Astronomers From India

"Science popularization involves information about science explaining the things and their implications in detail, or any beliefs the reader might have and also tell them about the newer discoveries so as to enlarge the persons horizons."

"In western society, there is a problem similar to India that the income of a research scientist is less than that of a management person. But perhaps the facilities and the infrastructure being much advanced in the western universities, they are able to attract and retain the people. In our case this can happen but not to the extent we would like. A corrective measure to some extent has been taken by the establishment of the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs). They are doing for pure sciences what IIT’s do for applied sciences. Since they are attracting good talent it may happen that you will have more input in research in the next ten years."

"During another examination the question paper read, ‘do any six questions, all questions carry equal marks’. But I attempted more than six questions and wrote for the examiner, “examine any six questions, all questions carry equal marks."

"In the Cambridge mathematical tripods, they said, ’do six questions. Complete questions carry proportionately more marks than an equal number of fragments. Till you attempt half of the questions you won’t get full credit’. Upon declaration of result I found that I had scored 110 out of hundred in one paper, 140 in another and likewise in all the rest. I was confused. So my tutor explained to me that although they write ‘do six questions’, you can attempt as many as you want. They award you marks for whatever questions you answer correctly and the ranks are on basis of the score."

"Space-time in an expanding universe changes over time, so the full quantum description of a neutrino. in that type of universe is different in the past and the future. Neutrinos would behave in both expanding and unchanging "steady state" universes."

"Found that in a universe that is expanding after a big bang event, neutrinos would turn up at a detector before they were emitted. Only future-going neutrinos were possible in the Steady state cosmology while the ever-expanding big bang models gave neutrinos travelling into Steady State theory to the past."

"If you see firm evidence of neutrinos arriving at the detector before they are sent, that can't happen in a Steady steady state cosmology, so the [[w:Big Bang|big bang has to be right. Or equivalently, no faster-than-light neutrinos, no big bang."

"The Gran Sasso results could be seen as tentatively offering support for the big bang theory – if we could find a way to test that they are indeed travelling backwards in time."

"I have not been able to relate the idea to the 'faster than light' neutrinos since there are no causality checks to decide if they are travelling in the past."

"According to the big bang theory the universe is only 13 billion years old... We made some observations a year ago which we are still trying to explain but the simplest explanation seems to be that there stars that are 20 billion years old."

"When you claim that the universe started in this particular way you are making a very profound statement. If I make a statement saying that the sun started in a certain way, I would immediately be asked for proof that the sun started in that way. I will have to go around gathering evidence of w:Solar systems}Solar systems forming, stars forming. I will have to produce evidence saying that this is how new solar systems are being formed, so the sun must have been formed in the same manner. That is a reasonably credible assumption."

"Now with the big bang there is only one event that happened. So like the sun you can’t say that there are other big bangs going on that are what ours was like. The second problem is that at the big bang mathematics and physics break down. So there is no way of mathematically describing it. That is not a satisfactorily scientific approach, to ascribe something to speculations which you cannot justify using mathematics and physics."

"...mention is made of evidences in favour of the big bang, like the microwave background. It is a relic radiation supposed to have formed very early after the big bang. As the universe expanded it cooled down and its present temperature is at 2.7 K. The only fact which is measurable or has been measured is that there is a background of 2.7 K temperature. Saying that this is left over from the early universe is a speculation. It is a part of a theoretical structure I am supposed to have built which enables me to say that it is a relic of that early-on era. We have given a different explanation. Helium forms by fusion of hydrogen inside a star like the sun, leading to radiation. One can ask the following question: if all the helium that you find in the universe was formed in stars sometime or the other, how much radiation will be formed and what would its temperature be? The answer is 2.7 K. If you ask a big bang person why his relic radiation today has a temperature of 2.7 K he doesn’t know. This alternative explanation that I’m giving is able to do more than what the big bang does. So I don’t see any reason to say we have a very positive proof of the big bang happening."

"In our theory we have multiple “mini bangs” and these mini bangs are not mysterious like the big bang but they come because of the concentration of what we call negative energy fields. Whenever there are pockets of negative energy, they explode and produce a mini bang. We believe there’s a mini bang producing energy in the centre of quasars, which are very bright star like objects. Gamma ray bursts, which are the explosive creations of gamma rays, are another example of a mini bang. These are actually happening. These can be described by normal physics, but the big bang cannot. The big bang theory does not use any mathematical formulation so they can’t say why the bang occurred."

"Since the universe is infinitely old, you should see some very old stars. According to the big bang theory the universe is only 13 billion years old. No stars should be older than 13 billion years. In our cosmology, stars older than this should exist. So we are on the lookout for very old stars. We made some observations [a year ago] which we are still trying to explain but the simplest explanation seems to be that there stars that are 20 billion years old."

