2009 - enigmas of universe - 214579e

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2009 number 7 ISSN 1993-8616

Enigmas

of thE univErsE


2/242The UNESCO Courier 2009 N7

Eg f E vEEfrom lhazen bn aithams theory about the dark spots on the moon

(11th entury) to the reent disoery o exoplanets in pril 2009, thisissue, published on the oasion o the nternational Year o stronomy,

traes these steps in our lon history o obserin the stars.

EDL 3

Image of Saturn taken by the space probeCassini, launched by NASA in 1997.

NASA/JPL/Spac

eScienceInstitute

forum

n livin with less, rom three points o viewHow to protect the poor from a crisis caused by a few of the rich?This was the main question raised at the UNESCO Future Forum held last March. 22

focus

gross ational appiness throuh literayInnovative literacy projects in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, India and the Philippines are the winnersof this years UNESCO International Literacy Prizes. 20

f cLED LD

fE vEEA small sphere at the centre of a muchlarger sphere: this is how the earth and the

universe were imagined in Greek antiquity. This image of a closedworld was shattered by a gadget sold in shops. 400 years ago,Galileo observed the sky with a telescope he made himself.The world would never be the same. 4

vE E The Apollo 11 Mission and Galileos obser-

vations, whose respective 40th and 400thanniversaries we are celebrating this year,conrmed discoveries with the naked eye almost a millenniumago by the Arab polymath Alhazen - a man ahead of his time whodetermined the future of astronomy. 7

Y LD

E LDThe movements of the Sun and the phasesof the Moon have synchronized human

activities, particularly rituals and agriculture, for thousands of years.

At its inception, astronomy was primarily used to measure time.Calendars have played an essential role in peoples lives.We revisit the astronomy of ancient China, the Mayansand the medieval Islamic world with the astronomers Zhao Gang,Julieta Fierro and George Saliba. 10

D

f E vEEOn May 14, 2009 the Planck satellitewas launched into space aboard the

Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou aeronautical base in FrenchGuyana. This European Space Agency (ESA) mission willhelp us to improve our understanding of the universe. A 2006Nobel Laureate in physics, Professor George Fitzgerald Smoot,explains more. 12

EEEL LfE:

E E?Does the discovery of extrasolar planets

mean the discovery of extraterrestriallife? During a UNESCO conference marking the InternationalYear of Astronomy, three world renowned scientists, Lord Mar-tin John Rees (United Kingdom), Jonathan P. Gardner (UnitedStates) and Franoise Combes (France), tackled the questionfrom different perspectives. 15

Y :

E EE E

f EEcWe have no reason to think that the

planets in our solar system represent every type of planet inexistence, according to the Swiss astrophysicist Michel Mayor,who discovered the rst extrasolar planet with Didier Quelozin 1995. Last April, his team at the Geneva Observatorydiscovered the smallest exoplanet known today. 18

2009 - 7

Contents


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tributed to this issue of The UNESCOCourier published with a view to popu-larise astronomical knowledge within theIYA2009 framework.In terms of scientic research, the main

topic discussed was that of dark matterand dark energy. Ninety-ve percent ofthe total energy of the universe is not vis-ible in the sense we usually understandit, so we nicknamed it dark matterand dark energy, said Nobel laureatePhysics George F. Smoot. FranoiseCombes of the Paris Observatory addedScientists invented the notion of darkenergy to explain a phenomenon disco-vered 10 years ago the acceleration ofthe expansion of the universe. Accordingto the theory most widely accepted upuntil then the universe has been expand-ing since the Big Bang and will contractin a Big Crunch. Today we know thistheory is false, yet it is still unclear whatcauses the acceleration.

In terms of popularising science, themain concern for experts is educa-

ting youth and teaching astronomy inschools. In my opinion, we should startteaching astronomy in primary schooldeclared Beatriz Barbuy, a Brazilianastronomer and recipient of the 2009LOreal-UNESCO award for Women inScience. Interviewed during the prepara-tion of this issue by the Brazilian journalistDnio Maus Vianna, Barbuy explains:The mysterious world of stars andgalaxies greatly intrigues children.Astronomy is an excellent way to teachchildren not only about cosmic pheno-mena, but also mathematics, physics,optics, chemistry and even computerscience and biology. She believes thatthe reason why astronomy appears inac-cessible is because its not sufcientlyfeatured in school curriculums. Theresulting lack of knowledge has a negativeimpact: scientists are often frustratedto note that obscurantism sometimesprevails over the facts established by

science .Jasmina opova

400 years ao galileo took the darkstains on the surae o the oon

to be seas. e was wron. oday,

we send missions to the oon

in searh o water. ehnoloial

adanes hae been extraordinary:

in the past 20 years 350 planets hae

been disoered outside o our solar

system and seeral months ao

the rst imaes o them reahed us

ia satellite. elesopes on earth

and in spae explore the unierse

24 hours a day, yet it is still remains

larely unknown.

Editorial

to help us penetrate his secrets the

United Nations declared 2009 the Interna-tional Year of Astronomy (IYA2009). Sub-mitted by Italy, the homeland of Galileo,the initiative is lead by the InternationalAstronomical Union and UNESCO.With the motto The Universe yours to

discover the IYA2009 aims to stimulateinterest in astronomy among the gen-eral public and especially youth. Activi-ties are underway around the world andUNESCO has organised a series of eventsdesigned to both stimulate researchand disseminate scientic knowledge.Exhibitions for young and adults have

been organised, as have scientic sym-posiums and debates with the widerpublic featuring many of the worlds lead-

ing astronomical experts.Among these, Franoise Balibar, Fran-oise Combes, Julieta Fierro, ZhaoGang, Jonathan P. Gardner, MichelMayor, Lord Martin John Rees, GeorgeSaliba et Georges F. Smoot have con-

This view out the aft windows on Endeavours ight deck was one ofa series of images recorded by the STS-123 crew during the rst fullday in space.

NASA

Children at Katha public school (Govinpuri slums, south Delhi, India),during an astronomy class.

UNESCO/O.Brendan

The UNESCO Courier 2009 N7


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I

small sphere at the entre o a muh larer sphere: this is how the earth

and the universe were imained in greek antiquity. his imae o a losed world

was shattered by a adet sold in shops. 400 years ao, galileo observed the sky

with a telesope he made himsel. he world would never be the same.

A closed worldThe closed world view has its ori-gin in Greek philosophy. For mostGreek astronomers and philoso-phers, from the 4th century on, theearth is a small sphere (the mostsymmetrical surface) occupying thecentre of another much larger rotat-ing sphere, which carries the stars.Different cosmological devices areadded during the nearly twentycenturies which separate the 4thcentury B.C. from Galileos time,in order to account for the move-

ments of the sun, moon and planets(wandering celestial bodies) in theintermediate space between thetwo spheres. The point here is thatoutside of the celestial sphere thereis no space, no matter, nothing. Thewhole world is enclosed, or, so tospeak, encapsulated, inside thissecond sphere; a sphere where,large as it may be when comparedto the size of his earthly residence,man is imprisoned.

