Well... now its a bit of Green thoughts ! the fact is this must be our foremost priority. In this fast world, we are barely realizing that we are running lower and lower on our energy reserves. "WE", the human species is so extra-ordinary that we managed to consume oil, coal and natural gas at tremendous speed ever since the so called "Industrial Revolution". Today we are at a critical juncture, to think and re-think the way its all being done. The irony in this issue is, the oil consumption has, in no way improved our life today, but for endangering out very existence. The Industrial revolution drove people into a frenzy of luxury... every element of which involved consumption of oil or natural gas. We have been clearing forests slowly but certainly in mammoth numbers to aid our settlements. These both have never been a winning combination, but otherwise... This tiny spec amongst the universe, called the "Earth" .. was going in a un chartered path of no return ever since.... All these narrow down to the issue we all are pretty much aware, termed as "Global Warming". It has taken an eternity for the human race to think and act against this.. seems like it might be too late, but its better late than never. Several countries and organizations are now thinking of various alternatives and reduce the dependence on our old friend, "Oil"....This has now reached degrees of un-precedented importance, the reason is we cannot revert back to old values of Green House gasses (As it was a centrury ago). This clearly is confusing...!, it was so to several scientist who initally worked out this theory.

Any attempt to reduce the green house gas levels could sting back seriously resulting in uncorrelated happenings all around the world and would lead us back to possibly an ice age.....

The well known Global Warming was not alone.. it had company... the amount of smoke and dust particles in high atmosphere (mainly from jets and airliners) which were spat into the atmosphere for decades have been grooming a newer phenomenon called the global dimming.

Well global dimming has ever since been doin the opposite of Global warming...! It has reduced amount of direct radiation from the sun to reach surface... thus reducing evaporation and also causing cooling effect.. this cooling effect has been ketp in check by the warming caused by the green house gases.. now, tipping any of these will cause a spiralling effect pushing the climate patterns out into the extermes.... The seriousness was felt with grounding of all the airliners in the US after 9/11 attacks. The reduction in smoke particles from Airliners, increased the brightness and temperature by un-imaginable levels. This study has been gaining momentum since then.

So what do we do ??? the immediate response of people to 'stop polluting' is out of the question, or we ll find ourselves freezing to death over the next few centuries... The happenings do not seem to show a 'reversible pattern' ...so where is the rabbit hole leading us again, well we are not sure yet. We clearly have to reduce out dependence on Oil and Gas as they are fast depleting, this will considerably reduce the pollution. Scientists all around the world are working over these theories using several weather models, the debate is on and there are scholars and scientists behind each stance.. hope this debate ends in a gud note and that we are able to sustain our species for several more millenniums into the future.

India and Astronomy - How deep does the rabbit's hole go ?

2008-12-07T07:12:00.001+05:30

Note:

These are details from different online resourse listed at the end of this article.

These have been mainly taken from Indian wesites, as none of the international websites quote much of Ancient Indian history. As always these informations have been hidden from the world and shut up in darkness ever since they were rediscovered.

There had been a famous theory called the Aryan Invasion theory of India which claimed that the Aryan race from present day Europe brought their wealth and knowhow into India several thousand years BC. This has now been disproved with concrete evidences.

We have to consider the Entire Indian sub-continent as a single entity as it was during the vedic periods (The region of prosperity and development) exending from Pakisthan in the west till Tibet in the East.

