Paraspar, an initiative of the Office of Communications (OoC) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), is a platform for conversations about knowledge systems, particularly science.
PARASPAR
Invites you to a lecture on
Nightfall: An Asimov Tribute or How I made it into Wikipedia
Abstract: Nightfall is usually considered to be the best science fiction short story ever written. It is set on the planet Lagash in a system with 5 suns. As a result, there is never any darkness except for one day every 2049 years when a combination of planetary motions results in darkness covering the entire planet. Civilization collapses in fire and has to be built again from scratch. Asimov, himself, did not worry about whether the system was possible or not as his focus was on the sociology of such a system.
Kepler has now found an incredible variety of worlds including worlds with 5 suns and I decided to look at the characteristics of such a system and to flesh out the physical details. We made this into a summer project with a student, wrote up the work and put it on ArXiv. Surprisingly, it turned out to be the most popular thing I’ve ever done. I will describe the background to the story, the context and the work we did.
Speaker: Jayant Murthy
Senior Professor
Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore
Venue: SV Narasaiah Auditorium
Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP), IISc
Date: 18 March 2024 (Monday)
Time: 4.00 pm
Click here for the Poster
All are welcome
For any queries, please contact Bitasta Das (bitasta@iisc.ac.in), Office of Communications, Indian Institute of Science.
Please find the recordings of the previous Paraspar lectures here: https://www.youtube.com/@officeofcommunicationsiisc4446/videos
