To a question from a panicked member of the audience about the doomsday threat in 2012, evoked by a recent movie, Dr John C Mather said there is no scientific basis supporting this fear. Interestingly his current project James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)- a successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope, is planned for launch only in 2014.

Dr.Mather, who bagged the 2006 Nobel Prize “ for the discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the Cosmic microwave Background Radiation”, was attending a press meet at the ongoing 97th Indian Science Congress at Thiruvanathapuram. He said that the JWST will be sent on an Ariane-5 launch vehicle of the European Space Agency and the spectrum of wavelength used is between 0.6 micrometre and 28 micrometre. He emphasised the relevance of multinational collaborative space efforts.

Earlier another Nobel laureate Roger Tsien in response to a query related to ‘a shortcut to secure Nobel Prize’ by a student delegate said that constant pursuit is the mantra of success. Prof Roger Tsien from the University of California, who bagged the2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery and development of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) was interacting with delegates and media persons at the open forum at the media centre.

Tsien said that the GFP tracking is used in the field of Biochemistry for research in cell division, treatment of AIDS, treatment of cancer etc. This GFP was identified from jelly fish found in the strait between USA and Canada. He shared with the audience his anxiety about the jellyfish getting extinct possibly due to global warming and pollution.

Source : Press Information Bureau
Date : January 05, 2010