KOCHI: Writing about Madhulika Guhathakurta aka Lika is writing about the sun. A popular name now among young Indians whose space dreams are soaring with ISRO’s success stories, the Nasa scientist’s tryst with the star began as a girl of six when her grandmother passed away. She was told her grandma had turned a ‘star’ in the night sky.
The sun, she says, shaped her life. Madhulika joined the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) in 1998, after her masters’ at the University of Delhi in astrophysics and PhD from the University of Denver.
Madhulika, who hails from Kolkata, calls herself a ‘She’liophycisit in a ‘He’liocentric world, having led Nasa’s Living With a Star (LWS) programme for 16 years since its inception in 2000. Several flagship missions have progressed under the LWS such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Van Allen Probes, and missions including the STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) probing the link between the sun and climate in the solar system.
Her pet project, however, is the Parker solar probe. The 2018 probe was the closest a spacecraft could get to the sun, and aids in “interplanetary space weather forecasting”, a task that gained focus in the recent decade after incidents of solar flares. The scientific world still remembers the 1859 Carrington event, when massive coronal mass ejections (CME) from the sun caused a huge blackout on earth. Hence, Madhulika & Co are considered ‘stars’ in present-day space research.
Madhulika is also a senior adviser for new initiatives at the heliophysics division of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and mentors a whole new generation of heliophysicists with her outreach and innovative programmes.
She is currently in Thiruvananthapuram as a chief guest at the Global Science Festival Kerala. TNIE sits down with the ‘star’ for an engaging chat.
Edited excerpts
Space weather has been a focus area of your team. How does this help when celestial phenomena are beyond our control?
We cannot control the sun or its flames. What we can do is assess how it will affect us. The radiation during CMEs has a heavy electromagnetic load, and that affects the earth’s magnetic field. The huge fluctuations they cause can shut down our technology-based networks, the power grids, satellites, etc. This is where the data from the study of the coronal emissions can help. Based on the study and predictions thereof of the sun’s atmosphere, we can take several precautionary measures such as repositioning our aircraft, switching off important networks, alerting people on important technological missions, etc. Damage control could thus be taken with forecast and early warning.
In this context, how do you view India’s Aditya-L1 venture?
Aditya has reached a vantage point from where it can send us exclusive data. it is a very commendable step for a country venturing into such projects for the first time. Chandrayaan 3, too, was a huge leap in the right direction for india, and it is a matter of great pride. the data we get from missions such as Aditya could greatly aid in the study of the solar atmosphere. At nasa, we always share the data we get from our probes and missions.
Will there be collaborations between Nasa and Isro?
Yes. I am going next week to Bengaluru for discussions on collaborative science and data sharing.
Speaking of data-sharing, how do you see the space research environment changing with new-age advances such as AI? Will it make space research economical?
To me, artificial intelligence is not the right word. it should be ‘augmented intelligence’. it is our own product, made by our minds, that is outsmarting us in gathering data and its analysis. Quite a complimentary phenomenon it is, which can hugely benefit our observations and conclusions. For example, in the study of CMEs, we could create Ai models that could help us predict the behaviour of the solar atmosphere. For the past seven to eight years, we have seen tremendous work with Ai, especially in StErEO missions where we studied a three-dimensional image of the sun constructed based on data obtained from three satellites that covered the star from vantage points over three to four years. So, Ai has made the magic of yesterday the science of today.
You have been an advocate of ‘space diplomacy’ and outreach. Will the coming years see countries working collectively on space missions, or as individual entities trying to outscore others in the game?
I cannot comment on that; i am an astrophysicist. How humans will evolve over the years in the sector of space research is not something that can be predicted.
It has been over two solar cycles since you are associated with the study of the sun. What are your understandings of the star as a heliophysicist?
It shaped my life. I have come to understand that without it, we are nothing. it represents what a star is, and what we are made of. We are made from the stars, we are the stars. Every element in us is directly from the stars. We are this combined, complex extensions of those celestial objects. Every culture has its rituals that bring forth this truth that we go back to the dust, to the ashes – star material. We are living stars. Sun represents that star for me.
There is a lot of affinity in India now towards space science. To take this forward, do you think there is a need to reorient the educational and research system here?
Training needs to be less outcome-driven and more towards understanding and questioning. the young ones need to be encouraged to think and ask questions. i was encouraged, as a girl, to ask questions. i had several questions about who we are, where we would go after death…
Your evolution as a scientist has been in an inquisitive mode. You also speak of the way science, spirituality and philosophy stretch into the question of existence. How far have you come in the path of such learning?
I have come to understand that some questions have no beginning or an end. Where do we go when we eventually do is a question that has no answer. We are only in the pursuit of knowledge to understand the environment around us through the rigours of science in a satisfactory manner. Maths is embedded in nature and everything in it – the petals of a flower can be expressed as equations. Even the mathematical models used in Ai are just nature’s products. Hence nature, as we describe it, is based on a bunch of constants that work for our framework and can fall apart in another.
So theories of maths and science are explanations of a particular framework in nature and any challenges to them are not a denial of the accepted framework but a window to another one. So there are no answers. We are always in the process of knowing.