As the human settlements began several thousand years ago, the regions surrounding river valleys and fertile lands outstretched their glamorous ability to sustain life.. People, like bees crowded and built their colonies using primitive technologies. Known history suggests that wood followed by pottery were the first sophistications of ancient human existance. We have heard of several outstanding civilizations on the banks of major rivers all over the world, like the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indus and Saraswathi river valley, Banylonians, Chinese... without any doubt we have to thank all of these ancient people to have given the headstart in our long journey till date.
As the legend speaks, around 9,600 BC (much earlier to even the Mesopotamian advent, which is the earliest known civilization in literature) there had been a thriving city between present day, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. An enormous flood swallowed the city and reclaimed it under the sea, also were cities buzzing with activities along the shores of North India which also was devastated by floods around the same period.(most probably by rising sea levels due to polar melting) . There have been predictions that this is the same time when a mind blowing civilization was born in Harappa (officially 2600 - 1900 BC) along the banks of the river Indus. The city was born in the midst of several uncertainities.. Science was barely understood. The people were mainly moved by the power of nature (which we still consider as the almighty). It is realy astounding to learn that these communities were sensible enough to observe the movements of heavens and to have quoted them in several vedic inscriptions. At this point we will consider the developents in Astronomy and Space science, eventhough there were strides and progresses in several other fields, they could be made the subject of another dicussion. So now we have a age old civilization (possibly older than the oldest in text).. what did they do to science ?
The city streets of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were aligned with the cardinal directions, this shows possible use simple astronomical instruments such as sun stick. They had also used an accurate calendar based on the movements of Sun and Moon. Furthemore they are known to have tracked the movements of stars and constellations and relating them to birth of a child... which is still practiced in Hinduism. Infact these civilizations formed the back bone of a strong religion called the Hinduism.
Scholars predict the making of "The Vedas" (Rig-Veda, the earliest) by around 1450-1350 BC, though this can be dated much earlier based on other studies. There is another study which dates the age of Vedas to around 3000-2000 BC, owing to the quote of river Saraswathi as sacred throughout the Vedas. The river has been determined to have dried out by 2000 BC, so the Rig Veda should have been completed before this period, to have been mentioned as sacred. Why are we talking about Vedas ? well, there are the earliest text available and talks extensively about every walk of life... Astronomy, Medicine, Agriculture, Religion.. etc., These texts along with epics such as Mahabaratha easily explains technology and development in science on par to today's stance.
There was a stage when we could not separate out astronomy from astrology..! The development of one supported the other and vice-versa. The initial observations were of the planets, sun and the moon, which were moving slower compared to that of the background stars. The observations of stars and constellations were also playing a major part in religious congunction and more aptly early astrology. Now more in detail
Planets : Vedas mention of the 9 known objects, (Navagrahas) to be orbitting earth (They had a geocentric outlook of the solar system). The nine included Sun (Adithya), Moon (Soma), Mercury (Budha), Venus (Sukra), Mars (Angaaraha), Jupiter (Bruhaspathi), Saturn (Shani), Rahu, Kethu ( Raghu and Kethu were names given to the moon's North and South nodes). Now we clearly know that Saturn marks the limit of naked eye planets. Early Indians had knowledge of all the visible planets.
Vedas mention of a celestial wind called the "Pravaha" which was believed to drive the planets around. Possible connection to "Ether" of the later days. There were mention about sunspots or possible Venus or Mercury transit across the sun. These phenomenon were barely understood, but from an naked eye observer's point of view, these were mind boggling results.
"sarva danishta, Surya Surya Surya," means "in all directions, Sun, Sun, Sun." explains that astronomers were able to understand that other stars are also sun like objects which are at varied distances from us.
Vedas quote, Manu-the legendary father of Hinduism, about a detailed explanation of calendar. Text explains the time quantities much similar to the modern day time scales. from seconds till several thousad years. The astronomical numbers appear due to the relationships of the Divine in every person's life.
Collection of thousands of years was termed as Yugas... some of them Kali (1200 years), Dwapara (2400 years), Treta (3600 years) and Krita (4800 years). This totals to 12,000 years
The cosmos is considered Infinite today. The cosmos certainly was believed to be the Bhraman God. This was refered to be infinite in Ishopanishad .. wish goes like this,

Purnamadah purnamidam

Purnat purnamudachyate

Purnasya purnamadaya

Purnamevavashishyate.

And the more famous Gayathri Manthra states the importance of Sun as the giver and the protector, and also stresses its importance.. the verses are as follows,

[Om, bhur, bhuvah, swaha]

Tat savitur varenyam

Bhargo devasya dhimahi

Dhiyo yo nah prachodayat.

