The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

How science shapes modern India
by Raja Ramanna

AS a result of World War II, the whole structure of science and its relation to industry in the West changed from what it was during the previous decades. The war was fought on the basis of using the latest technology against the enemy’s capabilities, and several discoveries and inventions which seemed impossible at one time became possible by the concerted efforts of groups of the best scientists in the world.

All this had a tremendous impact on the nature and structure of science and technology in the post-war world. Scientific research, which was earlier carried out on a small scale in university laboratories under a few professors and their students, suddenly changed to a structure where hundreds of scientists were working on applications of the latest discoveries, involving the coordinated work of several laboratories. The new structure required a corresponding change of policy of the respective governments and “science in the large” came into existence.

It was in this background that Indian science, starting from the late forties, had to be developed. A proper base had first to be created and this came about because of the overall appreciation of the role of science by the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. He was convinced that the future of India depended on scientific and technological development, and further that it should be based on self-reliance. To carry out such a programme was no easy task, as the old colonial administrative methods were designed against such development, and he had to find the right people with the necessary vision to implement these new policies. Though there were many scientists who had made important contributions to pure science, there was certainly a shortage of those with organisational capacities involving industry. Nehru identified three persons for this purpose: P.C. Mahalanobis, Homi Bhabha and S.S. Bhatnagar. These three scientists shaped post-war Indian science, each in his own way but with different results.

The approach of these distinguished scientists naturally depended on their political and social background. Prof P.C. Mahalanobis was a strong Marxist and his approach to planning was based entirely on socialists principles. He founded the Indian Statistical Institute which made important contribution to mathematics, particularly in the field of statistics, in many of its various centres in India. The important contribution of Mahalanobis was, being a distinguished statistician, that he gave India the correct way to assess its successes and failures.

But his over-dependence on the Soviet model and his somewhat parsimonious attitude towards spending prevented planning from taking the country along the path of generating wealth. We now know that the way to reduce poverty in India is to utilise private capital and resources, especially in a democratic system. However, the Nehruvian creation of the public sector did open up great possibilities, especially at a time when our private sector was weak except for a few firms, and is a contribution that must be greatly praised. There was, however, more emphasis on steel, on large power projects and, somehow, an appropriate structure was not evolved for the public sector to protect it from becoming just a tool in the hands of bureaucrats. At the same time, one must of course mention the positive contributions of organisations like Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT), Indian Rare Earth (IRE) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Many of these produced vital items which just could not have been imported.

Homi Bhabha was a wealthy Parsee who, because of the environment he was brought up in, had a natural feeling for appropriate management which took into account the existing conditions in the country. He was a pragmatic person and his training in engineering, physics and mathematics made it possible for him to start groups, to deal with atomic energy, space, pure mathematics, and physics (later to include biology). With his background of knowledge of the private sector, he was able to create a new flexible management system that is still viable. His early death in a plane crash was a disaster of the development of science in the country.

Homi Bhabha tried to focus his work in one of two fields of development so there was a greater concentration of effort. The formation of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), even before the end of World War II, gave a tremendous momentum to the new methods of research in India. Though his activities were mostly located in Bombay, he tried to get people from all parts, particularly the South, especially at a time marked by intellectual discrimination. By his efforts, he was, to a great extent able to prevent emigration of talented Indian scientists, especially in the early stages of our post-Independent era.

The mathematics faculty of the TIFR achieved great heights and most of the achievements belonged to young mathematicians who otherwise would not have found a place due to the system of reservations. The physics faculty attained an international reputation and was visited regularly by great physicists like Blackett, Pauli, Bohr, Dirac and other well known scientists. Bhabha’s own work on cosmic rays and fundamental particles was extended and the theoretical physics department made notable contributions. On the experimental side, special mention must be made of the contributions on proton decay experiments deep underground, nuclear magnetic resonance, nuclear fission, nuclear and neutron physics and the design and construction of accelerators, particularly the Variable Energy Cyclotron at Calcutta under conditions that were unbelievably difficult.

Bhabha’s contributions to the development of nuclear reactors is a part of our history. His insistence on self-reliance, even at the most difficult of times when it was just not possible to import items from aboard, was entirely due to his confidence that India will be able to make it alone. In the early stages, while the first nuclear power reactor was imported to demonstrate to the country that atomic energy is a viable source of power, he simultaneously built up a strong research and development complex at Trombay, which has progressively made it possible to build research reactors starting with smaller ones like “Apsara” and proceeding to large or more sophisticated and complex ones like “Dhruva” and “Purnima”. With this, he was able to put India among the advanced countries in the world. Unfortunately, after his death, international politics began to restrict imports through unfair treaties like the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and so on, and this slowed down the progress of our power reactor programme.