Cosmologyand AstronomyA second point: cosmology (as aset of conceptions about the struc-ture of the universe) and astronomy(dened as observation of the ap-pearances of the heavens) are inex-tricably combined in such a model.Thomas Kuhn (American philoso-pher and historian of science,

1922-1996) sees in this combina-tion the origin of the unreasonableeffectiveness of western science.According to Kuhns view, the re-quirement that cosmology shouldsupply both a world-view and anexplanation of observed phenom-ena has channelled the universalpsychological compulsion for beingpart of the universe into a drive forscientic explanations thus en-

hancing the power of cosmologicalthought. The devastating result isthat the astronomer may on occa-sions destroy, for reasons lying en-tirely within his speciality, a world-view that had previously made the

n 1639, nearly thirty years after

the discovery we are celebratingtoday, Galileo, then aged 68, lostthe use of his right eye. A yearlater, he became totally blind. Indespair, he then wrote to his mostfaithful friend Elie Diodati, Alas,honoured Sir, Galileo, your dearfriend and servant, has becomeby now irremediably blind. YourHonour may understand in whatafiction I nd myself, as I con-

sider how the heaven, the world,the universe, which by my ob-servations and clear demonstra-tions I had amplied a hundredand a thousand times over whathad been seen and known by the

learned of all past centuries, has

now reduced to the space occu-pied by my person.An agonizing statement of a man

to whom blindness had given theability to see, with the eyes of themind, the position he would for-ever hold not only among worldlythings but in the history of man.As if physical blindness had givenhim the power to adopt whatwould be posteritys point of view

on his achievements, namely, asAlexandre Koyr (French philoso-pher and historian of science, ofRussian origin, 1892-1964) has so

justly coined it: going from a closedworld to an innite universe.

From closed world

to inFinite universe

Allrightsreserved

Portrait of Galileo painted by Justus Sustermans (1636).

This article is an extract from the lecture From Galileo to Einstein, de-livered by Franoise Balibar at the launch of the International Year

of Astronomy at UNESCO, 15 January 2009.



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universe meaningful for the mem-bers of a whole civilization, special-ist and non specialist alike. This isprecisely what happened in 1609:Galileos astronomical observationsdestroyed the world-view, commonto both the educated and the manin the street.Both the Copernican and Ptole-

maic systems, which clashed in the17th century, are cosmological andastronomical at the same time. Thisis explicit in the title Galileo gaveto his rst Dialogue: DialogueConcerning the two Chief WorldSystems, where the two systems,Ptolemaic and Copernican, appearon the same footing, alternativesystems within the same intellec-tual framework, where any changein astronomical explanation (as thatproposed by Copernicus in 1543,

in his De Revolutionibus OrbiumCoelestium) entails a change inmans cosmological conceptionsabout the structure of the world.

The earth is no longerthe centreo the universeNo wonder then that the disputesurrounding the Copernican (1473-1543) heliocentric explanation wasitself felt to be not a mere controver-sy restricted to scientists (astrono-mers) but a threat to the estab-lished general order, relying as thislatter did on a geocentric world-view. No wonder too that Galileos

observations and interpretations ofevolving bright spots as evidenceof mountains on the Moon, some-thing anyone could understand inrelation to his own experience ofthe sun rising on the top of a moun-tain before it illuminates the valley,were much more threatening tothe established world-view thanthe other important scientic eventof that same year 1609, Keplers(1571-1630) Astronomia Nova[1571-1630]. All the more so in-asmuch as Galileos observationsinvolved an instrument derivedfrom a gadget sold on the openmarket, an instrument of such sim-plicity that anyone might believe hecould build one himself. But whocould read Astronomia Nova apartfrom specialists? Who would careabout the elliptical planetary trajec-

tories exhibited by Kepler?Such an achievement as Keplers

could be interpreted as a changein world-view only by astronomersthemselves, while the disclosureof mountains on the moon had theeffect that anyone looking at theMoon could no longer see it as aperfectly polished celestial body,radically different from the earth.Once the Moons of Jupiter (which

had been invisible to everyone un-til now, writes Galileo) had beenseen (even if Galileo was for a timethe only one who had really seenthem, with the exception of Keplerwho, as a professional astronomer,

was clever enough to adjust the in-strument Galileo had sent to him,to his own eyes), the thought thattheir movement around Jupiter itselfshould take them outside the celes-tial sphere behind the sphericalsurface on which Jupiter was sup-posed to be located, could occurto anyone willing to think seriouslyabout it. As a consequence, theworld could no longer be restrict-ed to the space inside the celes-tial sphere. Even worse: the earthcould not be located at the centreof the universe (this is what Sig-mund Freud later called the rst ofthree humiliations inicted upon hu-man narcissism, the other two be-ing Darwinian evolution and Freudsown discovery of the Unbewusst).

The infnite universeThe closed world picture had lost

its coherence and does not con-form to observation. But what aboutthe innite universe Koyr alludesto? That the closed world has beenburst open does not necessarily im-ply an innite size for the universe.The question here is that of thephysical reality of innity. It is wellknown that Kepler objected to theidea of an innite universe on theground that such an entity would ac-

commodate regions devoid of mat-ter which was pure non-sense ac-cording to his views: space withoutmatter is nothing, it simply does notexist. Galileo is more subtle and am-bivalent on this matter. He refuses

From closed world to inFinite universe

Ptolemy, 2nd century Greek geographerand astronomer.

Allrightsreserved

The Copernican system.

Allrightsreserved



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From closed world to inFinite unive rse

to identify the inertial movement(the one which is comme nullo) withtranslations at uniform speed, on theground that the mobile would thenbe taken to innity, which he ndsunrealistic. At the same time, bydestroying the idea that the cosmosis structured by a hierarchical order(the perfect and eternal heavensas opposed to the corruptible andinstable Earth), he introduces theidea of a universe whose spatialstructure is uniform, free of any naturalhierarchy, and without any referenceto a world of values, a world where

all points are on the same footing.In other words, a Euclidean geome-

trical space, including innity in itsdenition, on which the mathemati-zation of physical world, i.e. modernphysics, relies.No doubt we would not be cel-

ebrating Galileos astronomical dis-coveries with such ceremony hadthey not led to the foundation ofmodern science. By replacing thehierarchical structure of space bythe uniformity which characterizesgeometric spaces, Galileo madeit possible for geometry, and moregenerally speaking, mathematics,the application of which had been

up to then (from the time of Greeceon) restricted to understanding the

movements of perfect celestial ob-jects, to become part of the expla-nation of terrestrial phenomena, nolonger considered less perfect thancelestial ones.Three centuries later, in 1919, Ein-

stein, Galileos direct heir, not somuch as concerns his astronomicaldiscoveries as his project for themathematization of nature, havingpainfully worked out his so calledgeneral theory of relativity, cameto realize that this physico-mathe-matical theory, intended as a theoryof gravitation, was in fact a theory of

the universe itself therefore a cos-mology. The entanglement of as-tronomy and cosmology, which hadbeen crucial to the birth of modernscience, ended in the absorption ofcosmology by science: cosmologyhad become a branch of physics.

Franoise Balibar,Professor Emeritus of Physics

at the University of Paris Diderot

Author ofGalile: Le messager des toiles

(with Jean-Pierre Maury),

Gallimard, 2005 and

Einstein : Decoding the Universe,

Abrams, 2001.

Keplers model of the universe, based on ve regular polyhedra.

The Serpents star cluster, at some 8,484 light yearsfrom Earth. Photo taken with the infraredSpitzer Space Telescope.

