NASA looking for Jadoo on Mars

[US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korneinko have blasted off in a Soyuz spacecraft to spend a full year at the International Space Station. They are attempting to create a record of the amount of time spent at this guinea lab to see what happens to these two lab rats after 12 months in zero-gravity, drinking recycled piss, hurling around the planet (wheee) and no sex… at all; a vacation that Valery Polyakov has scoffed at after spending 437 days in an older version of above mentioned space lab, in 1994.

Image Courtesy: Google Images/NASA.

Disgruntled astronauts who were passed over for this glorious mission, including Tom Hanks, who apparently didn’t learn anything from his Apollo 13 near-death experience, have alleged that this mission is a front to actually send humans to Mars from where a signal has been received in a single monosyllable repetition sequence that goes Om- Om- Om- Om- Om in different pitches. Tom Hanks is so getting fired for this.

Rakesh Roshan, Indian film director and the father of a Greek Demigod, seems to have strong views on the subject. Bruce Willis, who became head of NASA after blowing up that asteroid aiming for Earth and having a habit of generally Dying Hard for over a decade is also stoked.

Russia and the United States, the two nations whose astronauts are on this mission have vehemently denied these accusations of a world-wide conspiracy, calling them wild and misleading theories to create panic and bring down the credibility of their governments. They further denied building space weapons, continuing research on Skynet, the existence of Area 51 and that Will Smith had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour for bringing down a space plane in Independence Day.

Note: ISRO made the bolts for the garbage chute on this vehicle.]

[This is my article for the Faking News website. You can and probably should read it here: NASA’s ‘Year in Space’ is a conspiracy to find Jadoo]

Note: This post has been written for Faking news. Did you notice the ‘Faking’ before the word news? That’s because this is a parody of mainstream news and is supposed to be taken in jest and humour.

Beyond Boundaries

Today I was watching a lesser known film titled ‘Einstein and Eddington’. For those who have not yet had the chance of watching it, the film is the tale of two scientists, one German and the other English, set in the backdrop of the First World War and meaning to show how science, which was at that time, the right hand of the military, transcended national identities to give a clearer picture of the universe as we know it today.

This blog post is not a review of the film but rather an amalgamation of thoughts that it evoked at its outset.

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

The correspondence of scientists from two countries at war on a planet that is so miniscule that it fades into insignificance at the magnitude of the theory that one of them developed and the other attempted to prove says something about human endeavour and its burning passion for knowledge even in the most brutal of times.

The 1900s were probably not the best of times for free scientific research because of the pressures of continuous conflicts and the race to be at the forefront of technological innovation that was spurred on by warring factions in Europe.

Today, the times are different and collaboration has reached a level where it’s difficult to pinpoint which country developed what because scientific approach today is one where the entire race is benefited from work towards a common goal by shared research and development.

It is almost magical (and that’s an ironical adjective to use) to see how correspondence between two great and open minds helped to establish the new laws of gravity and its behaviour in the universe. What’s more is that an English scientist helped a German scientist prove Sir Isaac Newton wrong.

This uncommon, possibly dangerous and mildly traitorous collaboration at that time brought about future discoveries that would have otherwise been delayed by decades of war. And all it took was one moment of courage and determination by one scientist to pose a question to another who was looking to answer that very question but didn’t know how to.

This goes a long way in showing how much good humanity is capable of; it speaks of a glimmer of hope amidst the devastation of war and the continuous search for the truth in the bleakest times of barbarity that can be conjured up. The same mind that can unravel whole civilizations can also unravel the threads of the universe.

Humanity has two faces and even though it might feel like the good side is faded beyond recognition, it shines more brilliantly at the worst of times to give hope and satisfaction to those with faith.