My Science School

Dr Vikram Sarabhai is widely known as the ‘father of the Indian space programme’. He helped establish the Indian space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and led it as chairman. 

Son of Ambalal Sarabhai, he came from the famous Sarabhai family of India who were major industrialists committed to the Indian independence movement. Vikram Sarabhai married the classical dancer Mrinalini in 1942. The couple had two children. His daughter Mallika gained prominence as an actress and activist, and his son Kartikeya too became an active person in science. During his lifetime, he practiced Jainism. He attended Gujarat College, Ahmedabad, but later moved to the University of Cambridge, England, where he took his tripos in natural sciences in 1940. In 1945 he returned to Cambridge to pursue a doctorate and wrote a thesis, “Cosmic Ray Investigations in Tropical Latitudes,” in 1947.

He led the Sarabhai family-owned business conglomerate. His interests varied from science to sports to statistics. He set up the Operations Research Group (ORG), the first market research organization in the country. Most notable among the many institutes he helped set up are the Nehru Foundation for Development in Ahmedabad, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), the Ahmedabad Textile Industry's Research Association (ATIRA) and the (CEPT). Along with his wife Mrinalini Sarabhai, he founded the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts. Other projects and institutions initiated or established by him include the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) in Kalpakkam, Variable Energy Cyclotron Project in Calcutta, Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) in Hyderabad and Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) in Jaduguda, Jharkhand.

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It was in November 1963 that India’s first rocket launch took off from a nondescript fishing village called Thumba on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. The village soon came to be known as the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launch Station. The rocket was so small and light that it was transported on a bicycle to the Thumba launch station.

The first rockets were two-stage rockets imported from Russia (M-100) and France (Centaure). While the M-100 could carry a payload of 70 kg to an altitude of 85 km, the Centaure was capable of reaching 150 km with a payload of approximately 30 kg.

ISRO started launching indigenously made sounding rockets from 1965 and experience gained was of immense value in the mastering of solid propellant technology. In 1975, all sounding rocket activities were consolidated under the Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) Programme. RH-75, with a diameter of 75mm was the first truly Indian sounding rocket, which was followed by RH-100 and RH-125 rockets.  The sounding rocket programme was the bedrock on which the edifice of launch vehicle technology in ISRO could be built. It is possible to conduct coordinated campaigns by simultaneously launching sounding rockets from different locations. It is also possible to launch several sounding rockets in a single day.

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One of the disputable things that we learnt from films is our idea of the quicksand. Does it really suck us to death? Quicksand is nothing but sand saturated with water, where the friction between sand particles is reduced. It is a mushy mixture of sand and saltwater. When you step into one, it does not immediately suck you in, rather it allows you to float, as quicksand is denser than water. It is your movement arising out of panic that digs you deeper into the pit. Because the human body is not dense enough to go all the way under, you would descend up to your waist, but no further.

At rest, quicksand thickens with time, hence your legs may get strongly held by it. But it remains very sensitive to small variations in stress. If you learn how to turn it around to your advantage, you can escape its clutches.

How to escape?

Asking your friend to pull you out doesn't work. The best way is to wriggle your legs around. This creates space between the legs and the quicksand through which water can flow down to loosen up the sand. You can get out safely using this technique. But it requires a lot of patience and considerable amount of force.

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A massive explosion and a towering inferno above the Caspian Sea caught international attention recently. Initially, it was thought to be an accident in one of Azerbaijan's multiple offshore oil and gas fields in the area, but investigations revealed that the blast was caused by an underwater mud volcano.

The blast took place about 10km from the Umid gas field, 75 km off the coast of the capital, Baku. The location of the fire roughly points to a mud volcano called Makarov Bank, which exploded in 1958, releasing a column of flame 500-600 metres high and 150 metres wide.

What are mud volcanoes?

Mud volcanoes are a rare type of volcano that erupt in the form of a superheated slurry of mud and water, unlike igneous volcanoes which produce lava. They are not necessarily driven by magmatic activity. Several geological processes may cause the formation of mud volcanoes. Some mud volcanoes are created hot-spring by hot- activity where large amounts of gas react with water and surrounding rocks to form boiling mud Steam from heated water deep underground forces mud through an opening or fissure in the ground Some mud volcanoes occur only in oil-field regions Under stress, methane and related hydrocarbon gases mixed with mud force their way upward and burst through to the surface, spewing mud in a cone-like shape. This mud is often hot and may have an accompanying steam cloud. The gas that builds up inside can be ignited by sparks created by fast-moving rocks and boulders beneath the surface during eruptions. This is believed to have caused the recent inferno in the Caspian Sea.

