Professor Hassan Ugail, a mathematician and a computer scientist

The Maldives Science Society has successfully held a science presentation. The presentation which was based on the recent scientific advances in realistic computer simulations was delivered by the eminent Bradford-University-based mathematician and scientist Professor Hassan Ugail. The presentation was held at the MCSE Seminar Room on 30 may 2010 at 8:30 pm.

Professor Ugail’s presentation was a graphic mix of cutting edge science and advanced mathematical modeling _ agreeably diluted for the general public _ and was well-received by an audience of a broad bandwidth of interests, including students from many schools. At the end of the presentation, Professor Ugail entertained a host of questions from an inquisitive audience.

Professor Ugail’s principal interests are in the areas of geometric design, computer-based physical analysis and Simulation Based Design. He is a member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EPSRC] and also a peer reviewer for the several related journals and conferences in his field of research.

Professor Ugail’s presentation was a graphic mix of cutting edge science and advanced mathematical modeling

Despite the fact that a detailed announcement was made well in advance of the General Assembly, only one candidate came forward for each of the five positions, namely the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary General, the Treasurer and the Committee Member.

During the meeting, Mohamed Ijaz, in his capacity as one of the four Founders, reiterated and stressed the importance of preserving the character of the Maldives Science Society in terms of the parameters of science and emphasized the fact that it is science that defines the Maldives Science Society. Mohamed Ijaz along with Ajmal Shaheed also cited the need for the above character-preservation as the reason behind their decision to run for positions in the election.

The members and the positions they ran for are:

• Mohamed Ijaz [the President]
• Mohamed Jameel [the Vice-President]
• Ajmal Shaheed [the Secretary General]
• Mohamed Nazim [the Treasurer]
• Ibrahim Ismail [the Committee Member]

Near the end of the General Assembly, the candidates were all voted in unanimously by show of hands and the Assembly was brought to an apt close when all the newly elected thanked the members of the Society for all their support and assistance.

The Maldive Islands will receive a longer period of eclipse than any other country with over 10 minutes and 50 seconds of annularity.

During solar eclipses, there have been a number of reports of physical anomalies regarding disturbances to sensitive equipments. Scientists from around the world are now in the Maldives to do research into this possible effect. In fact the scientists currently doing research in Addu happens to be the greatest gathering of pendulum speacialist ever.

The research team consists of an association of researchers, both academic and independent, who are studying and publicizing Professor Maurice Allais’s mid-twentieth century work in mechanics and optics, which he is still actively pursuing on the theoretical level. With their own current researches, the team of scientists also hope to extend Allais’s studies in both depth and breadth.

The Allais Effect

The Allais effect is a claimed anomalous precession of the plane of oscillation of a pendulum during a solar eclipse. It has been speculated to be unexplained by standard physical models of gravitation, but recent mainstream physics publications tend rather to posit conventional explanations for the reported observations.

The effect was first reported in 1954 by Maurice Allais, a French polymath who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. He reported another observation of the effect during a 1959 solar eclipse.

Prof. Allais’s explanation for this and other anomalies is that space evinces certain anisotropic characteristics, which he ascribes to structural modifications and motion through an aether. He has presented this hypothesis in his 1997 book “L’Anisotropie de l’espace”.

Prior Arts

Over the last fifty years evidence has accumulated from diverse physics experiments that, in some situations, various dynamical systems behave in ways which are not predicted according to current theory. These are experiments related to rotational or accelerated motion, and typically the anomalies correspond to forces of 10-3 to 10-5 of the forces that are causing the main motion. Moreover, some of these anomalous effects have been particularly manifested during solar or lunar eclipses, sometimes quite strongly.

Our Plans for Research with Paraconical Pendulums

In the 1950’s Maurice Allais constructed his paraconical pendulum, which was the most sensitive and accurate physical pendulum ever made up to that time. (A ‘physical pendulum’ is a pendulum with a solid rod joining the bob to the suspension, as opposed to a flexible wire or cord.) Allais operated his pendulum over a number of marathon month-long runs, and observed several interesting unexplained periodic effects, as well as serendipitously discovering his famous Eclipse Effect when a solar eclipse passed not far from Paris in 1954. These effects are probably related in some manner, but the details are still mysterious.

Allais’s pendulum experiments have never even been repeated, let alone improved upon, although Prof. Latham of Imperial College, London made a valiant effort around 1980. Yet the expense and effort involved would be quite trifling upon the general scale of modern physical research. We think that the main barriers have been informational and institutional. The fact that almost all Prof. Allais’s original reports have remained (until now) in the French language has undoubtedly been an impediment. We have realized that, with the general advance of technology, it would be possible to reproduce Allais’s experiments with much greater accuracy than he was able to attain, and we intend to do this and to study the Allais periodic deviations in depth. Moreover, we intend to set up sets of suitable pendulums at strategically chosen locations upon the Earth’s surface near to the paths (and anti-paths) of upcoming solar eclipses. This effort should confirm or disprove the fifty-year-old question of the existence of the Allais Eclipse Effect definitively, one way or the other (but, if it does exist, understanding its details and its cause may be a much tougher proposition).

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Rene Verreault (father), professor of physics, University of Quebec (Chicoutimi), Canada

Maxime Verreault (son), professor of physics, University of Quebec (College Ste-Foy, Quebec City), Canada

This team has installed a long pendulum in a 9-meter elevator shaft in Hithadhoo (Addu). The motion of the pendulum is recorded with a high-resolution video camera and followed by computer. They hope to confirm observations they first made in Canada in 2001 relating to the influence of the Moon upon the pendulum. They also are interested in investigating the Allais effect, which is the abnormal disturbance of a pendulum during a solar eclipse, as yet unexplained.

