Jana Gana Mana completes 100 years

Jana Gana Mana  completes 100 years 

Indian national anthem “Jana Gana Mana…” completed 100 years Tuesday.

It was on this day in 1911 that the song, penned by Rabindranath Tagore, was first sung at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress.

Eventually, three years after India became independent, the Constituent Assembly officially adopted it as the country’s national anthem — on Jan 24, 1950.

Written in highly Sanskritized Bengali, it is the first of five stanzas of a hymn composed and scored by Tagore. Its formal rendition takes 52 seconds.

The poem was composed at the time of the Coronation Durbar of George V. Some consider it to be in praise of King George V and not god.

Tagore, however, translated “Jana Gana Mana” into English as the “Morning Song of India”, addressing god and the motherland.

He set it to music in Madanapalle, a town in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.

There are official instructions regarding the correct version of the anthem, the occasions when it is to be played or sung, and about the need to pay respect to it.

Aliens may have left footprints on moon!

 Aliens may have left their footprints or artefacts on the moon which would last far longer than radio signals.

Two astronomers from Arizona State University who suggest this possibility point out that we have been approaching alien life from a wrong end, scanning for radio signals from the distant stars, under the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project.

The detailed moon maps created by National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (NLRO) may be the best place to look for alien life, they said, evidence such as trails or debris would remain there for millions of years, and be easier to 'catch' than radio signals.

"Evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence could come from any signatures of non-human technology," the journal Acta Astronautica quotes the scientists as saying.

They say that any alien mission to our solar system is liable to have occurred long ago, but the surface of the moon could preserve the signs for millions of years, according to the Daily Mail.

The photographs already captured by NLRO, currently mapping the moon's surface to 0.5 metre resolution, provides an easy, cheap way to look for these signs.