Sky is the Limit

 The greatest gift to mankind probably are the eyes. That we can see things around us is amazing. How did nature think that creatures required to see to live? What a tremendous evolution. That you could see meant that you could see the skies which is bountiful and endless. You could then easily see the birds flying amazingly and the eagles gliding in gay abandon.

 And then began the quest to fly. One of the earliest ways to connect with the skies was through flying kites and ballooning.

The Mythology of Flying:

  In the Hindu mythology The Ramayana has Hanuman flying to mount Meru and bring back the mountain itself (since he could not recognize the herb he was instructed to bring)  to heal Laxman The lord Rama’s brother. In the same epic Ravana the villain is said to possess Pushpak the flying chariot. In another incidence Saint Tukaram is believed to have departed to Vaikunth with Lord Vithoba escorting him in a Viman (an aeroplane).

 In Greek mythology Icarus son of master craftsman Daedalus ignored instructions not to fly too close to the Sun (since the wings were made out of feathers and wax) which melted and fell into the sea.

 Science Fiction:

 Several fantasy and science fiction writers took several flights into space. Isaac Asimov, Arther c Clarke, Jules Verne, H G Wells wrote science fiction and fantasy which formed the basics of several scientific mission that man has undertaken to the Moon and Mars and beyond.

 Rocketry:

• Chinese: Mongols besieging the city of Kaifeng in 1232 used arrows propelled by rockets.
• Arabs: Conceived rockets by the 13^th century and used them against Saint Louis in the seventh crusade.
• Italians: Did rocketry in the 15^th century. Leonardo Da Vinci conceived five hundred sketches and thirtyfive thousand words. However his pedaling of arms and feet theory proved disastrous.
•  Britishers: Developed Congreve rocket -ancestor of modern ballistic missile used in the war of 1812 and The Battle of Waterloo.

  Space Explorations:

   We are well aware of the bitch Lyka's first mission into space and then the famousYuri Gagarin's sojourn. Thereafter the Luna 3 and subsequently Zond 3 both Soviet expeditions sent the first images of the hidden side of the Moon. Later Luna 13 landed on the Moon. Zond 5 was the first to circle and return back to Earth
  However the most popular of the missions were the Apollo missions which carried human beings to the surface of the Moon and returned. Manueores including lift off , leaving Earths orbit, travelling in deep space, undocking, landing on Moon's surface, liftoff, docking and returning back to the Earth's surface were carried out.
  International Space Station expeditions creating a Space Station just beyond the confines of Earth's influence (to act as future stations under ideal lift off conditions to fly into further deep space) were carried out by Russia and America successfully by using Aeroplane like Space shuttles.
 Mercury, Venus, Mars and the Sun too have seen space missions by America, Russia, ESA, Japan, China and India. Most of these were flybys but some of them were robotic landings. Of note are the robotic missions to Mars when rovers Spirit and Opportunity combed the surface of Mars for years and now a more advanced  Curiosity is conducting more detailed experiments.
 India's recent mission Mangalyan to Mars too is significant and noteworthy.

 The Limits of Travelling in Space

  We walk at almost 5 kmph. Bullet trains can accelerate upto 300 kmph. Aeroplanes can fly at a speed of 1300/1500 kmph.
  It takes about 9 months to travel to Mars one way.
 A space mission probe 'New Horizons' took off to space in 2006 on a nine year mission bound to Pluto and beyond and flyby Pluto in 2015. It will have travelled 5 billion kms at the rate of about 1500000 kms per day.
  All this travel in space parlance of light years is negligible and we wont reach anywhere if we have to be ambitious to know the farther reaches and the deeper echelons of the sky. It is humanly difficult to travel space on account of radiation and depletion of oxygen and other space related problems. Right now various space agencies are trying to assess the difficulties involved in conducting a human space mission to Mars by creating similar circumstances on Earth. However we would'nt still be doing much to travel beyond the solar system which itself is about 1.2 light years from Earth.
  What we have achieved better is by peeping ourselves through telescopes especially Hubble Space telescope and the Chandra space observatory. We have delved into 100's of light years into space located several galaxies geographically (International Astronomical Union does this).
  As we know light and radio waves can travel the fastest ie at the speed of light. When will be able to travel like those flying saucers which we have fantasised and dreamt about?

