AstrotalkUK

Not for profit website/blog on astronomy, space and my writing

Episode 65: ISRO – The early years

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URRoa
Prof. UR Rao

The Indian Space Research Organisation formally came in to being in 1972. By then, India had been developing its space program for almost a decade. The first launch to space from Indian soil was a two stage Nike-Apache rocket supplied by USA with a  sodium  payload from France. The rocket delivered a vertical trail of sodium vapour in space above the twilight sky of the south eastern coast of Kerala on 21st November 1963.

In this episode, professor UR Rao talks about his rich and diverse career. Professor Rao completed his Phd under Dr Vikram Sarabhai, then went on to work for NASA at MIT and in Texas exploring the Solar System with instruments on NASA’s Pioneer and Explorer spacecraft. He returned to India at Sarabhai’s request and after heading up the Physical Research Laboratory, in 1984 became the chairman of the Indian Space Research organisation. He served in that role until 1994.

During his 81 years, he has participated in many significant areas in space and science exploration.  Several key individuals associated with space and science research including CV Raman, Robert Millikan, Ed Stone, Arthur Clark,  James Van Allen , Abdus Salam and Vikram Sarabhai were individual he knew personally and some were colleagues.

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From Dying Stars to the Birth of Life – Book Review

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Title: From Dying Stars to the Birth of Life: The New Science of Astrobiology and the Search for Life in the Universe
Publisher : Nottingham University Press
Author: Jerry L Cranford
ISBN : 978-1-907284-79-3
Price: £24.99 [237 pages hardcover]

Subtitled as “The new science of astrobiology and the search for life in the universe”, this is an abundantly illustrated book that attempts to cover the immensity of the universe and the minuteness of a living cell. The author establishes at the outset that he is not an astronomer. A now retired professor with years of experience in psychology and “brain sciences”, he brings his expertise of academia and research to his childhood passion of astronomy.

Astrobiology is a relatively new and still developing interdisciplinary field that studies origin and evolution of life throughout the universe. This book attempts to deals with some of the most poignant questions of Astrobiology that have faced humanity from the beginning. Where did life come from? What does it mean to be alive? Are we alone in the universe?  So dramatic are the developments in science and technology over the last half century that for the first time in human history tangible experiments can now be performed that have the potential to answer them.

The first half of the book takes the reader from the Big Bang to the emergence of stars, galaxies, and eventually supernovae that generate the fundamental elements to the complex compounds necessary for the development of life.  I found chapters 3 and 4 that described the constituent parts of living cells and how they work particularly interesting.

The final chapter is more rewarding than the title “Some final thoughts from the author” may at first suggest. In it the author turns to the question of why, in the technologically rich 21st century, science has been unable to provide a definitive answer to Fermi’s paradox – given that the universe is old and big enough to have nurtured life elsewhere than just that on Earth, why is it that life on Earth is the only one for which evidence exists?

Written in a somewhat unusual style, it has a freshness that readers new to the field may find attractive. The author jumps about between using the first and third person, variously talking about himself as “I”, “we” and “the author”.  He also uses “the present author” or “the present book” — why not simply “the author” or “the book”?    Initially oddities like these and others are a distraction, but they are relatively easy to get used to.

In the preface the author acknowledges support from many, including Seth Shostak from the SETI institute. Additional input like that from other specialists e.g. cosmologists, evolutionary biologists or planetary astronomers would perhaps have introduced a greater authority to the final product.

Many of the illustrations are sourced from the public domain, a welcome trend which I hope will flourish. This book lacked the typical highly formal scientific approach that an astronomer would have taken.  The author’s highly personal approach and an abundance of genuine passion for this subject is his unique contribution in this book.  If you wondered what astrobiology is all about, this detailed and enthusiastic review from a dedicated amateur is a good starting point to the current state of the subject.

Episode 35: 22nd July 2010: Dr Edgar Mitchell – Apollo 14

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A man playing golf on the moon is one of the images permanently etched into the collective memory of humanity’s first exploration of the moon. The so called “golf player” was Alan Shepard the guy with him was Dr Edgar Mitchell whilst Stuart Roosa orbited the moon in the command module. Today, Ed Mitchell, two months away from his 80th birthday is the only remaining member of the Apollo 14 crew.