Sections of sacred text also explains the origin of universe in the midst of blasts, earth being born from a thick cloud of dust and water arriving at the planet in the later ages.
Ancient Indians had divinded stars into 28 Nakshatras and followed the position of moon across the sky from one Nakshatra to other. This journey made one month of the lunar calendar.
Astrology as a separate class of science was famous around the 400 BC. There were several famous Jothisha who worked to strike the relation between the movements of the heavenly bodies and the day today lives of people. This has been living up till present day, we still refer to astrology to start good thinks.
Suryah Siddhanta, is one of the famous astronomy text of ancient India. The book details out the modern astronomical terms such as eclliptic, equator and even the elevation of stars above the horizon.
Separate study of Astronomy as science was called Khagola Shastra. Aryabhatta a mathematician observed the heavens from Nalanda University as early as 500 AD and put forward several results, which even today are not straight forward. He made accurate approximation of the diameter and circumference of Earth, Studied the motion of planets with respect to the Sun, Predicted the orbit of Earth on its own axis, The radius of orbits os Planets and was also the earliest to predict that the planets orbits were ellipses. He had used geometry to accomplish the feet. He had put forth these details in his book , "Aryabhattiya". The proud bit is he has accomplished these 1500 years ago, by about 1000 years ahead of Copernicus and Galileo. These details are used in the present day Hindu calendar called the "Panchanga". The calendar predicts the positions of planets, eclipses and several other astronomical data.
Other notable Indian Mathematicians and Astronomers include, Varahamihira who predicted that some force must be holding the object on the surface of earth and other planets as early as 6th century. Later Bhramaputra preponed Gravity, he was also the first to use algebra in Astronomical calculations.Devacharya (6th-7th Century) is notable as the first astronomer to describe a method for calculating the precession of the equinoxes.
With the invasion of the Moghuls, astronomy in India stagnated for some time. In an effort to try to revive India's past glory in astronomy, Raja Jai Singh (1686-1743) sought to build new observatories. One impetus was to improve the tables used for calendrical calculations. Jai Singh built five observatories, known as Jantar Mantar, in Delhi (built in 1721-1724), Jaipur (his capital, built circa 1728-1734), Mathura and Ujjain (built circa 1723-1734), and Benares (completed circa 1737). He fashioned these observatories after the old design of a large circle, from which one could observe the 2160 divisions (360 degrees times 60 minutes/degree = 2160 arcminutes).

We have witnessed what had happened in the past 250 years or so with Britts occupying India and fall of several Maharajhas. After independence we had a separate institution to take up the job of Astronomy and space science. The organization called the Indian Space Research Organization (which most of us are aware of) worked initially to make the lives of people better, concentrating on the Meteorology, Agriculture and Communication. Today we have reached the moon in the name of Chandrayaan (as quoted in the Vedas). With such a glittering past i personally feel, we as a country have lots to contribute to the world. Reaching the Moon or Mars is just a matter of pride, but the "Astronomy", as a branch of science requires us to work to protect our planet from global catastrophies such as comets and asteroids. With the ageing Sun more frightening than ever, spitting hot plasma into space, needs more attention from us to save the human kind. More is in stake with available fossil fuels depleting day by day.

References:

http://ephemeris.com/history/india.html

http://indiaheritage.org/science/astro.htm

http://www.spacetoday.org/India/IndianAstronomy.html

http://www.crystalinks.com/indiastronomy.html

http://visav.phys.uvic.ca/~babul/AstroCourses/P303/harappan.html

Now Its the Thunder after the Lightning !

2008-12-01T14:24:00.000+05:30

After, what has been termed as the worst terrorist attack in the country ! the political blame game has now taken stage in the state. We have been witnessing leaders.. putting their papers one after the other.. the reason - "They buckled under pressure" (as reported by the media). Do we all realize that they have taken the easiest way out of this issue ! I would have reallly been impressed if they gave an assurance that the days are going to change and their government will make steps to improve security (and stood-by their word with realistic efforts).

The opposition has the tradition in this country to find the smallest of the chance to accuse the ruling party for their mistakes. I am very glad that this is wat the opposition is supposed to do in any country, but when there is an emergency in the country, how on earth are these ppl able to do the same (fighting and pointing hands). We want them to stand together. That din happen in the wake of the attacks on Mumbai.

The clueless police on the day when Mumbai cried had somethin more to worry abt... guess what ? We already had leaders visiting the city as the attacks and encounter were happening. The police had to bother abt their security over the existing tension.]

Sources had informed that they had proof that the attackers trained and arrived from across the border. I can understand that this is a part of the investigation and this can either be a fact or a mere embarrassment. But with intelligence agencies providing a number of clues of possible attacks on Mumbai, to the local police and navy, there was no major steps taken. This is not a small issue, as there were kilos of RDX, several weapons and explosives which were smuggled in. Only god know why these were not spotted or intercepted.

