THE LOGIC BEHIND....

As a kid am sure we would have asked some thousand questions to our parents about moon, sun and the stars. For grandmothers and mothers moon is the only source who could help them while feed their kid. The innocent kid dreams of space being a his home and a palatial house there. As day passes he questions the same. What is gravitation or other stuff in space. Forgive me guys am not too good with astrophysics, or for that matter even physics. Cell biology fascinated me more than wires or test tubes. Science textbooks were there is dry meaningless full of definitions. It made no sense. I never figured how could people talk about electrons when they cant even see it. So biology seemed more interesting, as it dealt living organisms. But over the years it made more sense when i read science fictions. Blah!!! isn't it.

This is more important to me as a journalist as we don't have a choice over our beat. However as a student of journalism i still felt science writing was really tough. And the field lacks science journalists who could just explain in simple terms what the experiment was all about. Take for an instance i am sure hardly anyone would have heard about ice cube experiment conducted in south pole by scientist. Yesterday we got an oppurtunity to talk to Sven Lidstrom and Karthik Soundarapandian, who are winterovers in south pole. Wintering over is a tough task. Imagine living in darkness for nearly six months and experiment. These guys are working on neutrinos, minute particle which are created due to radioactive decay in the sun. They are extremely tough to detect. One wonders why on earth am i talking about two different fields which are no even remotely related. This was just to highlight the fact that I am atleast able to explain what neutrino after a fascinating class with Dr. Vijaya Swaminath, who was the first Indian to be on the south pole. Her series have enlightened us writers.

After a session with Sven and Karthik, we could visualise what life is in South Pole. During the questioning hour, my classmates asked whether they had anything called lunch time. Guys it makes sense to ask such questions. Psychologically it is tought to accept and live in such conditions. To be a winterover they had to undergo series psychological tests. But as sven said passion supercedes everything and once you enjoy what you do nothing can stop you. Yesterday when we spoke to them the temperature was -55 degrees. We in chennai are cribbing about the heat and they about the cold wind. Two extremes in the world. Both sven and karthik are planning to stay there till Jan 2008. But they do socialise and have get togethers and play basket ball. I wonder how. It makes more sense to play ice hockey. As the session progressed we almost felt as we were experiencing the wind of ice cube experiments. For a naive person like me who hardly understood the basics of newton laws and for whom einstein made no sense, neutrino astro physics made more sense. All beacuse of simple writing. Final conclusion science is fascinating, its never too late to pursue anything in life. For more information: Ice cube ww.nsf.gov,www.usap.gov, www.polar.org