Author: Dr Hemwati Nandan

Profile of the Month: Prof Prahalad Chunnilal Vaidya Prof Prahalad Chunnilal Vaidya, generally known as P C Vaidya, was a great Indian mathematician who worked in the area of Einstein’s General Relativity. Born on 23 May 1918, in Gujarat, Vaidya’s significant contributions to the subject of Gener­al Relativity range from the radiating stars, energy flows in spacetimes, null fields and gravitational collapse. Prof Vaidya exhibited an inclination toward mathematics from the young age with exceptional ability to address prob­lems in mathematics in an analytical way. During his higher education, which he pursued at the University of Mum­bai (then the University…

Advances in computing tech­nology opened the gateway to processing complex soft­ware applications. Genera­tive AI (Gen AI) is not a new term; it has been part of technological advancement for decades. However, with increased computing power and advancements in hardware devices such as GPUs, it has become much easier to adopt AI & GenAI in the emerging frontiers of Sci­ence & Technology. ChatGPT, Gemini, Cloude are some of the popular GenAI models that are becoming essential for tasks related to scientific analysis, re­search, and knowledge generation and interpretation. A brief timeline of GenAI is depicted as follows and shown in the…

Image Courtesy: NASA INTERNATIONAL ASTEROID DAY/ 30 JUNE There are many fascinating objects in the sky, viz., comets, stars, gal­axies, supernovae, etc., and aster­oids are among them in our solar system. Asteroids are small in size compared to planets in our solar system. They are rocky and metallic, and orbit the Sun like our planets. Their sizes range from a few meters to kilometers, and most asteroids are irregularly shaped, unlike the planets. They are mostly populated in the torus-shaped space between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Asteroids are remnants of the solar system’s formation and are important for…

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia INTERNATIONAL DAY OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT / 12 APRIL The curiosity to explore the un­known in the infinite space, which contains everything, stars, galaxies, and more, has led to many remarkable breakthroughs in Space Science, Astronomy, and Astro­physics in recent years. To explore space, observations can generally be character­ised into two groups: ground-based and space-based. Both of them have their own limitations and advantages; they complement each other. Ground-based observations with different types of telescopes are cost-effective and easier to maintain than space-based observa­tions with satellites/spaceships, which are costly and difficult to maintain. Space-based observations have a…

COVER STORY All space and time and ev­erything that exists is part of the universe. All matter, energy with the seen struc­tures (like stars and galax­ies) along with their invis­ible counterparts are a matter of study in modern cosmology which is the study of the universe as a whole. However, there are some conceptual parallels of unseen aspects of reality in spiritual context, which exist in ancient Indian scripts like Bhagavad Gita and Sankhya phi­losophy, where the notion of Avyaka­ta (meaning the unmanifest or unseen) may resemble the modern genesis of dark matter and dark energy, both of which are…

Given the abundance of electronic devices around us, it is challenging to envision modern life without batteries. These gadgets rely on different types of batteries for power. As efficient energy storage solutions, batteries are widely used in various applications. They play an inevitable role in the shift toward sustainable energy. Since the mid-18th century, battery designs have undergone significant changes continuously, driven by continuous technological progress. The electrolytes used in batteries have evolved from liquid or gel-based forms to solid-state materials. The current research to bring solid-state battery technology to market has made remarkable progress recently. The primary concern in…

NEW FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to a set of functions that enable computers to execute tasks similar to those of human intel­ligence through computer-based algo­rithms. It utilises various computational programmes to simulate human intel­ligence, enabling the solution to com­plex problems and the development of reasoning cycles. AI is divided into several sub-areas including machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), neural networks (NN), natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and cognitive com­puting. In the case of ML, it involves identifying patterns and analysing previ­ous data to make a potential conclusion. Another subset of ML is Deep…