“Tracing connection between mythology and science, Governor Lt. General (Retd) S K Sinha today said that the latter cannot totally ignore the former.
Inaugurating an international workshop on physics and analysis of hot and dense matter at University of Jammu this morning, the Governor while referring to mythological belief said that emergence of the Himalayas from the ocean. Scientists were today studying the Big Bang concept which led to the creation of the universe. They may find an element of commonality between their scientific findings and some mythological beliefs. He said that Homer’s Idiyad describing the Trojan War used to be dismissed as mythology and poetic fantasy till recent archaeological excavations have established the historicity of that war, which over centuries had got embellished with mythology.”
– from Daily Excelsior, Jammu, Feb 12, 2008
Governor (he was not yet ex) was inaugurating a workshop on ‘A Large Ion Collider Experiment’ (ALICE)’.
Indian teams are contributing to two of the experiment in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Experiments that aims to re- create conditions that existed immediately (in a billionth of a second sense) after the Big bang. These two experiments are CMS experiment and ALICE . Starting on 10 September 2008, it is the single biggest experiment conducted in the world since NASA’s mission to space.
The team from Jammu University worked for ALICE under Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre Kolkata.
Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD) for the LHC to be used in ALICE was built by Indian experts and the team from Jammu contributed to its creation.
Back to the (ex) Governor. I think it would have been understandable had he been quoting Frijof Capra. It would have been a nice ruse to talk about Amarnath.
But, taking about Homer’s Iliad (Idiyad?) at a physics workshop! He sure was a curious fellow and it’s a funny world.
Anyway, here is a little funny something to see:
Google search results for Big Bang India
and Google search results for Big Bang Pakistan
