SCIENCE FRONTIERS

THE SECOND SPACE RACE

Man last walked on the moon was in 1972. The United States of
America and the Soviet Union at that time were embroiled in a very
bitter and vicious cold war. Both super powers in their spirit of
surpassing the other had gone on in a space race that had expanded
the frontiers of the space technology and astronomy. This had thus
turned out to be an advantage to the scientific world.

This fight for superiority between the United States and the
Soviet Union in the field of space research like in many other fields
helped man in the conquest of the space and outer space. Russian
space ship, Sputnik took man to the outer space around the Earth.
Soon, the United States of America proved its might by landing on the
Moon. Later, the interest in the space research died down and both the
super powers cooled down in their enthusiasm for funding the space
race. Soon, other countries took initiative in space research. European
countries combined their efforts for joint space research. Once
developing countries like China and India are now beginning to show
interest in space research and indulging in a mini space race
reminiscent of the USA-USSR space race of the 1950s and 1960s. Both
countries are now looking to land on the Moon. China sent a man to
space in 2003. The United States of America is planning to send a
manned probe to the moon by 2020 and a manned probe to Mars by
2030.

The Soviet Union sent a man, Yuri Gargarin, to the space in 1961,
capping its lead of sending of dog Laika to space in 1957 in succession
to launching of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1 in the same
year. The world was deeply impressed by the technological superiority
of the Soviet Union over that of the United States of America. The
President of the United States at that time, John F. Kennedy, was
determined to do some thing in time and in the famous speech in May
1961 before a special joint session of the United States Congress
promised that the United States would land a man on the moon and
return him safely within a decade. It was able to accomplish this within
eight years in 1969. A few days before the United States sent the
astronauts, Neil Armstrong and “Buzz” Aldrin to the moon by Apollo 11,
the Soviet Union sent a spacecraft Luna-15 to the moon on a failed
mission. That was the last heard of attempt of the Soviet Union to
challenge the superiority of the United States of America.

Why the Soviet Union that had a clear lead in the space race in
1961 over the United States of America, surrendered to the latter so
easily and completely? The answer as NASA revealed is that the Soviet
Union was never on space race, and whatever stupendous
accomplishments it had till 1961 were part and extensions of its
passion for missiles researches in support of its war industry. The
indifference of the Soviet authorities to the space race in contrast to
the interest and genuine progress made by the Soviet Union scientists
dulled the edge of the Soviet Union superiority in space technology
over time. On the other hand, the United States took the 1961
accomplishments of the Soviet Union as a challenge and spared no
attempts to excel in the area to prove its mettle and world leadership.
NASA was formed and all financial constraints were waived for
advancement in the area. The United States made great strides since
then. In contrast, the space scientists of the Soviet Union faced hurdles
of all kinds including financial constraints and lack of political backing.
 The beginning of the 21st century marks the start of the second
Space race in the world. This time around, this space race is likely to
be between the United States and China as Russia is yet to wake up
from its space slumber, and drawing large amount of attention
throughout the world. China, as the United States of America has got
quite a big buffer between thinking and acting in the form of
democratic governance and Congress, has an edge in moving with the
requisite space programmes.

Perhaps, China may successfully land a man on the moon before

the United States plans for the 2020 landing. India too is not far
behind. It has however got to speed up its space programmes. India
needs to pull up its socks to do quite an impressive job in the race.