Bhabha was a fighter and would never have agreed to any discriminatory order that made it legal for a few countries and their friends to dominate the global atomic power scene. That policy still continues. His most lasting contribution is the encouragement he gave to the development of the fast reactor programme at Kalpakkam to utilise thorium, which is plentiful within the country. Unfortunately, thorium is not a fissile material and has to be converted by a complex process into one. Had he been alive, he would have been very happy to have known the high capacity and availability factors (80 per cent to 90 per cent) we have reached with our own power reactors, as well as the success of our fast reactor development which has supplied power to our grids. But for his early insistence on self-reliance, we would have been destroyed as a nuclear country by all the agreements we would have had to sign — as has happened in neighbouring countries. It is also a good reflection on the capacity of our industry which has all along responded superbly to our demands of the entire programme. Had we wished, we could have become a totally nuclear country; but that would not have been consistent with our policy of non-violence and the total elimination of weapons of mass destruction. But we live in a troubled world and scientists have to be always alert. — (IPA)

Raja Ramanna is one of the country’s foremost nuclear physicists and Rajya Sabha member. This article is taken from Independent India, a collection sponsored by ICCR on the 50th anniversary of India’s Independence.

Can we colonise Mars?
by Ben Sandilands

THE possibility of creating a habitable environment on Mars has been dealt a severe blow by a new theory which suggests that warming up the atmosphere would unleash extremely destructive tidal wave-like winds.

The so-called White Mars theory developed by British geologist Dr Nick Hoffman says that if the planet’s atmosphere were made warmer, large deposits of frozen carbon dioxide buried beneath the planet’s poles would melt. In Mars’s case though, violent winds travelling at supersonic speeds would be created, razing everything in their path.

We know that apart from deposits of real water ice at the north pole of Mars and traces of atmospheric water vapour there are massive sheets of solid carbon dioxide, both in the polar caps and close to the surface right across the planet,” says Hoffman.

“In the White Mars model it is proposed that when these sheets become exposed to the thin Martian atmosphere the dry ice ceases to behave like a layer of rock and fizzes and foams and explodes outwards, a bit like a fire extinguisher set off inside a bag of flour.”

“However this fluff of dust and sand is powerful stuff. Like volcanic ash clouds on earth, it flows like a liquid, and in the lighter gravity and thin air of Mars, moves at supersonic speed, destroying everything in its path. Rocky surface layers are blasted into seething masses of boulders, adding to the power of the expanding sheet of fast moving debris.”

Hoffman believes the focus of research of the red planet has been too geared to investigating what scientists wanted to find - evidence of liquid water and life. This has skewed interpretations of available data.

“A vast amount of public money has been tapped to send space craft to Mars to look for what we want to find - evidence of water and the past or present existence of life - rather than finding out what is really on the fourth planet,” he says.

“This is sometimes described as the Green Mars model, a term also used by those who believe we should reawaken the planet by terraforming it to make it habitable without space suits and life support systems.”

Hoffman says all the available evidence, including recent images that seem to show water seeping through parts of the sub-polar regions, points to carbon dioxide or dry ice as the force behind features resembling ancient rivers or lakes or alluvial flood plains.

‘Those impressive boulders we saw at the Mars Pathfinder Rover site arrived in a massive outpouring of gas and dust, not water,’ says Hoffman.

His radical theory that carbon dioxide instead of water formed the eroded features of Mars is rattling America’s scientific establishment and a year after his paper was rejected by the journal Nature, another US scientific publication, Icarus, is publishing his White Mars model.

“I’m afraid this has upset the Green Mars industry in the states rather severely,” says Hoffman, who has worked in Australia for the past nine years, and is on a limited term contract as a researcher in the Earth Science department at La Trobe University.

Hoffman was working in the oil search division of Australia’s largest mineral resources company, BHP, when those images were beamed to earth. “I felt very uncomfortable about the way everything was automatically interpreted as evidence of water erosion. The models, and the facts, didn’t add up. I knew the young Mars had to have been colder, not warmer than today, and if it was awash with water, it should have dissolved into rocks to form an abundance of carbonates. Yet spacecraft in Mars orbit can detect hardly any trace of carbonates.

“There were no great rivers or seas on a Green Mars, although other researchers have outlined persuasive reasons why instead of a sea of water there was once a sea of mud before a younger Mars underwent internal geological cooling,” he says.

“I guess I’m a bit like the little boy who shouts, ‘Look, the king is naked’. Early in the 20th century scientists who wanted money had to be able to see the so-called Martian canals proposed as signs of intelligent life by astronomer Percival Lowell to get patronage. Nothing has changed. We continue to delude ourselves through our anthropomorphic view of the universe.”

If Hoffman is correct the notion of terraforming Mars suddenly seems like a very bad idea. Artificially warming the planet to a temperature at which liquid water could flow would also unleash the destructive power of buried deposits of dry ice on a planet-wide scale.

Hoffman’s paper in Icarus was peer-reviewed before publication last month. Kenneth Tanaka, a planetary scientist at the US Geological Survey, says: “I think it is a valid theory. I side more with him that some of the Mars scientists that are more enamoured with liquid water.”

