Khagol_113_January 2018

| KHAG L | No. 113 - JANUARY 2018 | 10 A public lecture was delivered by Professor Frank Shu of UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, titled "Two Planets: Challenges of Living andProspering on Earth andMars". As the challenges of living sustainably on Earth grow ever more dire because of environmental constraints on unlimited growth of population and demand for energy and material resources, many visionaries promote the idea of a new start for a subset of humans by colonizing Mars. But is getting to Mars and living there as feasible as portrayed by certain captains of industry and directors of science- fiction movies? Using basic concepts from undergraduate physics and chemistry, this eminently engaging talk described how access to ample nuclear heat and electricity can help terraformMars to bemore like Earth. For example, the speaker discussed how the soil of Mars could be detoxified using porous charcoal made by the rapid immersion of biomass under hot (non-radioactive) molten salt that is a by-product from running a molten-salt nuclear reactor. Thus, the speaker argued that the same technologies that can make an inhospitable planet like Mars habitable could also, in principle, reverse the lasting industrial damage from modern economies that now threatens a habitable planet like the Earth. The talkwas followed by a lively question-and-answer session. Biography: Professor Frank Shu is perhaps best known to astronomy enthusiasts and students across the world for his commonly used text book Public Lectures Professor Mark Birkinshaw, from the University of Bristol, U.K., gave a Public Lecture at IUCAA, on January 17, 2018, titled, Ancient Light: "The Microwave Background Radiation and Cosmology." This lecture was jointly organised by the British Council in India and IUCAA. The discovery of the microwave background radiation in the 1960s provided cosmology and astrophysics with an exceptionally powerful tool for investigating the history of the Universe and the nature of massive objects within it. This lecture gave the story of the microwave background radiation, from the original idea in the 1940s up to the most recent measurements from satellites in orbit and telescopes in Antarctica, and shown what we have learned from the increasing degree of precisionwithwhichwe can study the radiation. Biography: Professor Mark Birkinshaw is well-known for his work on structures in the microwave background radiation created by clusters of galaxies, on relativistic effects that distort the appearances of distant objects, and on the interactions between outflows fromactive galaxies and the diffuse gas around them. He has published more than 400 'Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy', as well as the more advanced 2-volume 'The Physics of Astrophysics'. He is known for his pioneering theoretical work in a diverse set of fields, including the origin of meteorites, the birth and early evolution of stars, the process of mass transfer in close binary stars, and the structure of spiral galaxies. He is also a champion of research in reversing climate change economically. Professor Shu has served as Chair of the astronomy department at UC Berkeley and also holds the post of distinguished Professor at UC SanDiego. In 1998, Professor Shuwas awarded the title of University Professor in the UC system, which is reserved for scholars of international distinction who are also recognized and respected as exceptional teachers. papers. He has been a Harvard University Professor in the Department of Astronomy, and also worked at the Smithsonian Institution's Astrophysical Observatory, where he worked on the Chandra satellite for NASA. He was appointed as the first William P. Coldrick Professor of Cosmology andAstrophysics at the University of Bristol in 1995, and leads the university'sAstrophysics Group.