India's Contribution to Science & Technology

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Amber G.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Google doodle ... Jagdish Chandra Bose
Image
Ashokk
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Ashokk »

MRI Machines Can Cost 100 Times Less, Thanks To This Discovery In Mumbai
Mumbai/New Delhi: A scientific breakthrough in Mumbai can bring down the cost of Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI machines by 100 times, claim scientists.

A team of scientists from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research has discovered that metal Bismuth can conduct electricity without any resistance, making it a superconductor.

The superconducting property, the scientists say, is a unique state of matter that has many applications and is very costly to achieve. The discovery is being touted to rewrite a four-decade old Nobel Prize winning theory that explains how metals become superconducting.

Prof S Ramakrishnan, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, says, “We have discovered superconductivity in Bismuth and to explain this, we need a new theory and a new mechanism. Once that comes out, we will probably have a new class of superconductors.”

After unsuccessful global efforts for decades, the team calls this finding a fundamental scientific breakthrough. In order to achieve this, the scientists placed metallic Bismuth in very cold temperature to make it lose all resistance to electricity.

Currently, the MRI machines use superconductors made of an alloy called Niobium-Titanium and a good machine costs Rs 10 crore.

The team says that the applications of the discovery could take long but it promises to lower the cost of high end diagnostic machines.

Dr Arumugam Thamizhavel, Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, says, “Currently, there are no theories that can explain Bismuth’s superconductivity. This is a different type of superconductivity as compared to others. The theorists are working on it now and new theories may come out. Right now, MRI scans are possible only because of a superconducting magnet, so this discovery can find its application in some years.”

According to the scientists, the MRI machines use superconductors made of an alloy called Niobium-Titanium and if superconductors of Bismuth will be used, the cost of an MRI machine could come down by a 100 times.

The current cost of a good MRI machine is Rs 10 crore.

The discovery has been published in the current issue of ‘Science’ journal (Washington DC).
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Short comment - No doubt that discovery of super conductivity in Bismuth is significant discovery. But I believe that it's relationship with bringing down the cost MRI machines is somewhat silly. I don't think the scientists in TIFR talked about this and it seems that reporter made just made some silly connection.

For perspective, TIFR team's observed superconductivity in single crystals of pure bismuth below 0.53 mK (That is VERY cold, not something you can produce easily - it is almost absolute zero temperature (.005 K - inside state of the art TIFR's copper nuclear refrigerator) under ambient pressure with an estimated critical magnetic field of 0.000005 Tesla (about 1/8 of Earth’s magnetic field)... critical magnetic field here means that the wire will not remain super-conductor if magnetic field is higher... typical MRI needs MUCH MUCH stronger field.

I wonder what was the source of reporters conclusion that it will made MRI cheaper. The discovery is good, because it is different 'kind' of material and one does not need any commercial application to make it important.

The observation makes bismuth one of the two lowest carrier density superconductors to date... (Not that it is "cheaper" etc)

Because bismuth doesn’t fit neatly into the standard picture of superconductivity it may lead to interesting theoretical work.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

^^^ Speaking about MRI and other things which may be very useful to India. I may have posted about this but I am really excited about these kinds of things and quite proud of contribution from young Indian minds..
Portable MRI - Breakthrough - Uses sensitive SQUIDS(Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices to achieve images at very low magnetic fields)
(Does not require considerable infrastructure, like large quantities of liquid nitrogen/ helium, and a lot of energy -- bMRI doesn't have those same requirements, making it a much lighter, less expensive and low-power alternative that can be deployed)

And, Of course, Manu Prakash's..
50 Cents Microscope
I have seen demo of this from Manu Prakash a few years ago.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by SaiK »

Direct Attack by Chindu.. take it head on folks


Hindutva’s science envy
http://www.frontline.in/science-and-tec ... 049883.ece
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by KL Dubey »