Hector Munera, professor of physics (Newtonian mechanics), National University, Bogota, Colombia (retired)

Currently, Prof. Munera is devoted full-time to his main passion: research into the foundations of classical physics. He is in Maldives to witness the operation of the various pendulums that will be gathering data during the solar eclipse. He will use that data to determine if there are aspects of the dynamical behaviour of the pendulums during the eclipse that cannot be explained by current gravitational theory, and, if the answer is positive, to try develop an appropriate theoretical model.

Thomas Goodey, independent researcher, London, England

Since 2004 he has been constructing and improving a robotically operated short pendulum apparatus for investigation of the Allais effect. So far he has transported the equipment to the sites of six solar eclipses, and now it is set up in Feydhoo, Addu atoll. He hopes to see some interesting phenomenon during the eclipse, and he is also very happy to be the first person ever to perform pendulum experiments upon the Equator.

Dimitrie Olenici, astronomer, Suceava Planetarium and Observatory, Suceava, Romania

Cezar Lesanu, astronomer, Suceava Planetarium and Observatory, Suceava, Romania

This team has been researching the Allais effect, and the associated Jeverdan effect, since 2001 in Romania, using various types of pendulum of various lengths. Professor Olenici has more experience of this type of experiment than anyone else in the world, having personally performed more than 4,000 hours of observations. During this eclipse, using similar pendulums of around 4 m in length, they will perform two coordinated experiments 530 km apart: one in Hithadhoo (Addu) and one in Male. The comparison of the results will be of extreme interest.

Professor Lesanu is also a dedicated radio amateur, and is using his time in Addu to make amateur radio contacts worldwide. Very many amateurs seem to be rather excited about the possibility of making contact with such an exotic location.

Edward Oberg, mechanical engineer / project manager (retired), Sydney, Australia

He is here to observe the progress of the pendulum experiments during the solar eclipse and to correlate the results with the Iasoberg Model (www.iasoberg.com), a proposed pattern which he has developed for the pattern of the Allais effect across the Earth’s surface, that makes predictions for severe weather events and earthquakes. He is also coordinating data collection during the eclipse from a number of gravimeter stations around the Indian Ocean, for integration into his model.

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National Eclipse Tracker Team (NETT-Malaysia)

This team was established on late 2005 and includes members from multi-goverment agencies in Malaysia (related to astronomical observation and research) such as Space Physics Laboratory of University Malaya, Islamic Affair & Development Department, State Mufties Department (about 5 states), Malaysia Mapping and Survey Department, and other astrophotographers. The core business of this team is to track and do a research about eclipse around the world.

NETT-Malaysia had conducted research work during solar eclipses in Turkey (2006), Indonesia (2009), and China (2009). Maldives will be the forth country they will be visiting to conduct research.

Start Time: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 4:00pm
End Time: Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 12:00pm
Location: Lonuziyaarai kolhu
City/Town: Male, Maldives
Contact number: 7926005
Email: info@sciencemaldives.org
Facebook event link : http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=137740630258

Galileoscope

We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

The project aims at connecting people living in bordering countries by conducting joint star parties to show that the sky could act as a bridge to unite people in spite of their culture, religion, nationality etc.

As part of this project the Maldives Science Society is collaborating with the Sri Lankan Astronomical Association [AALK] for a joint event tentatively scheduled to be held on Friday, 13th March 2009.

The Maldives Science Society invites your participation and requests to share your enthusiasm by emailing us at info@sciencemaldives.org.

Reference:
http://www.astronomy2009.org/globalprojects/specialprojects/starpeace/
http://www.starpeace.org/

* A presentation on the coral reefs of the Maldives – on 5th March
* A presentation on the wonders of the Maldivian seas – in May
* A presentation on the journey of the Maldivian dragon flies – in   September
* An Egg drop event [a competition] – in July
* Making an orrery [as part of an astronomy project]
* The globe at night – 16th to 20th March
* Celebrating Earth-hour – 28th March
* World Space Week – 4th to 10th October
* Worldwide star count – 9th to 23rd October

In case you are interested and available for any of these events and/or projects, please email us at info@sciencemaldives.org with your name, email address, mobile number and the name of the activity and/or event of your choice.

Founded in 1919, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is an international union with the mission of promoting and safeguarding the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation.

IYA2009 celebrates the momentous event of the first astronomical use of a telescope by Galileo Galilei between AD 1564 and AD 1642. A Tuscan physicist and mathematician, Galileo played a key role in the scientific revolution and has often been referred to as the father of modern observational astronomy.

IYA2009 is also the anniversary of many other historic events such as the Johannes Kepler’s AD 1609 publication of Astronoma Nova and Christiaan Huygen’s AD 1659 publication of Systema Saturnium. Kepler and Huygen are both physicists and mathematicians whose contributions to physics have had an enormous impact on the course of modern science.

Modern astronomy’s quadricentennial, the IYA2009 is an international celebration of various other astronomical and scientific milestones and is indeed a global collaboration as well for one of the holy grails of many an inquisitive human being _ the search for our cosmic origin.

The science of astronomy embodies millennia of collaboration across a broad spectrum of human backgrounds such as geography, race, religion and gender, and is a classic instance of science’s contribution towards the promotion of cross-boundary cooperation and collaboration.

The IYA2009 invites astronomers and people around the world to look up in wonder into the staggering vastness we call space and attempt at seeking answers to some of life’s biggest questions.

Who knows what awaits us!

The night that followed saw the screening, at Bankai café, of the first episode of the popular science series Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Dr Kavan also attended this event and took questions from the audience too. Cosmos is an epic exposition on the origin, method and evolution of science and is indeed a must-see for anyone interested in science.