India readying a monster rocket capable of manned space flights

A key engine component of India's monster rocket GSLV Mk.III was recently sent to the launching pad for final integration with other components. This component called as ' L110 re-startable liquid stage' is actually the second stage rocket motor that uses 110 tonnes of liquid propellants. GSLV Mk. III is by far, India's most powerful launch rocket that is being readied for its maiden experimental launch. About this giant rocket, ISRO web site claims:

“ GSLV Mk III is conceived and designed to make ISRO fully self reliant in launching heavier communication satellites of INSAT-4 class, which weigh 4500 to 5000 kg. It would also enhance the capability of the country to be a competitive player in the multimillion dollar commercial launch market. The vehicle envisages multi-mission launch capability for GTO, LEO, Polar and intermediate circular orbits.

GSLV-Mk III is designed to be a three stage vehicle, with 42.4 m tall with a lift off weight of 630 tonnes. First stage comprises two identical S200 Large Solid Booster (LSB) with 200 tonne solid propellant, that are strapped on to the second stage, the L110 re-startable liquid stage. The third stage is the C25 LOX/LH2 cryo stage. The large payload fairing measures 5 m in diameter and can accommodate a payload volume of 100 cu m. ”

GSLV Mk. III would also make it possible for India to send human astronauts to space under its Human Space Flight (HSF) programme. With that aim in mind, the present experimental flight to take place in June or July 2014, is planned in such a way that it shall carry a crew capsule weighing 3.5 tonnes, without astronauts. The capsule will return to earth with the help of parachutes. Obviously, the crew capsule will carry no astronauts, as it was only a replica of the crew module that would be put into orbit in a real mission in future. We can therefore call the first experimental flight of GSLV Mk. III as a forerunner to India sending its astronauts to space.

GSLV-Mk III is the “muscular sibling” of GSLV-Mk II, that employes an indigenous cryogenic engine. This was recently launched successfully. GSLV-Mk III is capable of putting communication satellite weighing four tonnes into geo-synchronous transfer orbit or a 10-tonne satellite into low-earth orbit.

The second stage rocket motor for GSLV Mk.III known as L110 re-startable liquid stage, was fabricated at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, Mahendragiri, near Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu state (now being called as Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) Propulsion Complex after a recent administrative change) and was sent to launching site from here by road. The Mahendragiri centre has been instrumental in assembling and testing as many as 125 engines made by Isro so far. The indigenously developed cryogenic engine that had functioned well in recent launch was assembled, integrated and tested at this facility.

The first stage solid fuel boosters, each weighing more than 200 tonnes, are being readied near the launching site of Sriharikota on India's east coast, itself. The second stage would be married off with first stage boosters at the launch site itself. Since this is an an experimental mission, the rocket will only do a sub-orbital flight and reach an altitude of only less than 100 km. Its upper cryogenic stage will not fire as being a passive flight, instead of cryogenic propellants, the cryogenic stage would carry liquid nitrogen, which would be inert.

Realisation of GSLV Mk-III is very crucial and important for ISRO because success here would establish ISRO as a major player in this field capable of putting put heavier satellites into orbit.

31^st March 2014

Long forgotten musical tracks # 37

This week we have an instrumental piece named as "Wonderful Land," that stayed at #1 in the UK for more weeks than any other single during the whole of the 1960s. It was released as a single by the famous band “ The Shadows,” in 1962.

Enjoy

If you can not see the embedded video on your android devices, here is the link. http://youtu.be/S1dmBUBu9P4 You can also copy and paste the link in your You Tube App. If that also does not work, search You tube, The Shadows, Wonderful Land

16^th March 2014

Feeling thirsty? Eat some water!

A Plastic pouch or a bottle for storing liquids like drinking water or milk can simultaneously be considered as a boon as well as a bane. Few decades ago, when easy availability of bottled or pouched drinking water was not even remotely imaginable, getting pure water to drink that was impurity or germ free used to be a great source of worry, while travelling. In particular, when small children travelled, reasonable quantity of water needed to be carried along. These days in India, potable drinking water is now commonly sold in “PET” bottles, which is definitely a boon for everyone: for school going children, office goers as well as travellers.

In the African countries like Ghana, such drinking water is sold in plastic pouches. One can commonly see vendors sitting on roadsides with wicker baskets full of plastic pouches containing water. The thirsty travellers , purchase these pouches and quench their thirst. According to one estimate, in Ghana's capital Accara, 3 Million inhabitants manage to generate so much garbage from these plastic pouches that at least 80% of the total plastic garbage consists of these plastic pouches.

What happens to these bottles or pouches after the water is drank. In India, the bottle are just discarded, though it is possible recycle them. The result is that almost in all places and more so in tourism related places, we see discarded water bottles everywhere, in garbage dumps, sea beaches and street corners. In Ghana, the plastic pouches are invariably throw away on the road sides, creating an environmental disaster. With these discarded bottles or pouches lying around, it is difficult not to agree that use of plastic containers is actually a bane.

The problem of discarded plastic water containers, has become so serious that many countries are trying bring in legislation to ban their use. However the benefits offered by these plastic containers such as convenience and low packaging costs so much over weigh the environmental concerns, that their use is actually growing rapidly.

