Not being too busy these days, I was trying to fascinate myself with space science. Scientists are discovering new planets and "solar systems" in different galaxies hundreds of light years away. Let it be the "earth-like" planet or the "gassy-hot" planet, they are trillions of miles away.

I am a bit confused here .... a light year equals a distance that light travels in one earth-year (365 earth days approximately). If those heavenly bodies are hundreds of light years away, then the image scientists are viewing today was formed by light travelling to earth from those masses hundreds of years ago.

Doesn't it mean we are seeing something that was there hundreds of years ago? Isn't it possible that those things may not exist at present time?

And it also sounds interesting that the Sun we see every day .... we see it where it was 8 mins 20 secs before.

More interestingly, if something is living out there and you see an alien moving .... that alien would be dead hundreds of years ago .... but you are still see it .... wow.

What if life is possible on that "earth-like" planet. Who will reach there .... if a couple travel on a space craft flying at speed of light .... only their grand-grand-grand children will reach the planet (given that they give birth to at least two opposite sex childrens and same-family marriage is allowed in outer space :) ).

I don't see any outcome of these studies .... investing trillions of dollars .... research and grants .... papers being published every now and then .......
Let that money go to Africa and Asia to feed the poor.

Ya ya, you may say such studies are necessary ... we should know the mystry of our universe ..... but I am only saying lets limit the study to closer outer-space where you can reach .... in your life time.

hunata maha kabi le bhaneka thiye .... "uddeshya k linu ... udi chchunu chandra eka" .... tara destination teti tada pani nahos ki bichmai jivan samapta hos .......... prithvi mai bhayepo euta le nasake arkole garthyo ....

Ki kaso sathi ho

Twinkle Twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are

I agree with you Prakash ji.
The stars and planets what we see are not what they are now, but what they were before.
Scientists are trying to see the beginning of the universe by looking at the furthest place ever. Most theories on origin of universe are based (or may b say proved) by such method.

1. Hundred light years is not a great distance in cosmological scale.

" I don't see any outcome of these studies .... investing trillions of dollars .... research and grants .... papers being published every now and then .......
Let that money go to Africa and Asia to feed the poor. "

I agree to you that we have to do something to uplift the condition of poor countries but I don't agree to the means you have suggested as it is not plausible and even if it is put into action, I don't expect it to give the desired outcome.

Every scientific research and endeavors get criticisms until some practical applications are derived. Before such applications are derived, it can be hard to speculate the form of such applications. Had there been no such research, there would be no sajha, no internet, no computer. Computers are a result for the need for extensive numerical computational tools, basically for research similar to what you have described above. And, now you see the world has changed and I think computers and internet can potentially change the poor nations as well.

One Interesting thing about the Universe
Have you guys noticed that the shape of any Galaxy looks like the shape of hurricane. Why is that? Is that because each extraterritial bodies are moving around in the universe with a supersonic speed?

http://www.kosmandu.com/

once again:

http://www.astronomyclubs.com/

milkiway

Jupiter spots...

Itokawa...........

amazing pix, arnt they??

astronomers sans frontiers:

http://www.astronomerswithoutborders.org/

Amazing, indeed !!

I dont waste my time commenting but I could not resist commenting on very naive comments made in the post although I have reasons to believe that the blogger intentions were earnest.

Prakash Ji Says:
"Scientists are discovering new planets and "solar systems" in different galaxies hundreds of light years away. Let it be the "earth-like" planet or the "gassy-hot" planet, they are trillions of miles away."

One can only speculate that there are planets in billions of Galaxies that is spread all around the universe. We have never really discovered any planets that are outside the solar system as our current telescope fall very well short to distinguish many stars in galaxies and we are "light years" away from distinguishing any planets. Hence your statement is totally wrong! I would like to note that most of the universe is not regular baryonic (made of protons and neutrons) matter but an exotic matter known as dark matter. We have been able to map that to a certain extent using a technique known as gravitational lensing which to my mind is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what is known as dark energy that ensure that the universe is expanding.

The astronomical units are in light years as it does not make sense to have it in the regular mortal units of miles. Light travels 30,000 kilometers in one second. And although the universe is infinite for most practical purposes one can estimate it will take billions of light years to fathom the universe.

I cannot deny the possibility of intelligent life in the distant universe but it seems hard for life to exist as most of the universe as shown by the "cosmic microwave background" seems hostile. There is a significant number of people working in a theory which is called anthropic principle which describes how the universe is fine tuned so that life can exist. These are not crackpots and armchair "thinkers" but respected scholars such as Steven Weinberg, Frank Wilczek among others. However,
I am myself skeptic about such reasoning as it takes the beautiful consistent science into the dark arguments of metaphysics.

Prakash_Ji Says:
"if a couple travel on a space craft flying at speed of light "..

one learns in grade school that this is not possible due to Einstein's special relativity and THATS true. So if you are
one of those people who just like to dwell in fairy tale then live in your delusional reality just talk in that terms. For the universe we live in "ITS NOT POSSIBLE" as symmetry in special relativity known as Lorentz/Poincare Symmetry puts a constraint to the speed of light.