"Fred Hoyle and Wickramasinghe have argued that microorganims fill up the whole of space. One finds dust and biological molecules between stars. Why not microorganisms? They assumed in one example, E. coli filling up interstellar space and then they calculated how much the absorption of light at different wavelengths from the E. coli model would be. They showed that the extinction curve i.e. absorption curve, was precisely followed for some infra red source. So their argument was that these micro organisms must exist."

"Biologists conventionally think that it is a crazy idea. First they argued that micro organisms cannot last through the passage through UV, X rays, gamma rays. Now people have shown in laboratory experiments that bacteria learn to survive. So that argument doesn’t work. People are still not receptive. It is like the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. Biologists are going through the same phase."

"Science in India is getting better support now than in the past... Doing research has changed in the way that it is very grant oriented. The mentality that some accepted paradigm must be believed has become more rigid."

"Each scientific institute in my opinion should have a public outreach program...all the research you are doing is funded by the government. The government gets MONEY from the people, so you owe something to the people. You are shutting yourself in an ivory tower, saying that all these people outside the scientific community do not understand it. That is not the right attitude."

"It was around dusk when my companion and I noticed the position of sun closer to the west horizon, and the sun was going up."

"We all know that sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and earth spins on its axis from west to east. But on that day my jet plane was at 60 degree latitude near Greenland and the plane exceeded the speed of rotation of the earth on its axis so the sun was found moving from west towards east."

"The circumference of earth at equator is 40,000 km and by dividing it with 24 hours (earth completes its rotation in a day), it comes out to 1,667 km. This reverse phenomenon happened at 60 degrees latitude because their jet plane managed a speed of 833.5 km which is half of circumference of the earth."

"We have seven colours — violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (Roy G. Biv). Our atmosphere has a number of particles and when light falls on them, it gets scattered. With blue colour having less wavelength and more scattering qualities, it scatters and makes the sky blue. While red colour has opposite qualities than blue so traffic lights are of this colour."

"In the Vedic era, there was never a seven-days-a-week concept. Similarly, astrologers were also not known at the time. They came later, when Alexander came to India and brought several of them along with him. Indians carried forward astrology."

"The study he conducted with Dabholkar goes to explain why astrology is not a science through a simple experiment. They adopted an experiment conducted by Bernie Silverman, a graduate student of Michigan State University, USA. They collected horoscopes of 100 scholarly students and 100 students with learning difficulties."

"Our test asked a focused question and the astrologers could not point toward any ambiguity in interpretation. We told the astrologers that the real predictive success could be claimed only at the 70% level for their sample size. The test demonstrated the hollowness of the basic claim of astrology."

"His idea may not solve the mystery of faster-than-light neutrinos, and it may not even shed much light on it – the details of the analysis might be wrong, or be filled with old-fashioned ideas. But I thought it was fascinating that a 50-year-old New Scientist story touched on a topic that is all over the headlines today."

"He is a cosmologist of international repute and best known for his work on the conformal gravity theory, together with his mentor Fred Hoyle. He also set up the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune. More recently, he was involved in an effort to sample air from the atmosphere at heights of 41km for microorganisms. This study reported at least two strains of bacteria and one fungus that were cultured in the lab. If these findings hold up to further enquiry, they provide a new perspective on life on earth and its beginnings."

"The [Maharashtra Bhushan] award was in the waiting for a long time and he truly deserves it. Having been associated with him for over 40 years, I have seen him work calmly towards achieving all his targets and also encouraging all his colleagues to give work their very best."

"The globe of the Earth stands supportless in space... Just as the [spherical] bulb of a Kadamba flower is covered all around by blossoms, just so is the globe of the Earth surrounded by all creatures, terrestrial as well as aquatic."

"...spherical astronomy in Gola, where he applied plane trigonometry to spherical geometry by projecting points and lines on the surface of a sphere onto appropriate planes. Topics include prediction of solar and lunar eclipses and an explicit statement that the apparent westward motion of the stars is due to the spherical Earth’s rotation about its axis. He also correctly ascribed the luminosity of the Moon and planets to reflected sunlight."

"With Kala-kriya he turned to astronomy — in particular, treating planetary motion along the ecliptic. The topics include definitions of various units of time, eccentric and epicyclic models of planetary motion (see Hipparchus for earlier Greek models), planetary longitude corrections for different terrestrial locations, and a theory of “lords of the hours and days” (an astrological concept used for determining propitious times for action)."

"In Ganita, he names the first 10 decimal places and gives algorithms for obtaining square and cubic roots, utilizing the decimal number system. Then he treats geometric measurements — employing 62,832/20,000 (= 3.1416) for π—and develops properties of similar right-angled triangles and of two intersecting circles."

"Aryabhatiya...written in verse couplets ...contains astronomical tables and Aryabhata’s system of phonemic number notation, the work is characteristically divided into three sections: Ganita (“Mathematics”), Kala-kriya (“Time Calculations”), and Gola (“Sphere”)."

