Indian Genes Joaquim Gonsalves

Isi is a Space Lawyer and space outreach, communication & PR consultant for various clients. She is Community Manager at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), South America Regional Coordinator at Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), Lecturer of Public International Law at Universidad de los Andes, an alumni of the SHSSP18, guest lecturer and CAPCOM at various space studies programs of the International Space University, and guest lecturer of negotiations skills and air and space law in various universities around the globe.
We discuss a variety of topics which includes general international law, Space law comprises of a variety of international agreements, treaties, conventions, and United Nations General Assembly resolutions and rules and regulations of international organizations. We also discuss how space is free and open to everyone but we need to ensure we take appropriate measure to keep it that way. Isis is an inspiration as you will hear in this episode and a true role model, sit back listen and be inspired !!

Ranga Ram Chary is an observational cosmologist working in the fields of reionization, galaxy evolution, cluster cosmology and cosmic backgrounds. His group is active in science with Planck, Euclid, Herschel and the Spitzer Space Telescope in addition to a range of ground-based astronomical observation facilities such as Palomar, Keck, CSO, CARMA and ALMA. We are also involved in developing the next generation of small explorer missions in collaboration with JPL.    Specifically, measuring the properties of star-forming galaxies out to the highest redshifts, and in conjunction with studies of gamma-ray burst number densities and Type Ia supernovae, attempting to understand fundamental properties of galaxies, such as how they grow their stellar mass and metallicity, what is the stellar mass function therein, when does dust begin to play a significant role in their energetics and what fuels the star-formation as a function of cosmic time. Using these measurements to provide, among other things, better constraints on the reionization history of the Universe between redshifts of 6 and 20 (the first billion years of time), which is arguably the most important astrophysical event since the Big Bang.    THe team is also using objects at the extreme end of the dark matter mass function, i.e. galaxy clusters, as a probe of the structure of the Universe. By measuring cluster masses over the last half of cosmic time (z1) using galaxy dynamics and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, we can constrain the equation of state of dark energy and non-Gaussianity in the primordial density fluctuation field, two quantities which are parametric representations of the evolution of our Universe. Most recent efforts have measured spectral anomalies at the 10 parts per million in the cosmic microwave background to observationally constrain the existence of alternate universes with physical properties different than our own.    Of late, the team has developed a mission concept to identify the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events that are being detected by Advanced LIGO and Virgo.   Between 2010 and close-out in 2018,he served as the Project Scientist and Project Manager of the U.S. Planck Data Center at Caltech and since 2013, he has been the P.I. of one of the 3 U.S. Science Teams on Euclid.   

Marcella's interest in astronomy and atmospheric optical phenomena (photometeors) over time led her to create a scientific dissemination site (www.greenflash.photo) with about 1000 photometeor images and videos, even rare ones, observed throughout Italy and above all on the Iblei mountains (Rg) and on the Dolomites in Cadore, landscapes chosen for the great diversity of orographic, climatic and day and night luminosity, as well as for their position at the two extreme latitudes of Italy. In 2011 he received from the Minister of Public Administration the national prize for innovation in teaching in schools "Innovascuola". In 2015, his photo "Moon and Antelao" is included in the Shortlist of the Royal Museum of Greenwich photo competition "Astronomy Photographer of the Year", which selects the best astrophotography of the year from all over the world. The photo was then also published in the volume "Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015" published by the Royal Observatory of Greenwich in collaboration with the BBC, the photographic site Flickr and the Collins publishing house and exhibited inside the Astronomical Observatory of Greenwich.
The same photo will become the December image of the 2017 Greenwich Astronomical Observatory calendar. In 2016 he exhibited his photos in a personal exhibition in San Vito di Cadore (Bl), with more than 100 photos of atmospheric optical phenomena from all over Italy. The event was the first exhibition in Italy complete with video dedicated to photometeors. The work of dissemination through video and photography continues in the following years and many of his images are published by the major national astronomy magazines (Colelum Astronomia, Nuovo Orione and Le Stelle, Focus) and internationally (Astronomy Now, Sky and Telescope) as well as by websites of primary scientific importance such as those of Spaceweather, USRA and NASA. In 2016, he documents the visibility of the Maltese archipelago from the province of Ragusa and his images and his videos are broadcast by the Maltese national TV which, in the interview, define his works as the first shots of the Maltese archipelago by the iblei. Since 2017 he has been a member of the board of directors of CISA (Centro Ibleo Studi Astronomici), UAI delegation (Unione Astrofili Italiani) for the province of Ragusa, which aims to actively promote astronomy in the province of Ragusa, contributing with conferences on atmospheric optics. In September 2018, NASA publishes an image of him that captures the Moon setting next to the active crater south-east of Etna. In 2019 the national magazine "Nuovo Orione" publishes the calendar with its images: 12 photos that tell the sky of the Dolomites and the Iblei. For the summer solstice of 2019, NASA publishes his work on the solar Analemma, a work selected for its didactic value and for the singularity in creating an "Analemma at sunset".On May 31, 2020, his photos of the Green Ray taken on the Sun, Moon and planets, become NASA 's photo of the dayIn the summer of 2020 he sets up two twin exhibitions, in northern and southern Italy, between the municipality of Isnello (PA) and San Vito di Cadore (Bl) On September 26, 2020, his photo Moon Pairs and the Synodic Month ” becomes NASA 's photo of the dayOn November 11, 2020, his “Colors of the Moon” photo becomes NASA 's photo of the dayOn October 16, 2021, on the occasion of the “International Observe the Moon Night 2021”, NASA chooses its photographic work, created in collaboration with Gianni Sarcone, “ Moona Lisa ” as the astronomical photo of the day.Collaborate on the 2021 calendar of “ Severe Weather Europe” for the month of February  For professional deformation, he always combines his passion for photometeors with his profession, focusing his works on the didactic, informative and originality value, trying to grasp what has never been produced yet, simplifying to make it affordable for everyone.Component of t