Prakash_Ji Says:

"I don't see any outcome of these studies .... investing trillions of dollars .... research and grants .... papers being published every now and then .......
Let that money go to Africa and Asia to feed the poor"

Its blindingly obvious that you don’t understand science, but what is also obvious is you don’t even understand supply and demand economics. May be you should start
with Adam smith. Although your reasons are humanitarian, its a cliché that most people who have no understanding of knowledge outside their own prejudice have been regurgitating for the years. Money is not a solution to the problems in Africa. Lacks of imagination is.You are thinking of curbing imagination to feed people which will create more hungry and poor people. Feeding is not a problem but sustaining it is a serious problem. In order to achieve that one needs to come up with innovation.
Although some science is done just for curiosity an "invisible hand" takes over which makes sure that it has overall positive effect in a society. I personally want to live in a society where creativity art and science is cherished as opposed to just a mechanical desire to sustain life and this has a symbiotic relationship which ensures that the majority of humanity will lead a better life. While its important to find the cure of cancer it is perhaps even more important to be a visionary. If it was not for the vision of civilization that lived before us we would not even exist. Hence, one should refrain from writing comments that are based on very superficial (mis)understanding of things.


In trying to understad the universe we are unravelling the consistent pattern of the cosmos we live in from a Planck scale to a scale much larger than human evolution has programmed us to imagine. In doing this we understand our own relationship with the cosmos itself.


Wolftiger says,

Have you guys noticed that the shape of any Galaxy looks like the shape of hurricane? Why is that?

Not all galaxies have the same shape. The galaxy you are talking about is the spiral galaxy and our own galaxy(Milky way) is spiraled shape. This is due to extreme temperature as a result of gravitational collapse at the center.

Best Regards,

--

1 light year = 9,460,730,472,580.8 km

What about ever expanding universe, it looks like even our solar system is expanding . The object around us, i.e 95 worlds also expanding. Earth's moon is going out of its own track each eary by 2 feet.

ANY VISONARY ON THIS??

Planets which are light year far might moving still far each year, looks like to reach such a planet is dream on top of the dream.

What is more important? your own life or the world?
- your life, for sure. If you are not alive, everything is useless for you.

Laws of physics do not apply to our conscience. Or may be we are yet to interpret it in that way. Our conscience says, happiness is the most important thing to achieve.

Biology says that our sole aim is to increase our own gene and sustain it for ever.

cosmic and astronomic studies say that the world is transient, it had a beginning and will have an end. This predicts that our biological aim is doomed to a failure in bigger time scale.

Personally, all that matters is the self-yourself, myself. How long am I going to live? couple of decades, if I am lucky.

Future in cosmic time scale is too far to influence me, which I consider beyond the reach. So, most of the studies done on that will not affect me to increase my gene, though it might give me some pleasure. that is, I will not achieve anything in biological sense, but get something in conscience (happiness) factor. Is the happiness for couple of astronomers worth spending that much money? Or is it better to spend to save some dying ones.

True, visionary should be encouraged. But wouldnt it be better to spend money in those fields that have turnout in short time? Researches in chemistry and biology would yield product in short time when compared to astronomy. Its supply and demand thing, as you say. Whatever gives better product in short time should be encouraged.
isnt it?

Dear Copycat,

The question you have raised is an important one. Let me try to address your question.


The scientific knowledge shows that life is subjected to same laws of nature as is any inanimate object that you observe. Hence, one cannot have a hierarchy on what is more important, life or "world". In fact if you think carefully, the question does not
even make any sense. Also, one can reduce everything to happiness.I am very careful with reductionist arguments and I would not argue it as happiness is
a subjective experience.That to me is circular reasoning and you will not reach anything objective with such arguments. I will motivate why the study of the universe is important just for itself and equally for the better of humanity.


First let me correct you. Cosmic studies does not say anything such as the world has a beginning and the end. If you are referring to inflationary big bang theory and the
big crunch, you should be careful that these are still speculative theories which are being tested and will not be confirmed any time soon. The universe very well could have eternally existed and perhaps will last forever. We don't have evidence to any claims
hence we make models to which makes sensible predictions although it may turn out wrong in the future.The simple answer is we dont know as of now.

Note that there is no contradiction between funding biology, chemsitry and physics. In fact physics have a contributed immensely in the study of biology, chemistry, study of diseases and many other sciences. Just to give you one of the millions of example
think about Positron Emission Technology.Positron is an anti particle to electron which was predicted by the famous Dirac equation. Perhaps has saved some million life already.


However, I dont believe that we can reduce every science to the study of fundamentals as. For instance, I dont see any ways as to how the study of organic chemistry can be influenced by our unification quantum mechanics and relativity or the
study of black hole evaporation.However, I could cite hundreds examples such broken symmetry that we learned in trying to understand the phenomena
of the universe which was borrowed by chemistry from physics. The examples are numerous and some are too technical to discuss in this kind of forum.


However thats besides the point. While investigation of the question of fundamental nature of the universe has great sociological impact,
the desire itself has great virtue and provides the most important for the justification of its study. On the other hand, I certainly dont believe that in sociological context, studies of biology and chemistry
is lesser important than study of the cosmos or the elementary particle physics. Nonetleless, there is a craving in humanity to understand
the fundamental structure of the universe at the very microscopic level to the cosmic scale.Personally I care about objective truth more so
than the length of my mortal life.

The real reason why people do fundamental science is the same reason why Matisse and Picasso painted. "Reason is and ought to be
the slave of passion." To me science and knowledge(no just physics) is the structured discovery of our ignorance. We follow where the truth takes us.

Now the final question. Is launching the James Webb telescope or a Large Hadron Collider in Geneva an obstruction to civilization. Quite the contrary.
I know enough about the problem of poverty that the problems of people dying is bad governance as opposed to problems of money and this should be
obvious.Pick a work from Amartya Sen, for instance for details.We live in a rich enough society that can support diverse symbiotic scientific research with
only a microscopic fraction of budget that is required fight in Iraq. In doing so scientists will wittingly or unwittingly create a better;less mechanical
and more enlightened civilization.

Maurice,
like reading what yu have to say..keep it up

sorry guys
malai chahi padne phursad bhayena la