Here's a TED Talk that should be of interest to all curious Maldivians. Charles Anderson, a British marine biologist working and living in the Maldives for 26 years, reports on how him noticing the sudden emergence of dragonflies in the Maldives at certain times of the year led him to discover the world's longest migratory journey taken by any insect. It is a truly riveting story of curiosity and scientific discovery.

I now have an answer to a question I used to wonder about when I was a kid: Where do the dragonflies came from?

The BBC regularly broadcasts quality, extremely interesting science programmes that, at least in my opinion, exceeds that which you may find on the popular science and nature channels like National Geographic or Discovery. I just watched the first episode of the new nature series called Life which began airing on BBC One last week. The first episode opens with breath-taking shots of a pod of very smart dolphins that have developed the strategy of kicking up a cloud of mud in a tight circle to entrap the fast moving, hard to catch fish that they call their food. The awe-inspiring footage continued throughout the episode with various other animals and plants.

If this first episode is indicative of what's to expect, then this is definitely a series I would definitely reserve some telly time for. Life is available for viewing and download at http://www.bbc.co.uk/life. If you do watch it, make sure you watch it in HD - it's worth it. There is also some interesting supplementary material on the dedicated series mini-site by the co-producer The Open University.

I would also recommend catching the BBC's Bang Goes the Theory science series which takes a very hands-on approach and is especially great for kids. I love the little projects that Jem undertakes in each episode!

I've been experimenting with a potential "new" type of machine-man interface for a little while now. In the process, I've subjected myself to a bit of mutilation, pain and general annoyance. But today, I'm quite happy because I have now obtained some very interesting results...

Hopefully, will share more about the work in the coming weeks/months.

I got news today from Ajmal that the Maldives Science Society had finally received permission from Druyan-Sagan Associates to go ahead with its planned screening of Carl Sagan's award-winning science documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. MSS has been, far as I know, planning this event for well over a month now and was to be their very first event before the lecture on astronomy event slotted in. I think it is admirable that they went about obtaining permission before screening it, especially since it's all too common a practice in Maldives to hold no regard whatsoever for intellectual property rights.

Cosmos is truly a brilliant series; a bit aged (first broadcast in 1980!) yet still very relevant and informative. It tells the story of the universe and us humans through a wide range of scientific topics. It's content is not at all technical and is extremely accessible to everyone, which, I think, makes it a very suitable choice to jump-start conversations in the science-cafe'ish type of informal event MSS is after. MSS is only screening episode 1 out of the 13 episodes that make up Cosmos. The event is scheduled for 8:30pm, 12th Feb at Bankai Coffee Shop (see the MSS announcement).

Carl Sagan was and still is perhaps one of the best science popularizers the world has seen. The famous "Pale Blue Dot" image of Earth snapped by NASA, at the suggestion of Dr. Sagan, using the Voyager 1 spacecraft when it was a mind-boggling 6.4 billion kilometers away from Earth is one of the most moving and humbling things I have ever seen. It really does give a sense of our place in the universe, as a planet, as a species and as a person. At that distance, so far away from Earth, the Earth is seen as nothing more than a mere insignificant speck of dust, occupying less than 0.12 pixels, set against the darkness of the rest of the universe. The fact that a man-made object made it that far, snapped a picture and sent it back to its home (taking on a journey almost 6 hours travelling at the speed of light!) makes me shudder with excitement. Even more exciting is the fact that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is still operating, currently located around twice the distance Pluto is from the Sun, and ready to exit our solar system into the interstellar space! I can't imagine a more fitting choice of words than Sagan's to describe the picture...

As you may already know, this year is being celebrated worldwide as the International Year of Astronomy. The effort, an initiative of the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO, intends "to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery". And now, thanks to the hard work from the newly formed Maldives Science Society (MSS), Maldives will be joining in too.

MSS has organised for Dr. Kavan U. Ratnatunga, a Sri Lankan astronomer and Senior Research Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University (US), to travel to the Maldives and deliver a presentation. His presentation titled "The Universe as viewed through the Hubble Space Telescope" will center around the Hubble Space Telescope. It is a topic he is very much qualified to lecture - he has worked at NASA and has authored numerous research papers on various analyses and investigations of Hubble's snapshots of the universe.

The presentation is scheduled for 8:30pm - 11:00pm, 11th of February at the MCSE Seminar Room, Male'. If you are in Male' and interested in science and astronomy then it probably will be worth your while to attend the presentation. More details of the event are on the MSS Facebook event page and I presume updates will appear on the MSS website as well.

I commend the guys at MSS for putting so much of their time and their own money into making this event a reality. I hope they can make arrangements to participate in atleast some of the IYA cornerstone projects. The IYA Galileoscope project, which has developed a high-quality low-cost telescope kit, holds a lot of promise for MSS to make it possible for the public, especially kids and teens, to truly experience the universe through the lens of a real telescope. I, for one, had tears well up in my eye the first time I saw the rings of Saturn up close on a telescope... how will you react?

I am hooked... to WorldWide Telescope! I love Google Sky and am an avid fan of it, but this new software from Microsoft Research kicks it all up a notch. WWT gives access to images of the sky from various different databases including the DSS optical, infrared and even the WMAP microwave imagery in a really slick, smooth interface. I've spent a good few hours today browsing through the sky, literally, and reading up.

Here is an image of the Orion belt I snapped from WTT. These three stars are part of the Orion constellation and are among the most prominent and easily identifiable stars in the skyscape. In fact, any Maldivian who has ever looked up at the night sky should recognize them. It is one of the first star constellations that I had learnt of and was a source of great wonder when I was a kid.



And here is an image of the planet Mars - the (almost) unmissable bright red dot in the sky. Many Maldivians seem to have a special relationship with Mars - as demonstrated by a habit of falling for the Mars sunrise-from-west doomsday fantasy hoax and the Mars as-large-as-Moon hoax. I think it might be appropriate for all those people to see the planet up close.



It is amazing that through modern technology, merely equipped with free software like the WWT or Google Sky (and its web version), that anyone of us can now zoom on these and other objects in the sky and enjoy a whole new level of awe and appreciation of the world around us...

Here are some snaps of the moon during this morning's total lunar eclipse. The images are nothing special (and of pretty low quality) but given that I had no equipment other than an outdated digital camera this was the best I could have done.