India and the moon.

Back to the India and the moon. The country will be the fourth to place its flag on the moon, there have been 60 launches before Chandrayaan, so what is the euphoria about? The Indian space programme, Newsweek says, can't claim to be a space leader but is far ahead of other countries on one count: its use of space technologies to solve problems of everyday people on the ground. India's investment in Earth observation satellites is a tenth of what the West invests but it has managed to build and launch 46 satellites in 20 years.  more 

Chandrayaan blasts off at 6.20 am on Wenesday 22 October 2008

Scientific community celebrates successful launch of Chandrayaan-1

Bangalore (IANS): It is a time for jubilation for the scientific community of India and they are cherishing every moment of it with the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1 early Wednesday.

The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, India's first unmanned scientific mission to the moon, blasted off successfully towards destination moon from Sriharikota, about 80 km from Chennai.

With the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1, India now has joined an exclusive club of nations including the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan to have sent missions to moon.

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New Scientist

October 10, 2008 12:11 PM

$7.5 trillion for a 'transitional' fossil?

Palaeontologists: this could be your lucky day. Turkish creationist Adnan Oktarhas just offered ten trillion lira - a mouth-watering $7.5 trillion - to "anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution".  more 

U.S. video game magnate Richard Garriott starts space travel

U.S. space tourist blasts off in Russian rocket 

Enlarge Photo U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott gives a thumbs-up after donning his spacesuit at Baikonur cosmodrome...

Sun, Oct 12 02:37 PM

By Maria Golovnina

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - blasted off into space aboard a Russian rocket on Sunday watched by his father, a NASA astronaut who went into space at the height of the Cold War.

The Russian Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft lifted off in clear weather from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppes just after 1.00 p.m. (0700 GMT).

A video game developer from Texas, Garriott paid $35 million to fly into space alongside U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov.

Garriott's father, Owen, watched the blast off through binoculars on an observation platform and Garriott's girlfriend, Kelly Miller, burst into tears. more 

Shark in ‘virgin birth’

The Hindu Oct 11, 2008 

RICHMOND: Scientists have confirmed the second case of a “virgin birth” in a shark.

In a study reported on Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Centre contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Nebraska, zoo.

The aquarium sharks that reproduced without mates each carried only one pup, while some shark species can produce litters numbering in the dozen or more. The scientists cautioned that the rare asexual births should not be viewed as a solution to declining global shark populations.

“It is very unlikely that a small number of female survivors could build their numbers up very quickly by undergoing virgin birth,” Mr. Chapman said.

The medical mystery began 16 months ago after the death of the Atlantic blacktip shark named Tidbit at the Virginia Beach aquarium. No male blacktip sharks were present during her eight years at the aquarium. In May 2007, the 152-cm, 43-kg shark died of stress-related complications related to her unknown pregnancy after undergoing a yearly checkup. The 25.4-cm shark pup was found during a necropsy of Tidbit, surprising aquarium officials. They initially thought the embryonic pup was either a product of a virgin birth or a cross between the blacktip and a male of another shark species — which has never been documented, Chapman said. Tidbit’s pup was nearly full term, and likely would have been quickly eaten by “really big sand tiger sharks,” he said.  more 

Bebo message to Gliese 581c 20.5light years away

George W Bush chosen to illustrate evil Obama good

Telegraph.co.uk October 10, 2008

Messages from Earth sent to distant planet by Bebo

Messages from Earth – including a photo of George W Bush chosen to illustrate evil - have been sent to a distant planet that could be home to intelligent life.

 

By Matthew Moore 
Last Updated: 8:12PM BST 09 Oct 2008

The 501 notes, pictures and drawings were chosen by members of Bebo, the youth-orientated social networking site.

A digital time capsule was beamed in a high-powered radio wave in the direction of Gliese 581c, an "Earth-like" planet 20.5 light years away, from Ukraine's National Space Agency on Thursday morning.

The message flew past Mars within four minutes of being broadcast from the gigantic RT-70 radio telescope, but won't reach its destination until 2029.