NASA/JPL/UniversityofArizona

Allrightsr

eserved



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Millions around the world held their

breath on 20 July 1969, as theUnited States Eagle lunar moduletouched down in the Moons Seaof Tranquillity without making asplash! Despite its name, the Seaof Tranquillity does not contain asingle drop of water. Instead, it iscovered with volcanic rocks whichowed some 3 to 4 billion yearsago, as lava. The quirky name, how-

ever, is reminiscent of a once popu-lar theory explaining the Moonsappearance from Earth. As Italianpainter and scientist Leonardo daVinci wrote in his Codex Leicester,The luminous part of the Moon is

water, which has been stirred up bythe winds.You might be forgiven for thinking

that a scientic explanation for theMoons appearance was not practi-cally possible that is until Italianastronomer Galileo Galilaei turnedhis telescope towards the night sky400 years ago. Now enter Alhazen,or Ibn Haitham (965-1040), anIraqi scientist working at the turn

of the rst millennium near Al-Azharmosque in Cairo, and dubbed thefounding father of modern optics.Among a number of major contri-butions, he answered one of themost intriguing questions faced by

science: what gives rise to the darkgure in the Moons face.

Mystery solvedThis phenomenon had been thesubject of much speculation sinceantiquity, resulting in numerous ex-travagant theories. Half a dozen ofthese, at least, were explored byAlhazen in his work The Trace on

the Moons Face. Here, he showedthat none of the theories examinedmade predictions that agreed withobservational evidence. He puteach candidate theory to the testusing some crucial observations,most notably the fact that the gurein question always appears con-stant in terms of positioning, size,shape, and darkness.For instance, he ruled out the theo-

ry that the dark gure was an imageof Earths oceans and mountainsreected on the Moons mirror-likesurface. Based on the law of reec-tion, he showed that the Moonschanging angle with respect to anobserver on Earth meant that anysuch image had to change with time which is obviously not the case.A couple of other theories were

written off based on similar argu-ments. Firstly, that the dark gure is

a shadow caused by dramatic lunarfeatures such as mountains andcraters. This time, Alhazen arguedthat the Moons changing orienta-tion with respect to the Sun meantthat any shadowy patterns had toalso change with time ying in theface of empirical evidence.And secondly, that the dark gure

is caused by a vaporised substanceever present between the Moon and

Earth. He argued that if this weretrue, observing the Moon from dif-ferent Earthly locations would showthe vaporised substance againstdifferent parts of the Moon, if notoutside the Moon altogether!

over the moon

he pollo 11 ission and galileos obserations, whose respetie 40th and 400th

anniersaries we are elebratin this year, onrmed disoeries with the naked eye

almost a millennium ao by the rab polymath lhazen - a man ahead o his time

who determined the uture o astronomy.

UNESCO welcomes the Apollo 11 astronauts: N. Armstrong, E. Aldrinand M. Collins. 8 October 1969.

UNESCO/R.Lesage



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Solar eclipses something of alaboratory for physicists and as-tronomers enabled Alhazen torule out yet another exotic theory:the dark gure is a transparent re-gion in the lunar body. If this weretrue, asked Alhazen, why doesntsunlight shine through it during aneclipse of the Sun?Moonlight, Alhazen concluded,

can only be adequately explainedusing the phenomenon of diffusereection that is, reection froma rough surface. Further, the Moondoes not reect light in any otherway. What gives rise to the darkgure, he explained, is the fact thatits material, because of its different

optical properties simply reectsless light!

Date with the MoonAlthough, astonishingly, Alhazen

made his lunar discoveries basedon observations with the naked eye,the study of the visual and magnify-ing properties of lenses was in factlaunched with his Book of Optics.This new understanding of the lens,

based on geometry and experiment,underpinned the craft of the Dutchspectacle-makers who, by holdingone lens in front of another, inventedthe telescope, enabling Galileo torevolutionise astronomy.

In December 1609, hunting for theunexpected, Galileo used a 20-foldmagnication telescope to observethe Moon. He could make out moun-tains, craters, and what he wronglythought were seas (i.e. water). Wenow know, from lunar samples col-lected by Apollo missions (1966-1972), along with a certain amount

collected by Russias robotic Lunamissions (1958-1976) that lunarmaria are covered with dark rocks(basalts) conrming Alhazensbasic conclusions about the make-up of our closest neighbour.The two men are immortalized on

the Moon: there is a lunar crater,Galilaei, celebrating Galileos dis-coveries. Another crater, Alhazen,celebrates Ibn Haithams.Ambitious projects such as the

IYA2009 could inspire the next

big thing in astronomy. Soon theentire night sky will be continuouslyscanned by space as well as Earth-based telescopes, across manywavebands, churning out terabytesof data. The next 40 years, let alonethe next 400, could well see anoth-er revolution in astronomy.

Hatim Salihis a Sudanese researcher in quantum

computing and a member of the York

Astronomical Society

(United Kingdom).

over the moon

NASA

Looking at theMoon with hisnewly madetelescope,Galileo discernedmountains, craters,and what hethought were seas.

Have you ever wondered what gives rise to the dark gure on theMoons face?

Bib

liotecaNazionaleCentrale(Florence)



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over the moon

Veille funraire.

he Lunar eonnaissane rbiter (L),

and its sister mission Lc, launhed by

ational eronautis and pae dministration () last June,

are the rst in a series o unmanned missions soutin

or the return o astronauts to the oon.

antalizinly, in 1998, s Lunar rospetor ound

an exess o hydroen in the riid, permanently shadowed raters

at the oons poles, indiatin the possibility o water ie.

The only way youre going to know if its water ice is by stick-ing your nger in it, says Alan Binder of NASA. Thats exactly whyLCROSS wont be around for long. Having hitched a ride with LRO,LCROSS is currently in an unusual orbit around both the Earth andMoon, and is set to impact the lunar south pole on 9 October 2009.But why the wait?

One reason is to give LRO time to remote-sense the lunar southpole, where ancient comets and asteroids might have depositedwater. Data from LRO will help decide which exact crater to ex-cavate. Another reason is to drag LCROSSs impactor, calledCentaur, in space long enough to rid it of residual fuel (containingboth hydrogen and oxygen), which could contaminate results. Yet

another reason is to time the impact so that observatories in Hawaii(USA), with their sophisticated water detecting capabilities, cantune in. The goal is to muster as many eyes and instruments aspossible, says LCROSS Principal Investigator Tony Colaprete.

In fact anyone in Hawaii, up to the Mississippi region, with a 10to 12 inch diameter telescope or larger, should be able to witnessthe event! If everything goes according to script, Centaur will hitthe lunar south pole with an energy equivalent to what you get from100 million 60 Watt light bulbs in a second, kicking lunar debristhat has not been exposed to sunlight for billions of years, morethan 2 kilometers up, enough to clear the craters rim. LCROSS willthen y through the ejecta cloud looking for watery spectroscopic

signatures in the dust-dimmed sunlight, before plunging into theMoons south pole four minutes later.

Discovery of bits of ice hidden at the lunar poles could be invalu-able for any sustained human presence in space. For one thing,transporting water from Earth into space is highly costly. And thefact that the Moons gravity is only one sixth of Earthly gravity meansthat you need smaller rockets to launch space missions from theMoon that go the same distance. The implications of LCROSScould therefore be, quite literally, far reaching. If future astronautscould extract lunar water for human consumption and for makingrocket fuel, perhaps the one giant leap of setting foot on Mars willbecome, sooner than we imagine, one small step away.

