James Mathew

India has splendidly made its way to the moon, and I am one among the 1.4 billion Indians celebrating this giant leap made by India on an unexplored challenging territory on the moon. Amidst this ecstasy, the entrepreneur in me celebrates the fact that Chandrayaan’s journey to the moon started from an intentional crash in 2008. And ISRO had previously faced failures that the world watched minute by minute. Yet today, India sashayed its way into the league of superpowers by flying the Indian tricolor high on the moon’s surface. Till today it was only the United States, Russia and China who had made their way to the moon.

To me, India’s scientific expedition to the moon is a journey that has unraveled some of the most humane, humble, and empowering moments in the history of mankind. Let me share some of my favorites here:

1. In 2008, a small Indian probe crashed into the moon only to make the biggest discovery ever, there were signs of water. Could it ever be imagined that the seed of thought about India’s mission to the moon was born from an intentional crash? Remember, the starting point of every peak of success is always a thought.
2. On July 22nd 2019, Chandrayaan – 2 was sent to space but crashed on the Moon’s surface on September 7 due to a partial failure. This failure led to the witnessing of a humane moment when ace scientist and ISRO Chief K Sivan was emotional and found consolation on the shoulders of India’s Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. A humble realisation that the best of us cannot escape the clutches of failure and in moments of failure, those in power can change the game, by simply showing up with empathy, grace and faith in a person’s capabilities and intentions.
3. Nearly 15 years after the intentional crash and almost four years after Chandrayaan 2 was lost , ISRO successfully guided ‘Vikram’ through a tricky dance of gravity and speed to a soft landing on the south polar region of the moon. Sometimes we may get our facts right and processes in place, yet be exposed to risk. The only solution is to face the fight and push one’s boundaries over and above the failures.
4. Think about it. Being a scientist in ISRO requires academic genius, and the team that took on the Chandrayaan-3 project included some of the sharpest minds in India – yet the crowd gathered in ISRO’s Mission Operation Complex waited with bated breath. It was only when the lander was merely 812 metres away from the moon, that the scientists at ISRO erupted in applause for the first time and showed hints of unbridled joy knowing their mission had finally made it to the moon.

Not just any part of the moon — Chandrayaan-3 landed on unexplored territory of the moon peppered with thousands of craters and hundreds of obstacles rising out of the ground—one of the most challenging to land on when it comes to interplanetary locations.

A magical mission to the moon indeed! India has done us so proud and how.

The author is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner at UHY James Chartered Accountants, Dubai, UAE; ARISE UAE Board Member, Independent Non-Executive Director of GCC Healthcare Group; former Chairman, ICAI-Dubai Chapter; and former Secretary- General of IBPC Dubai.

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The five crew members on the missing submersible that was headed to the Titanic died from a “catastrophic implosion” of their vessel. The US Coast Guard came to that conclusion after examining debris found underwater by a remote-controlled vehicle. The debris was found 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the bow of the Titanic.

“We immediately notified the families,” Rear Admiral John Mauger said at a briefing in Boston on Thursday. “On behalf of the US Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences.” The saga of the missing craft known as the Titan sparked global fascination as an international fleet of ships and aircraft desperately scoured an area of the North Atlantic twice the size of Connecticut. Rescuers raced around the clock, concerned that the Titan’s estimated 96-hour oxygen supply was dwindling after it lost contact with the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince on June 18.

The US Coast Guard earlier in the week said unidentified sounds were detected during the search, but those noises weren’t linked to the missing craft. On board the Titan were Hamish Harding, 58, of the UK, founder of investment firm Action Group and an avid adventurer; French maritime expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77; Stockton Rush, 61, chief executive officer of Everett, Washington-based OceanGate Inc., which ran the expedition; and Shahzada Dawood, 48, and Suleman Dawood, 19, a father and son in one of Pakistan’s most prominent families.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate Expeditions, operator of the mission, said in a statement. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

The Titan, a 6.7-meter-long craft made of carbon fiber and titanium, was designed to carry a pilot and four crew to a maximum depth of 4,000 meters (13,120 feet). According to OceanGate’s website, an onboard system was able to track the health of the crew and provide “early warning detection for the pilot with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.”

