44 min
Zeroing In with Prof. Bhal Chandra Joshi | Part 1 | On Astrophysics, Clocking Pulsars, & Building Giant Telescopes Zeroing In
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- Science
The universe we inhabit is teeming with remarkable mysteries, far removed from the extraordinarily insignificant corner that the Earth occupies. Mysteries of which, we can only see the traces of, and they still, very beautifully, cradle answers to the questions of our very existence — we talk about the process of discovering these answers, and delve even more into the journey of setting out to seek out further questions with our guest for this episode, Prof. Bhal Chandra Joshi, from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) - TIFR, Pune, India.
Prof. Joshi's research explores vast and varied fields of astronomy and astrophysics, mainly addressing the questions about neutron stars and pulsars, and his expertise spans further beyond to building extremely elaborate and detailed instruments & facilities like the Giant Metre-wave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to delve deeper into those questions. After being trained as an electrical engineer at IIT Roorkee, Prof. Joshi went on to pursue his doctoral work in astronomy and astrophysics, and has produced very vital research works, along with making seminal contributions to building the GMRT facility with the veteran Prof. Govind Swarup. His deep understanding of the principles of fundamental physics is as deftly complemented by his expertise in the fields of engineering and instrumentation, bringing out a nourishing world-view and the essence of scientific explorations.
In the first part of the two part episodes from our conversation with him, we discussed about the faraway objects in the universe, specifically the most precise natural clocks ever known to humankind - pulsars, which happen to harbour extremely challenging and long-standing open questions in our understanding of these exotic objects. We discover how these questions span far and wide, and how on the other end, these objects can help us realize very useful technologies in the current scenarios. Dive in to the conversation to clock further perspectives on this and more!
Music credits to Sankalp Hongal and Ethan Phangcho. Episode artwork by Akshita Arora.
The universe we inhabit is teeming with remarkable mysteries, far removed from the extraordinarily insignificant corner that the Earth occupies. Mysteries of which, we can only see the traces of, and they still, very beautifully, cradle answers to the questions of our very existence — we talk about the process of discovering these answers, and delve even more into the journey of setting out to seek out further questions with our guest for this episode, Prof. Bhal Chandra Joshi, from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) - TIFR, Pune, India.
Prof. Joshi's research explores vast and varied fields of astronomy and astrophysics, mainly addressing the questions about neutron stars and pulsars, and his expertise spans further beyond to building extremely elaborate and detailed instruments & facilities like the Giant Metre-wave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to delve deeper into those questions. After being trained as an electrical engineer at IIT Roorkee, Prof. Joshi went on to pursue his doctoral work in astronomy and astrophysics, and has produced very vital research works, along with making seminal contributions to building the GMRT facility with the veteran Prof. Govind Swarup. His deep understanding of the principles of fundamental physics is as deftly complemented by his expertise in the fields of engineering and instrumentation, bringing out a nourishing world-view and the essence of scientific explorations.
In the first part of the two part episodes from our conversation with him, we discussed about the faraway objects in the universe, specifically the most precise natural clocks ever known to humankind - pulsars, which happen to harbour extremely challenging and long-standing open questions in our understanding of these exotic objects. We discover how these questions span far and wide, and how on the other end, these objects can help us realize very useful technologies in the current scenarios. Dive in to the conversation to clock further perspectives on this and more!
Music credits to Sankalp Hongal and Ethan Phangcho. Episode artwork by Akshita Arora.
44 min