I came across two ideas on the net, that have the potential of offering a real alternative, that is cheap and is free of any environment concerns. The first of these has been developed mainly for use as a potable water containers by three London-based industrial design students, Rodrigo García González, s Pierre Paslier and Guillaume Couche. They have named their revolutionary water container as “Ooho.” It is commercially being offered by Fast Company.

It is actually a blob like water container made from brown algae and calcium chloride. The inventors say that The container holds water in a double membrane using "spherification," the technique of shaping liquids into spheres that was first developed in labs way back in 1946 and is presently used by some chefs in Spain. It works a little like an egg yolk, which can hold its shape using a thin membrane to contain the egg.

The process developed by these three students creates a gel from the basic constituents of the “Ooho.” The double membrane protects the inside hygienically, and makes it possible to put labels between the two layers without any adhesive. While the package is being formed, the water is frozen as ice, making it possible to create a bigger sphere and keeping the ingredients in the membrane and out of the water. The real beauty of “Ooho” comes from that facts that it is is easy and cheap to make (costs just Rs.1.20 (2 cents), strong, hygienic, biodegradable, and most important of all, it is edible. You can just eat it.

There are naturally some problems and challenges, if we want to start eating “Ooho's” to quench our thirst. How the package stays clean before you drink from it and potentially eat it. How to transport it or carry it? Other problem is that when we try to eat water, it is bound mess up things a little. Inventors say that they hope people will try making the packages at home. "Anyone can make them in their kitchen, modifying and innovating the recipe," says García. "It's not DIY but CIY--cook it yourself."

Another product that has the potential of replacing bottles and pouches has been developed by a company called as WikiFoods, Inc. It has developed a revolutionary, plastic-free food and beverage packaging technology that, they say is inspired by the way nature packages fruits and vegetables. It has developed a skin similar to skin of grapes, which tastes delicious and also offers protective coatings against water loss and contaminant entry, and potential carriers of effective and functional nutrition. Company calls these skins as “wikipearls.”

The WikiFood manufacturing technology protects the wrapped food or beverage without exposing it to unnatural materials or chemicals while also delivering benefits of health, convenience and a food experience like nothing else. At present company offers their own brand of foods like ice cream, cheese, frozen yogurt, fruits, vegetables, water, cocktails and soups, wrapped it these eatable skins. They are not offering their packaging technology to others as yet. But day may not be far off, when other manufacturers would start offering their product in similar eatable skins.

WikiFoods says: “The skin is a protective electrostatic gel formed by harnessing interactions between natural food particles, nutritive ions and a polysaccharide. Through this proprietary and patent-pending technology, the skin becomes more impermeable to water and oxygen than other edible skins available.” I do not as yet know whether these Wikipearls can be conveniently washed before they are eaten, just like bunch of grapes. If this is not possible, there might be some difficulty in storing them.

Both these products appear quite revolutionary to me and as there use becomes common and popular, I hope that much more development would take place offering us more convenient and cheaper water or milk containers , which we can simply eat.

29^th March 2014

MH 370 and Roaring Forties

The search for debris from the ill fated Malaysian airlines flight MH 370 to Beijing has now shifted to southern part of the Indian ocean after Inmarsat engineers suggested that the plane went down in that region. I have already explained in an earlier blogpost, how this conclusion was drawn, based on the series of automated hourly 'pings' coming from a terminal on the plane and principle of Doppler shift.

The search has therefore shifted to the areas of southern Indian ocean near western coast of Australia, indicated as possible crash site by Inmarsat engineers. Twelve aircraft from six nations; the U.S., Australia, China, South Korea, New Zealand and Japan, are now searching an area of ocean which is at least several hours flying time away from the nearest air base. In addition five ships were preparing to join the the search, in spite of the bad weather to the search area that lies around 2550 Km southwest of Australia.

The leads for the exact spots, where this search should be carried out have come in form of pictures from four separate satellites, from Australia, China and France. The images from satellite reveal more than 100 objects that could be debris from the Boeing 777. The latest images have come from France-based Airbus Defence & Space and show 122 potential objects, varying in size from one metre to 23 metres in length in a 400 sq km area of ocean.

This massive search for the missing plane, however is facing the biggest obstacle of extremely bad weather, which is so bad that the advanced military surveillance aircraft have had to swoop low to avoid fog and clouds. The optimum altitude for the most advanced search aircraft, like P-8A Poseidon, is 1,000 feet, but it has had to go to 300 feet in recent searches. A US navy pilot says that at 1000 ft. height, there is virtually no visibility. This bad weather at the spot to be searched is mainly because of the location, where the planes and ships have to look for. The search area falls in the southern hemisphere and is located around 44 d 40' S latitude, which means that it has been zeroed to one of the most desolate corners of our planet, an area of ocean, nearly two miles deep.

So what is special about this latitude that is causing so much trouble for the search aircraft and ships? This area, that lies between latitudes 40° and 50° south in the Southern Hemisphere, is known for prevailing winds that are known to blow here persistently from the west. This area of Indian ocean is swept by huge rolling swells and is buffeted by strong, gale force winds known as the “Roaring Forties,” throughout the year.

In the past, when sail ships were the order of the day, ships travelling from Europe to the East Indies or Australasia would sail down the west coast of Africa and round the Cape of Good Hope to use the Roaring Forties to speed their passage across the Indian Ocean. On the return leg, they continued eastwards only to cross the Pacific Ocean and under Cape Horn before sailing up the east coast of the Americas and then back to home. This was known as, "To run the easting down" and it meant the express passages achieved in the Roaring Forties. This was also known as the Clipper route.

