Category: Quest

Browse through the almanac…

Nov 5, 2007

China’s first lunar satellite Chang’e 1 goes into orbit around the Moon. The unmanned lunar-orbiting spacecraft was part of the first phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. The spacecraft was named after the Chinese Moon goddess, Chang’e.

Nov 6, 1944

Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

November 7, 1492

Ensisheim Meteorite – the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim in France. November 8, 1895 While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray.

November 9, 1921

Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the photoelectric effect. November 9, 1967 NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

November 11, 1930

Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator. Nov 13, 1971 The American space probe Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.

Nov 19, 1998

The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, is launched. Nov 20, 1877 Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

Nov 24, 1969

The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.

Nov 25, 1867

Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel patented dynamite – an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents and stabilizers, in Geesthacht. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more powerful alternative to black powder.

–Team ScienceNow Digital

Watch the Sky in Winter Nights….

This star chart is for early November 9 pm mid November 8 pm and end November 7 pm .To use this chart, hold the star chart vertically, face any direction in the sky. Turn the star chart around so that the direction you are facing is at the bottom.

Now, the stars shown at the bottom in the chart are the stars you will see in the sky.

Dots represent stars. The larger the dot the brighter the star.

Lines between stars are imaginary and aid location.

Names of constellation are along each side each constellation

Suhas Naik-Satam

Nehru Planetarium

Let’s understand some astonishing facts….

• • Unless food is mixed with saliva you can’t taste it.

• • The average person falls asleep in 7 minutes.

• • Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.

• • 8% of people have an extra rib.

• • An asteroid about the size of a car enters Earth’s atmosphere roughly once a year – but it burns up before it reaches us. Phew!

• • 85% of plant life is found in the ocean.

• • The first computer of the world, the ENIAC weighed around 27 tonnes and occupied an entire hall.

• • Like humans, plants recognize their siblings and give them special treatment.

-Team ScienceNow

The dino-killing asteroid is hurtling towards our planet earth; but astronomers are yet to ascertain as to which of these big space rocks will hit us head-on…

An asteroid as big as an Eiffel Tower just missed our planet Earth. The asteroid named 2006 QQ23 was cruising at a speed of 16737 kms per hour missing us just by 4.6 million miles. If this fast moving space rock would have been following a different trajectory it would have hit the Earth with a brutal force of more than 500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

Although 2006 QQ23 was not a threat for Earth, it throws a caution: out there in the cosmos there is another giant unseen asteroid that could be on a collision course with our blue planet. Experts are 100% certain that we’re going to be hit but are not 100% sure when. In fact they are working hard to develop a strategy to deflect these large asteroids headed our way.

Scanning the Skies

Astronomers have been scanning the skies and they feel there is nothing to panic about as there is no real threat from the giant space rocks. The chance that any big object like the 12 kms wide “impactor” which is said to have hit Earth and wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago is highly impossible.

Strictly speaking at any given time there are hundreds of asteroids in our solar system that cause a threat to our planet. And keeping an eye on them are our space agencies – the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Near Earth Orbit (NEO) Coordination Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). They continuously monitor hundreds and thousands of known asteroids and meteoroids, classifying a few hundred as ‘uncertain’ or a ‘risk’ as to know whether they will hit our planet. As of August, the NEO Coordination Center had 20,502 asteroids on its list with 865 on the risk list.

However, some astronomers believe that we need to scan the skies and find these killer asteroids that could hit us head on. In other words, we should be able to find out all of these asteroids that are a threat to our planet and catalog their orbits precisely so as to calculate them into the future. But the trouble here is that asteroids have been known to catch us off guard!

Defusing the threat

Apart from detecting and cataloging asteroids, NASA has put a dedicated team in place which is working on a mission called Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The mission is to fire a so-called kinetic impactor into a binary asteroid known as Didymos. The so called mission idea is to alter the trajectory of the asteroids which are now most likely to pass by Earth

Another way to deflect an asteroid is to use a gravity tractor or so called spaceship that will use its own gravity to shift the asteroid’s trajectory – a concept by former astronauts Ed Lu and Stan Love. The idea is to use the gravity between a small spacecraft and the asteroid to gently tug it into another orbit. Then there is nuclear option whereby a nuclear warhead is sent into the space and is detonated in front of the asteroids. By doing so, the asteroid is likely to change its trajectory and take another path. Astronomers say these ideas will only work if we have prior information or data with us that proves that the asteroid is hurtling towards us. Also it will take perhaps decades to come up with missions capable of deflecting these dangerous space rocks.

-Team ScienceNow

India became Independent on 15^th Aug 1947. The new born nation with aspirations to progress and lead as Independent nation. The journey towards excellence with initial steps to be self-reliant began

The Year saw remarkable Scientific Developments…

20^th Feb 1947

First Space Flight The first living things sent into space and returned safe are fruit flies. They were sent with Rye and Cotton seeds, aboard a V-2 rocket which was launched by the US Army and reached an altitude of 68 miles

February 23, 1947

ISO the International Standards Organisation is founded

Finches of Darwin David Lack Published the book on Darwin’s Finches

Virus Isolated Deadly Zika Virus was first isolated from the Rhesus Monkeys from the forest in Uganda

July 29, 1947

First RAM Installed World’s first Computer ENIAC is turned on after the computer’s memory was upgraded at Maryland

November 17, 1947

Transistor Discovered John Bardeen and Walter Brattain with William Shockley at Bells Labs in USA demonstrated the Transistor

-Team ScienceNow

Explore the night sky and know the heavenly stars….

The October Sky Watch Chart and Phases of the Moon to view the astonishing Night Sky in September

This star chart is for early October 9 pm, mid-October 8 pm and end October 7 pm.

To use this chart, hold the star chart vertically, face any direction in the sky. Turn the star chart around so that the direction you are facing is at the bottom.

Now, the stars shown at the bottom in the chart are the stars you will see in the sky.

Dots represent stars. The larger the dot the brighter the star.

Lines between stars are imaginary and aid location. Names of constellation are along each side each constellation

Suhas Naik-Satam

Ex Co-ordinator

Nehru Planetarium

Mumbai