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London Finale Promo: Rounds 15–16 Double

London Finale Promo: Rounds 15–16 Double

Time of India15-07-2025
How To Take Selfie In Space? Shukla And ISS Crew's Hilarious Group Photo Goes Viral On Social Media
A heartwarming video from the International Space Station featuring Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla has gone viral. Captured just hours before the AX4 crew began their return to Earth, the video shows the astronauts playfully struggling to pose for a group photo in zero gravity. Shared by NASA astronaut Col Anne McClain, the crew set up a camera to auto-click every 5 seconds, floating, posing, and laughing through the chaos. Shukla's 20-day mission saw him orbit Earth over 300 times, traveling more than 13 million km. He conducted 7 experiments for ISRO and now returns with 580 kg of cargo. As the AX4 mission ends, this candid space moment has brought smiles back on Earth.#shubhanshushukla #ax4mission #spacephoto #isscrew #indianastronaut #isro #spacelife #nasaviral #microgravity #toi #toibharat #bharat #trending #breakingnews #indianews
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Meet the Only Indian Actor in Alien: Earth Who Worked at Tea Stall, Sang with Ilaiyaraaja and is Now Making Waves in Hollywood
Meet the Only Indian Actor in Alien: Earth Who Worked at Tea Stall, Sang with Ilaiyaraaja and is Now Making Waves in Hollywood

Pink Villa

time4 hours ago

  • Pink Villa

Meet the Only Indian Actor in Alien: Earth Who Worked at Tea Stall, Sang with Ilaiyaraaja and is Now Making Waves in Hollywood

Adarsh Gourav is the only Indian actor in Alien: Earth, now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar in India (August 13) after its U.S. debut on Hulu and FX (August 12). He plays 'Slightly,' a synthetic child navigating a dark, dystopian future, an emotionally layered role that critics are already praising. The performance marks a major milestone for the Jamshedpur-born actor-singer and places an Indian talent at the heart of the iconic Alien franchise. From Jamshedpur to the Alien universe Born in July 1994, Gourav grew up in Jamshedpur before moving to Mumbai at 13. He studied at Loyola School, Lilavatibai Podar, and Narsee Monjee College. His early life was rooted in music: nine years of Hindustani classical training, tabla lessons, and fronting indie bands like Steepsky and Oak Island. He performed on MTV Indies and recorded songs, jingles, and ads, building a music-first résumé long before mainstream stardom. Here's how he got his start in front of the camera At Ajivasan (Suresh Wadkar's academy), Padma Wadkar mentored Gourav and gave him multiple stage opportunities across Mumbai. During a 2007 Mumbai festival performance of Vande Mataram, he was noticed by Nazali Karamyoi of Raell Padamsee's company Ace, which led to acting auditions. According to The Times of India, in 2010, he made his screen debut in My Name Is Khan, playing the younger version of Shah Rukh Khan's character, a high-profile first role for a teenager. Music roots with Ilaiyaraaja and Sukhwinder Singh Before acting took center stage, Gourav shared platforms with Ilaiyaraaja and Sukhwinder Singh in 2007-08. He continued to record for films and campaigns, keeping his classical base while exploring contemporary styles. Those stage hours and studio sessions inform the vocal control and emotional precision visible in his screen work today. The White Tiger breakthrough and method grit After training at The Drama School Mumbai (on advice to pursue acting seriously), Gourav worked steadily in Mom, Rukh, Madly, Leila, and Die Trying. His breakout came with The White Tiger (2021). As Balram Halwai, he earned BAFTA and Independent Spirit Award nominations. For realism, he worked at a tea stall during prep. Post-White Tiger, Gourav appeared internationally (including Explorations with Meryl Streep and Kit Harington) and at home in Hostel Daze, Guns & Gulaabs, and Kho Gaye Hum Kahan. With Alien: Earth on Disney+ Hotstar in India and Hulu/FX in the U.S., his portrayal of Slightly positions him as one of the most compelling South Asian actors in the global sci-fi genre.