The Roaring Forties is a continuous belt of ripping westerly winds around that region of the globe, that are aided by the Earth’s rotation. Pressures and temperatures change rapidly here, driving the winds frequently over 30-40 mph, and give rise to storms. The winds in this area also remain unobstructed because of absence of continents or mountains that might slow them down via friction. This means that the winds flowing over the relatively smooth Indian ocean surface also produce huge waves up to 30 or 40 feet high.

There is also another difficulty faced by the searching ships and aircraft. This region of sea is known to generate a network of spiraling eddies or locally circulating ocean currents on the ocean’s surface, that are likely to toss around the plane fragments or debris in random ways. This would make it even more difficult to physically locate the debris, even when the searching ship has reached the exact spot indicated by the satellite, because it simply might have been tossed around by the local eddys.

Readers can well appreciate the gravity of the logistical difficulties for the search by aircraft and ships even though numerous satellite images of possible debris have been made available. Weather experts predicted only a day or two of relatively calm weather before bad weather returns, making it almost impossible for the search to continue.

(Image visualizations (earth.nullschool.net) )

28^th March 2014

Nostalgia: The Buffalo Encounters

I came across a very interesting bit of news today. It appears that the residents of an inner-Sydney suburb in Australia were quite shocked and startled Yesterday morning, to see two water buffaloes racing down the city streets over a distance of about 2 Km. The pedestrians, disbelieving, what they were seeing, just stood still, while car drivers scurried to get out of the way.

Reuters reports that the two buffaloes looked agitated, having escaped from a city park, where an advertisement was being filmed, in which they were supposed to play a role. Firefighters rushed to the scene and finally rounded the animals using ladders and firefighting gear to corral the animals into a makeshift pen, while live tweeting the operation. The operation was over when at the end handlers from the film set took the animals away.

This news immediately connected my mind to some of my childhood memories, when such encounters with buffaloes used to be extremely common. The first incidence that came to my mind was, when my father was badly injured in an encounter with a band of buffaloes. My father had a 250 CC AJS make motorbike, on which he used go around the city. Once, when he was riding back to the house with my mother on the pillion seat, he saw a large herd of shining black buffaloes further on the road. They perhaps had just finished their bath in the river and were returning to their pen happily. Normally, water Buffaloes are very docile animals and just continue on their way silently. That day however, they were not in such happy state of mind and there was some sort commotion with the result that the herd suddenly changed gear from slow walk to a canter. My parents were absolutely dumbfounded and scared as these huge beasts ran ahead barely brushing past them. Mean while, as the confusion reigned supreme, one highly agitated buffalo hit the handlebar of the motorbike and my father and mother both fell down. Luckily the cow (or buffalo) boy arrived at the spot and managed to retrieve the situation with my father getting heavy bruises. Luckily my mother escaped unhurt.

Water Buffalo is always considered as almost the ultimate standard of laziness and stupidity for no plausible reason. Buffalo milk and products made from milk, form a significant portion of our daily diet. Yet the source from where we get this earthly elixir, or a water buffalo, is often scorned, slighted and often taunted. In Indian villages or even in towns, a herd of Buffalos quietly crossing a road or walking along it, is a very common sight. In the first few years, after I had started my business, I used to move around on my Lambretta scooter in the small by lanes of Pune city, where most of my suppliers were located. I can still remember one narrow patch of road, where I used to encounter regularly, herds of even 100 buffaloes. This patch of road was very near the river and the owners took their Buffaloes for a wash through here. Those days, there were many buffalo pens within the city itself and the pen owners very casually drove their herds on the streets, without bothering at all about the traffic. On one day, I encountered one such herd on the narrowest part of this street. I had no choice but to park my scooter on one side of the street as scores of black beasts, their freshly washed black skins shining in the late morning sun brushed past me. It must have taken that entire herd about 5 minutes to pass me. However for me, those harrowing 5 minutes had turned into hours. In the later years though, the local Government decided to shift all buffalo pens from the city to outside of the city limits and this most weird kind of street menace, disappeared from the Pune city streets forever.

My worst encounter with a buffalo happened long time ago. I had gone some place with a grandmother of mine. My grandma wanted to go to a temple and asked me to come along. As we were walking along, we saw one huge black beast suspiciously looking at us. My grandmother was scared and told me that we should quickly move to the side and keep quiet. I however did not agree and continued walking with much bravado. Withing next few seconds, this beast suddenly charged towards me and before I knew what was happening, I found myself lifted in air at least a couple of feet. My grandmother shouted and some bystanders ran for help. Luckily for me the beast just dropped me back on ground and disappeared. I was just plain lucky that day or otherwise I would have found myself lying on roadside with few bones broken.

Ever since that day, though I very much cherish my glass of milk, I studiously avoid any kind of contact with buffaloes of any type or kind. It is said that it would be hard to find another four legged creature, as dovish or pacifist as a buffalo. In south east Asia, water Buffaloes are used even for ploughing fields and for pulling carts. Yet, whatever people may say, most of us feel scared, when we come across a herd. I am no exception.