Mud volcanoes exist around the world, from Indonesia to Italy But some of the greatest concentrations of mud volcanoes on Earth exist near Azerbaijan Azerbaijan has around 400 of the roughly 1,000 known mud volcanoes on Earth, which, along with its abundance of oil and gas reserves has earned the country the nickname Land of Fire Most mud volcanoes are situated on small islands created by their eruptions, but some are hidden below the surface and form temporary peaks above the water when active The mud volcanoes in Azerbaijan are some of the biggest and most violent in the world The size of small mud volcanoes can be as high as four feet. Lusi in Indonesia is the largest mud volcano at 2300 feet El Totumo in Colombia at 50 feet high is believed to spew out mud with medicinal properties. Many people visit the volcano to lie on its mud.

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Recently, Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, announced that it had chosen 82-year-old Walky Funk, a female aerospace pioneer, to rocket into space on its first passenger flight on July 20. She will not only be one of the passengers on board this crewed flight, but also the oldest to travel to space. Bezos, his brother Mark, and the winner of a charity auction (who has bid $28 million for a seat on this New Shepard flight) will be her co-passengers.

BBefore this, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson had scheduled a short up-and-down flight along with three others to suborbital space on July 11.

But why are these space flights talked about a lot?

Space tourism

Space tourism is nothing but people travelling to space for fun or recreational purposes. Astronauts have been travelling to space since the 1960s to perform planets. If you are wondering whether Funk and team would be the first space tourists, the answer is “no”. American multi-millionaire Dennis Tito was the first space tourist. He is said to have paid $20 million for hitching a ride alongside trained cosmonauts on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station in the year 2001. What is distinct about the Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights is this is the first time private companies are attempting to send private individuals to space. The objective is to make space travel accessible to civilians. But whether space tourism will be within our reach, considering the exorbitant price involved for the experience, is debatable. However, these are just early days.

Besides Bezos’ Blue Origin and Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is keen on ushering in a new era of private commercial space travel, wherein people will be transported on short, suborbital flights to the edge of space.

Suborbital flights

Suborbital flights ascend about 100 km above the Earth to let travellers experience a few minutes in space. They also enable travellers to experience weightlessness and to catch a glimpse of the planet's curvature through viewing windows before returning to Earth. A suborbital flight does not have the power or speed to achieve orbit. SpaceX, which already transports astronauts to actual orbit and to the International Space Station, plans an all-civilian mission to space later this year.

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German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein is someone who needs no introduction. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein has made several other important contributions as well.

Einstein had predicted the existence of gravitational waves - ripples in space-time caused by some of the most energetic processes in the universe - in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. It was nearly a 100 years later that gravitational waves were detected from the collision of two black holes for the first time in 2015. The first detection of a neutron star-neutron star collision took place in 2017. And now, finally, black hole-neutron star collisions have been observed.

Observed in January 2020

While the paper announcing the discovery of collisions between black holes and neutron stars beyond doubt was published in June 2021, the two collisions that were observed actually took place separately in January 2020.

The first one observed, on January 5, involved a black hole nine times massive when compared with our sun and a neutron star that is almost twice as massive as our sun. The second one on January 15 involved a black hole 5.7 times as massive as our sun and a neutron star that was 1.5 times massive when compared to our sun.

Types of merger

Before these observations, scientists weren't sure if the supermassive black holes will simply swallow the lighter neutron stars in a single bite or if the forces of the black hole would shred the neutron star before taking it in. The latter case would be accompanied by glowing debris, which can be picked up by powerful telescopes at our disposal even though they are taking place at astronomically vast distances.

Physicists were able to confirm that no glows or electromagnetic signals were detected in either of these collisions, meaning that the black holes swallowed the neutron stars in a single bite in these two instances at least. Scientists, however, haven't ruled out the possibility of future collisions producing glows or electromagnetic signals owing to the many factors that are at play.