H. S.

Launch of LCROSS and LRO on 18 June 2009.

N

ASA

looking For water

on the moon



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Tthe rst written Chinese calendar,highlights Zhao Gang. Luo Xiahongis equally well known for having cal-culated the precise frequency of so-lar and lunar eclipses over a periodof 135 months and for also havingperfected the spherical astrolabe,which during Chinese antiquity wasthe main tool for predicting the posi-

tions of the stars.Another famed calendar was reat-

ed by Guo Shoujing (1231-1316).Developed under the Yuan dynasty,the astronomer calculated that theEarths revolution around the Suntakes 365.2425 days. This extremelyaccurate calendar was created 300years before the Gregorian calendarwhich uses the same calculation andis universally accepted today.

It is estimated that from the 24thcentury B.C an ofcial at the courtof emperor Yao was specically in-structed to observe the sky and as-tronomical phenomenon as well astell the time. But the most ancient

a story as old as

the world

he two Chinese characters for theword universe () denote the unionof time and space explains ZhaoGang, deputy director of the Chi-nese observatory. He continues it isindeed difcult for man to conceivethe innity of space-time and, more-over, it has not yet been scienticallyproven.

Our ancestors believed in the ideaof harmony between man and thesky, he says, explaining that beforestarting any important activity theywould rst consult the stars. Live-stock and agriculture were in effectthe two pillars of Chinese societyduring Antiquity. That is why agri-cultural calendars were a centralconcern for astronomers, along withmanufacturing astronomical instru-

ments and the observation of astro-nomical phenomenon.Even our lunar calendar used

today is founded on the scienticmethod applied by Luo Xiahong(140-87 B.C), author of Tai Chu,

written information comes from ruinsof the Yin dynasty (during the 14thto 11th centuries B.C). From thesesites inscriptions on tortoise shellsand bones tell us about the Sun andMoon, planets, comets, stars andmeteor showers.

The most ancient astronomicalbook known today comes from theEra of Warring States. The work en-titled Gan Shi Catalogue of Stars(5th-4th centuries B.C) lists no fewerthan 800 stars, including 121 withexact known positions.A particularly interesting document

from Chinese astronomical history isthe Map of Dunhuang, which con-tains over 1300 stars (see photo).Created in the 7th century on a rollof Chinese paper about 4 metres inlength, it is considered one of theoldest celestial atlases in the world.

Uniting the heavensand the earthThe Mayan civilisation spread

over an enormous territory includ-ing south-east Mexico and parts ofCentral America. Their year was or-ganised according to rainy and dry

seasons and therefore the calendarhad fundamental importance fororganising civil life, building monu-ments and agriculture, explains theMexican astronomer Julieta FierroGossman, winner of the UNESCOKalinga Prize for the Popularisationof Science (1995).Onstage with a suitcase full of

masks, sticks and cards propsfor her performance the expert in

Mayan astronomy used stories andimages to illuminate this fascinatingculture, and concluded by handingout paper butteries. A regular gureon television and radio, as well asat universities and schools both in

he moements o the un and the phases o the oon hae synhronized

human atiities, partiularly rituals and ariulture, or thousands o years.

t its ineption, astronomy was primarily used to measure time. calendars hae playedan essential role in peoples lies. e reisit the astronomy o anient china, the ayans

and the medieal slami world with the astronomers Zhao gan, Julieta fierro and geore aliba.

Cuneiform tablet containingancient observations of the planetVenus (7th century BC).

BritishMuseum

From interviews at the launchof the International Year

of Astronomy at UNESCO

(January 2009),by Weiny Cauhape,Luca Iglesias Kuntz

and Katerina Markelova.



11/2411

Mexico and abroad, Fierro spreadsthe message that science can bebrought to everyone, provided theylift their eyes to the sky.The main Mayan buildings were built

with a view to measure time Fierroreects, before highlighting the storyof Chichen Itza (a UNESCO WorldHeritage Site). This site was de-signed so that during the equinox theSun cast a shadow onto the pyramidresembling a serpent descendingthe staircase this symbolised Ku-kulkn, god of resurrection and rein-carnation, also known as featheredserpent. This effect was achievedby rst building small models of theirmonuments allowing them to calcu-late exactly how and where to build.The sophisticated level of Mayan

astronomy, which still astounds sci-entists today, can also be seen inthe codices, made from bark, and

stele, engraved stone to stone, thatsurvived the Spanish conquest. Yet,the different measuring devices theyused werent as complicated asastrolabes - they used merely twosticks. One had to be horizontal andthe other placed at the altitude ofthe celestial objects this way theycould draw the different paths of theSun, Moon, Venus and Mars andknow when special events such as

eclipses would happen Fierro ex-plains. The design of the temple atBonampak for example, shows thatthey observed the Milky Way, whichthey called Wakah Chan and is por-trayed in the beautiful frescos within

the temple. It is embodied as a deityin the form of a snake which accord-ing to their beliefs united the heavensand the Earth.The Mayans used both the astro-

nomical calendar (or solar, 365 days),similar to that found in other cultures,and another religious calendar with a260 day year, reecting the time takento bear a child. These two calendarscoincided every 52 solar years. Thiswas marked by a grand ceremony inwhich every house re was put outand then relit to signify renewal.

The missing linkContrary to popular belief Islamic

astronomy is not the docile pupil ofGreek astronomy. While the heaven-ly science may have been in slumberin Europe between Antiquity and theRenaissance, it had extraordinarymomentum in the Islamic world dur-

ing the Middle Ages, reects GeorgeSaliba, professor of Islamic andArab science at Columbia Universityin New York (United States). This isparticularly true of the Caliphate ofBaghdad, who under the reign of al-Mamun gathered the wise men fromthe empire and encouraged them totranslate ancient Greek, Indian andPersian texts into Arabic.According to Saliba, simply being

a good linguist wasnt sufcient forbeing a good translator. You alsohad to be equipped with a strongscientic background. So much sothat some translators even correct-ed the masters - the great Ptolemy

was refuted more than once.When, for example, in 829 al-

Hajjaj translated the celebratedAlmageste, the great book ofmathematics and astronomy, hetook the opportunity to recalculatethe duration of the lunar month andincluded the correct gure. Ptolemyhad published an incorrect calcula-tion, taken from the Babylonians,without having veried it.In 1375 Ibn Al-Shati also improved

Ptolemys highly complex Earth-Moon-Sun model. The model isbased on Arab knowledge and isalmost identical to that proposed byCopernicus in 1543, the difference

being that the Earth and not theSun was the centre of the universe.Saliba wonders whether Coperni-cuss model was not even directlyinspired by the works of Ibn Al-Shati.Especially given that their diagramsboth represent the three celestial

a story as old as the world

A brass astrolabe (Ispahan, Iran, 1712).

bodies and use the same symbolsin the same places, only with Arabiccharacters in one and Latin in theother. Could this be the missing linkbetween the Ptolemaic system andCopernicuss heliocentric sys-tem?One thing is certain: thanks to

their technology, Islamic astrono-mers perfected observations ofthe sky and through their meticu-

lous calculations they ne tunedthe mathematics of astronomy.We cannot deny, as Saliba states,that they redened nearly all theparameters at the foundation ofGreek astronomy.

BritishMuseum

China: The map of the heavens of Dunhuangis the most ancient map of the stars found to date.

