On touching the Moon
Last week a friend of mine showed me this pic he had taken with his new digital camera:
(courtesy Abhishek Bhat)
Within an hour I saw this pic taken by another friend of mine :
Aditya's moon
How coincidental that is, considering the fact that both of them live in diametrically opposite parts of the world is a completely different story, but that is not what I am going to talk about.
Last time I saw this kind of a picture of the moon, it was on my std II science book cover. That was about 16-17 years back. Wait, you want to tell me that today digital cameras can take photographs that you could take with telescopes two three decades back ? Have we advanced so much ??
The thought somewhat scared me, and I realized that the more education I am getting, the less I know about things that are not related to my 'field'. I cannot say with confidence though that I know everything that is there to know about my field. There are so many things about so many things that I have just forgotten or haven't kept track. I know you will say that it is not possible for a single person to know everything. But I certainly feel I knew a lot more when I was younger. Watching quiz shows on TV, I would be rather proud of myself that me, a little girl knows so much more than these wise people on TV. (I guess that is the inspiration behind the show "Are u smarter than a fifth grader").
Forget about history and geography, I have been 'delving' exclusively into science since the last 8 years. And I have no clue what is going on. The last vivid memory I have of a Mars mission is the Pathfinder mission (vivid memory means I remember the name of the mission) which was some 12 years ago. What happened after that ? I know that India sent up a moon mission last year, called Chandrayaan, but that's about it.
At this rate, I am certain my children would be knowing much much more than I do and if I try to have scientific discussions with them, I would just make a fool of myself. You know I can almost hear my five year olds talk stuff that I can not make any head or tail of. Gosh! I am already feeling insecure and inferior to my unborn (and un-conceived) children.
But jokes apart, the point is, there must be so much happening in areas other than my concentration. The bane of specialization is that, all of this is so water tight. What do Mathematicians do these days ? Are there any new theorems ? (I know some them model biological phenomena, in my program). What do physicists do ? Any new explanation for the origin of the universe ? (Ok I know that sounded so layman, but that is what I am). Few years back I had seen a BBC documentary on String Theory, that seems to try and explain everything from Big Bang to parallel universes. But apart from showing the same images and animations over and over again and making some scientist speak for and against the theory, it did not really increment my knowledge of the universe.
Long long back I had read that tiny little elegant expression in Resnik Halliday, connecting the physical constants that gave a faint little whiff of the unified field theory, whatever happened to that ? (I might be totally blabbering, please forgive my ignorance, and if anyone remembers that expression please tell me, I am having indigestion since I thought about it) Recently though I read an article in which some physicist claim to have formulated a new theory to makie an invisibility cloak. I was reading it during my lunch time, and I remember chuckling to myself, what a good way to waste research money. But now, I am kind of scared, if I don't look out for that one, my children might as well have one, and I would know nothing about it !! So all you guys out there, keep that in mind when you become parents.
And I can't even talk about Chemistry. I was at this Chemistry department poster session during recruitment of new grad students, and man, if there was 0.001th part of something I understood I was very happy.
Again, its kind of laymanish to talk about Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology as the only 'Sciences' but I am sure either everything else can be derivatized from them, or I just dont know they exist.
Ya, so in this mire of information, technology and research it is certainly difficult to keep track. You probably have to be more than Super human. But it is still possible, if scientific literature is made more accessible, and more layman-friendly. It is so heavily laden with jargons that, it becomes nearly impossible to grasp, for people who are not familiar with stuff. And it has to be like that, after all, you cannot give a background of about a 1000 years of developments in each article. Here is where I think newspapers can play a role. Scientific journalism is hardly seen these days, if there are any, they are outright ridiculous. The problem of course is that people are not interested to read about science. Either science has alienated itself from people, or people have found better (worse?) things worry about. The point is, there is really so much to know, but it is rather easy to get caught up with so little, like religion, race, caste, color, social status. We worry about all these so much more than we do about the physical real world around us. Maybe because religions, race, caste, color (and all sorts of pettyness*) are things we created, but we did not (or we feel we did not**) create the world.
I won't go into anymore philosophical/theological discussions on this. I will just end this note by saying that all of you should see these pictures and maybe take a picture of the moon yourself too, if you have that camera. It made me feel like touching the moon, gave me that faint little flicker of excitement, that I feel very often eludes me these days. I am sure it will make you feel so too.