SPACE SHUTTLE PROBES

Since the beginning of mankind, man has always wanted to find

out the truth of the world around. As he discovered more and more
truths, the horizons of his activities expanded exponentially and he
encountered more problems and riddles along the path. He tried to
solve them and has always succeeded in doing so. His unquenchable
curiosity was his forte. Not that those truths were revealed to him all of
sudden. He discovered them in stages, often running for centuries or
millenniums to arrive at the final truth. For example, his first
perception about the world he lives in was that the Sun, moon and
stars revolved around the Earth and the Earth was the centre of the
Universe. He continued with this belief for centuries till he discovered
that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

In the process of his endeavours to discover the truth of the

world, he invented umpteen tools like telescopes and spacecrafts to
help him in his probes. Spacecrafts take him to outer space to collect
data. Space Shuttles are the latest version of the spacecrafts devised
by the United States. They apart from carrying astronauts and
scientists to the outer space engage them in difficult manoeuvres
there and bring them back to the Earth. Another important feature of
these space shuttles is that they can be reused once they returns to
the Earth like any other transport facility. Not that mankind has
reached perfection in this wonderful technology. Sometimes back, the
United States of America launched a Space Shuttle to the outer space
with astronauts on scientific assignments. The Space Shuttle
disintegrated on the way down while entering the Earth’s atmosphere
and all the astronauts were killed. Such terrible losses are parts of the
progress and man has lots to cover in the process of discovering the
truths around him.

COSMIC COLLISION

On the fourth of July in 2005, while the United States of America

was celebrating its National Day, Deep in space, the comet, NASA
targeted a comet known asTempel-1 with a man made object as part
of its Deep Impact Space Mission to study the composition and origin
of comets as well as of the Universe. The impact was photographed
from the spacecraft that was on the mission and observed through
space telescopes as well as from the observatories on the Earth, and
revealed bright spray of fine dusts from the site of the impact on the
comet. The crater formed by the impact was around 200 meters in
diameter and 40 meters deep and contained fine dust particles
of carbonates, silicates, sulfides and hydrocarbons.
 The comet, Tempel-1, which was discovered on April
3, 1867 by Wilhelm Tempel, an astronomer working in Marseille
was found orbiting around the Sun once every five and a half years.
This collision was designed to study the composition of comets and
how the world came into existence. Also in issue in the objectives of
the Deep Impact Probe was whether the Big Bang theory really holds
good or not. The Probe sends back readings and other data back to the
Earth for the analysis of scientists.

Tempel 1 will come to view again in 2011. NASA plans to visit

and impact the comet again then by its Stardust spacecraft as an
extended mission of the Deep Impact Probe to study changes in the
crater created in 2005 and make further detailed and deeper studies of
the crater for better understanding of the Universe.

PLANETS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Mankind has been on this earth for a very long time and has
always been curious. People have died exploring new areas and ideas.
The result is the presence of man in all continents and in all corners on
the surface of the Earth. No area on the Earth remains unknown or
unfamiliar any more. Naturally, curious as he is always, he started
looking beyond the Earth towards the space. Planets and stars
attracted his attention. He traveled in the space in 1950s and landed
on the Moon in 1960s. Planets of the Solar system that he observed
with naked eyes and by telescopes from centuries are primed as the
next target of man and his unabated curiosity. He wants to land there
and colonize them for his benefits if he can. The effort warrants
detailed information the planets and the space he is to cover reach
there and the hurdles and problems to be encountered during the
endeavor.
 In spite of tremendous progress made by the community of
scientists in this direction, lots need to be done and require time, funds
and synergy among top scientists and experts in various fields of
science. They must further study and analyze and learn about various
environment features of the outer space that yet remain
incomprehensible to them. This will take a very long time.

The Solar System was traditionally held to contain nine planets

namely Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
and Pluto. Many more bodies in the Solar System were discovered and
classified as non-planets and a traditional planet of the Solar System
namely Pluto was removed from the planetary honour and relegated to
the group of non-planet land masses since then as many of the newly
discovered land masses that were classified as non-planets were found
to be larger than Pluto, the smallest traditional planet of the Solar
System. There is tremendous confusion among astronomers about the
concept and definition of planets as different from non-planets and
Pluto was always in the eye of the storm for a long time.