Amber G. wrote:Short comment - No doubt that discovery of super conductivity in Bismuth is significant discovery. But I believe that it's relationship with bringing down the cost MRI machines is somewhat silly. I don't think the scientists in TIFR talked about this and it seems that reporter made just made some silly connection.
I agree. Not every scientific discovery needs to have an application to be 'important'. This is truly top-notch science that challenges the BCS theory, and I'm proud it came out of an Indian institute. The leader of the study, Prof. S. Ramakrishnan, is a true 'home-grown' talent with all degrees from India.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Mukesh.Kumar »

What does a sensational scientific discovery about a solar storm in the Earth's magnetic field have to do with old, recycled steel pipes which lay buried for more than a decade under a now-defunct gold mine in India?
'Jugaad' shows the way to a path breaking research paper.


The Wire
Around midnight on June 22, 2015, the GRAPES-3 cosmic ray telescope at Ooty – operated by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai – detected an unusual burst of cosmic rays. It lasted for about two hours, which had the team of high-energy cosmic ray scientists greatly surprised. The team comprised scientists from TIFR, J.C. Bose Institute, Kolkata, and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, and collaborating Japanese scientists. The excess during the burst period was about a million cosmic-ray charged particles called muons (of energy about 1 GeV), over and above the normal emission of about 300 million.
This finding also suggests that cosmic-ray flux data can serve as an accurate ‘early warning’ unto an impending geomagnetic storm. “We are not claiming that we can predict space weather events at this point of time,” Sunil Gupta of TIFR, the lead author of the paper, told The Wire. “The Ooty telescope is not geared for that. That would first require a lot of further research, calibration with observations over a long period, funds and people to operate the instrument in that mode. That was only a suggestion,” he added. At the same time, the GRAPES-3 scientists have also been able to observe over the years that the fluctuations in the rates of muons can serve as a proxy, with high sensitivity, even for normal variations in atmospheric parameters – such as, for example, temperature.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

Very nice, of course. But why is it that we don't hear of Indian discoveries of new planets and solar systems, the way we do for Nasa or telescopes in the US and Europe? All this esoteric stuff about muons and radio emissions of this and multispectral of that, is great. But the general public is really impressed by concrete understandable things like 'discovery of earth like planets 20 light years from here', or even a new galaxy. I do know that Indian astronomers in the 1980's were among the first to discover, independently, a ring system around the planet Uranus. That is cool. Yes, I realise that the obtuse theoretical stuff leads to the more 'practical' or publicly discernible discoveries, but it does feel that we don't see enough of the latter from Indian astronomy!
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by vsunder »

^^^Since we are on the subject of the "Ooty" radio telescope, how it came to be is a "serependitous" ( is there such a word) story. Homi Bhabha had recruited Govind Swarup to set up a radio telescope group at TIFR in the early 1960's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govind_Swarup

One of the first things the new team had to do is build a radio telescope and started to scour India for a suitable site. It so happened they lucked out and found this place at Ooty. The latitude of the place 12 degrees north exactly matches the slope of the hill on which the radio telescope is located, thus giving the telescope an equatorial mount without actually being at the Equator. This is one of the advantages of the Ooty radio telescope. There are very few radio telescopes located at the Equator, perhaps the one at Arecibo, Puerto Rico I surmise, but even that is 18 degrees North.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory

This anecdote of the Ooty telescope appears in the following book:

https://www.amazon.com/Bhabha-His-Magni ... agnificent
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

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sanjaykumar
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Post by sanjaykumar »

A crank and a fool or a rishi and a guru, he is fascinating.
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Post by sanjaykumar »



An outstanding exposition of C.K. Raju's stance.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Prem »