27^th March 2014

Tracking final hours of MH 370 with Doppler Shift

All of us have experienced that a train's whistle changes note or the pitch as it approaches near to us and then again when it speeds away from us. Way back, a physicist form Salzburg, Austria; Christian Doppler ( 1803-1853), was the first person to give physical explanation for this commonly observed phenomenon. At the age of 38, Doppler gave a lecture to the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences titled as, "Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des Himmels" (On the coloured light of the binary stars and some other stars of the heavens), In this work, Doppler explained his idea that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer, and he tried to use this concept for explaining the colour of binary stars. Lateron, Doppler's idea became known as Doppler Shift or Doppler effect. His hypothesis was tested for sound waves by Buys Ballot in 1845. He confirmed that the sound's pitch was higher than the emitted frequency when the sound source approached him, and lower than the emitted frequency when the sound source receded from him. Within 3 years or in 1848, Hippolyte Fizeau discovered independently, the same phenomenon on electromagnetic waves. This meant that the Doppler shift held good for all kinds of waves.

 Christian Doppler ( 1803-1853)

The applications, where Doppler shift has been put to use, are spread over a large range from simple day-to day uses like a Siren Alarm or most complex physical measurement like measuring temperature of a gas. Here are some more applications of this principle.

• Astronomy
• Radar
• Medical imaging and blood flow measurement
• Flow measurement
• Satellite communications
• Vibration measurement

Joining this long list of applications of Doppler shift, is a totally new method by which a Satellite company has tracked the last few hours of the flight path of Malaysian Airlines, ill fated flight to Beijing, MH 370.

Inmarsat plc is a British satellite telecommunications company, that offers global and mobile services. It provides telephone and data services to users worldwide, via portable or mobile terminals which communicate to ground stations through eleven geostationary telecommunications satellites. Inmarsat's network provides communications services to a range of governments, aid agencies, media outlets and businesses with a need to communicate in remote regions or where there is no reliable terrestrial network.

The most formidable obstacle in tracking down flight MH370, after it went off the radar screens at 01.30 AM on 8^th March, 2014 and when it was flying over Gulf of Thailand, was that the the main aircraft communications addressing and reporting system (which would usually transmit the plane's position) got switched off mysteriously. However whosoever or whatsoever switched off the communication systems on board, 9 minutes earlier or at 0.1.21 AM, perhaps was not well aware that there still was a communication terminal on board that gave a series of automated hourly 'pings' from the plane.

About 45 minutes later or at 2.15 AM, Malaysia's military radar detected flight MH370 in the Andaman Sea north of Indonesian island of Sumatra, though at that time it was not aware that the dot on the Radar screens was actually the missing MH 370. After this Radar appearance, no further trace of the aircraft was seen anywhere again on any Radar. Yet, one of Inmarsat’s satellites continued to pick up a series of automated hourly 'pings' coming from a terminal on the plane.

In a path breaking endeavour, Inmarstat's engineers were able to establish that MH370 continued to fly for at least five hours after the aircraft left Malaysian airspace by analysing the pings coming from the aircraft that were picked up by the satellite. They also predicted that it had flown along one of two 'corridors' – one arcing north and the other south. The plane was reportedly flying at a cruising height above 30,000 feet.

How did they do it? It is here, where the universally useful Doppler shift, comes into picture. Since the satellite moved in a known fixed orbit, the engineers were able to predict the position of the aircraft from the change in frequency observed due to the movement of the satellite in its orbit. Senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat, Chris McLaughlin, says: "We looked at the Doppler effect, which is the change in frequency due to the movement of a satellite in its orbit. What that then gave us was a predicted path for the northerly route and a predicted path the southerly route. That’s never been done before; our engineers came up with it as a unique contribution."

Not satisfied with this, Inmarsat's engineers carried out further analysis of the pings and created much more detailed Doppler effect models for both the northern and southern paths. After this, they compared the data received from MH 370 with other aircraft on similar routes and were able to establish a match between MH 370's predicted path and the readings from other planes on that route. Finally on 24^th March 2014, Inmersat engineers confirmed that MH 370 had indeed taken a southerly route.

Inmarsat's predictions however can not tell us, where the aircraft actually went down because of one serious limitation. No one knows at what speed, the aircraft was flying. This means that many questions such as whether aircraft fuel finally ran out? or whether it was in flames at that time? or whether planed plunged or glided? Will remain unanswered.

The search for the missing plane has to shift now to the southern Indian ocean, where weather conditions remain a big challenge. We do not as yet know for certain, whether research carried out by Inmarsat engineers is truly on right track till we find some debris floating on water. Finding out the black box from the aircraft would be the top most priority then, because that is the only thing, which can tell us what really happened in the final hours of MH 370, before it went down.

In any case it is impossible to console the relatives and kin of 247 unfortunate individuals, who were on board. Still, finding the black box, may give some kind of closure to their minds and it might help in solving some of the mysteries of MH 370 so that effective steps can be taken up in future, to avoid or minimise such tragedies.