This attack has been much different compared to the earlier ones, when the state stood along with the government... this time around the anger and frustration was evident in the eyes of the statesmen. Today we are demanding some realistic solutions. There has been a hurried re-ordering in the political stage, and lets hope these bring in some confidence and positive outcomes. After all, there has been more threats for attacks elsewhere in the country (news on possible attacks on Delhi). Lets hope that we don have to re-visit these ever again.

This country has now become pretty much insecure worse compared to days pre-independence. And very "proudly" so is amongst the top 20 dangerous places to live. Nothing to be proud-of though. Reforms in the Military, curbing of militant activities within and across the borders and much stringent law and order can make some change... We are waiting for some such changes to earn a better place for coming generation.

Mumbai under attack - Terror takes a new turn !

2008-11-28T12:19:00.001+05:30

48 hours of horror...! people shut up in hotel rooms, not sure if they are going to walk out or shot at... Gun shots, grenade blasts, bombs and more killings... these are not part of any hollywood movie, this infact has been a 48 hr reality which has been keeping Mumbaikars and Indians gripped and terrified.

10-20 people had sneaked into the Gate-way-of-India region at around 9:00 PM on 26th November and spread into the city, started in-discriminate shooting at every one. Groups of these ppl took control of the Nariman House, Taj Mahal Hotel and Oberoi-Trident hotel. This has been another Black-26th in the history of this country.

Attacks started on Mumbai on 26th November and 2 days past that, the city is still in the grips of a hand full of terrorists. Local Police, Indian Military, Rapid Action Force, Nationals Security Guard and Marine Commandos... all are on ground zero and the place has turned into a warfield. How many occasions have we, Indians seen a telecast of horror on national television ? It has happened, happening right now... and wil happen again...! what is the country doing give security to the innocent people. Today people in their own home land, are not able to walk without fear.

What are we gonna do to reverse this. The attacks have now become very frequent.. Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad... the list is never ending. The need at this hour is not being prepared for the next attack, we need to make sure that we can confidently say, "It wont happen again". Whether its home grown terrorism or if its accross the border or elsewhere, these must not be taken for granted by India. In my opinion we are not at all prepared to avert the next attack, we have to accept this bitter truth.

We in this country do not have a definitive identity, we barely can track a person across this country but to block the traffic at toll-gates and keep waiting for them to cross...... With commencement of these attacks, there were no choppers in the air-Choppers, world over are the best high ground for such an activity within a city like this. First place we are extremely vigilant, to have allowed people to bring into out country kilos of explosives, modern automatic guns and ammunitions.

The reality over here is more than 150 innocent people have been killed over 2 days by mindless terrorist elements. Two famous hotels have lost their lustre. The 100 year old Taj Mahal hotel has take a beating (couple of floors collapsed down with more than half of the building tarnished). Nariman House, which is a Israeli residencial area was under attack and portrayed a Hollywood like attack by NSG and the battle is never ending. God only know how much ammo was smuggled into the city. Oberoi-Trident sanitized at dawn on friday and the other two places still within the clutches of gun battles, we can expect the saga to wrap up atleast by friday night.

We will have to wait and see wat actually happens. Whatever it be, we have to now stand united and strong to fight against such anti social elements. Lets all pray for the several people who got killed for no mistake of theirs, let their souls rest in peace atleast after their death...

Hey guys...!

2008-11-20T19:09:00.000+05:30

When i was reading my blog entries, i found that there were so many grammatical errors (particularly last two entries). I had jus dumped what came in mind and had'nt reviewed it then. Please bear with the mistakes. :)

Chandrayaan-1 on course for its two year journey...

2008-11-18T05:58:00.000+05:30

^ MIP snatched this image of Shakelton crater as it crashed on to lunar surface as planned. (Shakelton crater is the site of interest for NASA's moon base plans)

ISRO press releases have confirmed that one by one the instruments on Cha'n 1 are switched on, and not to forget, they are proving to be fantastic. These data in sink with Japanese Kaguya and Chinese Chang'e-1 will keep scientists around the world busy for several decades now. Chnadrayaan-1 now holds the proud status of being the first to carry so many scientific instruments to moon orbit, in total there were 14 of them. ISRO has been decoding the images and data from the kiddo and putting up some of them on its website. It has also released images taken by its Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and images (above) from Moon Impact Probe (MIP) which are stunning.