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/stat ... 6718834688
Indians are certain they invented the zero. But can they prove it?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as ... 8ecb5304d3
The origin of zero has been an enduring subject of debate because other cultures, including the Mayans, also claim to have used the zero.
“Finding the source of zero is a bit like finding the source of the Nile,” said Dinesh Singh, a mathematics professor at Delhi University and a member of the Indian Society for History of Mathematics. He is not associated with Project Zero. “Nobody has a clue about exactly when and how the zero came into play.”Scholars at Project Zero say the key may lie in early Hindu and Buddhist philosophical discourses about the concept of “emptiness” and “void,” which began many centuries before the mathematical zero came about.“Even though zero popped up in different places in different forms, Indians are credited to have given zero to the world. But zero did not appear all of a sudden,” said Annette van der Hoek, a Dutch scholar on Indian studies and coordinator of the Zero Project. “We find the cultural notion of zero-ness or emptiness in philosophy, arts and the architecture much earlier. We want to trace its steps as far back as we can and look for the bridges between philosophy and mathematics. What was the philosophical mind-set that provided a fertile ground for such an invention?”
At Camp Zero, mathematicians, philosophers, astrophysicists, archaeologists and numismatists will frame research questions for PhD scholars and examine manuscripts, coins, stone tablets and seals. The research, they hope, will produce books, inform school textbooks and offer opportunities for doctoral research.The doctrine of “sunyata,” or “void,” is one of the most profound contributions of philosophy from India, said Sundar Sarukkai, professor of philosophy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore.“Its possible connection to the mathematical zero is also of great interest, and hopefully this kind of work will draw more students into studying and researching these philosophical and mathematical traditions, which ironically has been neglected within India itself,” Sarukkai said.Buddhist philosophical texts in the 3rd century have elaborate verses about emptiness — “sunyata,” in Sanskrit.The ancient Mayans used an empty tortoise-like “shell shape” to depict zero, but Indian historians say that it did not seem to have influenced global numeral systems. Arab merchants encountered the zero in India and carried it to the West.What is widely found in textbooks in India is that a mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata, in the 5th century used zero as a placeholder and in algorithms for finding square roots and cube roots in his Sanskrit treatises.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

Indians did invent it, and what is positively beyond any doubt and ambiguity, is that Indians discovered that division by zero is infinity or undefined. Nobody else did that. Not Babylonians, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Mayans, Incas or Polynesians. No slur on any of these ancient cultures, but India's real and pretty obvious achievements and innovations, often get blurred or obscured by the sheer volume of references to other ancient cultures. It must be something deliberate and institutional/ideological, and it's usually by British and American historians. For politico-religio-cultural reasons, they are reluctant to admit to any Indian originality or priority. There are also the odd French and German commentators who indulge in this game.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Kashi »

Not a very encouraging development. This appeared in Science. Posting in full.

Indian research labs face financial crisis
India’s 38 premier scientific laboratories are in a budgetary pinch. A jump in expenditures on salaries, pensions, and perks for government employees, recommended by an advisory commission, is leaving little money for new research in the budget of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), based in New Delhi, which oversees the labs and their 4600 scientists. The increase in personnel expenses comes on top of a 2015 call by the government for CSIR to raise 30% to 50% of its total budget itself by commercializing its technologies.

The stark reality is that “we will be left with no funds to support new research projects,” CSIR Director General Girish Sahni wrote in an email to CSIR lab directors obtained by Science.{Not very encouraging. Already a few CSIR grants are help up because of lack of funds}

The budget constraints are grim. Sahni wrote in his email that after covering the roughly 15% increase in salaries, unspecified boosts to pensions, plus capital expenditures and other previous commitments, out of CSIR’s total $683 million budget for the 2017 fiscal year only $31 million will be left to support new research at the 38 labs.{CSIR has limited funds to support new research. I am surprised how much of $683 million goes into capex and salaries/pensions??}

“It’s not that we are going into bankruptcy and closing down labs,” he told Science in an interview. But he adds, “There surely will be an impact on our ambitious programs.” Sahni says CSIR is now studying which new research programs will be affected.

He thinks the government needs to do more to support research, especially because countries like China and South Korea are pumping billions of dollars into science and technology.

“We have great ambitions and great capabilities also, but where is the moolah?” he asks. “If we don’t invest in science, we will lose the opportunity because other nations are whizzing past.”