26^th March 2014

Bamiyan Buddhas: a new controversy

Prior to 1998, single-most iconic symbol of rural and untouched Afghanistan, was a pair of giant Buddha statues that stood in their hillside niches near a beautiful rustic place, Bamiyan. An ancient traveller mentions that if heaven is to be ever found on Earth, it would be in Bamiyan only. The distant snow covered peaks from north and south, surrounding grayish-brownish mountain ranges with razor cut vertical cliffs from all sides and right in the middle a refreshing green river basin, which itself is at an height of 8000 feet, is how Bamiyan can be described. The river, the greenish-yellowish fields on both the banks, dotted with earthen forts make the landscape stunningly beautiful and picturesque and make it look as if a model has been laid out. It is said that whenever anyone entered the Bamiyan valley, his mind automatically felt detached from the problems of his world. This probably was the reason why Buddhist monks were attracted to Bamiyan in the first place.

No one precisely knows, when the Bamiyan Buddhas were carved out of the hillside. The archeologists now believe with the application of new carbon dating method that smaller image of the two was carved out in 507 CE and larger image was carved in 554 CE. In the year 632 CE, a learned Chinese monk made a journey by land from China to India in search of the original Buddhist scriptures and teachings. His name was Xuan Zang and he had believed that true Buddhist religion was being practiced only in India. He stayed at the Nalanda university, in present day Bihar state of India and had completed his learning of the true religion as per his belief. Every one knows this part of the history, yet very few understand that Xuan Zang's travelogues are perhaps our only guide books about the political, social and religious conditions of this region in those times. Xuan Zang had traveled to India by a route passing through present day Afghanistan. Being a Buddhist monk, he had considered that traveling through a particular region of present day Afghanistan was of paramount importance to him. This region was located to the south of the state of Bactria and part of the Hindukush mountain ranges and was known as Bamiyan. To visit Bamiyan and pay his respects to the Huge Buddha statues there, was of utmost importance to him. Xuen Zang has left detailed description about Bamiyan and the huge Buddha statues there in his travelogues.

As per Xuan Zang's description, there were three images of Buddha. Two standing images and a third image of sleeping Buddha at the base. This sleeping Buddha was 1000 feet long. This third image however finds no mention in subsequent history anywhere. The smaller standing image on left was 114 feet high and the taller image on right was 165 feet high. These images were not completely carved out of stone. Their shapes were roughly carved out and subsequently a cement formed by grinding earth, hay and horse's hair together with some binder was applied all over the rough images to give final shape to the image. A coat of paint was given over the cement coating layer. Afghanistan's extremely dry weather had ensured that this cement coating and the paint layer would have a long life that can survive for centuries. The larger Buddha image was painted in blood red colour, whereas the smaller image was painted in multicolours. Xuan Zang says that the smaller image was painted golden. The apparel worn by Buddha in these images had a distinct Greek touch. Experts have said that it was obviously seen that both images were influenced by the Gandhar, Greek and Persian sculpture. On both sides of the rock cut cave or shelter, in which the Buddha images were sculptured, there were many small cave like structures cut in the wall. Wall painting similar to Ajintha caves were painted on the walls of these caves. With this decoration, the Buddha images and the entire scene looked very majestic and grand.

The calm and quiet of the affluent Bamiyan was destroyed for the first time in 1272 when great conqueror Genghis Khan sent a small army led by his grandson to capture Bamiyan. In the ensuing battle, the grandson was hit by an arrow and died. After learning about this, Genghis Khan was so angry that he sent his army to Bamiyan with orders that no human or animal should survive the onslaught. The signs and remnants of the total ruin and destruction brought about, are still visble in form of some of the ruined forts. Luckily, Genghis Khan's soldiers were scared of touching the Buddha images and these were saved.

In the fifteenth century, then Amir of Afghanistan, Babur loved the beauty of Bamiyan and made efforts to bring back old glory to Bamiyan. However, since the silk route trade had diminished then, Bamiyan remained in the backgrounds. When Mughal king Aurangjeb came to power in Delhi, he tried to disfigure Bamiyan Buddhas. Luckily again his soldiers were not able to achieve much, except for slight disfigurement of the Buddha faces.

After these historic attempts to destroy the giant statues failed, Bamiyan Buddhas were left in relative peace till 1998, when another band of Muslim fanatics known as Taliban, captured power in Afghanistan and decided to demolish the Buddha statues. Taliban cadres were keen to destroy Bamiyan ever since 1998. Initially Taliban destroyed many small Buddha images carved in small caves on both sides of major Buddha images. The history lovers from all over world requested Afghanistan Taliban not to destroy Bamiyan Buddhas and make the world loose one of its historic monuments. This was of no avail. Finally in February 2001, Chief of Taliban in Afghanistan, Mulla Umar gave orders to destroy Bamyan Buddhas. In March 2001, Taliban planted powerful mines near the Buddha images and both the images were destroyed and big heaps of crushed stone and loose earth was all that remained of Bamiyan Buddhas.

In 2003, United nations declared Bamiyan as a world heritage site and efforts were started to save whatever remained at Bamiyan. This also means that any modifications to the face of the cliff would, in practice, have to be approved by UNESCO's Expert Working Group. A controversy has now arisen, whether to re build the giant statues or just maintain the caves or niches, in which giant statues once stood.

In 1970, before Taliban had destroyed the statues, Indian conservators had re-built the giant feet of the statues, to replace the missing originals. Last year, German conservators doing stabilisation work on the eastern niche, quietly began building pillars to support the stonework and protect visitors from potential collapse. However, what they had built looked looked much like the feet built earlier by Indians. When UNESCO discovered, what was happening, it immediately asked the Afghan government to order the work suspended.