The discovery of these collisions opens up a universe of possibilities for the scientists. Apart from getting us on the right path towards understanding how these binaries (two star systems) are formed, they could also tell us what proportion of the universe's heavier elements (gold, platinum, and others) are produced by such collisions.

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The inner edge of the Kuiper Belt begins at the orbit of Neptune, at about 30 AU from the Sun. (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from Earth to the Sun.)

The inner, main region of the Kuiper belt ends around 50 AU from the Sun. Overlapping the outer edge of the main part of the Kuiper Belt is a second region called the scattered disk, which continues outward to nearly 1,000 AU, with some bodies on orbits that go even farther beyond.

Just outside of Neptune’s orbit is a ring of icy bodies. We call it the Kuiper Belt.

This is where you’ll find dwarf planet Pluto. It’s the most famous of the objects floating in the Kuiper Belt, which are also called Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs.

There are bits of rock and ice, comets and dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. Besides Pluto and a bunch of comets, other interesting Kuiper Belt Objects are Eris, Makemake and Haumea. They are dwarf planets like Pluto.

Credit : Solar System Exploration

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The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991–2000), the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope (2003–2020).

Hubble is the only telescope designed to be maintained in space by astronauts. Five Space Shuttle missions have repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope, including all five of the main instruments. The fifth mission was initially canceled on safety grounds following the Columbia disaster (2003), but NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin approved the fifth servicing mission which was completed in 2009. The telescope completed 30 years in operation in April 2020 and could last until 2030–2040. One successor to the Hubble telescope is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which is tentatively scheduled to be launched in late 2021.

Hubble's launch and deployment in April 1990 marked the most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo's telescope. Thanks to five servicing missions and more than 25 years of operation, our view of the universe and our place within it has never been the same.

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In 1609, using this early version of the telescope, Galileo became the first person to record observations of the sky made with the help of a telescope. He soon made his first astronomical discovery.

Galileo was the first to point a telescope skyward. He was able to make out mountains and craters on the moon, as well as a ribbon of diffuse light arching across the sky — the Milky Way. He also discovered the rings of Saturn, sunspots and four of Jupiter's moons.

Galileo wrote a book "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican" and dedicated it to the Pope Urban VIII. But his ideas were considered heretical, and Galileo was called to appear before the inquisition in Rome in 1633. He struck a plea bargain and was sentenced to house arrest, where he continued to work and write until his death in 1642.

Elsewhere in Europe, scientists began improving the telescope. Johannes Kepler studied the optics and designed a telescope with two convex lenses, which made the images appear upside down. Working from Kepler's writings, Isaac Newton reasoned it was better to make a telescope out of mirrors rather than lenses and built a reflecting telescope in 1668. Centuries later the reflecting telescope would dominate astronomy.

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Planetary conjunction is a celestial event wherein two planets appear to be closer to each other but, they are far away in space.

Mars and Venus will be closest to each other on July 13, 2021. Such a celestial event is known as planetary conjunction wherein two planets appear to be closer to each other but, they are far away in space.

From Earth, both Mars and Venus will appear to be 0.5 degrees apart. Both the planets could be spotted with a telescope or binoculars in the same frame.

The last time, the planetary conjunction between Mars and Venus happened on August 24, 2019, however, the planets were not visible with the naked eyes. The planetary conjunction between both planets that occurred on October 5, 2017, was the last visible event. The next planetary conjunction between Mars and Venus is expected to occur on February 22, 2024, and a conjunction as close as the one happening on July 12, 2021, will occur on May 11, 2034.

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Educated at a coeducational, state-funded secondary school in the small town of Beccles, Suffolk, Dorothy fought to be allowed to study science along with the boys. She succeeded and was accepted in 1928 to read for a degree in chemistry at Somerville College, University of Oxford. As an undergraduate, she was one of the first to study the structure of an organic compound by using X-ray crystallography.

Crowfoot moved to the University of Cambridge in 1932 to carry out doctoral research with British physicist John Desmond Bernal, who was to be a lifelong influence. In his laboratory, she extended work that he had begun on biological molecules, including sterols (the subject of her thesis), and helped him to make the first X-ray diffraction studies of pepsin, a crystalline protein. She was also highly receptive to his strongly pro-Soviet views and belief in the social function of science. 

