aditya
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📰 Radio telescope floating in Karnataka waters throws light on nature of early stars and galaxies
•SARAS 3, a radio telescope designed and built at the Raman Research Institute (RRI) here, has provided clues to the nature of the universe’s first stars and galaxies.
•Using data from the telescope which has been deployed over the Dandiganahalli Lake and Sharavati backwaters since 2020, astronomers and researchers have been able to determine properties of radio luminous galaxies formed just 200 million years post the Big Bang, a period known as the Cosmic Dawn.
•Researchers Saurabh Singh from the RRI and Ravi Subrahmanyan from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, along with collaborators at the University of Cambridge and University of Tel Aviv, have used data from SARAS 3 to throw light on the energy output, luminosity, and masses of the first generation of galaxies that are bright in radio wavelengths.
Deeper insight
•“The results from the SARAS 3 telescope are the first time that radio observations of the averaged 21-centimetre line have been able to provide an insight into the properties of the earliest radio loud galaxies that are usually powered by supermassive black holes,” said Subrahmanyan, former Director of the RRI and currently with CSIRO. Explaining the findings, Professor Singh said SARAS 3 had improved the understanding of astrophysics of Cosmic Dawn by telling astronomers that less than 3% of the gaseous matter within early galaxies was converted into stars, and that the earliest galaxies that were bright in radio emission were also strong in X-rays, which heated the cosmic gas in and around the early galaxies.
•The results of the findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
•In March, the SARAS 3 team used the same data to reject claims of the detection of an anomalous 21-cm signal from Cosmic Dawn made by the EDGES radio telescope developed by researchers from Arizona State University and MIT, the U.S.
📰 Centre plans to document cultures, social practices of indigenous, tribal societies
Experts make a presentation before President Droupadi Murmu; plan is to encourage sociologists, anthropologists and researchers to research and document practices of their own communities
•The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), along with the Union government, is now pushing for the “re-documentation” of the cultures and social practices of indigenous and tribal societies in India, existing scholarly literature on which, it says, is heavily reliant on the body of knowledge created by colonising governments.
•The plan is to encourage more sociologists, anthropologists and researchers from India’s indigenous and tribal communities to research and document the cultural, social and historical practices of their own communities in a bid to replace the colonial-era body of work on this subject, NCST Chairperson Harsh Chouhan explained, adding that this will enable the government to understand tribal societies, identity and rights better.
•Professors, Tribal Research Institute (TRI) Directors, researchers and other academics who have been attending a two-day workshop this week on the way forward to achieve this goal, also met with President Droupadi Murmu on Monday night at the Rashtrapati Bhavan for a presentation to her, after which Ms. Murmu launched a book compiling unheard stories of the sacrifice and bravery with which tribal communities and leaders resisted British rulers.
•During the closing remarks of the workshop, Ms. Murmu said, “This should not be the end. It should be the beginning of efforts to hold similar events and workshops across the country.”
•She added that she hoped this workshop would inspire youth to research and write about the histories and cultures of their own communities.
Valuable knowledge
•From ways to treat illnesses and ways to make weapons to ways of protecting nature and ways of passing along knowledge through community songs, Ms. Murmu said that the knowledge of tribal communities needs to be included in the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) that the National Education Policy is now focusing on, and that this knowledge of tribal communities will play an important role in making India a “knowledge superpower”.