Germans are however not convinced. German branch of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, was awarded the contract by UNESCO to do much of the conservation work on site. Michael Petzet, an archaeologist, is the president of this German organization. He says making no secret of his intent: "These feet, it was only the idea for the safety of the whole structure,and maybe in the future if the Afghan government wants to make a little bit more, they can build upon this."

Brendan Cassar, Chief of Cultural Heritage, is the UNESCO's culture specialist in Afghanistan. He disagrees with what Michael Petzet says. In support of his argument, Casser says:

"Our priority has been to stabilise iconic elements of the World Heritage site that are unstable. The point is, a very small percentage of the surface remains, some pieces are the size of a car and some a grain of sand." In addition, the type of sandstone from which the Buddhas were carved is highly unstable. He feels that one can not go to step 10 unless steps 1 to 9 are addressed, to make a good restoration. There is also a problem of availability of funds. Pledges from donors to fund even the basic work have fallen short by at least $700,000.

Afghanistan Government wants that at least the smaller statue of the two should be re-built. According to Abdul Ahad Abassi, head of monuments for the Afghan culture ministry, the Government has formally requested that the smaller Buddha be rebuilt, and UNESCO's World Heritage Committee is studying the issue. Abdullah Mahmoodi, of the Bamiyan Tourism Association says: “I say rebuild one of them to attract tourists, particularly from Buddhist countries like Japan and South Korea. One ( empty niche) should remain like that to remind people what the Taliban did. The best way to protect our monuments is to make them valuable again."

With opinions so passionately split, Bamiyan Buddhas are unlikely to re-emerge from the heaps of rubble.

25^th March 2014

Easter egg worth US$20million

Peter Carl Fabergé, legendary artist-jeweller and a goldsmith to the Russian Imperial Court, was born in 1846 in a family of goldsmiths. He was educated in St Petersburg and Dresden. After doing his apprenticeship with his goldsmith father, he went to Paris, where he received expert tuition from goldsmiths in France, Germany and England. Because of his superb talents, creative imagination and business instincts, he became the jeweller and goldsmith to the great Russian Imperial Court of Tsar Alexander III and then his son, Tsar Nicholas II and his Empress Alexandra. In those years, he created some of the most exquisite jewels and objets d'art. He soon acquired worldwide reputation, which attracted royalty, nobility, tycoons, industrialists and the artistic intelligentsia of Paris.

The Russian Revolution of 1917, not only brought a violent end to the Romanov dynasty but also brought full closure to the business house of Fabergé. The Bolsheviks seized the Fabergé workshops and their treasures, all production was closed down and Peter Carl Fabergé and his family fled from Russia. In spite of this, the noble Fabergé name, still retains its mystique, charisma and awe-inspiring romance. Many of the iconic Fabergé works of art were lost in the revolution and there whereabouts still remain a mystery.

Between 1885 and 1916, Peter Carl Fabergé created 50 pieces of objets d'art, that are considered as the artist-goldsmith’s greatest and most enduring achievements. These are popularly known as jewelled Easter eggs. According to Russian Orthodox Church, Easter was considered as the most important occasion every year. There was a centuries old tradition in Russia that at the time of Easter, hand coloured eggs were brought to the Church to be blessed and then presented to friends and family. This tradition led to a custom amongst Russia's noblemen, wherein they gave valuably bejewelled Easter eggs made from gold as presents. In 1885, Tsar Alexander III decided to give a jewelled Easter egg to his wife Empress Marie Fedorovna, possibly to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their betrothal and entrusted the job to Peter Carl Fabergé.

The house of Faberge, which claims the legacy to Peter Carl Fabergé today was re-established in 2009. Their web site describes these Easter eggs in following words and I quote:

“Each egg, an artistic tour de force, took a year or more to make, involving a team of highly skilled craftsmen, who worked in the greatest secrecy. Fabergé was given complete freedom in the design and execution, with the only prerequisite being that there had to be surprise within each creation.

Alexander III presented an egg each year to his wife the Empress Marie Fedorovna and the tradition was continued, from 1895, by his son Nicholas II who presented an egg annually to both his wife the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna and to his mother the Dowager Empress Marie Fedorovna. However, there were no presentations during 1904 and 1905 because of political unrest and the Russo-Japanese War.

The most expensive was the 1913 Winter Egg, which was invoiced at 24,600 roubles (then £2,460). Prior to the Great War, a room at Claridges was 10 shillings (50 pence) a night compared to approximately £380 today. Using this yardstick, the egg would have cost £1.87 million in today’s money.

The Winter Egg, designed by Alma Pihl, famed for her series of diamond snowflakes, is made of carved rock crystal as thin as glass. This is embellished with engraving, and ornamented with platinum and diamonds, to resemble frost. The egg rests on a rock-crystal base designed as a block of melting ice. Its surprise is a magnificent and platinum basket of exuberant wood anemones. The flowers are made from white quartz, nephrite, gold and demantoid garnets and they emerge from moss made of green gold. Its overall height is 14.2cm. It is set with 3,246 diamonds. The egg sold at Christie’s in New York in 2002 for US$9.6 million.”

I am sure that readers by now must have got a fair idea about the present market value of these Easter eggs. Apparently out of the 50 eggs Fabergé made for the Imperial family from 1885 through to 1916, only 42 have survived and no trace of the balance 8 was ever found.