PS:
* Many might disagree with or be offended by me calling religion petty, but that is totally my opinion. Sorry
** I think we did create a lot of this world as we know(and probably will destroy it too)
(courtesy Abhishek Bhat)Within an hour I saw this pic taken by another friend of mine :
Aditya's moon
How coincidental that is, considering the fact that both of them live in diametrically opposite parts of the world is a completely different story, but that is not what I am going to talk about.
Last time I saw this kind of a picture of the moon, it was on my std II science book cover. That was about 16-17 years back. Wait, you want to tell me that today digital cameras can take photographs that you could take with telescopes two three decades back ? Have we advanced so much ??
The thought somewhat scared me, and I realized that the more education I am getting, the less I know about things that are not related to my 'field'. I cannot say with confidence though that I know everything that is there to know about my field. There are so many things about so many things that I have just forgotten or haven't kept track. I know you will say that it is not possible for a single person to know everything. But I certainly feel I knew a lot more when I was younger. Watching quiz shows on TV, I would be rather proud of myself that me, a little girl knows so much more than these wise people on TV. (I guess that is the inspiration behind the show "Are u smarter than a fifth grader").
Forget about history and geography, I have been 'delving' exclusively into science since the last 8 years. And I have no clue what is going on. The last vivid memory I have of a Mars mission is the Pathfinder mission (vivid memory means I remember the name of the mission) which was some 12 years ago. What happened after that ? I know that India sent up a moon mission last year, called Chandrayaan, but that's about it.
At this rate, I am certain my children would be knowing much much more than I do and if I try to have scientific discussions with them, I would just make a fool of myself. You know I can almost hear my five year olds talk stuff that I can not make any head or tail of. Gosh! I am already feeling insecure and inferior to my unborn (and un-conceived) children.
But jokes apart, the point is, there must be so much happening in areas other than my concentration. The bane of specialization is that, all of this is so water tight. What do Mathematicians do these days ? Are there any new theorems ? (I know some them model biological phenomena, in my program). What do physicists do ? Any new explanation for the origin of the universe ? (Ok I know that sounded so layman, but that is what I am). Few years back I had seen a BBC documentary on String Theory, that seems to try and explain everything from Big Bang to parallel universes. But apart from showing the same images and animations over and over again and making some scientist speak for and against the theory, it did not really increment my knowledge of the universe.
Long long back I had read that tiny little elegant expression in Resnik Halliday, connecting the physical constants that gave a faint little whiff of the unified field theory, whatever happened to that ? (I might be totally blabbering, please forgive my ignorance, and if anyone remembers that expression please tell me, I am having indigestion since I thought about it) Recently though I read an article in which some physicist claim to have formulated a new theory to makie an invisibility cloak. I was reading it during my lunch time, and I remember chuckling to myself, what a good way to waste research money. But now, I am kind of scared, if I don't look out for that one, my children might as well have one, and I would know nothing about it !! So all you guys out there, keep that in mind when you become parents.
And I can't even talk about Chemistry. I was at this Chemistry department poster session during recruitment of new grad students, and man, if there was 0.001th part of something I understood I was very happy.
Again, its kind of laymanish to talk about Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology as the only 'Sciences' but I am sure either everything else can be derivatized from them, or I just dont know they exist.
Ya, so in this mire of information, technology and research it is certainly difficult to keep track. You probably have to be more than Super human. But it is still possible, if scientific literature is made more accessible, and more layman-friendly. It is so heavily laden with jargons that, it becomes nearly impossible to grasp, for people who are not familiar with stuff. And it has to be like that, after all, you cannot give a background of about a 1000 years of developments in each article. Here is where I think newspapers can play a role. Scientific journalism is hardly seen these days, if there are any, they are outright ridiculous. The problem of course is that people are not interested to read about science. Either science has alienated itself from people, or people have found better (worse?) things worry about. The point is, there is really so much to know, but it is rather easy to get caught up with so little, like religion, race, caste, color, social status. We worry about all these so much more than we do about the physical real world around us. Maybe because religions, race, caste, color (and all sorts of pettyness*) are things we created, but we did not (or we feel we did not**) create the world.
I won't go into anymore philosophical/theological discussions on this. I will just end this note by saying that all of you should see these pictures and maybe take a picture of the moon yourself too, if you have that camera. It made me feel like touching the moon, gave me that faint little flicker of excitement, that I feel very often eludes me these days. I am sure it will make you feel so too.
PS:
* Many might disagree with or be offended by me calling religion petty, but that is totally my opinion. Sorry
** I think we did create a lot of this world as we know(and probably will destroy it too)
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