BritishLibrary



12/2412

You were one o the principal

architects o COBE, the frst

satellite to observe the CMB

in 1989. What are your

thoughts, 20 years later,

on the Planck mission?

I recall that as soon as we had madethe COBE discoveries and madethe announcement, I was alreadythinking about what was next. I hadcolleagues Nazzareno Mandolesi

and Marco Bersanelli from Italyvisiting for a month. We met togetherand outlined possible missions. Weeventually proposed what becameCOBRAS (COsmic Background

Radiation Anisotropy Satellite). Atthe same time the French peoplehere, mostly from Orsay, but someothers as well, proposed SAM-BA (Satellite for Measurement ofBackground Anisotropies).

n ay 14, 2009 the lank satellite was launhed into spae aboard

the riane 5 roket rom the Kourou aeronautial base in frenh guyana. his European pae

eny (E) mission will help us to improve our understandin o the universe.

2006 obel Laureate in physis, roessor geore fitzerald moot, explains more.

Later on they merged and eventu-ally it became COBRAS-SAMBAand then it became Planck. Oncewe made the discovery that theradiation was sure and that there

were these uctuations in the earlyuniverse to map, then the uctua-tions became this tool where youcould discover the geometry andconstituents of space and checkto see if the laws of physics re-

towards a map

oF the universe

The Nobel Laureate George Fitzgerald Smoot,at UNESCO in July 2009..

UNESCO/MichelRavassard

George Fitzgerald Smoot was awardedthe Nobel Prize in Physics along

with John C. Mather for their discoveryof the blackbody form

and anisotropy of the cosmic microwavebackground radiation. Their discovery followsa quarter of a century after the initial discovery

of Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB)by Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson.

Mr. Smoot began his scientic careerby obtaining dual bachelors degrees

in Mathematics and Physics fromthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

It was there, after obtaining a doctorate in particlephysics, he rst began to turn his attention towardscosmology. He subsequently started working

for the Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory in the early 1970s where

he collaborated with Luis Walter Alvarez,a 1968 Nobel Laureate in Physics.

Professor Smoot took part in the UNESCOsponsored international symposium,

The Invisible Universe, held at UNESCOin Paris from June 29 to July 3. During his visit

he gave an interview to French science journalistDominique Chouchan.



13/2413

main constant over time and validover all of space time. What wasneeded was to make a much moreprecise set of maps using theseuctuations.

Thereore, one o the objectives

o the Planck mission

is to make these more precise

maps o the early universe?

Its objective is to make a beauti-ful map to measure very preciselythe embryo universe by using thelight from the beginning of the uni-verse. In order to accomplish thistask the detectors and the cooling

system had to be very high-techand the way to send the data backis also very complicated.In order to explain the importance

of measuring with such precisionthe radiation and its uctuations, Iwill use an analogy. If you have twobells that you hear are struck, youcan tell which one is bigger. If theyare made of the same material, thebigger one will be the lower fre-quency because the wavelengthis longer. If you have two bells,one made of iron and one madeof brass, and you strike them both,you can tell the constituents of thebell by the harmonics you hear. Itsthe same for the early universe,its a precise analogy. The soundspeed is affected by what the ear-ly universe is made out of and bymeasuring precisely you can tellwhat the universe is made out of.

When will astrophysicists

receive the frst data rom

Planck?

Were already getting some data,but it takes at least 6 months beforeyou have seen even the sky and ittakes 14 months before you haveseen the whole sky enough timesso that you have a complete skymap. Nothing will be released to

the public for some time becauseits going to take a while to analyzethe data and the team is so large(400 scientists) and they have a lotof comments to make. So, I think itwill be 2 to 3 years.

vers une cartographie de lunivers

Did the unierse bein with a Bi Ban?

his question remains a soure o ontroersy.

oweer, or the supporters o this theory,

whih are the majority in the astronomial ommunity,

the obseration o reli radiation (the eletromaneti

radiation present in the unierse at a time

when matter and radiation existed separately),

and in partiular the measure o its utuations,

should allow us to see around 380,000 years

ater the amous Bi Ban.

These low frequency microwaves,also referred to as Cosmic MicrowaveBackground Radiation (CMB), are aremnant of the hotter anterior period.Its uctuations, or its heterogeneitiesaccording to observations (anisotro-pies), provide a key to understandingthe formation of visible matter (stars,galaxies, etc.).

The Planck Mission of the EuropeanSpace Agency follows in the footstepsof the COBE (COsmic BackgroundObserver) satellite launched by NASAin 1989 and the WMAP (WilkinsonMicrowave Anisotropy Probe) alsolaunched by NASA in 2001. The twodetectors aboard the Planck satellite

have been designed to be 50 timesmore sensitive in detecting uctuationsin relic radiation than that of its pre-decessor WMAP, which had alreadybeen 30 times more sensitive than theoriginal instruments aboard the COBEsatellite. They cover complementaryranges of frequencies: one of the de-tectors is under the direction of Jean-Loup Puget, Director of the IAS (InstitutdAstrophysique Spatiale) located inOrsay, France, the other is headed byNazzareno Mandolesi of the Istituto diTecnologie e Studio delle RadiazioniExtraterrestri in Bologna, Italy.

D. C.

the planck mission

at a glance

On board the Planck satellite.

ESA



14/2414

Will the results rom Planck

defnitively confrm the Big

Bang Theory?

The thing about science is thatyou never prove anything, you onlysupport it. Its like the theory of evo-lution. Do you know how strongthe evidence is for evolution? Youcan map DNA, and so forth. Its atheory. But it is very, very accurateand has very many cross-checks.For the universe, 20 years ago weused to not have as much evidence,now were getting much more. Thepredictions so far have been check,check, check. The fact that I am stilltalking about the Big Bang Theory

and putting checkmarks down tellsyou so far, so good. But the fact thatthere are so many checks meansthat now we have it really, really nar-rowed down.

When pondering to such length

the secrets o space and time,

do you eel more like

a scientist, a poet,

a philosopher, or all three?

Sometimes I have to become moreof an artist and philosopher be-cause thats what people relate toand not to the technical details. Allthey care about is the real struc-ture of space and time and whatspossible and whats not possible.What we know today probablytells you that time travel is notpossible. Is that philosophy or isthat science? Well, its a mixture.Its like people who cook. Are they

chemists or are they artists? Well,a good cook is both. And so a re-ally good scientist will be a scien-tist, artist and a philosopher.But you remember the Greek

word for science is natural phi-losophy. Its only because sci-ence has been so extraordinarilysuccessful that philosophy is nowthe domain about what we dontknow and science is the domain

about what we do know. Thereare just so many incredible andbeautiful places on earth. Its hardwhen you go into the forest andyou see all these interconnectedspecies to not see the hand of

God. But when you step backand you see evolution, then it be-comes very natural. But it doesntmean its still not beautiful. If yousee a rainbow and you know howthe rainbow works, it still doesntmean its not beautiful. I was once

asked Are you reducing man to ajiggling string of corks? Isnt thatdehumanizing? Doesnt that takeaway the soul? I said, Not nec-essarily. Sometimes there is evenmore beauty in understandinghow the machine works.

towards a map oF the universe

Drawing of the constellations in the Southern hemisphere by Joannes Janssonius(1661).

NationalLibraryofAustralia

COBE was the rst satellite to observe cosmic radiation in 1989.