Science Quiz
by J. P. Garg

1. “How fast should I set the speed of light?” “How much charge should I give this little speck called an electron?” “What value should I give to Planck’s constant?” These are such other questions might have been posed by God to Himself while creating the universe.

Who ascribed such questions to God?

2. The British cardiac surgeon Stephen Westaby recently conducted a revolutionary operation on a 61-year-old patient who could not have otherwise lived for more than six weeks. Due to a device implanted in the patient’s heart, he can now live for a number of years. Name the type of device which has been implanted permanently for the first time in the world.

3. In this biochemical process simple sugars (glucose, fructose) as well as complex plant and animal sugars (starches, glycogen) are oxidised and converted into lactic acid, and chemical energy is released. What is this process called?

4. It has been observed that when a large and continuous ecosystem is fragmented into smaller parts, say by human populations, then in these parts some species die out faster in proportion to the size of these fragments. What is this process called?

5. This chemical, commonly used by ripening bananas, is hazardous to health. It prolonged consumption can cause ulcers or even cancer. Which is this chemical, that can also cause various gastric and stomach problems.

6. The moon revolves around the earth in a period of about 28 days. It also completes one rotation around its own axis in the same time, with the result the moon shows the same face to us every night. What is this phenomenon called?

7. Who proposed the exchange theory of nuclear forces and in which year? Name also the elementary particle via which this type of exchange is supposed to take place.

8. This shrub grows to a height of two three metres and bears scarlet or orange red flowers in abundance, almost throughout the year. Because its flowers grow at the top of the twigs, this flowering shrub is sometimes called “peacock flower”. What is its more popular common name? What is its botanical name?

9. What are “Shields”, “Stable platforms”, “Sedimentary basins” and “Folded mountain belts”?

10. An Indian institute has recently developed hydro-fluoro carbons (HFCs) which can be used in place of chloro-fluoro carbons (CFCs) that damage the protective ozone layer surrounding the earth. Can you name this institute?

Answers

1. American physicist Albert Einstein. 2. An electric pump. 3. Glycolysis. 4. Faunal collapse. 5. Ethophone. 6. Synchronosis rotation or captured rotation. 7. Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa in 1935; meson. 8. Gulmohri; caesalpinia pulcherrina. 9. There are the four components which make up the crust of all continents on earth’s surface. 10. Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad.

New products & discoveries

Agriculture minus soil
THE revolutionary new technique called “hydroponics” or soil-less agriculture has been perfected. Such are its amazing applications that many scientists feel that it is the answer to all food problems faced by the world today.

It may be that soon some organisation will design a growth chamber for the home that will be about the size and shape of a refrigerator. You could pluck a head of lettuce, some radishes, some carrots or whatever end have a garden fresh sealed without leaving your kitchen.

American astronauts are usually put on a diet of garden-fresh vegetables, juicy lettuces, radishes and oranges, every time they sit down for lunch. In fact the variety of greens and fruits available to them are more than what we earthlings can hope to get in any given season.

But how on earth does a space station get all these farm-fresh juicy fruits and vegetables everyday? The answer lies in hydroponics.

First protein biochips
BY mating silicon chips with biological proteins, US scientists have created the first protein biochips to detect microbes, disease cells and a harmful or therapeutic chemicals.

Base computer chips were first fabricated and then a group led by Michael Ladisch attached the protein avidin to the chip.

Chips containing thousands of proteins can be organised into a device about the size of handheld computer that could lead to quicker and cheaper detection, say researchers of Purdue University.

If the first real-world tests of the biochips are successful, the protein-encrusted silicon chips could appear in dozens of applications in a few years. Physicians may use devices containing biochips to quickly diagnose common diseases or to test the efficacy of chemotherapy. Soldiers may rely on sensors on the battlefield to sound the alarm in the event of a biological or chemical attack. Farmers could place sensors in their fields to alert them to crop diseases. Medical scientists may use them biochips to investigate whether certain plants popular as folk remedies actually contain biochemicals that have beneficial biological activity. New pharmaceutical products may come up too.

Carbon dioxide as refrigerant
RESEARCHERS are making progress in perfecting automative and portable air-conditioning (AC) systems that use environmentally friendly carbon dioxide (CO2) as a refrigerant instead of conventional, synthetic global-warning and ozone-depleting chemicals which were refrigerants of choice during the early 20th century but were later replaced with man-made chemicals.

Technical advances, including development of extremely thin and strong aluminium tubes, have made possible use of CO2 as a refrigerant.

Developed by Purdue University researchers in the US, the design of the portable CO2-based AC works as well as conventional military “environmental control units.” Thousands of the units, which now use environmentally harmful refrigerants, are currently in operation. The CO2 unit was designed using a new computer model that accurately simulates the performance of carbon dioxide-based air conditioners.

Aprototype has been built by Purdue engineers and is being tested.