REMINISCENT of the famous Raja Ravi Verma painting in which Shakuntala while pretending to remove a thorn from her foot is surreptitiously looking at her lover Dushyantha, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) New Horizons spacecraft took a last peek at Pluto from a distance of 5.7 million kilometres in the wee hours of July 19 and brought to closure a week full of anticipation and excitement.
New Horizons, launched about nine and a half years ago, made its closest approach of Pluto on July 14 while cruising at a record speed of 58,500 kmph after travelling about five billion kilometres. At the time of the closest approach, 17:19 hrs IST (11:49 UTC [Coordinated Universal Time]), as the spacecraft passed 12,500 km above the surface of Pluto, a set of seven scientific instruments aboard the craft hungrily gathered data on the faraway world of Pluto and its five known moons.
This was the first ever foray by any space mission into the Kuiper Belt, the so-called “third region” beyond the terrestrial inner planets and the gaseous outer planets, swarming with teeny-weeny icy objects. New Horizons has indeed taken a cosmic step and as data from it, with tantalising images and surprising implications about Pluto and its five moons, begin to trickle in, our understanding of the weird world is all set to change radically. As one blogger opined, it is time to tear and throw away chapters on Pluto from every book that has ever been published. The world that the New Horizons mission paints is not at the perspective we had until now. We had known all along that Pluto was weird, but it is weirder than we imagined.
AN ODD BALL
Denne historien er fra August 21, 2015-utgaven av FRONTLINE.
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Denne historien er fra August 21, 2015-utgaven av FRONTLINE.
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How Not To Handle An Epidemic
The lockdowns were meant to buy time to put in place appropriate health measures and contain the coronavirus’ spread, but they have failed to achieve the objective and heaped immense misery on the marginalised sections of society. India is still in the exponential phase of the COVID-19 infection and community transmission is a reality that the government refuses to accept.
Tragedy on foot
As the COVID-19-induced lockdown cuts the ground beneath their feet in Tamil Nadu, thousands of migrant workers are trudging along the highway to the relative safety of their upcountry homes.
Sarpanchs as game changers
Odisha manages to keep COVID-19 well under control because of the strong participation of panchayati raj institutions and the community at the grass-roots level under the leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Scapegoating China
As the COVID-19 death rate spikes and the economy tanks in the United States, Donald Trump and his advisers target China and the World Health Organisation with an eye to winning the forthcoming presidential election.
New worries
Kerala’s measured approach to the pandemic and lockdown has yielded results. But it still has to grapple with their huge economic impact on its economy, which it feels the Centre’s special financial relief package does little to alleviate.
No love lost for labour
Taking advantage of the lockdown and the inability of workers to organise protests, many State governments introduce sweeping changes to labour laws to the detriment of workers on the pretext of reviving production and boosting the economy.
Capital's Malthusian moment
In a world that needs substantial reorienting of production and distribution, Indian capital is resorting to a militant form of moribund neoliberalism to overcome its current crisis. In this pursuit of profit, it is ready and willing to throw into mortal peril millions whom it adjudicates as not worth their means—an admixture of social Darwinism born of capital’s avarice and brutalism spawned by Hindutva. .
Understanding migration
When governments and their plans are found to be blatantly wanting in addressing reverse migration, exercises such as the Ekta Parishad’s survey of migrant workers throughout India can be useful to work out creative long-lasting solutions.
Waiting for Jabalpur moment
The Supreme Court’s role in ensuring executive accountability during the ongoing lockdown leaves much to be desired. Standing in shining contrast is the record of some High Courts.
An empty package
The Modi regime, which has been unable to control the COVID-19 infection, restore economic activity and provide relief to millions exposed to starvation, trains its sights on Indian democracy, making use of the panic generated by fear and a lockdown that forecloses paths of resistance.
