Live Indian Independence Day for the first time on YouTube

Yes, you heard it right. YouTube, in association with Doordarshan will live stream the 67th Independence Day celebrations to be held on Thursday in the capital along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s address to the nation.

This association will enable millions of Indians worldwide to enjoy high definition live feed on Doordarshan's YouTube channel and get front row access to all celebrations lined up for the grand event.

The live streaming of the celebrations, a first for YouTube, will be available on August 15 from 6:25 a.m. (IST) onwards, including the flag-hoisting ceremony by the Prime Minister. Highlight clips will also be available for viewers. 

Doordarshan Director General Tripurari Sharan said this move will help the channel to reach a global audience in a format that best suits today's generation. Earlier this year, streaming of the 64th Republic Day Parade also received a tremendous response with over a lakh views. The objective is to cater to Indian and global audiences and take events of national importance beyond their TV screens.

The farthest Galaxy of our universe...

Making it a breakthrough the astronomers, powered with NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature’s own natural “zoom lenses” in space, have discovered the most distant Galaxy ever seen in the Universe.

The galaxy appears as a diminutive blob that is only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. It offers a peek back into a time when the universe was 3 per cent of its present age of 13.7 billion years.

This galaxy named as MACS0647-JD, was observed 420 million years after the big bang, the theorized beginning of the universe. Its light has traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth. This finding is the latest from a program that uses natural zoom lenses to reveal distant Galaxies in the early Universe.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive Galaxy cluster. Without the cluster’s magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote Galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, The Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH) research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope. The cluster’s gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making the images appear about eight, seven, and two times brighter than they otherwise would that enabled Astronomers to detect the galaxy more efficiently and with greater confidence. As per Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore,“This cluster does what no man-made telescope can do. Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy,”

MACS0647-JD is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy. An analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

Satellite revealed huge meltdown at Greenland

There is another horrifying news, just a few days after NASA satellite imagery revealed that a massive iceberg, twice the size of Manhattan, had broken off a glacier in Greenland.

As per the latest news, a massive ice sheet in Greenland has melted this month over an unusually larger area, which was detected after analysing radar data from the Indian Space Research Organization's ( ISRO) Oceansat-2 satellite. The 'unprecedented' melting is found to be highest ever in three decades of satellite observation. Melting even occurred at Greenland's coldest and highest place, Summit station. The thawed ice area jumped from 40% of the ice sheet to 97% in just four days from July 8 to July 12. Although about half of Greenland's ice sheet normally melts over the summer months, the speed and scale of this year's melting surprised scientists, who described the phenomenon as "extraordinary".

Son Nghiem of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was analysing radar data from the ISRO's Oceansat-2 satellite last week when he noticed that most of Greenland appeared to have undergone surface melting on July 12. This event was so extraordinary that at first scientists questioned the result: if it was real or was it due to some data error. Nasa said that nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its centre, which is 3 km thick, experienced some degree of melting at its surface.

NASA is not yet able to determine if this is a natural but rare event, or if it has been sparked by man-made global warming. Scientists believe much of Greenland's ice was already freezing again.

Until now, the most extensive melting seen by satellites in the past three decades was about 55% of the area, but this time it reached 97% - much more severe than earlier. Ice last melted at Summit station before this took place long back in 1889.

These events, one after another, are strict warning to the mankind to avoid the calamity due to global warming.

Denis Ritchie, who laid the foundation for IT companies

On the warm evening of this Wednesday, 12th of Oct, the man behind the current fortress of IT industry passed away. The response from hardware techies for his demise was immense but it nowhere matched the river of praise and ocean of grief that flew after the announcement of death of iconic Steve Jobs. But it really should, the world may not recognize him as much as Jobs, may be because he was not that popular public face but his contribution were at par even more.

Denis Ritchie was not only the father of C Programming language but with his fellow Bell Labs researcher Ken Thompson, he used C to build UNIX, the operating system which is now the backbone of most of the IT empires including Apple. All popular languages, including Java, are based upon C and all operating systems are developed and designed on C's base. Today the application for mobile platforms - Android and iOS apps are also developed in Objective C, which again is based on C.

The contribution of Richie is definitely much more than any IT company's CEO and COO as he laid the foundation for where IT industries stand now. He is the shoulder where Steve Jobs and other IT giants stand upon.

SONY Pictures to bring biography of Steve Jobs

Well, you can call it a quick move as just one week of Steve's demise SONY Pictures is all set to buy the movie rights to an upcoming biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. To add more to it, the talk is already in final stage and Sony is expected to pay $1 million for the rights to the book, which traces Jobs' story from college dropout to CEO of the world's leading tech company.

On the other hand, the leading publisher, Simon & Schuster, from NewYork which was to release the authorized biography of Steve Jobs by 21 November has suddenly shifted its date to 24 October following the demise of Steve Jobs earlier this month.

Comparing both these released, personifying the most iconoclastic personality in IT industry ever on written pages is going to be much simpler task than portraying him on canvass. The major problem when making a biography movie of a popular face is that you could not get a look alike face for the actor playing the lead role. The option is to being out energy and enthusiasm from the actor playing those icons which will bring the character closer to the one expected. For example Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, or more recently, Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles did the same.