MIP was successfully crashed into the surface of moon with Indian flag painted on its sides. This has more been a sign of pride than science, but ISRO has managed some data out of the procedure. MIP measured the composition of the lunar atmosphere, measured the gravity variation of the surface, measured the impact and sent stunning images of the moon at close range. MIP carried a video camera on it TMC has also beamed back a high resolution video, which is available on the ISRO site. http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/videos/tmc.htm

This image was taken by TMC from orbit of 100 km above the surface.

Heading ISRO in this glorious path, Mr. Madhavan Nair must be on the "moon" after the recent successes, it has been a real bumpy ride for him. Congratulations sir. and not to leave out the several-hundreds who have been working for the mission day and night, thanks for making India proud in world stage. With criticism from sevaral countries about the value of this mission and the need for it at this hour has tied up the scientists and managers in an emotional turmoil, they had some time to talk back and take a breather preceeding the successes. The real sense of India, growing up the space ladder has now put similar misions world over in top gear, may be thats the reason for several of the comments from them. What so ever, India-the country now has its limits beyond our home-sweet-home. Please visit ISRO website for more info on the mission and recent updates. http://www.isro.org/

Image Courtesy : ISRO

First Moon Pictures from Chandrayaan 1

2008-11-14T22:10:00.001+05:30

Image Courtesy: ISRO

So guys... am back with some gud news, Chandrayaan 1 has beamed back some rather blurred images of the moon. The image taken from a whooping 311200 kms from moon. The image is blurred for a reason. The sophisticated Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) has brilliant resolution, but not at such large distances. It was designed to take pictures of the moon from a height of 100 kms, and hence the lack in quality. Lets expect some classy pictures of the moon soon. But the image above is the first of the numerous to follow. So far the satellite has done a real gud job in finishing tak after task with textbook accuracy. Lets hope it keeps the gud work going. Lets push the debate on whether the expenditure is worth-it or not aside for the moment and salute the efforts and outcomes of a successful first for India. Surely there is a day for discussing the why's and why not's. These moments are so historical from a global stand point and needs all our encouragement and support. So i hope you all will join hands to support ISRO and INDIA for its achievement.

Chandrayaan 1 is now in 100km lunar orbit. And has also soft-landed the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on moon, this probe has Indian flag painted on its sides. Thus with this landing India becomes only the 4th nation after US, USSR and European Union to reach the surface of our nearest astronomical companion. Congrats ISRO..!

I will follow this blog up with the first ever pics from the MIP and Chandrayaan 1.

India in Deep Space

2008-10-27T04:42:00.000+05:30

http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Oct26_2008.htm

ISRO has officially confirmed that, with the third orbit raising manoeuvre the probe's apogee has been increased to more than 150,000 Km from earth on October 26th. Thus pushing Chandrayaan - 1, first ever Indian space craft to enter deep space. The peregee of the probe is maintained at 348 Km and takes around 73 hrs to revolve once around earth. Further manoeuvers are planned to thrust the vehicle closer to the moon. Congrats ISRO !, yet again.

Picture Perfect - PSLV C11 Launch

2008-10-25T00:09:00.001+05:30

Courtesy ISRO - http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/index.htm

Chandrayaan-1 in Earth Orbit

2008-10-22T11:48:00.000+05:30

Satish Dhawan Space Center - Sriharikota, AP -22nd October 6:00 hrs IST
I promised a post-launch blog, and here it is. We have successful launch of Chandrayaan 1

The much awaited day had arrived and it was time for the ISRO scientists to hand over controls to the computer. Now it was T-2mins. This means 2 mins to launch. The time was 6:20 IST and the rain and lightning which were feared to create problems had kept off the Bay. Well the climate was gloomy blended with a bit of early morning sun giving the place an interesting glow. Scientist at ISRO had no other option but to sit and wait to see the success of the launch. NDTV reported, "The ISRO scientists are cool as a cucumber".

