The Science of Gravity

The first time I watched the film Gravity, I admit I was a bit disappointed - probably because all the hype in the movie critics circle led me to have really astronomical (ahem) expectations for the film. It was the second time I watched without any accompanying expectations that the full impact of Gravity hit me like high speed debris from space. It was one of the most visually arresting movies ever made, and the special effects are near realistic. Go watch Gravity in a good theater with 3D. (I cannot believe I'm saying this, but the 3D actually works in the movie). You'll be dazzled.

The Plot (lots of spoilers):
Rookie astronaut Dr.Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope along with her mentor Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney). Meanwhile, a Russian satellite is shot down, creating a cloud of debris that moves at dangerously high velocities. The Space Shuttle is quickly destroyed by the debris, and Dr. Stone has to find a way to return to the planet below. The two protagonists reach the International Space Station, only to find that re-entry is impossible with the Soyuz. The debris which revolves around the earth faster than a speeding bullet returns every 90 minutes to its starting point - an orbital time bomb. Matt dies while in the process of entering the Space Station, leaving Ryan to fend for herself and to find an escape using the Chinese space station Tiangong.

The Good Stuff:
While there are many goof ups in the realism of the movie, it is much more faithful to reality and science than most other sci fi movies. There are a lot of things which the movie got right, and here are a couple of good things I noticed which are based on the truth:

• The Earth. My God, the first shot in which they show the Earth was really beautiful. It was also a nice touch to show things with no particular up and down - it took me a while to realize that we were seeing South America tilted sideways. The first 20 minutes are a single shot, with the camera moving freely and the focus moving back and forth between the characters, the earth and the space shuttle.

• The debris problem is based on a real thing, the cloud moving at high speeds will cause a cascade effect as it destroys more debris which make matters worse. This is called the Kessler's syndrome. Something like this is also the basis for the anime Planetes.

• The stars were accurate! It's not a big thing, but I actually saw real constellations like Scorpio, Orion and Pleaides pass by in the background. (Yes, I'm a big geek I know) Many other movies just make do with a random star background for the night sky (although, the movie fell prey to this during a pivotal scene when Ryan Stone is disconnected from the space shuttle arm and keeps spinning as the camera pans to reveal the center of the Milky Way....and random stars.)
• The space station, shuttle and the Soyuz capsule were captured effectively as well! Check out this video of Sunita William's tour of the ISS in which she shows the Soyuz capsule - the controls and the interiors look recognizably familiar to the ones shown in the movie. There were comments by members from the space program on reddit.com claiming that they got even the right kind of pencils floating around in the ISS! 

I don't want to believe

"I don't want to believe, I want to know." 
- Carl Sagan

It was a clear winter evening of November, not a regular thing I know, but this just happens to be one. The wind was still tingly cold. As I chugged down some hot coffee, I looked up at the sky to notice birds flying in a "V-Shape". Distorted the shape was, but the sight stirred my emotions. Why do they fly in a certain shape? Did someone teach them? Clearly birds couldn't have cooked up this gimmick all by themselves?

We humans are story telling and pattern seeking animals- we tend to delude ourselves when our emotions are stirred. We have a distinct memory of the instances where a pop tune rings in our head and suddenly a friend sings it! Clearly this was no co-incidence?. We tend to, in that emotional stir, forget that our head resonates with non-sense all the time. We don't keep a count of all the days where the tune was persistent but not the co-incidence. It's like football, the goal keeper is commented when the opposition scores a goal whilst all the goals he saved are not discussed as rigorously.

Every phenomenon is beautiful in it's own way. Some for example- Sunrise, convection of fluids and frank reed sources have "Patterns" that can be recognized by us Humans. Other's like- Brownian motion, Dislocations inside a Crystal do not! It's beauty and the truth associated with it are not determined by our convenience.

We evolved from primates and hence have an affinity towards dominance hierarchy-

Let us go back to the "V- formation of the birds". The coffee, the sky and my mood were brilliant that day(not a regular thing I know), now add to that some sort of bliss and we have a recepie for self deception. I can for instance, tell my self that some "Father figure" harnessing all knowledge and wisdom told the birds to make a "V" and not any other alphabet like a "Q" or "O" because he wants us to remember that he was born of a Virgin.

Or I can contend with facts, that this "V- formation" makes an aerodynamic shape, enabling the birds to travel long distances. Surely the bird in the front takes the maximum air-drag, but it makes flight a lot easier to all the others. If we carefully watch their flight we would indeed notice that, after a period of time the bird in the front "takes a break" and the next "important one" comes in the front. Something like our political campaign, the candidate "taking the heat" from criminal allegations, "steps back from the front" until it dies down and he's ready to compete for the next tenure (No I'm not sub-consciously thinking of Narendra Modi).

Read more about V-formation:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_formation

Knowing rather than hopeless rationalization or believing, helps build scientific temper. It increases the competitive edge in a world arranged on science. It also surges the awe,wonder and most importantly teaches us humility- a trait which helps us to understand our place in the universe and gives a sense of "Spiritual connection".

Consider now a scientist working on a new theory to explain high temperature superconductivity. Not an easy thing to do really, he has to theorize something on a scale of atoms and electrons, a very unfriendly scale to humans. It is tiring for him to analyse, imagine and relate his findings from the "Sister experiments". So he spends himself in the theory, he romanticizes it. All his social conversations at dinner tables now become awful since he is occupied with his own strife. Everything happening around him- movie songs, news titles and random family issues, remind him about his work.

He realizes now that he is now in a relation, a love affair with his own theory! Our scientist finally wraps up his whole business with the cold outside world and goes into a happy isolated affair with his theory. As the moment of truth approaches, when he puts his theory to experimental scrutiny, the numbers and results don't match-up. Now he has to wash his mind of that mishap, he has to drain all the negativity, his partner broke up!

Our subjective reality, no matter how sweet our rationalization of the phenomenon is to us, is not a measure of truth! Science lay's down facts with a straight face! Science is far away from knowing everything and it's clearly not going to be easy. But this is the best thing we ever had! We should try our best to add to the body of knowledge and reduce the error margin as generations pass. We also have to tirelessly and wirelessly promote scientific thought and leave scant room for delusions and ignorance.

                                                                                                                                                 -Cherry

Introduction!

We're Nakshatra. We are legion. We are starstuff. Expect us.

*cue menacing Star Wars - imperial march music*

Ahem, sorry for that bit of weirdness. So, about us. We are basically a bunch of jobless college students looking to learn the subtle science and exact art of amateur astronomy, and in the process get to know how science works. Most of our lives, we lived through a system that prioritized memorization over methods, that only made students to learn the dull facts and definitions as though that were all that is to science. Well, you can't blame the "system", if there is such a thing. They did the best they can under the circumstances, if we were in their place perhaps we could have come up with nothing better under the constraints they must have faced. That, however, does not change the fact that there is something severely lacking in how science is taught and understood by society, colleges and schools. Minds are not trash cans to be filled but candles to be ignited. We don't wait for the constraints to relax or the "system" (whatever that is) to reform itself to start a revolution in thinking.

We are "the astronomy and science club of NIT Trichy," or at least that is what our pages and posters proclaim. We conduct regular - cough - occasional stargazing sessions to look at and study the planets, Messier Objects and the moon. We also conduct talks on relevant science issues sometimes. Most of the time we just do nothing and make elaborate, far fetched plans of conducting events, workshops etc.

But we're new, starting out. Our operation is small, but there is lot of room for aggressive expansion. (Okay, I'll stop with the cultural references now.)

Knowledge and understanding have been cloistered long enough. it is time we experience a renaissance that had long been asleep.