13.04.2020 : From one crisis to another..

As the world-wide pandemic locks human society down - unusual images of clear sky, clean water-bodies (apparently, Ganga water has become fit for drinking at Haridwar!), animals reclaiming urban spaces emerge all over social media - showing us the terrible impact our everyday activities have been having on the planet. Unfortunately, most of us are totally unaware of the effect this very act - sharing a colour photograph on internet - actually has.

About a decade ago, Radio Astronomers were proudly advertising the observational capability the Square Kilometer Array (SKA - the biggest radio telescope being built in two different location of South Africa and Australia) using the fact that it would generate an Exabyte (Exa = 18 zeros after 1) of data per day - equal to the total internet traffic of the entire world per day, at that point of time. The internet traffic has increased manifold since then and we, the internet consumers, are generating almost 8 Exabytes of data per day.

Such huge amount of the data needs to be stored somewhere, necessitating creation of gigantic data-centres which store millions of circuit boards. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook.. are some of the top companies maintaining these data centres. This development is rather recent. It was only in 1998 (almost to the day) two young students (Sergey Brin, Lawrence Page) of Stanford University published a 10 page paper titled 'The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine' and the abstract said - "In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine... and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems. ... Also we look at the problem of how to effectively deal with uncontrolled hypertext collections where anyone can publish anything they want." Not only did the paper herald the birth of Google, our omniscient Big Brother, it also had a prophetic premonition for the future.

Now, with easy access to internet - anyone CAN and IS publishing anything they want.  And we are generating 'data' thereby. Whether it's a 'like' on Facebook, watching a movie on Netflix, posting a message on twitter - every internet activity involves data generation which needs to be stored for use at any and every future time-point. Hence, the data-centres. And energy is required to maintain these data-centres, the environmental cost of which is not insignificant.

These data centres – the repositories for billions of gigabytes of information – used an estimated 400 terawatt hours (TWh) in the 2018-2019 fiscal year. To put this number into perspective - the total electricity generation of India was 1547 TWh (of which about 35% renewable) during the same period, India being the world's third largest producer and third largest consumer of electricity. It is well known that electricity generation is a significant contributor to greenhouse gasses. That is not all. The information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem as a whole — encompassing personal digital devices, mobile-phone networks and televisions — accounts for more than 2% of global emissions, same as the carbon footprint of the aviation industry!

At present, around 10% of the world’s total electricity consumption is being used by the internet. However, given the current growth (of internet usage) trend, the prediction is that the electricity usage by ICT could exceed 20% of the global total by 2030. It appears that use of efficient storage techniques and a large-scale shift to renewable energy may not sustain this rate of growth beyond the next 10 to 15 years.

Projection for ICT energy usage

It is obvious that increasing internet connectivity in everyday life has fostered new, more energy-intensive, forms of demand that is counterbalancing all our energy saving strategies. Mobile devices have come to support and overwhelmingly control our everyday behaviour. We need them and we are obsessed with using such devices while waiting for the bus, waking up in the morning, going to sleep at night and even while watching TV or having a social get-together.

The way we are going it might be impossible to prevent a catastrophic runaway climate change before we could make a complete transition to renewable energy. Perhaps cutting back on our thirst for data might be the ultimate way to prevent energy use going into hyperdrive. Would we be able to do that in time? Then again, humankind has always lived from one disaster to another, surf-riding on the crest of one innovation to the other. Perhaps this is the right time to start thinking about it - when we are completely dependent on the smooth running of the internet traffic through extended periods of lock-down. Perhaps it is time to incorporate this foreknowledge into the paradigm shift that is being brought about by the current crisis.

06.04.20 : The Departure

I believe, humankind never really recovered from the two devastating wars in the first half of the twentieth century. Only that could have explained our obsession with the third one. The next war, they said (from futuristic fiction writers to serious pedants), would be fought over water (not improbable it seemed). But majority talked about biological warfare, fought with terrible bio-weapons. Suddenly, it seems, we are bang in the middle of that third war - fighting against an invisible enemy. It appears to have been precipitated by human intervention (intentional or otherwise) - causing certain virus to jump across species.

In the midst of this pandemic, which has already claimed an unbelievable number of precious lives, there have also been other departures. Stalwarts, who played important roles in shaping the world of physics in the years following the WWII, completed their innings here, leaving us fighting the third war.

After Freeman Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) and Phil Anderson (13 December 1923 – 29 March 2020), today we lost the grand dame of modern Astrophysics - Eleanor Margaret Burbidge (12 August 1919 - 6 April 2020). She was born in the year Eddington observationally verified Einstein's theory of Relativity for the first time, and lived on to witness the detection of gravitational waves (a direct consequence of that theory).

People familiar with Margaret Burbidge's life would readily agree that her long innings in Astrophysics significantly influenced two arenas - first, our understanding of nuclear astrophysics and second, the practice of science in terms of gender equity.

During the war years she studied Astronomy at University College (London) and met Geoffrey Burbidge, with whom she would later embark on a lifelong personal and scientific journey. She received her PhD in 1943 and they moved to USA afterwards. However, realising the potential of Burbidges’ research expertise, William Fowler invited Geoffrey and (a pregnant) Margaret to Cambridge to work on Fred Holye's theory of 'Stellar Nucleosynthesis' (creation of chemical elements in stars) in the mid-fifties.

Geoffrey Burbidge, Margaret Burbidge, William Fowler

The result of that collaboration was a 108-page paper titled 'The Synthesis of the Elements in Stars' (Reviews of Modern Physics, 1957). This pathbreaking paper (now known as B2FH for Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, Hoyle) explained how various chemical elements are produced at different stages of stellar life cycle, and laid the foundation for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. The paper did receive the recognition it deserved when Fowler was awarded the 1983 Nobel, thought it was not clear why his co-workers were left out.

For Margaret, though, such unfair treatment was not new. She was turned down a Carnegie Fellowship, at the Mount Wilson observatory, in 1945. Because only men were allowed to use the observatory. Many years later, she recounted this story to us (a bunch of wide-eyed Astrophysics aspirants at IUCAA). Apparently, when she pressed the issue the authorities informed her that the observatory premises (located on top of a hill) did not have a rest-room facility for women! Ten years later (when, in 1955, Geoffrey Burbidge received the Canegie fellowship), she gained access to the observatory posing as her husband's assistant, concealing her pregnancy while climbing up and down the hill!

In 1968, Burbidges joined the University of California at San Diego (UCSB). But both of them could not be hired in the same department (IIT-K indeed copied the rules from overseas) and initially Margaret was hired in the chemistry department. Mercifully, the rules changed after a while and she could move back to Physics.

Then, in 1972, she became the director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Since, the establishment of the observatory three-centuries ago, this was the first time when the director was not chosen to be the Astronomer Royal (the post went to Martin Ryle instead).

Finally though, Margaret decided to speak up. In 1972, she turned down the prestigious `Annie Jump Cannon Award' of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) because it was earmarked only for women. She said - "It is high time that discrimination in favour of, as well as against, women in professional life be removed". This sparked a conversation about gender bias and eventually led to the formation of the AAS Committee on the Status of Women.

Margaret Burbidge with Jayant Narlikar at IUCAA (Courtesy : Somak Raychaudhury)