CSIR hopes to make ends meet by selling research results. “We have identified about 200 technologies which we are putting on fast track for commercialization,” Sahni says. He adds that there are another 600 to 800 technologies that might be sellable. CSIR claims it is currently getting 15% of its budget from marketing its results. Sahni says they aim to raise that to 25% in the next 2 years and possibly to 50% by 2020.

All CSIR labs have been asked to draw up action plans. Sahni favors the trend, believing it will be healthy for the institutes and augment their autonomy. But he concedes that some CSIR scientists and lab heads are resisting the call to raise their own resources. And there are skeptics outside the system as well. “There is no ready market for CSIR technologies,” says Dinesh Abrol, a science policy expert at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development in New Delhi and a former CSIR scientist. “These are all pipe dreams and pipe dreams will not work.” {Seems like a lot of CSIR funded research is not really marketable}

Other institutions outside of CSIR are also being squeezed by the new salary recommendations. “We expect that we would receive proportionately larger allocation to cover these additional costs,” says Soumya Swaminathan, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research in New Delhi. “If not, we will be severely affected,” she says.

At the moment, there is no clear indication the government will increase its support for the research institutes, though Sahni says he remains optimistic.
In my opinion, GoI MUST unambiguously increase the budgetary support for scientific research.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by gashish »

“Saraswati”- one of the most massive large-scale structures in the Universe discovered
Indian astrophysicists identify mega-structure of galaxies 4 billion light-years away - several scholars and faculty of Indian Universities involved
When astronomers look far away, they see the Universe from long ago, since light takes a while to reach us. The Saraswati supercluster is observed as it was when the Universe was 10 billion years old.

The long-popular “Cold dark matter” model of the evolution of the Universe predicts that small structures like galaxies form first, which congregate into larger structures. Most forms of this model do not predict the existence of large structures such as the “Saraswati Supercluster” within the current age of the Universe. The discovery of these extremely large structures thus force astronomers into re-thinking the popular theories of how the Universe got its current form, starting from a more-or-less uniform distribution of energy after the Big Bang. In recent years, the discovery of the present-day Universe being dominated by “Dark Energy”, which behaves very differently from Gravitation, might play a role in the formation of these structures.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by sum »

Was this posted earlier?

Highs and lows in the country’s research landscape-- Nature
Indian science is a study in contrasts. With its vast population and rapidly expanding economy, the country has ramped up scientific production at an impressive rate. India started the twenty-first century well behind Russia, France, Italy and Canada in terms of yearly publications and it now leads them all by healthy margins. It is quickly closing in on Japan.

Despite those gains, India is not yet a major player in world science. Its publications generate fewer citations on average than do those of other science-focused nations, including other emerging countries such as Brazil and China. Relative to its size, India has very few scientists; many Indian-born researchers leave for positions abroad and very few foreign scientists settle in India. The country invests a scant portion of its economy in research and development (R&D), and it produces relatively few patents per capita compared with other nations.
Som every interesting numbers ( India spends more per researcher than Canada/UK but pretty poor output to show for that)
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

x-post;
This week, Nobel Prize in Physics, most likely will be awarded for LIGO...
In this respect, we must honor the gurus. Here is a nice writeup, very worth reading in full.
Why We Need To Thank Homi Bhabha for India's Role In The Discovery of Gravitational Waves
Image
Amber G.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

xpost: Here is the historic Paper about Gravitational Waves / Neutron starts merger -- Hot of the press!
GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
(From above:)

.....The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India,..
(Wonder if these institutes get recognition they deserve from Indian Press / Bloggers /Forums /)
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Zynda »

Indian scientists play a pivotal role in gravity waves detection
Forty Indian scientists from 13 institutions, including two in Bengaluru, played a crucial role in the discovery of the strongest ever gravity wave signal reported by an international team of astronomers on Monday.
The detection was confirmed by nearly 70 telescopes around the world that studied various forms of radiation from the merger. Observations from three Indian telescopes were also used in the final analysis.
“One of the key contributions from the Indian scholars was to find out ways to find whether a particular signal is of environmental origin or emanating from an astronomical source,” Sanjit Mitra, one of the team members from Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune told DH.