NASA



15/2415

M

aybe theyre out there. We cantsay because we dont know howlife began on earth, so we dont

know how probable it is. And ofcourse even if simple life is com-mon, we dont know whether italways evolves into complex life,so there could be another planetwhere there are just bugs, or ants,nothing else.I think its stupid to have convic-

tions about a topic where we haveno idea. I think we should not besurprised either way. It could be

that we are the only life in the galaxy.It could be that theres a lot outthere. But its a very importantquestion and probably this centurywe will settle it.Its important, but I wouldnt want

Does the disovery o extrasolar planets mean the disovery o extraterrestrial lie?

Durin a Ec onerene markin the nternational Year o stronomy three world

renowned sientists, Lord artin John ees (nited Kindom), Jonathan . gardner (nited tates)

and franoise combes (frane), takled the question rom dierent perspetives.

extraterrestrial liFe:

surprises in store?


Lord Martin John Rees at UNESCO for the launch of the International Year of Astronomy(January 2009).

The search for extraterrestrial life is a fascinating

aspect of the work of Martin John Rees,Baron of Ludlow, whose current research dealswith cosmic structure formation,

especially the early generation of stars and galaxiesthat formed relatively shortly after the Big Bang.

The Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society,Master of Trinity College and Professor

of Cosmology and Astrophysicsat the University of Cambridge

believes we will soon answer the questionAre there other forms of life in the universe?,

as he told Cathy Nolan (UNESCO).



16/2416

everyone to work on it, because itmay be impossible. If youre a sci-entist, I think its best to work mostof the time on a topic where you aresure to make some progress. Main-ly, it is certain that we will discoverlots more planets around stars, evenif we dont know if theres life onthem. Thats a very important sub-

promises to be just as exciting!Recently, a couple of planets

were detected through direct im-aging, which is very exciting. Mostof the planets discovered to dateare big ones like Jupiter. A small,rocky planet like the Earth is alot harder to detect. Future tele-scopes will be able to nd small-

extraterrestrial liFe: surprises in store?

sphere of an Earth-like planet thatis warm enough to have liquid wa-ter on its surface. That would bea good indication that the planethas life: bacteria, plants, andmaybe animals. We dont know ifWebb can do that. Well try.In 1995 two Swiss astronomers,

Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz,made one of the most remarkablediscoveries of the century. Theydetected a celestial object orbit-ing a star that was not our Sun. Itbecame known as 51 Peg b therst extrasolar planet. Suddenly,the search for extraterrestrial lifeseemed more promising. Not so

fast! warns Franoise Combes,an astronomer at the Paris Obser-vatory and member of the FrenchAcademy of Sciences. Therecould be thousands of solar sys-tems neighbouring the Sun, butthat does not mean we can seethem. She tells the UNESCOCouriers Katerina Markelovaabout some of the questions atthe centre of current research intoexo-planets.If we were anywhere else in our

galaxy, on a distant celestial ob-ject, we would never have beenable to detect Earth with the ob-servation facilities available to usat present. Our instruments aresimply not sensitive enough to seesmall telluric [rocky] planets likeours. Of the 353 exo-planets, orextrasolar plants, that have been

Image taken by the CFH telescope (Canada-France-Hawaii)of the star around which CoRoT-Exo-7b orbits.

ObservatoiredeParis

ject. And well understand galaxiesmore, well nd even more distantgalaxies and do better calculations.Well understand much better whathappened (at the very beginning tocreate life on Earth), thats the mainthing. As a bonus, we may ndsome real surprises!Galileos telescope measured

only a few centimeters indiameter - that of some moderntelescopes reaches up to 10 meters.

What discoveries do they holdin store for us? Accordingto NASAs project managerJonathan P. Gardner, the launchof the space telescope JamesWebb in 2013 may herald anentirely new phase in aerospaceresearch.In just the last 10 or 20 years, us-

ing large new telescopes on theground and Hubble and other tele-

scopes in space, we have made atremendous number of discover-ies that have revolutionized whatwe know about the universe. Withupcoming missions like JamesWebb, the next 10 or 20 years

er planets and tell us a lot moreabout them.The next big step will be the

James Webb Space Telescope,which is Hubbles successor.After it is launched in 2013, it willbe able to study the atmospheresof transiting rocky planets.What astronomers really want to

do is to nd biomarkers such asozone and methane in the atmo-

NASA

The future James Webb Space telescope.



17/2417

discovered so far, the majority arehot Jupiters, large gaseous plan-ets that orbit very close to theirstars. The time it takes them tomake a complete orbit is there-fore very short. Planets that arefurther out can take hundreds ofyears to travel the full distancearound their stars. It would takeseveral human lifetimes to seethem.A series of methods can be

used to detect exo-planets.There is the transit method:when the planet passes in frontof its star, it obscures it slight-ly. Some 59 planets have been

discovered this way, to date. Sevenother planets have been disco-vered using so-called gravita-tional lensing, where light raysfrom a star are deviated by thegravitational field of a massivecelestial object on the samevisual axis as the star. But mostexo-planets have been detectedusing the Doppler effect, whichallows us to measure the distur-bance of the speed of the star asits planet passes close by.In 2006 the French Nation-

al Centre for Space Studies(CNES) put the Corot (Con-vection, Rotation and PlanetaryTransit) satellite into space withthe mission of finding exo-plan-ets similar to Earth. This Febru-ary, Corot discovered what wasthen the smallest exo-planetever observed - Corot-Exo-7b.

Its diameter is barely1.8 timesthat of Earth, its period of revo-lution is just 20 hours and it hasa temperature of between 1000and 1500C. Its density has notbeen determined precisely, but itis without doubt a rocky objectlike Earth.The European Space Agency

(ESA) is currently studyingthe possibility of launching the

Darwin satellite, which willmostly be used by exo-biologists,as it is designed to detect tracesof water and oxygen in theatmosphere of exo-planets.

extraterrestrial liFe: surprises in store?

n 14 oember 2008, the ierre uer bseratory was inauurated

in alarue, rentina. he bseratory is explorin the mysteries

o the hihest enery osmi rays hared partiles showerin

the Earth at eneries 10 million times hiher than the worlds

hihest-enery partile aelerator. Launhed more than a deade ao

under the auspies o Ec, the obseratory is a network

o 1600 sensors spread oer 3000 km2 in rentina.

