Mover and maker of the cosmos

The word ‘gravity’ is synonymous with Newton for most of us. No small wonder as his theory held sway for two centuries. A force that is proportional to the mass of the objects and inversely to the distance between them — atleast that’s what we’ve learnt in school. Few of us have dabbled in general theory of relativity to know about space-time and a curved world.

The new show at the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru titled ‘Gravity’ does a quick, neat job of updating the mechanical world view to a curved space-time universe. With script and direction by Madhusudan, a faculty at the planetarium, the programme captures a lot of information.

Tracing the journey from Ptolemy’s earth centric solar system to Einstein’s space time, the 37 minute audio visual gives the viewer the latest understanding of the cosmos in the context of gravity. It may in parts seem tough to grasp fully as the narration is fast in places explaining complex aspects. But the script deals with it as effectively as possible with the time constraint.

An apple falling down and the moon going around the earth were explained away by the same mechanical force as that of colossal tidal forces in the universe. The presence of Neptune was predicted by its gravitational pull on Uranus. But Mercury behaved a bit strange. Newton’s classical physics failed to explain this.

Einstein came in with his general theory of relativity and declared gravity was not a force. A universe explained by a space time fabric that resulted in ‘miraculous’ curving of light as also stretching of light around objects, threw new light on the 14 billion years old world we inhabit.
Gravitational lensing, or the multiple images of distant stars from the bending of light around dense galaxies, came as proof. Shift in the position of stars before and after an eclipse made it conclusive. More recently, detection of gravitational waves, predicted to be given off in the merger of two massive bodies like back holes, has further strengthened the space time concept.

We also learn about Indians Nobel laureate Chandrashekar and the planetarium’s founding director Prof C V Vishweshwara, Bala Iyer and others who have contributed to our understanding of how the universe works. In fact, the programme is dedicated to the late founding director who was known as the ‘black hole man of India’.

A quick word is necessary on the pleasing background music and narration, besides the graphics that cannot be done away with when dealing with stupendous scales of supernova explosion or jets given out as a red giant is swallowed by a black hole or the merging of two black holes. Indigenously produced full dome animations combined with hi-res videos from Nasa and ESO aid well in conveying the enormity of things at the macro cosmic level. The dynamic nature of the universe is beautifully encapsulated in the visuals. Gravity is a dictator. It is the mover and maker of the cosmos. Gravity creates, nurtures and destroys… The script comes with thought-provoking, awe-inspiring lines.

Ptolemy’s model lasted for almost 15 centuries, Newton’s two, and the present Einsteinian model a century old, the question one is left with is — how long before some other insights change the way we see gravity?!