Last Christmas, NASA sent a giant telescope into space. The US space agency has placed it—one million miles from Earth—to orbit the Sun with its 21-foot-wide mirror, a sun-shield the size of a tennis court, and a million tiny shutters, each one of sand. smaller than a grain. Amid the massacre following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rising inflation and an impending global recession, the James Webb Space Telescope sent back its first stunning images, unveiled on July 12. The occasion was historic. For the first time, we saw a speck of the universe, as it was 13.5 billion years ago, just ‘slightly later’ than our estimate of the Big Bang – about 3 million centuries ago. Thanks to technological advances and the amount of time it takes to reach even that, we are now promised a glimpse into the origins of the universe. There will soon be a data grab to investigate what has been so far in the fields of mathematics, physics, literature and philosophy. The occasion was also filled with a space of cosmic symbolism: the images were presented at the White House in the presence of US President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and leaders from NASA and US science policy. It’s no coincidence: Science and technological innovations have long been led by governments, with public funding. The web project is expected to cost approximately $9.7 billion over its lifetime. As NASA partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency invested €700 million and Canadian $200 million, respectively. Scientific exploration at the limits of what we know is never cheap.
The images remind us that just as the price of knowledge is difficult, the value of basic research can defy guesswork. Like the US, India was an early investor in space, and our low-budget success in developing the sector – newly open to private participation – has long been led by a scientific temper, as evidenced by our education policy. has been promoted. This was a path laid down by Nehru, who wrote in his Discovery of India: “Scientific nature dictates which way a man should travel. This is the nature of a free man. We live in a scientific age, so we must are told, but there is little evidence of this disposition anywhere in the people or even in their leaders.” Yet, with almost 75 years of independence, our state spending on science and technology has come down. The budget of the ministry was cut by more than 3% in this financial year. Indian scientists say we have too little money in a shrinking vessel for fundamental research. They also face other pressures. The repeated call to study ‘Vedic science’, a catch-all term for anything from ancient texts to star alignments, for example, has been a distraction. For real progress, our ministries must have as much of a scientific temper as that of academia and national laboratories.
While the West has moved on in recent centuries, India has a record of science that we are duly proud of. The ancient Indians were spot on with many observations of the universe, for example, the correct concept of the spherical shape of the planets. But maybe it’s time to do a stock check. Lucknow-born scientist Hashima Hassan, who played a key role in the web project, writes on Women.nasa.gov that there is an “almost hostile environment” faced by a young Indian woman trying to pursue a career in science. have to face. But she also speaks of having grown up in a “free, democratic nation where I had the same constitutional rights as my brother.” This balance of ideas can be a lesson in nurturing scientific thinking.
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