Mitra was one of the 11 Indian scientists, who are the part of the discovery team comprising scientists from US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Europe’s Virgo detector.

The two Bengaluru institutes — Indian Institute of Astrophysics and International Centre for Theoretical Sciences — were part of the discovery.

In the last three decades, several Indian scholars richly contributed to the development of the underlying mathematics that led to the discovery of these extremely feeble waves from the other sides of the universe.

“The latest discovery would help us accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe from which its age can be calculated independently,” Mitra said. There are scientific debates on the Universe's age, which has been calculated as 13.82 billion years.

The Pune centre spearheads the Indian effort to set up another gravity wave observatory, which is to be operational by 2024.

“The observatory needs 350 acres of land. We hope that the land acquisition process would be over in another 6 months,” said Somak Raychaudhury, IUCAA director.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Murugan »

Calude Alvares in his blog on India's contribution...

http://www.typewriterguerilla.com/2017/ ... ellectual/
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Amber G.
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Post by Amber G. »

I have not seen much coverage in Indian media. Please share widely the link given below.
Bade wrote:
from here at IUCAA, which has a lot more details and names of individuals involved from the Indian side.
http://www.gw.iucaa.in/news/gw170817/
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by ArjunPandit »

Amber g have you come across any book that covers the contribution of Indian scientists
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

xpost from physics dhaga - Today is 107 Birthday of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar!

Google is honoring him today!

Image
Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.” Thanks to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, we know! Today marks the 107th birthday of the first astrophysicist to win a Nobel Prize for his theory on the evolution of stars.

A child prodigy, Chandra published his first paper and developed his theory of star evolution before turning 20. By age 34, he was elected to the Royal Society of London, and soon after, became a distinguished service professor of physics.

The Indian-American physicist’s honors are astronomical, including the National Medal of Science, the Draper Medal of the US National Academy of Science, and the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Though originally met with skepticism in the 1930s, Chandra’s theories and equations won the Nobel Prize in Physics 50 years later.

Today’s Doodle illustrates one of the most important of all of S. Chandrasekhar's contributions to our understanding of stars and their evolution: The Chandrasekhar limit. The limit explains that when a star’s mass is lighter than 1.4 times that of the sun, it eventually collapses into a denser stage called a “white dwarf.” When heavier than 1.4, a white dwarf can continue to collapse and condense, evolving into a black hole or a supernova explosion.

Today we honor the original starman whose universal theories propel current space research and modern astronomy on their ambitious missions.

Happy birthday, Chandra!
Link: S. Chandrasekhar’s 107th Birthday

I am sure he would have been very happy to hear about recent discovery of Gravitational Waves and observation of coalescence of neutron stars!

The birthdate 19/10/1910 always looked curious. In 2010 -- 100th Birthday was a big event, both in India and in US.

I posted in Brf around that time - UC's president remembered him by telling a story. Chandra used to drive 50+ miles each way just to teach a class which had only two students. Such was his dedication. But, as the president reminded, every one in that class (Yang, Lee) got a Nobel in physics, so that was worth it. This was the only class, the president noted, where entire class and the professor got a Nobel! (Later some one corrected -- It wasn't exactly true that there were only two students, one more person sat in the class unofficially and occasionally.. this was Fermi!! (but he already had a Nobel)

I distinctly remember when the news of Nobel for him was announced which inspired a me to explain stellar structure to some people in my family :) . I was happy that he finally received the well deserved recognition -- I knew the family. His uncle also had a Nobel Prize in Physics. Many other people in his family were quite notable in sciences. Both US and India can be proud of him.