The Auger Observatory is a hybrid detec-tor, employing two independent methodsto detect and study high-energy cosmic rays.One technique detects high energy particlesthrough their interaction with water placedin surface detector tanks. The other tech-nique tracks the development of air showersby observing ultraviolet light emitted highin the Earths atmosphere.It was at UNESCO Headquarters in 1995that the international collaboration in sup-port of the project formally got off theground after Argentinas offer to host thesouthern Pierre Auger Observatory wasgratefully accepted by all parties. On 13 Oc-tober 1998, the nance board of the PierreAuger project met at UNESCO Headquar-

ters to work on the agreement underpinningthe organization, management and fundingof the project. The meeting was graced bythe visit of then President of Argentina,Carlos Menem, who announced that con-struction of the Pierre Auger Observatorycould begin early the following year. Theproject formally came into being in March1999 with the signing of an agreement, twomonths before construction of the detectorbegan in Argentina.The project is named after former UNES-CO Science Director Pierre Auger (1948-1958), who died in 1993. He is perhapsbest-remembered for UNESCOs key rolein the founding of the European Organiza-tion for Nuclear Research (CERN) nearGeneva, which launched the Large HadronCollider [gigantic particle accelerator used

by physicists to study the smallest knownparticles].on 21 October last year.Pierre Augers scientic speciality was expe-rimental physics, in the elds of atomic (photoelectric effect), nuclear (slow neutrons)and cosmic ray physics (atmospheric airshowers). After his service with UNESCO,he served as Director of the Cosmic PhysicsService at the French National Centre forScientic Research (1959-1962) and asDirector-General of the European SpaceResearch Organization (1962-1967).The Pierre Auger Collaboration involvesabout 350 scientists from Argentina,Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, the CzechRepublic, France, Gemany, Italy,Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal,

Slovenia, Spain, UK, USA and Vietnam.Nobel Laureate in Physics, JamesW. Cronin, of the University ofChicago, conceived the Pierre AugerObservatory, together with Alan Watsonof the University of Leeds.The rst research results from the Pierre Au-ger Observatory have given fresh insightsinto the properties of the highest energyparticles in the Universe. These ndings aresummarized in a paper published in Sciencein November 2007.Now begins the projects second phase,which includes plans for a northernhemisphere site in Colorado (USA) andenhancements to the site in the southernhemisphere.

World of Science,Vol. 7, No. 2, AprilJune 2009

pierre auger observatory

The Observatorys ofce building.

AugerObservatory



18/2418

The great scientifc discoveries

are oten the result o chance.

Was this the case or the frst

planet discovered outside

o our solar system?No, it wasnt a stroke of luck if

thats what you mean. It was theoutcome of a long process of re-search and the development ofinstruments to accurately mea-sure the speed of stars. Thespectrograph called ELODIEat the Provence Observatory[France] allowed us to detect therst exoplanet and was designed

precisely in order to look for planetsoutside of out solar system.Where we were lucky was in dis-

covering some planets that revolvedaround their orbit very quickly. Theorbital period of 51 Pegasi b is only

4.2 days. To give you an idea, bycontrast the orbital period of Jupiteris 4332.71 days - approximately 10years. It is without doubt that ob-

jects with a shorter orbital periodare easier to discover and observe.In a few nights you can make obser-vations that in other cases wouldtake you 10 or 20 years.

What is your most important

current research?

In the short run, I would say thatthe research follows three mainthemes: comparative planetology,

the detection of lighter planets andplanetary imaging.The rst eld combines data from

satellites and ground instrumentsto determine the average density ofplanets. These studies aim to know

the physics of planets. This is veryimportant since we have no reasonto believe that the planets in our solarsystem represent every type of planet.

In theoretical terms we can predictthat, for example, there are planetsmade of melted ice. This wouldbe the case with Neptune. If it ap-proached the sun its surface wouldbe covered with oceans. But thissort of ocean would have nothingto do with the type of ocean wehave here on earth because itwouldnt have a rocky bottomRegarding the search for lighter

planets, you must know that until re-cently weve been able to detect extrasolar planets that are as small asfour times the mass of Earth. Thatsalready almost 100 times lighterthan Jupiter! In our jargon, we call

e have no reason to think that the planets in our solar system represent every type

o planet in existene, aordin to the wiss astrophysiist ihel ayor, who disovered

the rst extrasolar planet with Didier Queloz in 1995. Last pril, his team

at the geneva bservatory disovered the smallest exoplanet known today.

astronomy :

the three tiers of research

JohnWhatmough

An image of 51 Peg b, the rst exo-planet discovered by Michel Mayorand Didier Queloz in 1995.

Interview by Marie-Christine Pinault-Desmoulins (UNESCO).



19/2419

astronomy : the thre e tiers oF research

them Super-Earths. But thanks tonew instruments we have discov-ered a telluric exoplanet only twotimes the mass of earth. [Note, theGeneva Observatory announcedthe discovery of Gliese 581 E onthe 21 April.]These discoveries are made by in-

direct measures. At the same time,planetary imaging that allows us tosee the exoplanets directly is takingoff. At the end of last year, we hadgreat success in obtaining imagesof some very large young planets.But please note this doesnt meanwe will now be ooded with im-ages, because the vast majority of

exoplanets cannot be seen easily:either they are already cold, or theyare too close to their stars.Currently, the Geneva Observatory

is in the process of developing, incollaboration with partners, a toolcalled SPHERE for direct imagingof exoplanets, which will allow us tosee these tiny planets. It should beoperational in 2011. More than 200people have been working on it forover 5 years.

Is there much international

collaboration in the feld

o astrophysics?

Currently the most common collab-oration is person to person. Thereisnt any real international collabora-tion. It must be said that in certainareas it isnt necessary or even de-sirable: competition is positive. How-ever, the search for life in the universe

necessitates international collabora-tion. This eld requires consider-able resources and it is probablethat the existing organizations arentadequate for promoting this type ofmission effectively.This ambitious mission has largely

been put on hold for budgetaryreasons, both from ESA (EuropeanSpace Agency) and NASA (NationalAeronautic and Space Administration

of the United States). Some re-searchers dream of a type of insti-tution which could coordinate thesestudies on a global scale, but for themoment this is wishful thinking.

Planet imaging is a priority of current research. This image of the RosetteNebula, situated 4500 light years from earth, was taken by the infrared spatialtelescope Spitzer.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UniversityofArizona

Michel Mayor, who discovered the rst extrasolar planet, participated in the launch of theInternational Year of Astronomy (UNESCO,January 2009).

MichelRavassard/UNESCO



20/2420

Literacy Prize. Their participatoryapproach engages communities,using any of ve local languagesand offering numerical and literacylessons as well as practicallessons about farming, gender, health,hygiene and human rights. Their in-

novative approach has made strikingchanges to the daily life of villagers,from enabling farmers to managefood production better at the villagelevel, by taking measures to stockcereals in order to avoid speculationin times of famine for example, totraining health workers, notably in theeld of maternal health. Staff also saythat girls who follow the programmeare less likely to accept forced or

early marriage. Tin Tua is now shar-ing its experience with organisa-tions in Benin, Togo, and Niger.

Khabar Lahariya was a projectdoomed to failure: a newspaper writ-

Throughout the years, these prizeshave rewarded over 450 literacyprojects and programmes under-taken by governments and NGOsaround the world. The theme for thisyears Prizes was Literacy and Em-powerment.

The ashai Lanuae Deelop-ment rojet is a community-owned initiative that has deed war,cultural hostility to female educa-tion and a lack of an existing writingsystem for the dialect concerned, toprovide education to about 1,000participants a year. Founded in1999 by SERVE Afghanistan, aBritish NGO, in response to com-

munity requests for an adult educa-tion program, the project is a winnerof this years UNESCO ConfuciusPrize for Literacy. The organisationexpanded its work in 2006 with sup-port from the provincial government

to include classes for girls and nowprovides literacy, livelihood, publichealth and nutrition education to thePashai minority, some of whom werecompletely excluded from the exis-ting education systems. Participantslearn to use written material in their

local language as well as in Pashto,one of the countrys two ofcial lan-guages, the other being Dari.

in ua is an NGO in easternBurkina Faso working to educatecommunities that have some of thelowest literacy rates in the world.In the Gulimancema language TinTua means lets help ourselvesdevelop, a principle their Literacy

Programme has been putting into ac-tion since 1986 across 750 villagesand hamlets. They now reach 40,000learners annually and in recognitionof their work they are a winner ofthis years UNESCO King Sejong

focus

The Thief of Words (2008)by Jaume Plensa (Barcelona, Spain), one of the mostimportant international sculptors.