But no messages were received after a mothership on the surface lost all communications with the Titan on June 18, about 1 hour and 45 minutes after it began diving toward the Titanic, which sank in 1912 on its first trans-Atlantic voyage. OceanGate says it offers 10-day expeditions to the Titanic site, providing “qualified explorers” the opportunity to join as mission specialists.

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You may ridicule her but you can’t ignore her bold initiatives in leading from the front against diseases. Kerala’s Virus Warrior, as one magazine had called State’s Health Minister K.K. Shailaja, has been featured in Science magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Under the heading ‘How a communist physics teacher flattened the COVID-19 curve in southern India’ the magazine traces her work in controlling the spread of COVID-19 in Kerala. Even though she had been called names in the State Assembly by the Opposition, it was her alertness that had stemmed the spread the virus in the State quite early.
The report starts, ‘When the World Health Organization (WHO) issued its first statement on the spread of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, on 18 January, few local governments in India paid close attention. But K. K. Shailaja, the diminutive woman running the health ministry in the southern state of Kerala, immediately perked up her ears.

Shailaja knew many students from Kerala were studying at Wuhan University, and she understood the havoc an outbreak could cause. In 2018, during her first stint as a minister, she faced an outbreak of Nipah virus, another deadly pathogen spread from animals to people. “We knew anything could happen at any time,” she says.

By 24 January, Shailaja had called a meeting of her rapid response team, set up a control room, and mobilized surveillance teams. On 27 January, the first group of students flew back from Wuhan. Three days later, one of them tested positive for COVID-19, becoming India’s first confirmed case.

It is to her credit that only 0.36% of confirmed cases have died, a mortality rate that is among the lowest in the world and reflects both Kerala’s young population and high-quality health care. The magazine, quoting virologist Shahid Jameel, director of Ashoka University’s Trivedi School of Biosciences, says “In many ways, [Kerala] got it right. They possibly got it right the most of any Indian State.”

Much of the credit goes to Kerala’s calm and cheerful Health Minister, often called “Shailaja Teacher” because of her old job as a high school teacher. Although Kerala benefited from historical advantages including the country’s highest literacy rates and arguably its best primary health care system, experts say Shailaja’s leadership has been critical. “She listens to people, she visits hospitals privately, she talks to doctors,” says K. Srinath Reddy, director of the Public Health Foundation of India. “She comes across as a person who is blessed both in ability and humility.”

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It was around 66 million years ago that a deadly asteroid hit the earth and resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs. At that time, dinosaurs were the most dominant species on earth and predators like Tyrannosaurus Rex (T-Rex) roamed across the planet like ferocious warriors. However, the collision of earth with the rogue space body turned things upside down, and dinosaurs were wiped off from the surface of the blue planet.

What if doomsday asteroid moments earlier or later?

The doomsday asteroid that resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs hit the shallow waters of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The nine-mile wide space rock hit Earth with the destructive force of 10 billion Hiroshima bombs, and the radioactive shockwave literally obliterated everything for hundreds of miles in every direction. It also resulted in the creation of giant tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, which ultimately pulled the planet to a state of nuclear winter.

But if that asteroid had arrived mere moments earlier or later, it would have plunged into the deep sea of the Pacific or Atlantic oceans, and we would have been living in a different world today.

” Without the catastrophic asteroid impact and removal of the dinosaurs from the scene, it is unlikely that the inconspicuous mammals would have ever evolved into the large and diverse animals that fill the world today,” said Michael Robert Rampino, a professor at the New York University.

Dinosaurs will undergo evolution, humans might have gone extinct

According to Robert Rampino, if dinosaurs have survived the asteroid impact, these creatures could have undergone major evolutionary changes. They also believe that dinosaurs might have also acquired hands and a large brain in the course of time.

However, the fate of humans will be under uncertainty if dinosaurs are still there on the earth. It was the absence of dinosaurs, and a safe haven to live which played a crucial role in determining human evolution. If dinosaurs were there on the surface of the earth, humans would have faced the deadly killing spree of predators like T-Rex.

Alexander Pearce, an Irish convict notorious for cannibalizing his fellow prison escapees had confessed that human meat is very tasty and delicious. If dinosaurs find human meat tasty, they would have vigorously hunt down humans, and it may even result in the extinction of our species from the planet.

And moreover, if dinosaurs are still there on planet earth, the movie Jurassic Park would not have become a reality. And yeah, what is the point in creating a movie if entire humans are running to save their lives from deadly Jurassic predators in real life.

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