Arjun Pandit asked about books, one good book about his life is(By Wali (Chandra).
(About a year ago, there was this post with reference to Chandra.. some may find it interesting,
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

srinebula wrote:Swarajya carried on article on Chandrasekhar's birth anniversary:
https://swarajyamag.com/science/chandra ... gle-doodle
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Ashokk »

sanjaykumar
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by sanjaykumar »

Thanks for the post on the Quantum Indians. It was informative albeit a little light on the principles.
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Post by Varoon Shekhar »

SS Bhatnagar awardees for this year, for the record. Impressive sounding stuff!

https://www.asianscientist.com/2017/10/ ... gar-prize/
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

^^^ From above.
No awards were given out in the mathematical sciences category this year. /
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Vayutuvan »

Amber G. wrote:^^^ From above.
No awards were given out in the mathematical sciences category this year. /
Hmm. Why so? A little disappointing frankly speaking. I am sure they could have found several from either applied or pure math or even theoretical comp. sci.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Supratik »

Varoon Shekhar
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Post by Varoon Shekhar »

https://www.thebetterindia.com/141419/e ... bel-prize/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._C._George_Sudarshan

E.C.G Sudarshan passes away. Didn't receive the recognition he deserved :(
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by hanumadu »

Supratik wrote:Economic survey on Indian R&D.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ne ... 891266.cms
Ah, there is still hope. :) Thanks Supratik. Nice article.
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

^^^ (the news has been posted in brf)
Sharing sad news - Eminent Physicist George Sudarshan (1931-2018) passed away. He will be fondly remembered as a guru to many of us. He was also a family friend.

I and few others discussed his contributions many times in Brf.

He was nominate 9 times for the Nobel Prize and at least twice it was unjustly denied to him. One of the most infamous case was Noble prize for quantum representation of light - known as Sudarshan-Glauber representation was given to Glauber only. Worse aspect of this was that the the work that the Noble committee cited for awarding was demonstrably Sudarshan's work. As many eminent scientists said at that time the Noble committee can choose it's recipient but it does not have the right to award a person for the work done by another. Shame on the Noble committee and the recipient for remaining quiet even after the facts became public.
(Around that time, I have posted many posts regarding that)


http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/k ... 884743.ece
Image
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Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

Can be x-posted to Indian space research topic...

Now, this is the kind of glamorous discovery that lay people recognise and understand :-). Finding a new planet orbiting another solar system. Probably a first for Indian astronomy/astrophysics.


https://www.isro.gov.in/discovery-of-su ... d-sun-star

The scientific team, led by Prof Abhijit Chakraborty of Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, have found a sub-Saturn or super-Neptune size planet (mass of about 27 Earth Mass and size of 6 Earth Radii) around a Sun-like star. The planet goes around the star in about 19.5days. The host star itself is about 600 light years away from the Earth. The discovery was made by measuring the mass of the planet using the indigenously designed “PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search” (PARAS) spectrograph integrated with 1.2m Telescope at PRL’s Gurushikhar Observatory in Mount Abu, India. This is the first of its kind spectrograph in the country, which can measure the mass of a planet going around a star and with this discovery India has joined a handful ofcountries, which have discovered planets around stars.
Amber G.
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Joined: 17 Dec 2002 12:31
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Amber G. wrote:Prof Abhay Ashtekar - Inspiration to many.

Good Scientists Solve Problems, but Great Scientists Know What’s Worth Solving’
Image

Theoretical physicist Prof. Abhay Ashtekar is the recipient of this year’s prestigious Einstein Medal!

One more physicist we have talked about in Brf.

(He was also an inspiration, guru and friend to many of us - IIRC Bade and me mentioned him in brf long time ago. Congratulations.

Last time I mentioned it was when he became chair of LIGO/India's international advisory panel and was mentor to many of the people in LIGO team. I believe he is still at PennU.
Amber G.
BRF Oldie
Posts: 9265
Joined: 17 Dec 2002 12:31
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: India's Contribution to Science & Technology

Post by Amber G. »

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are
.
Thanks to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, we know! Today marks the 108th birthday of the first astrophysicist to win a Nobel Prize for his theory on the evolution of stars.

I am sure he would have been very happy to hear about recent discovery of Gravitational Waves and observation of coalescence of neutron stars!

(I distinctly remember when the news of Nobel for him was announced and I was happy that he finally received the well deserved recognition - I knew the family. His uncle also had a Nobel Prize in Physics. Many other people in his family were quite notable in sciences.
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