"...he flourished in Kusumapura—near Patalipurta (Patna), then the capital of the Gupta dynasty — where he composed at least two works, Aryabhatiya (c. 499) and the now lost Aryabhatasiddhanta. Aryabhatasiddhanta circulated mainly in the northwest of India and, through the Sāsānian dynasty (224–651) of Iran, had a profound influence on the development of Islamic astronomy. Its contents are preserved to some extent in the works of Varahamihira (flourished c. 550), Bhaskara I (flourished c. 629), Brahmagupta (598–c. 665), and others. It is one of the earliest astronomical works to assign the start of each day to midnight."

"In geometry his greatest achievement was an accurate value of π. His rule is stated as: dn^2+(2a-d)n=2s, which implies the approximation 3.1416 which is correct to the last decimal place."

"The development of Indian trigonometry, based on sine as against chord of the Greeks, a necessity for astronomical calculations with his own concise notation which expresses the full sine table in just one couplet for easy remembrance. One of the two methods suggested by him for the sine table is based on the property that the second order sine differences were proportional to sines themselves."

"The peculiar system of alphabetic numerals evolved by him with 33 consonants of the Sanskrit alphabet (Nagari script) denoted various numbers in conjunction with vowels which themselves did not represent any numerical value. For example khyughr (=khu+yu+ghr) is denoted by 2x100^2 +30x100^2+4x10^3 =4,300,000 which is the number of revolutions of the Sun in a yuga (epoch)"

"He was the father of the Indian epicyclic astronomy which resulted in the planetary theory that determines more accurately the true positions and distances of the planets (including the Sun and the Moon)...was also the first to produce celestial latitudes...proposed the scientific cause of eclipses as against the mythological demon Rahu [Moon's node]. His ideas resulted in the new school of Indian Astronomy – the Āryabhata School Āryapakșa based on the text of Āryabhatīțya."

"Use of better planetary parameters, the innovations in astronomical methods, and the concise style of exposition of Aryabhatiya makes it an excellent text book on Astronomy. As opposed to the geostationary theory, Aryahabata held the view that the earth rotates on its axis. His estimate of the period of the sidereal rotation of earth was 23 hours 56 min, and 4.1 s is close to the actual value."

"An Arabic translation of the Aryabhatiya entitled Zij-al-Arjabar (800 AD) is attributed to Ahwazi."

"The Aryabhatiya consists of four sections:1.Dasagitika (10+3 couplets in Giti meter); 2.Ganitapada (33 verses on mathematics); 3.Kala-kriyapada 25 verses on time-reckoning), and 4. Golapada (50 verses on spherical astronomy)"

"Aryabhatiya, an improved work, is product of mature intellect, which he wrote when he was 23 years old. Unlike in the Aryabhata siddhanta, the civil days are reckoned from one sunrise to the next, a practice which is still prevalent among the followers of Hindu calendar."

"His fame rests mainly on his Aryabhatiya, but from the writings of Varahamihira (Sixth century AD), Bhaskara I, and Brahmagupta (seventh century) it is clear that earlier he composed the Aryabhata Siddhantha (voluminous) is not extant. It is also called Ardharatrika Siddhanta, because in it the civil days were reckoned from one midnight to the next; 34 verses on astronomical instruments from this have been quoted by Ramakrishna Aradya."

"He was a celebrated astronomer and mathematician of the classical period of the Gupta Dynasty...He played an important role in shaping scientific astronomy in India. He is designated as Arayabhata I to differentiate him from Arya Bhata II who flourished much later (ca. AD 950-1100) and who wrote the Mahasiddhanta."

"He hailed from the Asmaka country, which comprised the present South Gujarat and North Maharashtra, through which the rivers Godavari and Narmada flowed. He flourished at Pataliputra (modern Patna) in the ancient Magadha country (now Bihar) where he composed his works, the 'Aryabhatiya and arya-siddhanta'."

"The second reason adduced, viz., that Aryabhata should have hailed from Kerala is fragile. Besides the Aryabhatan system being prevalent in this land,-“all” commentaries on Aryabhaflya have been produced by Kerala astronomers really does not stand scrutiny."

"He gives a clue to his date of birth in his Aryabhatiya... The date works out to the end of the Kali year 3600, corresponding to the Saka year 421, the date being 21 March 499 ...and that he composed the Aryabhatiya when he was 25 years old, i.e. in Saka 444 or AD 522. Page 4"

"He mentions his name at three places only as “Aryabhata”, towards the beginning and ending Verses of his work Aryabhatiya,"

"Of late, there has been a tendency to spell the name as “Aryabhatta” with the suffix “bhatta”. Two artificial satellites sent up into space by Indian scientists are given the names “Aryabhatta I” and “Aryabhatta II”. Some modern writers also make use of this spelling."