Shop of Vin Chaud (Hot wine) in Old Lyon city streets, France

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India's Mars mission - Mangalyaan

India's first ever attempt to reach another planet became reality today when Mangalyaan - Mars orbiter mission started its journey today afternoon at 2.38 pm. ISRO successfully lauched Mangalyaan today after noon from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. This mission is special in itself.

Mars orbiter mission will probably reach near Mars around 24th September. If this happens, India's efforts  will only be the fourth such attempt ever after Russia, USA and European association.

The mission required an expenditure of  nearly $ 73 million dollars.

The main aim behind this mission to study the presence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. There is a lot more to look forward towards this mission. It sets India as one of the leading countries in the field of space science.

If you want to learn more about this mission you may follow the link:

http://www.space.com/23464-india-launches-mars-orbiter-mission.html

Happy Diwali 2013

Happy Diwali

Chennai Express movie review

Long back I speculated about movie "Chennai Express", a new released movie back then.

You might be wondering why I am writing this review now. Its too late to write a review about a movie which has already been telecast on TV. Actually, I was thinking to watch this movie when it was released, but then, as always I missed watching it. I heard about the movie a lot. It went on to earn more than 200 crore money. Plus, it is funny movie with actually no great story. Recently, I heard it will be airing on some channel on October 20. I was looking forward to that day and just one day before, our TV gave up. Which again postponed  the plan  indefinitely. But somehow I got a copy of the movie and finally watched it on my Laptop.

Now, about the movie. I actually enjoyed it for most part of it. Except for initial introduction, love songs, final fight sequence between Shahrukh Khan and Thangabali, movie is enjoyable and mostly funny. All said and done, Shahrukh Khan knows the knack of entertaining audience. He has good sense of timing and quotient for humor. The new train catching version of DDLJ really makes one laugh to the heart. Communication through singing was another good part. Deepika Padukone also surprisingly performed well and the combination worked well to entertain the viewer. I am not sure if the movie is worth 200 crore rupees, but it surely compels one to watch it again.One more thing, I want to point out is the scenic beauty shown during the train journey. It reminded me of shots from Harry Potter's first movie. I hope it is all natural and not photoshopped.  

So, to all  people who still haven't watched this movie yet ( as I hadn't watched it till recently), do watch it. It is entertaining for most part of it.

Football Ground under water

One fine rainy day when Football Ground went under water in Mumbai

Nobel Prize Winners: 2013

This years Nobel Prize winners for Physics, Chemistry and Medicine have been declared so far.

In Physics, as expected Nobel Prize had to go in the direction of most recent discovery of Higgs Boson or God Particle. Higgs and few other Scientists worked on the idea of existence of Higgs Boson which give mass to all other particles way back in 1960s. Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom shared this years Nobel Prize for Physics for introducing us to the concept of existence of Higgs Boson.

In the field of Chemistry, this year the award went to Computational Chemists. Many people are still not aware but Computational Chemistry is a branch in Chemistry that really helps to make understanding a concept easier by allowing you to look at it at molecular level. It allows you visualize molecules (something an experimental chemistry is unable to do) and understand mechanisms behind each and every reaction that occurs. This year Nobel Prize was awarded to three scientists Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel  who worked separately to develop different models that allows  one to study different molecular systems like proteins, DNA, enzymes etc. These models allowed combining the quantum mechanical models and newtonian law based classical models and generate a new one which allows big systems like proteins to be handled (classical mechanics) but at the same time giving better accuracy as giving by quantum mechanical models).

Nobel prize for Medicine this year went to Randy W. Schekman,  James E. Rothman of Yale University and Thomas C. Südhof of Stanford University.Their basic research solved the mystery of how cells, which are factories producing molecules, organize a system to transport the molecules within cells and export them outside. Read more about their work here

Qutub Minar, Delhi

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Read more about Qutub Minar here