SOLAR ENERGY FROM SPACE

The world faces a very large energy problem. This is some thing
that India especially faces. The solution lies in unconventional sources
of energy, particularly harnessing energy from the sun. This is a
renewable form of energy, is nearly limitless and also is not polluting at
all and is the cause of all forms of energy on the earth apart from the
nuclear energy.

Solar Energy is taken for granted by man because of its

abundance and easy availability. The world uses it in the form of solar
cells popularly used in traffic lights, for home uses for heating
purposes, and in satellites as sources of energy. In this, man is
harnessing only a minute fraction of the endless solar energy at his
disposal. Reasons are many. Day and night cycles, seasons,
geographical areas and clouds make the availability of the solar energy
a time dependent phenomenon. It cannot be harnessed steadily and
uniformly at all hours at all places at the will of the user. This leads to
the problems of storage of the solar energy. Combined with the low-
intensity energy patterns of the solar energy, the problems of the
storage render solar energy economically inconvenient enterprise. It is
in this situation scientists thought of harnessing solar energy from the
outer space.

Continuous and uninterrupted availability of the solar energy in

the outer space makes it ideal location for harnessing the solar energy.
Already, the benefits of the solar energy in the outer space are derived
for the energy requirements of the space ships and satellites. However,
the problem here is regarding transmission of the energy so collected
to the surface of the Earth for the human use. Right technologies are
yet to be devised for the purpose and scientists are on the job to bring
a revolution in meeting the ever-increasing energy requirements of
man.

A NEW COUSIN

The world was created with the Big Bang about fourteen billions
of years back. After billions of years of cooling from the Big Bang, the
Sun of our solar system came into being leading to the birth of the
Earth and other planets of the solar system. For approximately four
billion years, the Earth remained without life on the planet. The Earth
was too hot and cooled down very slowly. Life started on the Earth with
the single cell creatures and over billions of years evolved to
complicated patterns of life culminating in the birth of human beings in
their present form.

The first lives on the Earth were water-born and aquatic in

nature. Gradually, as the cells evolved to complicated patterns on the
compulsions of the survival instincts and the needs of the adaptation
to the environment, lives capable of living on land came into existence
leading ultimately to the birth of Homo sapiens.

Home Sapiens is proved to be a very curious species, eager to

discover and know everything around it. Curiosity is its hallmark. This
nature led it to discover everything about the Earth it lives on, the
space around it and even about the outer space and planets and stars
and the worlds beyond it. He became curious to know whether life like
his own exists anywhere else outside in worlds invisible to him. He was
curious to know about his human cousins and how they live if they
exist anywhere in any corner of the endless Universe. Though theories
surmise the possibility of life and humanlike species somewhere in this
endless Universe beyond human comprehension, no empirical
evidences are available to prove or disprove it, and no such evidences
can be accessed in near future with the limits of the present scientific
advancements in the perspective of the human limits.

While man is looking to the Outer Space to trace his cousins on

the illusion that he has already conquered the Earth he lives on in his
thirst for knowing it fully, he was in for a shock while he discovered the
existence of a new species, Homo Floresiences, a cousin of Home
Sapiens, in the island of Rampasasa in Indonesia, until a few years
back. Locals of Rampasasa recall the Homo Floresiences as short in
height. However, the attention of the world is yet to focus on this
interesting discovery and scientists and archaeologists are yet to
pursue this matter to know better about their cousins on this very
Earth on which they live on.

STEM CELLS

Stem cells are the basic cells. They are the cells from what every
part of the body develops after going through several stages. They are
present in almost all living bodies in the stage of the initial growth.
They form all cells of the body including the muscle cells, the nerve
cells, and the bone cells. These stem cells if properly manipulated are
potential of curing all genetic diseases and changing personal traits
and character in living beings including man.

There are differences of opinions regarding further experiments

in the field of the stem cells that have the potential to change the very
nature of man. Because, such potentialities involve moral questions.
Many countries like North Korea and England have made considerable
progress in the field of stem cells. Mr. George Bush, as the President of
the United States of America strongly opposed stem cell experiments
and even threatened that he would veto any bill on this field if the
Congress passed it. The present President of the United States of
America has different view in this issue and the world may witness
stem cell revolution for the betterment of the human kind.