Last week, news media broke a story of an unidentified scrap metal dealer from U.S. Midwest, who bought an egg shaped golden ornament for US$14000, while searching for scrap gold. Hoping to make a small profit by selling it to gold dealers, who bought scrap gold for melting, he was thoroughly disappointed when there were no takers as everyone felt that he had overestimated the value of the objet d'art, which had a watch on top and gems tucked inside the egg.

In desperation, the man searched the internet and realised that he may have in his hand the egg that Russian Tsar Alexander III had given to his wife, Maria Feodorovna, for Easter in 1887. After making discreet inquiries, the man was directed to London's Wartski antiques dealer, who after seeing a photograph of the ornament, instantly realised that it had to be original. Wartski acquired the egg for an unidentified private collector. The new owner remains unidentified but the price is believed to be around US$ 20 million.

The story appears like that of fiction and just unbelievable, but Wartski people say, it happens to be true.

24^th March 2014

Celebrating 'Holi' up above in the sky

If we ask any seasoned air traveller, what would he consider as the most boring moments of his/her entire air journey? I am sure that the answer would be the minutes, when mandatory air crew safety demonstration is done at the beginning of each and every flight. This demonstration, carried out at the instance of International Civil Aviation Organization, usually is accompanied with an announcement, which begins something like this: “Now we request your full attention as the flight attendants demonstrate the safety features of this aircraft.” The demonstration typically cover such aspects as bracing position, seat belts, emergency exits, oxygen masks, life belts etc. There is no doubt that all this information is of vital importance during an emergency, but a seasoned traveller normally has heard it so many times that he tends to simply neglect it, particularly on long haul flights with stops on way.

Cebu Pacific airlines is a budget airline serving around the Asia-Pacific region. In October 2010, they came out with a novel idea to promote their airline, prior to a planned stock exchange offering on 12 October, 2010. To catch the media limelight, they decided a novel approach for grabbing the passengers' attention for the oft-ignored safety demonstration, when pretty, young female air crew performed the air safety demonstrations, as part of a dance routine involving a Lady Gaga tune and then allowed the passengers to take videos of the dance. The air crew mixed in dance moves with instructions about how to don life jackets, use air masks and find the emergency exits. Obviously, Cebu Pacific's novel trick was not so much really to grab passenger's attention towards safety demonstration but instead had in mind it's $538 million capital raising exercise on Philippines' stock exchange, as part of plans to buy more planes to compete with Singapore's Tiger Airways and Malaysia's Air Asia.

The idea clicked, as the videos of the crew dancing became You Tube sensations with about 7 million hits. However, there was criticism from the feminists. The women's political party Gabriela in Philippines said that the routine was "a cheap promotional gimmick" and branded the airline "a purveyor of sexism and machismo". Responding to the criticism, airline came out with a second version that featured male crews also dancing to a 1980 tune “Men Without Hats.” This dance was quite appreciated by many female passengers at least.

India's budget airline 'SpiceJet' appears to have taken a leaf out of Cebu Pacific's book last week. On March 17^th 2014, when Indians celebrated the festival of colours known as 'Holi,' SpiceJet ran eight special flights with extra cabin crew on board, to do a 2.5-minute jig to celebrate Holi. The cabin crew on these flights performed a small dance sequence based on a song 'Balam Pichkari' from Bollywood chartbuster 'Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani,' starring Ranbir Kapoor-Deepika Padukone, at 35,000 feet up in the air. The airline allowed the passengers to take videos with their mobile phones. The videos were eventually uploaded on YouTube and other social media. In one video, a pilot is seen coming out of the cockpit and taking photographs of the celebrations at the front of the aisle. Passengers apparently did not mind the dance as they are seen in the video, cheering and clapping along.

While Spicejet management and the passengers appeared pleased with the promotion and the media attention, the airline received.  India's directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) was not amused at all. Smarting under recent downgrade of India's flight safety ranking by US, DGCA is in no mood to take things lightly and has promptly issued a show cause notice to Spicejet with a threat to ground the airline. DGCA says in it's notice using a video shot on the SG 876 Goa-Bangalore flight as evidence:

Cabin crew acts had drawn the attention of other crew on duty, thus reducing their preparedness/alertness. The frequent movement of the dancing crew may have affected the aircraft's centre of gravity during flight and created turbulence. The airline is charged with permitting use of cellphones in the air to take pictures, which is against present regulation. It is accused of creating an environment that might have instigated passengers to become unruly.... It is established that SpiceJet failed to observe various safety regulations to provide a safe flight.

Spicejet has tried to defend themselves by saying that the cockpit was manned at all times as per DGCA regulations that govern situations, when one pilot is outside, for instance to use the toilet. The dance that lasted just 2.5 minutes, was professionally choreographed and was a Holi delight for passengers. It had also put additional crew members — two airhostesses and an in-flight manager — on the flights for this jig.

Many Indian and foreign airlines have held magic shows, birthday celebrations and other festivities on board. Several airlines around the world celebrate special occasions such as Xmas on their flights. To show that Spicejet's idea was not new or untried before, I have highlighted above, similar attempts, by Cebu Pacific. None of such previous attempts have resulted with any untoward results. In case of Spicejet it was simply trying to give its flyers a memorable Holi experience, and the passengers weren't complaining. But it appears that Spicejet may have to pay the price for its exuberance.