The announcements echoed "9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0.. lift off, we have lift off of Chandrayaan-1 aboard PSLV-C11 .... t+1 2 3 4.....". The 7 storey, 300 tonn monster roared and lifted off like in a slow motion video. The Live webcast in Doordarshan, NDTV, CNN-IBN and ISRO website covered the historic moment in detail. The lift off was pretty smooth. The official announcements kept beaming about the 4-stage separations, altitude and velocity. Every milestone in its journey was cheered by the scientists and technicians in ISRO control center. The intensity of the cheer increased with every separation and after the 4th separation was over the whole control center came alive and the jubilation was pretty much evident. Ten years of hard work had paid off. This was PSLV's day yet again. The Brain child of Indian Space Research proved its worth for 13th time on a row. The Chandrayaan 1 space craft successfully detached from its last stage of booster rockets had gone into the first Transfer orbit at around 18.2 mins after launch.

"The launch was perfect and precise. The satellite has been placed in the earth orbit. With this, we have completed the first leg of the mission and it will take 15 days to reach the lunar orbit," Mr. Madhavan Nair announced in the mission control centre.

This is the first hurdle crossed, the later parts of the journey of Chandrayaan will be ever more challenging. As reported by NDTV science editor, "Mr. Pallava Bagla", the launch of PSLV and orbital insertion of Chandrayaan into earth orbit are the easier part of the mission as ISRO has mastered this act over past decade (This is PSLV's 13th successful launch) .

From now on the satellite will be under direct control from Bylalu near Bangalore (giant 32 and 18m dish will capture data from Chandrayaan). There will be several maneuvers which have to be undertaken to push the satellite to lunar orbit. Chandrayaan will initially revolve around Earth, extending its apogee (farthest point from earth) with each revolution. After couple of such orbits, the satellite will have to do a critical maneuver when it will be inserted into Lunar Transfer Orbit. This will be termed as Lunar Orbital Insertion. After this move, the little satellite will cruise to moon over 5 to 6 days covering 400,000 Kms. The mission being India's first to the moon, will take extra care to check and re-check the data and perform necessary corrections, and hence 2 weeks to reach moon orbit (otherwise would take around 6-7 days). Chandrayaan will rendezvous with moon on 8th November and then settle to a near circular orbit around moon for the next 2 years, 100km over our natural satellite. So in couple of days the space-craft will be on lunar orbit. Since Indian scientists have never attempted anything of this sort before, the next 2 weeks will the toughest for the several scientists at ISRO. Lets hope all things go fine and I will get back with the first pictures of Moon by an Indian Space craft in 2 weeks.

What is CRR ?

2008-10-16T13:45:00.001+05:30

To be frank, it was greek and latin for me, when i came across the flash in every News site yesterday saying RBI cuts CRR by 100 bps. CRR stands at 6.5 %. Thanks to my friend Ajay who gave me a rough idea. I wanted to share the info with you all.

CRR- Cash Reserve Ratio according to India is the amount of money which each bank has to maintain with the RBI (Reserve Bank of India). So thus if RBI decides to increase this percentage, the amount of money with the banks will reduce. RBI uses this to drain out excessive money with banks, i.e the liquidity in the economy reduces.

With decrease in CRR the interest rates of banks are destined to reduce and cause more liquidity amongst people. This will help a decrease in the Inflation figures. This is evident from the recent moves done by RBI. RBI has recently reduced the CRR to 6.5% which has released Rs.40,000 crore and Agricultural dept waiver will release aditional Rs.25,000 crores. So cumulatively this move by RBI has released over Rs.60,000 crores into the economy and is predicted to ease the crisis. I am sure this information will be helpful to many people like me, who was unaware of this. Please correct me incase if any information is incorrect. And lets hope the market situations will inprove for the gud of people.

Chandraayan 1 - India's First Mission to Moon

2008-10-14T02:59:00.000+05:30

ISRO Official Mission website - htt p://www.isro.org/chandrayaan/htmls/home.htm

ISRO, Indian Space Research Organisation (भारतीय अन्तरिक्ष अनुसंधान संगठन) ever since its establishment in the year of 1972 from the sown seeds of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, has made India proud by proving its abilites in launching satellites in Earth orbit and using Space science to improve the quality of millions of people. The next biggest challenge for the prestegious Government organization is the Mission to Moon. Only in April 2008 did ISRO stun the world by breaking the record for most number (10) of satellites launched and successfully placed in orbit, beating Russians by 2 satellites. ISRO is due to launch its Moon mission on 22nd October (the window being between 20th and 28th). The mission will carry out a comprehensive high resolution mapping, some of the best so far of the Moon. Chandraayan will also look at some serious science for future mission of India and USA. NASA has plans to use the data from Chandraayan for its lunar base plans over the next decade. Lets get some insight of the the mission and payloads.