Galaxies flying away from us: How Hubble's redshift led us to the Big Bang
Galaxies flying away from us: How Hubble's redshift led us to the Big Bang

Indian Express

time5 hours ago

  • Indian Express

Galaxies flying away from us: How Hubble's redshift led us to the Big Bang

On a crisp night in the late 1920s, Edwin Hubble stood in the dome of the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, high above the smog and streetlamps of Los Angeles. Through that giant eye, he measured the light from distant 'spiral nebulae' — what we now call galaxies — and found something remarkable. Their light was shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, a sign that they were racing away from us. It was as if the universe itself were stretching. When light from a moving source is stretched to longer wavelengths, we call it redshift — much like the way a passing train's whistle drops in pitch as it moves away. Hubble discovered that the farther a galaxy was, the greater its redshift — meaning the faster it was receding. This became the Hubble–Lemaître law, a simple but revolutionary equation showing that the universe is expanding. But here's the subtlety: the galaxies are not flying through space as bullets through the air. Instead, the space between them is stretching. A common analogy is raisin bread dough rising in the oven — as the dough expands, every raisin moves away from every other raisin, and the farther apart two raisins start, the faster they separate. Crucially, the bread isn't expanding into the kitchen; the dough itself is the 'space.' In the same way, the universe isn't expanding into some empty void — it's the distance scale itself that's growing. This is why galaxies farther away show greater redshift: they're not just distant in space, they're distant in time, and the intervening space has been stretching for billions of years. The implication was staggering: if the galaxies are all moving apart today, then in the distant past, they must have been much closer together. Follow this logic far enough back and you arrive at a moment when all the matter, energy, space, and time we know were compressed into a single, unimaginably dense point. The first to put this into words was Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and physicist. In 1931, he proposed that the universe began from a 'primeval atom' — an idea that would later be nicknamed the Big Bang. At the time, the name was meant to be dismissive; British astronomer Fred Hoyle, along with his student and celebrated Indian astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar, champions of the rival Steady State theory, coined it in a radio broadcast to mock the idea of a cosmic explosion. Ironically, the label stuck and became the most famous phrase in cosmology. For decades, the debate raged: was the universe eternal and unchanging, or did it have a beginning? The tie was broken not in an ivory tower, but in a New Jersey field. In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two engineers at Bell Labs, were testing a radio antenna for satellite communications when they picked up a persistent hiss of microwave noise. They cleaned the antenna, even shooed away nesting pigeons — but the signal stayed. Unbeknownst to them, just 50 km away, Princeton physicist Robert Dicke and his team were preparing to search for the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. When the groups connected, the truth emerged: Penzias and Wilson had stumbled upon the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the fossil light from the universe's infancy, released about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The CMB confirmed that the universe had indeed begun in a hot, dense state and has been cooling and expanding ever since. In the first fraction of a second, an incredible burst of inflation stretched space faster than the speed of light. This expansion wasn't into anything — rather, the very fabric of space itself was stretching, carrying galaxies along with it. As space grows, so does the distance scale we use to measure it: a galaxy whose light left billions of years ago was much closer then than it is today. That's why the farther away we look, the greater the redshift we see — we are peering not just across space, but back in time, to when the universe was smaller. The CMB is the afterglow from a time about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had cooled enough for electrons and protons to form neutral atoms, letting light travel freely for the first time. That light has been on a 13.8-billion-year journey to us, its wavelength stretched by cosmic expansion from the fierce glare of the early universe into the faint microwave glow we detect today. Over the next minutes after the Big Bang, nuclear fusion forged the first elements: hydrogen, helium, and traces of lithium. Hundreds of millions of years later, the first stars and galaxies ignited, manufacturing heavier elements in their cores and seeding the cosmos with the building blocks of planets and life. Billions of years on, our Sun and Earth formed from recycled stardust, and here we are — creatures of carbon, contemplating the birth of time. The Big Bang theory is not just an origin story; it's a framework that explains everything from the cosmic web of galaxies to the faintest ripples in the CMB. It predicts the abundance of light elements, the distribution of galaxies, and the universe's large-scale geometry. Without it, we'd have no coherent picture of cosmic history. Today, the expansion first seen by Hubble is still ongoing — in fact, it's accelerating, driven by the mysterious dark energy. The latest measurements from telescopes like Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, and surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey continue to refine our understanding of the early universe, probing the first galaxies that emerged from cosmic darkness. The journey from a lone astronomer squinting at galaxies to a global scientific collaboration mapping the cosmos is a reminder that big ideas often start with small clues. As Carl Sagan once put it, 'We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.' The Big Bang is not just about how the universe began — it's about how we began, too. Shravan Hanasoge is an astrophysicist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