It includes images of landmarks such as the London Eye and Edinburgh Castle, along with pictures of famous faces including Hillary Clinton and television presenters Richard and Judy.

There are also hundreds of notes written by Bebo members about their lives, ambitions and views of Earth. The messages included in the digital capsule were selected by an online vote.

One reads: "I wish I could be alive to see the day contact between the two worlds is made, I've been born way too early."

Others took a less serious approach, with many using their messages to pay tribute to their favourite celebrities. One message simply reads: "Best thing about Earth. George Sampson", in reference to the Britain's Got Talent winner.

The image of Mr Bush was chosen by Gillian Anderson, the X-Files star who was one of several celebrities involved in the project. She selected a picture of Barack Obama to illustrate goodness.

Pop band McFly chose to send a message praising singer Cheryl Cole's "perfect body".

Oli Madgett, who has been running the A Message From Earth project for Bebo, said he hoped that any aliens living on Gliese 581c would be impressed with the the notes

"We've spent years developing this, and I'm really pleased we've reached this stage," he said.

"Over half a million people have got involved and been really enthusiastic about uploading their messages onto Bebo, which has been great to see.

"I think it has really captured people's imaginations and made them think about our own planet Earth and humanity's impact upon it. I hope whoever's out there is impressed by what Earth has to offer."

Gliese 581c, which was discovered last year, has a radius that is 1.5 times the Earth's. Scientists have estimated that its average temperature is between 0 and 40 C, meaning that water would exist in a liquid state – one of the essential ingredients for life as we know it.  source

10ft (3m) high bronze statue for Stephen Hawking

BBC 

Page last updated at 16:02 GMT, Thursday, 9 October 2008 17:02 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Hawking to be depicted in statue

A scale model has been made of a planned sculpture Professor Stephen Hawking will be depicted in a 10ft (3m) high bronze statue of him in his wheelchair. The £250,000 sculpture has been commissioned by Professor Hawking's colleagues at Cambridge University and will be sited near his office. Sculptor Eve Shepherd said she hoped to show the "power of Professor Hawking's mind and the fragility of his body." Shepherd has made a scale model of the sculpture, but is unsure when the full size version will be finished. The 32-year-old artist from Brighton has been following Professor Hawking in an attempt to learn more about his personality. Professor Hawking's office is in the Cambridge University Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.  source

140 computer centres from 33 countries join Worldwide LHC Computing Grid

World's biggest computing grid set to process data from Large Hadron Collider

SATURDAY, 04 OCTOBER 2008 00:00 TDI BUREAU

Washington, Oct 4 - The world's largest computing grid is all set to tackle the biggest ever data challenge from the most powerful accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the LHC, the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid combines the power of more than 140 computer centres from 33 countries to analyse and manage more than 15 million gigabytes of LHC data every year.

A gigabyte has 1,024 megabytes of information and a single megabyte has one million bytes of information.  read more 

Haber-Bosch' discovery of ammonia from nitrogen - the most significant invention of the 20th Century,

ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2008) — As a result of the Haber-Bosch process for the synthesis of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen, billions of people have been fed, millions have died in armed conflict and a cascade of environmental changes has been set in motion, suggests a feature article by scientists from four of the world’s leading environmental research centres that will be published online on 28 September in Nature Geoscience.

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See also:

Earth & Climate

• Environmental Issues
• Air Pollution
• Geochemistry
• Sustainability
• Environmental Science
• Earth Science

Reference

• Fertilizer
• Nitrogen oxide
• Nitrogen
• Eutrophication

The feature appears 100 years after Fritz Haber filed his patent on the ‘synthesis of ammonia from its elements’ for which he was later awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Lead author, Jan Willem Erisman from the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), explains: “The increasing demand for food and biofuels makes efficient use of nitrogen fertilizer and more sustainable energy a challenge for many. Haber-Bosch is perhaps the most significant invention of the 20th Century, yet it has many side effects. Now we need a new invention that changes the world just as much, but without the environmental impact.” more

Big Bang and Higgs Boson

Man to unlock secrets of the universe

New Delhi, Fri, 03 Oct 2008Madhuri Vasnani

The Universe is a vast wide-open space that comprises smallest particle to the biggest galaxy. No one can judge how big the Universe is. Astronomers use a special instrument called a spectroscope to tell whether an object is moving away from Earth or toward Earth.

