Sir,
It is heartening to read that a team of Indian astronomers has discovered an extremly large supercluster of galaxies-as big as 20 million billion suns, which the scientists have named Sarswati.(DE, July14, 2017).The fact that this supercluster of galaxies is 4000 million light years away from Earth and roughly about 10 billion years old and its mass extends over a scale of 600 million light years, speaks volume about this path breaking discovery.It is reported to be among only a few comparatively large structures in the universe.This discovery will help the scientists to know more about the universe and to unravel how such clusters had been formed billion of years ago.Since times immemorial, man has wondered about the universe and his curious mind has attempted to unravel its mysteries.Indian astronomers and mathematicians such as Bhaskara, Aryabhatta, Varahamhira, Yaganvalkya, Brahamgupta and others made significant contributions to the advancement to the science of Astronomy.Aryabhata mentioned that the earth rotates about its axis, thus causing westward motion of the stars.He also said that reflection of sunlight causes the shining of the moon.The Indian astronomers calculated that the typical year has 365.24675 days which is only 6 minutes longer than the accepted 365.24220 days. Brahamagupta said that the earth is spherical and the circumference of the earth is 5000 yojanas.One yojana being about 7.2 Kms, it comes to about 36000 Km,which is very close to the actual figure.They also made valuable contribution in the field of calculation of eclipses.Now the Indian astronomers have made the important discovery of the supercluster of galaxies and rightly named it ‘Saraswati’, for which they deserve appreciation.
Yours etc…
Ashok Sharma
Housing Colony, Udhampur.
Follow our WhatsApp channel