Pixxel-led consortium makes ‘suicide bid' at zero for EO PPP, to bear Rs 1,200-crore cost
Pixxel-led consortium makes ‘suicide bid' at zero for EO PPP, to bear Rs 1,200-crore cost

Economic Times

time7 hours ago

  • Economic Times

Pixxel-led consortium makes ‘suicide bid' at zero for EO PPP, to bear Rs 1,200-crore cost

iStock A consortium led by Bengaluru-based Pixxel, which has won the government contract to design, build, and operate India's first fully indigenous commercial Earth Observation (EO) satellite constellation, did so by bidding at zero cost. This means the group will bear the entire ₹1,200 crore investment while forgoing the government's public-private partnership (PPP) offer of up to ₹350 crore in support. 'The winning bid was zero. I cannot reveal the other bids, but this zero bid by the consortium is a very strong statement that the private sector sees immense opportunities in space,' IN-SPACe chairman Pawan Goenka told ET. The Pixxel consortium, comprising SatSure, PierSight, and Dhruva Space, emerged as the lowest bidder (L1), ahead of two other technically qualified groups: one comprised Astra Microwave Products, Bharat Electronics, Sisir Radar, and Spectragaze Systems; the other was GalaxEye Space, with CoreEL. The request for proposal was issued a year ago, with IN-SPACe announcing the selection of the winning bidder on GalaxEye, one of the other technically qualified consortia, told ET that its bid was pegged at ₹97 crore. Over the next four years, the team will deploy 12 satellites carrying optical, hyperspectral, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors, delivering high-resolution data for agriculture, urban planning, disaster management, climate monitoring, and national Jyoti, Director, Technical Directorate, IN-SPACe, told ET that the first satellite will be launched within two years, with the remaining 11 to follow over the next two-and-a-half years. 'Once the first set of satellites is launched and initial data is received, it will undergo extensive validation and calibration before being offered to the commercial market,' he said the first satellite includes a lot of R&D as it has clearly defined the specifications in the tender. 'It's not just about launching 12 satellites but meeting exact parameters on revisit frequency, data resolution, and spatial coverage,' Goenka said. He added that for the first time, an Indian satellite will see multiple payloads or data capture capabilities integrated into a single mission. Pixxel, known for its hyperspectral imaging expertise, will spearhead satellite design and integration. SatSure will contribute with its knowledge in geospatial analytics and value-added services for sectors such as agriculture and infrastructure, while Dhruva Space will provide its expertise in satellite platform and ground segment solutions. PierSight will bring its capabilities in maritime surveillance, leveraging Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology to enhance monitoring and analytics over oceans and coastal regions. Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. Regulatory gray area makes investing in LVMH, BP tough For Indian retail How IDBI banker landed plush Delhi properties in Amtek's INR33k crore skimming As 50% US tariff looms, 6 key steps that can safeguard Indian economy Jane Street blow pushes Indian quants to ancient Greek idea to thrive Stock Radar: Astra Microwave showing signs of bottoming out after 16% fall from highs; time to buy? F&O Radar | Deploy Broken Wing in Paytm to play stock's bullish outlook These 9 banking stocks can give more than 28% returns in 1 year, according to analysts Why 2025 Could Be The Astrological Turning Point We've Been Waiting For

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