In April 1953, together with Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton, Hodgkin was one of the first people to travel from Oxford to Cambridge to see the model of the double helix structure of DNA, constructed by Francis Crick and James Watson, which was based on data and technique acquired by Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. According to the late Dr Beryl Oughton (married name, Rimmer), they drove to Cambridge in two cars after Hodgkin announced that they were off to see the model of the structure of DNA.

Hodgkin became a Reader at Oxford in 1957 and she was given a fully modern laboratory the following year. In 1960, Hodgkin was appointed the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, a position she held until 1970. This provided her salary, research expenses and research assistance to continue her work at the University of Oxford. She was a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford from 1977 to 1983.

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Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin's life as a researcher began when she received a chemistry book containing experiments with crystals as a child. After studying at Oxford University and despite graduating with good grades, as a woman, she had difficulty finding work. Finally, J.D. Bernal of Cambridge University, a pioneer of modern molecular biology, gave her a chance. After receiving her PhD from Cambridge University, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin returned to Oxford University in 1934 where she remained for the rest of her career, achieving a host of brilliant discoveries in the field of molecular biology.

When X-rays pass through a crystalline structure, the patterns formed can be captured as photographic images, which are then used to determine the crystal's structure. During the 1930s, this method was used to map increasingly large and complex molecules. A mass of X-ray diffraction images, extensive calculations, and astute analysis helped Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin to successfully determine the structure of penicillin in 1946 and, in 1956, also the structure of vitamin B12, which has the most complex structure of all vitamins.

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Centaurs are icy planetesimals located between Jupiter and Neptune. They cross the orbits of one or more of the giant planets in their journey around the Sun, and interactions with these outer planets cause the orbits of Centaurs to be inherently unstable.

No centaur has been photographed up close, although there is evidence that Saturn's moon Phoebe, imaged by the Cassini probe in 2004, may be a captured centaur that originated in the Kuiper belt. In addition, the Hubble Space Telescope has gleaned some information about the surface features of 8405 Asbolus.

Of the objects known to occupy centaur-like orbits, approximately 30 have been found to display comet-like dust comas, with three, 2060 Chiron, 60558 Echeclus, and 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, having detectable levels of volatile production in orbits entirely beyond Jupiter.Chiron and Echeclus are therefore classified as both asteroids and comets, while Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 has always held a comet designation. Other centaurs, such as 52872 Okyrhoe, are suspected of having shown comas. Any centaur that is perturbed close enough to the Sun is expected to become a comet.

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In astronomy, a trojan is a small celestial body (mostly asteroids) that shares the orbit of a larger one, remaining in a stable orbit approximately 60° ahead or behind the main body near one of its Lagrangian points L4 and L5. Trojans can share the orbits of planets or of large moons.

In the Solar System, most known trojans share the orbit of Jupiter. They are divided into the Greek camp at L4 (ahead of Jupiter) and the Trojan camp at L5 (trailing Jupiter). More than a million Jupiter trojans larger than one kilometer are thought to exist, of which more than 7,000 are currently catalogued. In other planetary orbits only nine Mars trojans, 28 Neptune trojans, two Uranus trojans, and a single Earth trojan, have been found to date. A temporary Venus trojan is also known. Numerical orbital dynamics stability simulations indicate that Saturn and Uranus probably do not have any primordial trojans.

The same arrangement can appear when the primary object is a planet and the secondary is one of its moons, whereby much smaller trojan moons can share its orbit. All known trojan moons are part of the Saturn system. Telesto and Calypso are trojans of Tethys, and Helene and Polydeuces of Dione.

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The Voyager Golden Records are two phonograph records that were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. The records are a sort of time capsule.

The Voyager 1 probe is currently the farthest human-made object from Earth. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have reached interstellar space, the region between stars where the galactic plasma is present. Like their predecessors Pioneer 10 and 11, which featured a simple plaque, both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched by NASA with a message aboard—a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate to extraterrestrials a story of the world of humans on Earth.

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, passed the orbit of Pluto in 1990, and left the Solar System (in the sense of passing the termination shock) in November 2004. It is now in the Kuiper belt. In about 40,000 years, it and Voyager 2 will each come to within about 1.8 light-years of two separate stars: Voyager 1 will have approached star Gliese 445, located in the constellation Camelopardalis, and Voyager 2 will have approached star Ross 248, located in the constellation of Andromeda.

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