21^st march 2014

When the time itself began!

The standard model of Physics stipulates that at the sub atomic level, there are as many as 12 particles. Out of these particles, some are known as Bosons (Named after famous Indian scientist Bose.) Other particles like Quarks exert forces on each other by exchanging these Bosons. The forces, which these particles exert on each other are of four types. The first force is the Electromagnetic force of attraction between oppositely charged particles like protons and electrons. The effects of this force are easily visible because it can act over larger distances. Working of many commonly used gadgets like electromagnets, electric motors is based on applications of this force. The next two of the basic four forces can act over a very small distance. Because of this reason, there effect is felt only inside an atom or at the most within a molecule. Out of these two, the force known as the 'strong nuclear force' is at least 25 times stronger than the Electromagnetic force.  Because of this inherent strength, this force can easily overcome the electromagnetic force within the nucleus of an atom and keeps the nucleus together. The third force is known as Weak Nuclear force and its action on hydrogen atoms in the interior of Sun is primarily responsible for creation of solar energy that sustains life on earth.

The fourth force is well known to us and we observe it every day as the Gravitational force. Isaac Newton. the great British scientist had given us the empirical formula for this force in as early as 1687.  Many everyday natural phenomena that we observe, like tides of the seas, creation of day and night due to rotation of earth and creation of four seasons because of earth's rotation around the Sun, are all due to this force. Falling down of a ball thrown up or even the leaves of a tree falling down, are all examples of this force. Yet this force is so feeble that Electromagnetic force is 10^42 times stronger than this force. Question arises as to how such a weak force controls our lives. The reason is simple. This force becomes appreciable only when a large body like earth or sun exert it on another body.

Though gravitational force was discovered long time ago, its exact nature has always remained unknown. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, speed of light is the ultimate speed that can be achieved by any particle with or without mass. Since all the forces that I have described above, are essentially created by exchange of Bosons; this exchange can be done only at or below the speed of light, which is a finite number. This means that the exchange of Bosons would require a finite interval of time. In case of a Gravitational force, the distances between two masses that exert this force on each other are enormously long (eg. between earth and Sun.) Exerting gravitational force therefore should theoretically take a long interval of time. In practice, we observe something that is contrary to this. Gravitational force is felt instantly.

To overcome this difficulty in explaining Gravitational force, Einstein proposed general theory of relativity that can explain gravity as the deformation of space by massive bodies like earth or sun. Einstein imagined the space time like a flimsy blanket, where embedded stars and planets cause it to curve rather than remain flat. When two massive objects move towards or away from each other, these curvatures caused in space time by these massive objects, do not remain stationary, but move like ripples on a water surface. Einstein called this changes in curvature as gravitational waves that propagate like on water in a lake or seismic waves in Earth’s crust.

It is now generally believed that our universe was caused by a big bang some 13.8 billion years ago. In a time span, less than the blink of an eye, the infant cosmos expanded exponentially, inflating in size by 100 trillion trillion times. In the year 1964, astronomers at Bell Labs in New Jersey were able to detect for the first time an all pervading but extremely weak, microwave radiation, known as cosmic microwave background, proving that the universe began in an immensely hot explosion radiating electromagnetic waves in visible or near visible wave bands. As the universe expanded and everything started moving away from each other speeding up faster and faster, there was a redshifting in the wavelength of this background radiation. In physics, redshift happens when light or other electromagnetic radiation from an object is increased in wavelength. Redshift means an increase in wavelength or a lower frequency. The visible light radiation from the big bang has now redshifted to microwave band after these 13.8 billion years.

Imagine a balloon being blown up. Even though every small part of the balloon expands at the same rate, small imperfections on the surface would cause that part of the balloon growing up at a slightly different rate or in other words create small local ripples on the surface. Similarly, though this theory of rapid cosmic inflation would make the entire cosmos remarkably uniform across vast expanses of space, many scientists argued that we should be able to observe tiny fluctuations in gravity that began as gravity ripples and when cosmos inflated, became gravitational waves. In other words, all these theories can be proved right if and if only, we are able to positively detect gravity waves in the background microwave radiation. Although the theory of cosmic inflation was believed by many, the failure to find the gravitational waves so far as predicted, caused many cosmologists to hold off their endorsement of this theory

Gravitational waves are feeble primordial undulations that propagate across the cosmos at the speed of light; no one was able to detect these waves so far. Since there is too much of human made electromagnetic wave interference around the earth, a spot near the south pole was chosen to set up an experiment known as BICEPII at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in a laboratory named as Dark Sector Lab. BICEPII is essentially a small aperture telescope with large number of detectors to increase mapping speed.

Last week, a research team led by co-leader Clem Pryke of the University of Minnesota first announced successful detection of the illusive gravity waves. Surprisingly, The measurements announced by the astronomers last week are nearly twice as large as cosmologists predicted for gravitational waves. Since the strength of the gravitational waves’ signal is tied to how powerfully the universe expanded during the brief era of inflation we might have to change our ideas about how powerful the process was.

Detection of Gravity waves within a year of the experimental proof for existence of Higgs Boson really proves that we are living in momentous and extra ordinary times. Higgs Boson discovery explained how mass was created in the first place in the primordial universe and now we have a signal that comes from when the time itself began.

20^th March 2014