On a recent visit to Pontefract, organised once again by Ken Willoughby, he describes his personal journey to the moon. Amongst other things he highlights his javelin throw which, by a narrow margin, beat the golf ball, as a picture in his presentation illustrates. He spent nine hours on the surface of the moon during two EVAs on February 5th and 6th 1971. Apollo 14 was his only space flight and he left NASA in the following year.

Ed Mitchell is perhaps best known for his epiphany moment on the return journey to Earth when he experienced a unique spiritual sensation which has dominated his professional and personal life ever since. To help understand it, he left NASA and establish the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Over the last few years he has frequently spoken publicly about his interest in the paranormal, ESP and UFOs. He asserts that the Roswell incident was real, aliens have landed on the Earth and the US military is responsible for a cover-up.

It is strange that someone (a navy pilot and an Apollo astronaut) with a professional life dominated by leading edge science and technology can hold such an unscientific position. He appears oblivious to the contradiction in referring to himself as an astrophysicist and yet accepting Fred Hoyle’s Steady State explanation of cosmology, for which there is little evidence, over the Big Bang. I wonder how he explains Hubble’s law and the expansion of space, Cosmic microwave background radiation and the relative abundance of primordial elements.

I really should have asked him. I did not in part out of deference. Despite his age and unusual views, he remains a member of a unique group of individuals with a special contribution to human history. Who knows, he may well turn out to be right. In the meantime, the main road of science, directed by the sign posts of  observational evidence, is probably still the  best path to a more accurate understanding of the cosmos.

Dr Mitchell was kind enough to share his power point slides which I have incorporated into the hour long video presentation. Links to that presentation and a video version of this episode below.

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An increasingly familiar quote from someone else who made a huge contribution to how we should go about understanding the cosmos. Carl Sagan.

“I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” .

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Episode 35 – Video (10 minutes)

Dr Edgar Mitchell 2nd July 2010 from AstrotalkUK on Vimeo.

Episode 33: January 27th 2010 : Ptolemy’s Almagest

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If you had the task of gathering all of humanity’s knowledge of cosmology in one place, how would you do it? Answers to questions such as, How big is the Earth? At what date and time will the Moon be full again? What makes the Sun shine? How old is the Universe? Today a good place to start the project would be to scour the sources online. In about 150AD Claudius Ptolemaeus, better known as Ptolemy, a Greek national with Roman citizenship living in Egypt, attempted to do just that. He is best known for his encyclopaedic work written in ancient Greek “Syntaxis Mathematica”, perhaps better known as the Almagest from the Arabic Al magisti “the greatest”. He was an industrious author of many scientific and mathematical treaties but he also collected works going back hundreds of years.

The Almagest was the premier source of knowledge for describing the cosmos for almost two thousand years. Nothing of the original survives, only hand written copies of hand written copies.

Today’s episode is partially about one such copy, A seven hundred year old manuscript identified recently in the special collections of the Brotherton Library in the University of Leeds. Only parts of it is the Almagest. The manuscript was kept by Anthony Askew,   Joseph windham and then  lord Brotherton who donated it to the University of Leeds.

This episode is also about how information is transmitted through history. The value that successive individuals, societies and civilisations put on them. The inevitable errors in the mishmash of translations over hundreds of years from one language (Ancient Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Latin and English) to another or the periodic attempts by one scribe to diligently copy the work of another. In early 2009 Dr Regine May and Professor Malcolm Heath came across a 14th century manuscript catalogued as a work of Astrology and discovered it contained elements of Ptolemy’s Almagest. The manuscript in three volumes has yet to receive detailed  scholarly scrutiny.

In today’s episode there are 4 contributors.  Dr Regine May outlines how the almost accidental discovery of this manuscript came about and Dr Oliver Pickering, the keeper of the special collections describes how the library acquired the manuscript. A live recording of Professor Malcolm Heath, Dr Allan Chapman and Dr Oliver Pickering inspecting the manuscript in the Brotherton Library.

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Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who read and wrote about the ancient Greek culture. Perhaps it was the writings from the ancient Greek civilisation which lead him to conclude The future influences the present just as much as the past.

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