Simon Conway Morris is an English paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and astrobiologist known for his study of the fossils of the Burgess Shale and the Cambrian explosion. The results of these discoveries were celebrated in Stephen Jay Gould's 1989 book Wonderful Life. Conway Morris's own book on the subject, The Crucible of Creation (1998), however, is critical of Gould's presentation and interpretation. He has held the Chair of Evolutionary Paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge since 1995.Simon Conway Morris speaks exclusively to Indian Genes! In his new book From Extraterrestrials to Humans, he cheerfully challenges six assumptions—what he calls ‘myths’—that too often pass as unquestioned truths amongst the evolutionary orthodox. 
His convivial tour begins with the idea that evolution is boundless in the kinds of biological systems it can produce. Not true, he says. The process is highly circumscribed and delimited. Nor is it random. This popular notion holds that evolution proceeds blindly, with no endgame. But Conway Morris suggests otherwise, pointing to evidence that the processes of evolution are “seeded with inevitabilities.” 
If that is so, then what about mass extinctions? Don’t they steer the development of life in radically new directions? Rather the reverse, claims Conway Morris. Such cataclysms simply accelerate evolutionary developments that were going to happen anyway. And what about that other evolutionary canard: the “missing link”? Plenty to choose from in the fossil record but what is persistently over-looked is that in any group there is not one but a phalanx of “missing links”. Once again we under-score the near-inevitability of evolutionary outcomes. 
Turning from fossils to minds, Conway Morris critically examines the popular tenet that the intelligences of humans and animals basically are the same thing, a difference of degree not kind. A closer scrutiny of our minds shows that in reality an unbridgeable gulf separates us from even the chimpanzees, so begging questions of consciousness and Mind.
Finally, Conway Morris tackles the question of extraterrestrials. Surely, the size and scale of the universe suggest that alien life must exist somewhere beyond Earth and our tiny siloed solar system? After all, evolutionary convergence more than hints that human-like forms are universal. But Dr. Conway Morris has serious doubts. The famous Fermi Paradox (“Where are they?”) appears to hold: Alone in the cosmos—and unique, but not quite in the way one might expect. 

Dr. Lee Clare is responsible for the coordination of the Göbekli Tepe Project. He completed his master’s degree at the University of Cologne in 2005, majoring in prehistoric archaeology. Following the completion of his PhD in 2013, which focused Early Holocene climate-culture interactions in the Eastern Mediterranean, he joined the Orient Department of the DAI as a post-doctoral fellow. In 2015 he took on the position of research coordinator of the DFG long-term project at Göbekli Tepe, and in 2019 moved to the DAI’s Istanbul Department where he is now acting consultant for prehistoric archaeology. His areas of academic interest include Neolithisation and Neolithic dispersal processes, Early-Middle Holocene absolute chronologies, culture-climate interaction, prehistoric conflict and cognitive evolution.
The mound of Göbekli Tepe is situated a few kilometres to the northeast of the modern town of  Şanlıurfa in southeastern Turkey. The tell is situated on the highest point of the Germus mountain range towering 750 m above the Harran plain. With a height of 15 m, the mound, which is completely artificial, is spreading on an area of about 9 ha, measuring 300 m in diameter. This immense ruin hill was formed of the debris of monumental constructions dating back to the 10th and 9th millenium BC. Göbekli Tepe was first noted as an archaeological site during a combined survey by the Universities of Chicago and Istanbul in the 1960s (Benedict 1980 – external link) due to its remarkable amount of flint flakes, chips, and tools, but the architecture the mound was hiding remained unrecognized until its re-discovery in 1994 by Klaus Schmidt. Excavations started the following year and are still ongoing, until his untimely death in 2014 lead by Klaus Schmidt. They revealed an monumental architecture not suspected in such an early context and illustrating the outstanding role of this site – not as a settlement, but as a place of cult and ritual.

In conversation with Indian Genes in this Exclusive, Avi Loeb the Harvard University professor who is now heading the Galileo Project, explains his shocking hypothesis, details in this conversation have not been heard before and Avi Loeb, opens up to all matters related to the search for Extraterrestrial life including some details about his own life you may not Know.
Avi Loeb is no stranger to controversy. The prolific Harvard University astrophysicist has produced pioneering and provocative research on black holes, gamma-ray bursts, the early universe and other standard topics of his field. But for more than a decade he has also courted a more contentious subject—namely, space aliens, including how to find them. Until relatively recently, Loeb’s most high-profile work in that regard was his involvement with Breakthrough Starshot, a project funded by Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner to send laser-boosted, gossamer-thin mirrorlike spacecraft called “light sails” on high-speed voyages to nearby stars. All that began to change in late 2017, however, when astronomers around the world scrambled to study an enigmatic interstellar visitor—the first ever seen—that briefly came within range of their telescopes.