Melissa Alba: Good Evening. Welcome to the Tonight’s Show. I am Melissa Alba. Today is the tenth anniversary of Planet Maya’s discovery and third anniversary of establishment of International Space Organisation. We have in our studio, a few experts from International Space Organisation and its related agencies: Dr Robert Dupont (Space Operations), Dr Nancy Cuoco (Astrobiologist), Dr Aanjaneya Prasad (Anthropologist) and Dr Gustav Greenidge (Earth Sciences). Welcome to our show.
Before we start our discussion, lets take a look at some facts we know about this planet.
A Male Voice Over:
Maya is the third or fourth planet from the sun depending on its position in orbit. It was named after the sanskrit word “maya” which means illusion. Due to its strange position in our night sky, it was not discovered until recently.
Though the credit for its discovery goes to NASA’s voyager team, there are two noted observations of this planet before. The first one by Sir Arthur Eddington and his team during the solar eclipse which proved the General Theory of Relativity. They observed the star shift as predicted by Albert Einstein. However, they also noticed an uncharted dot. They reported this observation to many astronomers around the world as they couldn’t publish it formally due of lack various independent observations. Ever since many astronomers tried to find the ‘unidentified dot’ during solar eclipses but were not successful.
The other observation was by Dr. Chandrashekar’s team. His team took four observations in Boma (DR Congo), Mbuji-Mayi (DR Congo), Suryapet (AP, India) and Berhampur (Orissa, India) during a solar eclipse. To their surprise they found the dot in both the observations in India but in none of them in Congo. He explained that it was like “maya”, an illusion. Since then this was unofficially named the ‘maya’ phenomenon.
Ten years ago, when the voyager’s team found the radio signals from an unexpected place in this solar system, they turned the cameras to find ‘a pale blue dot’. This was a defining moment in the history of humankind as not only, we found a place that might closely resemble our own planet, we also found evidences that there may be intelligent life on it.
Observation of this planet is very difficult from our Earth-Moon system. The eyes that could gather some data about this planet were the Voyager Probes. They managed to find out some of the important physical and orbital characteristics like:
Mean radius: 5866 kms
Mass: 5.3298 × 1024 kg
Equatorial surface gravity: 10.33 ms-2
Sidereal rotation period: 22h48m55.398s
Axial tilt: 5.0684 o
Satellites : One with an inclination of 1.04 o
The scientific community seized this opportunity to convince all the governments to sign and ratify the outer-space treaty which paved the way for the establishment of the International Space Organisation.
Melissa Alba: We are sorry for that very small introduction for an event that eventually changed the way we look at ourselves in this world. We think we should have more time for our guests here to give the details in their own words. Lets start. Dr Dupont, how do you compare this planet with our Earth?
Dr. Robert Dupont: Let me say a note of caution. The current data is very minimal about this planet. However,it is sufficient enough to have this discussion with some intelligent guesses. About your question, Maya is unequivocally identical to Earth in terms of size, mass, density and age. As you can see the data for yourself, the mean radius, mass, rotation period, surface gravity are within ten percent of the values of our Earth. That is a remarkable match. Yet there are significant differences like the axial tilt which is only five degrees when compared to twenty three and a half degrees of our Planet; its moon’s inclination which is just one degree when compared to five degrees of our moon.
Mellisa: Speaking of these differences. Dr Greenidge, what does these two differences say about that planet?
Dr. Gustav Greenidge: The axial tilt is responsible for the seasons we experience. We have large variations in seasons because of our significant axial tilt. But for Maya, as it is just five degrees, we can expect most of the climate to be very calm due to less variations in seasons. They most likely do not have monsoons or hurricanes. Even if they have, their intensity wont be much when compared to us. Polar ice caps may probably be stronger and definitely cover a small area than ours. Continent placement is direct result of tectonic activity so we cant comment on that, but the images indicate that land coverage is forty percent of the planet’s surface, almost double the land area on Earth. We still have to verify this piece of data though.
Moon’s orbit inclination is very fascinating. It is just one degree. So every fortnight there is an eclipse. Solar and Lunar eclipses occur alternatively. But this is not the reason why the inclination is fascinating. That one degree may result in occasional non-occurrence of an eclipse.
Melissa: That is very interesting. So those people may not consider eclipse as a bad omen I suppose because of the frequent occurrences.
Dr. Greenidge: No, they may not. Anything that happens very frequently is not special. So it may not have any cultural significance.
Melissa: Yeah, about their culture. It is a known fact that our Earth’s orbital characteristic have a significant affect on our cultures. Dr. Prasad, what kind of culture can we expect to see because of these these two differences?
Dr Aanjaneya Prasad: Axial tilt is very important. As it is just five degrees, duration of day don’t change much throughout the year unlike on Earth. Our festival of lights like Christmas, Diwali etc are celebrated in Northern Hemisphere’s winter due to longer nights and also because most of our civilisations had origins in Northern Hemisphere. If our civilisations had origins in Argentina, South Africa or Australia we would have celebrated Christmas or Diwali in June or July. However, for Mayanese people …
Mellisa: Wait a second Doctor! Mayanese is what we call them?
Dr Aanjaneya Prasad: Yes, to distinguish them with Mayans of our planet. To respect Dr. Chandrashekar we named it after his phenomenon. Later, when we realised this possible confusion, IAU decided to name those people Mayanese.
Coming to our point, Mayanese don’t have such huge variations in duration of daytime unless they are really close to the poles. So festival of lights may not have a place in their culture. Similarly, given the frequent occurrences of eclipses, a lunar non-eclipse may be as considered the ultimate festival for many cultures on Maya.
Mellisa: Why only Lunar non-eclipse? Why not Solar non-eclipse?
Dr Prasad: It is just my guess. There are less full-moon days than less full-sun days. Everyday we the see the entire sun, but the moon has phases and only once a month we can see it totally and for them on almost all full-moon days there is lunar-eclipse. So we thought a lunar non-eclipse will have more significance than solar non-eclipse.
Mellisa: Looks like just facial similarities are not enough to understand Maya or Mayanese. Lets a take a break and when we come back, we will discuss about ISO’s mission to Planet Maya.
To be continued..
). In an year, a person can save 365×100 W.h = 36.5 KW.h . The general transmission losses of most power distributions is 10%. So the actual electricity produced to serve 36.5 KW.h is 40.15 KW.h . Emission Factor of Coal 0.963 i.e to generate 1 KW.h of electricity 0.963 Kg of CO2 is emitted. Similarly E.F of Oil and Natural Gas are 0.881 and 0.569.
