Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Palakkad on Tuesday organised the sixth edition of its public lecture series Pale Blue Dot. Ajith Parameswaran, astrophysicist from the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bengaluru, delivered the lecture in association with PMG Higher Secondary School and the Department of Physics at Government Victoria College, Palakkad.
Taking the audience to different frontiers of astronomy, Dr. Parameswaran provided a scientific boost to their perception of the universe. Demystifying the mysteries surrounding the universe, Dr. Parameswaran explained various methods used by astronomers to study them.
More than 400 students from different schools and colleges in the district interacted with Dr. Parameswaran. By giving examples, he explained different observatories set up in different parts of the globe and their implications on people’s understanding of the cosmos. “The observation of gravitational waves is the new toolkit for scientists,” he said.
Gravitational waves, he explained, are disturbances in space time that are produced by the movement or collision of two massive black holes.
Dr. Parameswaran said that those breakthroughs were only a tip of the iceberg. He expressed optimism for the future of gravitational wave detectors and underscored the construction of new observatories, including one in India.
Dr. Parameswaran is a well-known astrophysicist in the country. He made significant contributions to the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since 2004 and has received several accolades such as the 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and the 2016 Gruber Cosmology Prize for his involvement in the discovery of gravitational waves.
Recently, he was honored with the TWAS-CAS Young Scientist Award for Frontier Science by the World Academy of Sciences.
The Pale Blue Dot public lecture series of IIT Palakkad aims at fostering knowledge dissemination and promoting scientific inquiry and critical thinking.
It is one of the outreach programmes of IIT Palakkad aimed at the general people. Experts on various subjects interact with the general public and share knowledge in a simple, understandable manner. The lecture series was launched in collaboration with the District Public Library and Unnath Bharat Abhiyan.
