Sailing the Solar System
Posted by in Astronomy on July 12, 2011
People think it s cool that I’m working on a proposal for a major new NASA Venus mission. But when they ask when it will launch and I answer, “If we’re lucky, perhaps around 2020,” they suddenly appear less enthusiastic, like I’m describing a crazy pipe dream.
Maybe you have to be a little bit crazy to do this for a living. At the very least, you need to be comfortable with delayed gratification. Interplanetary spacecraft take a lot of time and work before any metal is cut, and most of them go nowhere. We spend years designing, proposing, and planning missions that never get selected for funding and so never make it anywhere near a launch pad.
Because there is no wiggle room in planetary orbits, these projects, once selected, cannot slip schedule without consequence. There is precious little chance of fixing any mistake discovered after launch. If you make it to launch, you get to enjoy moments of intense anxiety as something you’ve poured years of your life into sits on the pad on a stack of rockets loaded with enough fuel to blow it into shrapnel.
At a time when jet travel has shrunk our home planet to within a day’s travel time, planetary exploration requires timescales, and levels of patience, more characteristic of an earlier era of oceanic exploration.
Charles Darwin was the naturalist on board the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836. His 5-year mission was to explore the strange new worlds of South America and the Pacific, seeking out and cataloguing new life. His discoveries and insights on this voyage repositioned humanity within the web of life on Earth. Now, less than two centuries later, we’re exploring other planets, searching for other sites of Darwinian evolution. Read the rest of this entry »
Islam and Science (How Should the Science Be Treated in Islam)
Posted by in Science on July 7, 2011
Islam and science has been an oft quoted term for thinkers, writers and common people. It has created so many new interpretations, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. Here our contention is to provide you the basic concepts in Islam to make the idea clear. Islam is a philosophy as well as science, only point to understand is how strong the link is between these two. Has there been any link or not? And if there is to what extent is it practical? We see number of people around us who do not consider science important and therefore do not bring it in their lives arguing that it is a materialistic approach towards life. Is this true for their lives? There have been so many Articles and lectures written on this specific topic and here our purpose is to show you the real picture and let you decide what the reality in Islam is.
Before going into any further detail it is important to know what science really means. There are so many interpretations and here is one of those, “Science basically is an understanding of a particular thing that exists physically and the use of the principles of that understanding for the benefit of the humanity”.
After reading the definition one can understand that it is not a new thing because its existence has been long since the beginning of humanity. Man has always tried to make things easier and simpler for his domestic and industrial life. Before Islam great names like Aristotle and Plato are examples for the great work that also highlights the importance of philosophy. Now we will discuss science after the existence of Islam.
Most of scientists and thinkers believe that arrival of Muhammad (SAW) and Quran was the most important and boasting point for science. It is basically arrival of reality that helps to understand the universe and purpose of its creation. In fact that was the period when science got new spirit despite of the fact that philosophical explanations were made continuously. Quran and Hadith describe their position openly and clarifies that there is no clash between Islam and science rather it is wrong explanation of science that has made it suspicious. First we look at the life of Muhammad (SAW). His life is true explanation of the basic of the science in which He rooted out superstitions and old traditions and told the people reality. He knew the importance of knowledge and made it compulsory for every men and women. He raised the degree of learning seventy times higher than prayer to prove that for the understanding of religion, knowledge about universe is important. Is this not the purpose of science? Science also rejects superstitions and makes people aware of true facts of the universe. After Allah Almighty He is the only person who knows everything about this universe and to prove this He spent a practical life and gave principles with logics on all fields of life. Here a question rises, “Did He invent something?” The answer is no, because science is an awareness it does not require invention. Yet His teachings and philosophy are becoming theories of science day by day. Read the rest of this entry »