This Friday Documentary: The Journey of a Star ( Chandrasekhar)

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Dear All

This time we are going to watch a wonderful documentary on one of the
greatest astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He was Indian Nobel
Laureate and you all know about him better than me. He was born in Lahore
(British India); obtained his PhD from Cambridge; and taught in Cambridge
and University of Chicago.  He has lot of contributions in astrophysics;
Chandrasekhar limit was one of the most notable. It describes the maximum
mass of a stable white dwarf star.  He has authored many books on stellar
dynamics, black holes, hydrodynamics, plasma physics, and also for general
public for example 'Truth and beauty: Aesthetics and motivation in science'
and 'Newton's Principia for common readers'. These are all available in our
library as well. He was awarded many prizes, the most notable one was Nobel
Prize. NASA named the third of it's four great contributions after
Chandrasekhar. The 'Chandra X-rays laboratory' was launched and deployed by
Space Shuttle Columbia in 1999.  The Chandrasekhar number
(magnetohydrodynamics) was named after him (*).
So, let's together watch this documentary,  *The Journey of a Star*, today
in Lecture-room B at* 5:30 pm (17:30).*   And, learn some thing new from
this great physicist.

Note on this documentary from Marie Curie Library's website:

"On the morning of 1st August 1930 in Bombay, the wharf of the P&O -
Peninsular and Oriental Line - was fully crowded and there was the usual
confusion of any departure. Foreigns walked around looking with open
admiration at the Gateway of India, a monument erected by England in the
Twenties to be the symbol of the entry in the Raj, but that was going to
become very soon the sad witness of its leaving. Near the pier of the
steamer Pilsna, a liner of Lloyd Triestino travelling from Bombay to
Venice, a small crowd was gathering to bid farewell to a young man heading
for Europe. That Indian boy had the solemn gait of a Brahman and a
thoughtfulness unusual at that age. His eyes were shaded by a veil of
sadness: surrounded by all those friends, relatives and brothers, among all
those hugs and kisses, he was missing the embrace of his mother, left home
seriously ill. She had encouraged him from the beginning, pushing him to
set out on that journey to England, to the temple of science called
Cambridge. When the ship steamed off and the profile of the Gateway of
India became a small point on the line of the horizon, he knew that he
would not see her anymore. That voyage across the Arabic Sea, the Channel
of Suez and the Mediterranean changed the course of astrophysics forever.
It also changed the life of that impressive young man whose name was
Sbrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, universally known as Chandra."-- Back cove

To inform those who would not be able come to watch: this documentary video
is also available in our Marie Curie Library.


-- 
Syed Muntazir Mehdi Abidi
High Energy Physics Diploma

(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subrahmanyan_Chandrasekhar