Moreover, in Job's case there will be some more added difficulty to Sony as they have to play both Steve of early college days when he started the company in a garage as well as the 50 years old CEO who captivates his audiences with high profile launches of iPhones and iPads. Not only age, the health is also going to be a major concern as Jobs lost his weight dramatically when battling with the pancreatic cancer in his final years. Let's see with whom Sony Pictures comes out to play Steve Job's role.

Planet discovered which orbits around two stars

There has been controversies since long about the existence of circumbinary planets, one which orbits two stars. Ending all such controversies, NASA has found Kepler-16b (named as it is searched by Kepler space telescope). Kepler-16b is around 200 light-years from Earth and it is orbiting two stars.

According to NASA, previous research did hint at the existence of circumbinary planets, but clear confirmation remained mysterious until the Kepler mission’s latest discovery. The newly found circumbinary planet is likened to the fictional inhabited planet called Tatooine, which was portrayed as having two sunsets in the "Star Wars" series.

The newly discovered planet is not thought to harbor life. It is an an inhospitable, cold world about the size of Saturn and thought to be made up of about half rock and half gas. Kepler-16b is comparable to Saturn in both mass and size and orbits around both the stars in 229 days. The two stars which Kepler-16b orbits are said to be smaller and cooler than our sun and 20 and 69 percent as massive as the sun.

Kepler Telescope is used to search for earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone, the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface.

Terror story behind death dance macabre in Mumbai

More than 750 peoples have already been killed so far in more than half a dozen attacks on the financial capital of India ever since 1993. The country is yet to recover from the attack in November 2008 and the main accused Kasab is yet to be hanged and here is another serial blast on Wednesday to shock us all.

What is the reason behind high frequency of such attacks on Mumbai? Why it has become the most favorite place for the terrorists that there have been more than 6 blasts in around 18 years? Why no other city but Mumbai bleeds again and again and despite of all secret services and securities the terrorism is not getting extinguished?

As per the ministers, Mumbai and Delhi will always remain the most targeted cities on the list. But we all know the financial and entertainment capital is more prune to attack than the actual capital Delhi. Though attack on Mumbai grabs attention of the entire country in a blink so that may be one of the reason why terrorist choose Mumbai every time. But the main reason lies somewhere else deep in the past.

It all started in early 1993, just two weeks after the demolition of the Babri mosque by Hindu fanatics in December 1992, which killed more than 900 people and it triggered the serial bomb attacks, just two months after the riot, which killed more than 250 people. This is when the rule of law broke down in the city and a liberal city ruled by law and order turned into a city infamous for heinous crime, killings and terrorism. Once initiated the crime graph never went down in the city. It was only the last month, when gunmen shot dead the city's leading crime journalist on a rainy morning and zipped away openly on their motorbikes. Its the same city where the flats meant for war widows was allegedly grabbed by politicians, retired army officers and business giants.

The image of the city has turned out to be a chimera with bloodshed every other day. This crime chain needs to be broken in order to put law and order back or else Mumbai may go the Karachi(Pakistan's port city) way where terrorist attacks are as common as some festival or cavalcade.

Tata Manza clocks an incredible mileage of 46.33 kmpl

The Tata Manza (Quadrajet Aura ABS) has clocked an incredible mileage of 46.33 km per litre. This feat has been achieved by Narayanan Menon, a resident of Coimbatore who has zoomed into the Limca Book of Records. 

Narayanan R Menon, Managing Director of Aromen Engineering Company and a proud owner of the Tata Manza has been certified for the remarkable drive on the Coimbatore- Avinashi by-pass on 25th of May 2011. Menon’s Tata Manza covered a long stretch of 72.3 kilometers on road by consuming only 1.58 liters of diesel, which translates to an incredible mileage of 46.33 km per litre.

A mechanical engineer, Menon himself does not credit an amazing mileage to a ‘magic foot’ rather a combination of good driving and car maintenance. For a country where fuel efficiency is a significant factor for automobile ownership and with fuel prices increasing, the feat certainly bodes well for the mileage conscious customer.

World's largest solar powered yacht breaks two world records

Turanor, the 31 meter yacht resembling the Starship Enterprise has completed almost 250 days at sea, making half way around the globe to the shores of Brisbane, Australia, propelled by nothing but rays from the sun. It is the world's largest solar powered boat and the first fully solar-powered vessel to circumnavigate the world.

This 60-ton vessel, which is dotted with over 536 square meters of photovoltaic panels, can sail for up to five nights without direct sunlight, supported by reserves stored in the world's largest rechargeable lithium battery. In the entire tour battery never dipped down 20% and the crew is very happy with the performance of the boat.

The $16 million vessel is a catamaran, a type of craft with two hulls, which saves energy by slicing rather than riding the waves. But despite its streamline design, the shark-shaped ship travels at an average speed of just 7.5 knots about that of a large ocean liner.

Talking about the experience they had on the trip, the crew constantly monitored weather forecasts to keep in line with the sun, plotting our route, examining wind, wave and current predictions, communicating with other vessels on the satellite phone, updating our blog and logging our positions.

The name Turanor has been taken from J.R.R. Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy which means "power of the sun". The yacht has already broken two world records. One being the fastest ever crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a solar boat and the longest distance ever covered by a solar electric vehicle.