We God and Astronomy and More

 In these columns we will talk and think and write about the relationship with We ourselves, God and Astronomy and many other things associated.
 When do we require God the most?
 Probably more when we are in duress, under stress and strain or are in danger of something. Now what would an atheist look to under such circumstances. The atheist would probably look to nature like a scene from The Grand Canyon or the deep calm river  Alaknanda flowing below as watched from a cliff or the view of the ice capped Himalayan scene as seen from a large distance. These would soothe his mind.
 In any case what you are looking at is a higher power that relieves your fear.
 Now the believer in God has a quick fix answer that is embedded in mythology and our social upbringing. Other examples quoted above for an atheist are Earthen whether The Grand Canyon, the view of the river or the Himalayas.
 Now let us look on a very different plane let us have a view of the night skies. It welcomes you with a lovely vision of the Milky Way and innumerable Stars around and on many occasions the Moon. Probably this would be a more amazing view if you were to move away from the illumination of the artificial lights of the city that obscures the clarity of this scene.Closer look and you will see Star formations the constellations and much more. A look at the day sky with a bright sunny sky has a Sun blowing all its energy to make your life workable and all this worthwhile. Once you start reading the Suns worth its dimensions the Hydrogen Helium explosions under which it works and the magnitude of its size and energy and its potential do you start realizing what a speck you are in the worldly scheme of things.
 As we start magnifying our lives and start watching a billion Suns in the Milky Way's just one arm and know the size of the Galaxy and know that our neighboring galaxy Android is twice the size of the Milky Way and expand your mind to know the the Local Group of Galaxy will we start realising the extent of the endless possibilities that await us and the higher powers of Gods nature.

Knowing Ourselves

 Probably the most intriguing of all the questions that come to our mind are: Where did we come from? What is our purpose in life? Where did it all began? What are our origins?
 Now let us get back a little in time. You are born to your parents. They were born to our grandparents. Then come the great grand parents. I for one succinctly remembers my grandfather and my grandmother when as a child I used to travel to them during summer holidays.  I know the name of my great grand father and great grand mother as these are essential during various Hindu rites but know nothing about them. And beyond that it is all blank a cul-de-sac to most of us.(It may all be very good for everyone of us to start writing the family tree so that the coming generations know of their parental heritage better).  So does it all end here! Our search to find our origins.
 Instead of tracking yourself backwards in time I think it is easier to directly go to the origins of life and the best way is the astronomers eyes, telescopes a lot of astronomical data and astrophysics and maths. This may initially sound heavy but it is really not so as the Sky, its Stars, the Moon and the Milky Way have been too close to our minds and hearts. It is besotted in our mythology, our social upbringing. It is inculcated in our culture.
 Let us begin with the notion that initially there was nothing but a void. We will not get into the astrophysics of it all which does assume the same. There was no life, no Earth, no Moon, no Sun, no Stars, no brightness probably a dark, an unknown. Just a vast vast expanse of nothingness.
 The astronomers don't have any clue even today to what may have spurred the Big Bang. What may have triggered off or what were the circumstances under which it all took place"The expansion which popularly is known as the Big Bang". Did God have anything to do with this  or would the God Particle in the  CERN experiment explain more. Only time will tell.

 However the astronomers have some clue to what may have happened a few thousand years later when matter began to form in the void of the cosmos. The matter that began to form in the same form it is today constituting the same 92 elements that envelope and inhibit the cosmos. The life forms that were born out of these elements including our very own physical form. This definitely points out to the scheme of things in the sky and of our relationship with the cosmos including the Earth, the Moon, the Stars, the Galaxies and anything beyond that. That we are a part of the cosmos.

 The Positive Conspiracy

 If you decide to embark on a desire, vow to take it up as a mission, promise yourself to achieve it through all dedication and perseverance the entire cosmos will conspire to help you achieve your goal.

 To achieve what you will need is a positive attitude. The opposite one, ‘the other one’ need not even be in your vocabulary. Your mind has to be concentrated to achieve the target you have in mind. Like the flowing river your thought process has to be unidirectional.

 Why only positive attitude. The reason is simple. This cosmos, this, universe was a void, was an empty space. The universe was born out of a positive trigger as we all know and later matter came into being and now a huge cosmos still growing positively and enlarging its spheres in the form of moons, planets, sun’s and galaxies galore in the emphatic sky. The process is to grow positively to achieve. All the destruction that takes place while the cosmos grows is for a bigger scheme of things eg there is destruction in a star burning into millions of atomic explosions and there is a beginning and an adulthood and an end to it. But there will be rebirth from its ashes and more mass and more energy will be generated in the process. This and such could happen in nebular clouds of gas as the cosmos keeps endlessly expanding. It is this positive connotation that drives this universe and is embedded and catapulted in every iota of the cosmos.