CLONING OF ANIMALS

These days, human kind has advanced so much that many things
that he does would certainly surprises the creator himself if he comes
down to visit the human kind he created. Human kind has been able to
work wonders wherever he has gone to work in. He is now trying to
copy the work of the creator himself. The endeavour is progressing
without the barriers of the national borders. The present efforts are
towards cloning of animals through the DNA technique to create sturdy
and stronger species. Scientists created Dolly, a sheep that died of
disease. Thereafter, the scientists produced a cloned cat that turned
out to be a carbon copy of the cat from which the DNA was extracted
and used. It was a major step for the science and mankind in their
progress towards replicating the works of the creator in creating living
species. Then, the next successful endeavour was in creating a mule,
which was a cross between a donkey and a horse. Later, they
succeeded in producing a cloned dog called as Snuppy. Attempts will
continue in the cloning techniques till scientists create healthy and
strong cloned human species. Already they have succeeded in
producing human semen in laboratory conditions and this itself is a
revolutionary step forward to the field of the creator.

NEWTONIAN LAWS

Newton was a great physicist, mathematician, astronomer and

natural philosopher that lived about three hundred years back from
1643 to 1727. He was a person who is well known throughout the
world today for his path breaking influence on the history of science.
His full name is Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton was a physicist and a
mathematician with a flair for astronomy and natural philosophy. He is
easily the greatest physicist in the world till Albert Einstein postulated
the Theory of Relativity that revolutionized the field of science. In an
opinion poll held at Britain’s Royal Society in 2005, he was voted as
having larger influence on the history of science than Albert Einstein.

Isaac Newton was born and lived in England that has produced
gems like William Shakespeare, and John Keats. Sir Isaac Newton is the
father of the three Newton’s Laws. Newton’s first law says that if a
body is at rest, it will continue to be at rest and a body, which is in
motion, will continue to be in motion and will continue moving in the
same direction with the same velocity until an external force is applied
on it. Newton’s second law says that the rate of change of momentum
of a body is equal to the product between the mass and the
acceleration of the body and the change of momentum is in the
direction of the force. Newton’s third law says that for every action,
there is an equal and opposite reaction. These three laws
revolutionized the concepts of science of the time and laid foundations
for rapid growth of science in the next centuries. All later revolutions in
Physics and classical mechanics like the Theory of Relativity and the
Quantum Theory owe their origin to the concepts conceived and the
paths laid by Sir Isaac Newton in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, published in 1687.

CONGRUENCY OF TRIANGLES

Triangles are three sided figures that are present in the world of
Geometry They are said to be one of the most complex figures in
geometry. Triangles can be of three types: Equilateral, Isosceles and
Scalene. Congruency of triangles means that the triangles are equal
and same in all respects. There are many kinds of triangles in
Geometry. Congruency is one of them. There are some conditions for a
triangle to be a congruent triangle. The triangle must be equal to the
triangle in all respects - that is in three angles and in three sides.
However, creating a congruent triangle being a difficult and tedious
work, four options are available to perform the job: the S.S.S
congruency, the S.A.S congruency, the A.S.A congruency and the R.H.S
congruency. The S.S.S congruency refers to the congruency which can
be determined if the three sides of the triangles are given and both are
equal. The S.A.S congruency refers to the congruency which can be
determined if the two sides and one angle of the triangles are given
and both are equal. The A.S.A congruency refers to the congruency
which can be determined if the two angles and one side of the
triangles are given and both are equal. The R.H.S congruency refers to
the congruency which can be determined if the hypotenuse, the right
angle and one of the triangles are given and all are equal. The R.H.S
congruency can be used only in a right-angle triangle.