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Based on this, scientists came to know that the Universe is still growing outward in every direction.

Man due to profound curiousness is eager to know about the origin of the universe, i.e. from where he came from; beginning of the universe; and how it will come to an end. Therefore, man has been fascinated by the questions that he had in his mind and has tried his level best in order to search possible scientific answers to them.

According to scientists, a powerful explosion called the ‘Big Bang’ happened about 13.7 billion years ago, which set the Universe into a motion which is continuing till today. Scientists are unaware about the fact that whether this motion will stop, change way, or keep going forever.

The scientists of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research have been carrying out the ‘Big Bang’ Experiment by using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to unlock the secrets of the universe. This experiment is being carried out at the Swiss-French Border in a 27 KM tunnel which is 100 meters below ground level. The LHC is used to crash sub-atomic particles at the speed of light and create a condition which existed for a fraction of a second after the “Big Bang” which created the whole Universe 13.7 billion years ago. The collider is the most powerful tool hoping to uncover the secrets behind the laws of the universe, both on the tiny scale of quantum mechanics and the huge domain of galaxies and black holes.

Scientists have been indulged in this experiment since 14 years and the cost is around 2.6 billion Swiss Francs. This experiment started successfully on September 10, 2008 without doing any harm and is expected to shed light on mass, matter, basic foundation of life and other untold mysteries of Universe. More than 100 scientists from India are a part of this experiment. India has also exported important Software and Hardware used in conducting this experiment.

According to critics, this experiment is very dangerous for mankind and would create a Black Hole which would swallow the whole Earth inside-out. But leading scientists declared the experiments to be completely safe and secure.

After two weeks of experimentation, a major helium leak was found into the tunnel housing the colossal machine. In order to fix the collider the section of the tunnel will have to be warmed up and later cooled down again, which would take around two months. The laboratory closes down in the winter, so the experiment would resume after spring of 2009.

Since the machine will be shut down for repairs, so the researchers, who have been waiting 14 years for the world’s largest particle collider, will have to see any results in the Big Bang experiment for few months.

When this is complete, scientists will be provided with data to answer important questions about the nature of the universe. And one of the answers they are keen to know is: Does the Higgs boson exist?

The Higgs boson is a particle responsible for the transition between energy and matter. It has even been christened with a divine nickname – the God particle. If the experiments at the LHC prove to be a successful one, then it would be the first experiment ever and scientists would find possible answers that how the energy from the Big Bang formed matter, and us.  read 

Francois Englert and Robert Brout

Interview with Professors Francois Englert and Robert Brout .

Large Hadron Collider experiment

SCIENCE

Heart of the matter

R. RAMACHANDRAN, Frontline, Volume 25 - Issue 20 :: Sep. 27-Oct. 10, 2008

The Large Hadron Collider experiment ushers in a new era of scientific probe into the mystery of the universe.

COURTESY: CERN 

One of the first images from the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of the six experiments of the LHC, shows the debris of particles picked up in the detector’s calorimeters and muon chambers after the first beam on September 10 was steered into the collimator (tungsten block).

SEPTEMBER 10 is a red-letter day for physicists around the world. Though a couple of years overdue in coming, the stage was set on that date for the beginning of the largest and costliest ever international scientific experiment, which was 14 years in the making, involving nearly 9,000 physicists from 60 countries and about $8 billion at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.

The first particle beams were injected into what will be the most powerful particle accelerator and steered around the full 26.659 km circumference of this ringed underground machine in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions. Called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the accelerator lies at an average depth of 100 metre in a 3.7 m diameter tunnel straddling the Swiss-French border near the Alps. To bring down the cost considerably, the LHC is reusing the tunnel that housed the previous high-energy accelerator, the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider. The LEP was shut down in 2000.  more 


Extraordinary Machine 



Indian contribution