The Alternate World

My interest in Astronomy dates back to the time when i was first introduced to an Atlas, it was an Orient-Longman I think. In it, there was an appendix where the colourful pictures of planets of the solar system & other bodies were given along with the details about them. Comparing those worlds with the one in which we are living, a thought always occured to me; Our world could have been different from the one right now. There could have been more than one moon shining in our night sky, a planet peeping into our lives. The color of sky could have been different & so on...

This post will take you to an alternate world, to a new planet. Fed on my imagination, I went on a search of this world. Here is collection of a few pictures which are the closest to my imagination. So, here you go...


1. Two moons in the sky & a sparkling unknown source of light.





2. A scene from a moon with its planet, another moon & its sun.




3. Sea of Serenity I-The Dusk.




4. Sea of Serenity II-The Daytime



5. Vision from a ringed planet's satellite- The Ultimate Beauty.





6. Vision from a ringed planet's satellite- The Sunrise.




7. Sea of Serenity III. In fact, there are 4 people in this picture.



8. A new satellite in the Earth's sky.



9. Sunrise & two moons



P.S. : There is still one imagination of mine whose depiction I was unable to find. Its about a planet with two 'Suns'. In our solar system there are couplets of stars who revolve around each other. I could not find any convincing picture showing this.

Also, these pics can be downloaded as wallpaper. Just click on them, after saving them you can set them as your wallpaper (1024 x 768 resolution).

Nobel to Phelps

Edmund S Phelps bagged the Nobel Prize in Economics this Monday. The name may ring bell in the mind, because in second year, we studied his work in Macroeconomics. Here is the list.

Firstly, we studied his major work; the Expectations Augmented Phillips Curve, whose derivation, incidentally, was asked in the exam as well.

Secondly, among the many models of wage stickiness, there was one given by Phelps in association with Friedman; the Imperfect Information model. Quite related to it was ‘Worker Misperception model’ to derive Aggregate Supply curve.

More importantly, we studied the determinants of Natural rate of unemployment, which follow largely from the work of Edmund Phelps.

So, he figured prominently in our Macroeconomics last year. I would like to mention a quote by Phelps which emphasises that the natural rate of unemployment changes over time. I like it, obviously for its economic content, but more for the use of beautiful words. He noted, the natural rate is not,” an intertemporal constant, something like the speed of light, independent of everything under the sun”.

It gives a nice feeling that we studied & comprehended the work of, who is now, a Nobel laureate.

Dialectic Commercialism!!!

It’s quite funny that these cellular companies invest so heavily in advertisements but fail to concentrate on minor details. Take the case of Idea cellular’s TV Commercial (TVC) featuring a monkey (may be a Langur, but I didn’t saw a long tail….I just know that they are not the same ones found near Stephens). The cell phone in use there is N 72, but the ringtone is monophonic & not polyphonic. Secondly, the monkey goes to a stadium, a park & all open places within the city limits where obviously signal would come. Or No!! Thinking of past reputation I think the presence of signal is a miracle (even if it is in the ad).

The ad is in response to the Airtel’s TVC where 3 girls are in Himalayas. That ad is quite logical, if not absolutely. Hehe, till the phone call from ‘papa’ I was under an impression that it’s a new ad of Nokia showing enhanced features of the N series. Hey!! Where’s the Chika, I mean the dog in Hutch’s commercial who follows the boy. With these kinds of TVCs I surely miss Chika.