The Launch - ISRO has chosen its brain child, PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) for this mission considerig the maturity of the monster over the past few decades. PSLV C11 is an upgraded version of the traditional PSLV having a liftoff weight of 316 tonnes. The launch is proposed on 22nd of October from Sriharikota 90km off Chennai. This will be PSLV's 13th launch (we have to note that only two of these were failures, considering infacncy of Indian Space Research).

Mission Control - ISRO has set up a 32 meters Antenna for tracking Chandraayan and will also be used for later missions of ISRO. The Antenna is located at Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) in Byalalu near Banglaore.

Spacecraft (Chandraayan 1) - The Space craft is a cuboid of sides approximately 1.5 m weighing 1304 Kg at launch and around 590 Kg in lunar orbit. This includes 11 payloads, 5 Indian and 6 forign payloads owing to research. The following are the list of payloads on Chandraayan 1,

Terrain Mapping Stereo Camera (TMC) - Indigenous
Hyper Spectral Imaging Camera (HySI) - Indigenous
Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI) - Indigenous
High Energy X-Ray Spectrometer (HXS) - Indigenous
Moon Impact Probe (MIP) - Indigenous
Chandraayan 1 X-Ray Spectrometer (C1 XS) - European Space Agency
Near Infrared Spectrometer (SIR) - European Space Agency
Sub KeV Atom Reflecting Anayser (SARA) - European Space Agency
Random Dose Monitor Experiment (RADOM) - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (MiniSAR) - NASA
Moon Minarology Mapper (M3) - NASA

And this is the Spacecraft layout (source, ISRO)

Mission Highlight - there are a few interesting aspects of this Mission

Chandraayan 1 has a budget of Rs. 386 Crores (US$ 83 million). This happens to be the cheapest of the lunar missions in the recent years(1/3 rd of Japanese and half of Chinese lunar probe). Still this mission is meant to last longer by almost 50% compared to the previous ones.
MIP (Moon Impact Probe) is destined to crash into the surface of Moon after separation from Chandraayan orbitter. The data will be used to design future impact probes and Soft landing missions on the surface of Moon.
ISRO will be following up Chanraayan 1 with Chandraayan 2 in 2012, when a lander will place a lunar rower on the surface for further scientific studies.
NASA and ESA will be given a free ride on board Chandraayan, and in return the organizations will be sharing the Data gathered from their Instruments.

Details of each of the payloads are available in the Chandraayan Official Website quoted earlier. So as a proud Indian i am already excited and figers crossed for a safe and successful Mission to Moon. Am really hopeful to follow this up with a post launch blog.

Why Singularity !?

2008-10-12T21:52:00.001+05:30

Singularity [sing-gyuh-lar-i-tee]

Why would one choose a title "Singularity" ? Thats a brilliant question. The answer to this takes its roots to my interest in Astronomy.. I am infact obsessed with this term. This term is primarily used when explaining Black holes and Origin of Unvierse. Singularity has several synonyms.., state, fact, quality of being singular, unusual, unique quality, peculiarity, mathematical representation of a black hole, etc., Singularity is the point at which the basics of physics fails. Due to infinite mass the gravity of the body (a collapsing star) goes crazy resulting in a Black Hole. Its termed Black cos even light can't escape its enoromous pull. Various theories propose that the origin of universe (around 15 billion light years ago) was result of a singular point losing its blance and blowing off in a BIG BANG. So with some backing of wats singularity, i presume you will be able to appreciate the power of this word. Ever since i heard of the word, "Singularity" has been very near to my heart.

* Image - Shows an artistic representation of a star being ripped appart by a black-hole and the bright accretion disc resulting from this ordeal. Singularity is the center of the bright disc which.

My First Blog....

2008-10-12T19:28:00.000+05:30

At last the decision to start off my blog has arrived.. I would like to use this space as my opportunity to share my opinions and information with you all. I wish to get ample support and encouragement from viewers so that i can keep continuing with my blogging in an effective and better way. I would dedicate this blog for my favorite topics like Photography, Music and Astronomy. I will be happy to share anything interesting and informative apart from my interests too.... So then.. lets start, meet you soon.