Gross National Happiness

throuh literay

nnovative literay projets in

hanistan, Burkina faso, ndia and the hilippines

are the winners o this years

Ec nternational Literay rizes,

while a proramme in Bhutan reeived

an onourable ention.

ine 1967 Ec

has awarded annual nternational Literay rizes

to outstandin eorts in the eld o literay and non-ormal

eduation. he urrent prizes are

the Ec Kin ejon rize

(supported by the epubli o Korea)

and the Ec conuius rize or Literay

(supported by the eoples epubli o china).

JaumePlensa/CourtesyGalerieLelong



21/2421

focus

ten, produced and sold by poor, low-caste, rural and barely literate wom-en, in a local language in the regionUttar Pradesh, northern India. Sevenyears later, however, the newspa-per which means news waves inEnglish, has a fortnightly readershipof over 25,000 and has just beenawarded a UNESCO King Se-

jong Literacy Prize. The newspaperwas started by Nirantar, a womensorganisation founded in 1993 withthe aim of promoting literacy and ed-ucation for womens empowerment.In 2002 the organisation began se-lecting women from marginalisedbackgrounds and training them as

journalists. Two years on, Nirantarand Khabar Lahariya began collec-

he uniipal Literay coordi-natin counil o the uniipa-lity o oo, La Union, Philippineshas developed a holistic educationsystem that aims to encompass allwithin their community. From basicliteracy and numeracy, to computerskills, farming techniques and indig-enous crafts the entire local popu-lation has the chance to becomeliterateor upgrade their skills. It isthis vision and ethos that has earnedthem a 2009 UNESCO ConfuciusPrize for Literacy. The very old, mar-ginalized and neediest in all 49 villag-es in the area are served by travellingteachers and mobile libraries that en-sure the unreached are reached. Theprogramme is also distinguished byits unique funding arrangement, with

the government, NGOs, the privatesector and international donors allcontributing.

he continuin Eduation ro-ramme of the Ministry of Educa-tion of Bhutan was launched in 1992and has since reached over 135,000learners, 70% of whom are women,and established 700 non-formaleducation centres. Its approach is

community driven, exible and par-ticipatory with courses ranging fromliteracy and numeracy to health, hy-giene, forestry, family planning, ag-riculture and the environment. Thisyears recipient of the Honourable

Mention of the UNESCO ConfuciusPrize for Literacy emphasises edu-cation as an integral part of thecountrys guiding principle, GrossNational Happiness, which aims toimprove the life of all its citizens.The experience of last years winners

highlights the positive impact thatbeing awarded a UNESCOInternational Literacy Prize makes.Since the Adult and Non FormalEducation Association (ANFEAE)in Ethiopia won a 2008 UNESCOConfucius Prize for Literacy,their voice is being clearly heard bythe Ethiopian Ministry of Education.They are acting as government ad-visors to implement adult educationand are helping to guide nationaladult education curriculum. Similarly,

the KwaNibela Project, OperationUpgrade of South Africa, whichalso won a 2008 UNESCOConfucius Prize for Literacy, hasgone from strength to strength sincethe award. Their raised prole withthe government has built condencein donors - some have actuallycontacted them asking for fundingproposals. They are being consult-ed more frequently by the Ministry

of Education, and have also helpedthe Namibian government reviewtheir literacy curriculum.

David Jackman,UNESCO Courier

Khabar Lahariya is an Indian newspaper,written and sold by poor women.

Centerforgenderandeducation

tively offering journalism courses forneo-literate and semi-literate women.

The result has been the only wom-ens media collective in the country,a newspaper from, about and for thevillage that has raised the voice of vil-lagers. Its easily replicated exampleof transformative education is a mod-el for women ghting caste, gender,traditional role models and lack ofeducation. The independent journal-ist and womens activist Farah Naqvi,who has recently written a book

Waves in the Hinterland, the journeyof a newspaper about their story,states that Khabar Lahariya has notonly redened the very male notion ofcitizenship but turned the very notionof women in India on its head.

A wall on the metro in Lisbon (Portugal).

Jasmina

opova



22/2422

Opening of the Future Forum at UNESCO (2 March 2009).

ON lIvING wITH less,

from thrEE points of viEw

ow to protet the poor rom

a risis aused by a ew o the rih?

his was the main question raised

at the Ec future forum

held last arh.

he debate is summarized

by one o the moderators,

lison male, in a presentation

o three dierent perspeties

on the risis and its eets.

forum

What to do to protect some of thepoorest from a crisis created bysome of the richest.In his presentation, Watkins coined

an acronym new to the alphabetsoup of international institutions:ITYBL. In The Year Before Lehman,i.e. 2007, he noted, aid to poorercountries was already falling. Nowthat foreign investment in the devel-oping world has slowed to a trickle,trade has shrunk, commodity priceshave fallen, and remittances senthome by immigrants in richer coun-tries are declining sharply, Watkinsasked how poor and middle-incomecountries could avoid a drastic fall

in already meager or subsistence liv-ing standards.He estimated that the poorest 70

countries needed about $400 bil-lion a year - or about 1 percent ofthe total gross domestic productof the 30 (mostly rich) countries inthe Paris-based Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Devel-opment. In the lingua franca of hisworld, thats what it would take to

maintain hope of realizing the eightMDGs, or Millennium DevelopmentGoals, to which 189 countries com-mitted in 2000. Several now looktruly unrealizable by the target dateof 2015.

The message arrived one recentweekend with a glossy thud: a300-plus-page edition of MadameFigaro, the French dailys weekly odeto women and beauty, dedicated tothe rst Paris ready-to-wear fashionshows since the advent of la crisein the luxury industry.Madame Figaro, like all such maga-

zines, had been somewhat crisis-starved of ads and thus pagination oflate, but fashion week - and fashionhouses determined that the showswill go on - bulked it up again. None-theless, fashionistas could not missthe main point: times are tough, or atleast much tougher, as evidenced in

the 10 detailed tips for recessioni-stas about maintaining cool andchic even on diminished budgets(mostly this seems to involve trawlingWeb sites that will offer you slightlyused couture on the cheap).To get readers in the right mood,

the French designer Jean-Charlesde Castelbajac kicked off the edito-rial offerings with musings on whathe called the democratization of

beauty, or low cost luxury.We are moving irredeemably, heproclaimed, to this new El Dorado.Today, wrote Castelbajac, fash-

ion, luxury and creation must reinventthemselves. A young generation

of designers, he insisted, has thistransformation in hand. Nothing willbe the same again, and thats forthe best. Our renaissance will equalthe measure of our conscience, headded, because we carry within usa treasure beyond value: imagina-tion.French ingenuity at pleasing the

senses - whether through food, wine,ne clothes or graceful buildings -has survived and indeed thrived formany centuries, and Castelbajac,himself a veteran of invention, candoubtless bank on it safely oncemore.

Impact o the crisis onthe developing worldAcross town, a few days earlier,sounded a cri de coeur that was justas timeless and true: the indignationof international aid workers, laborofcials and others about the everquickening, ever harsher impact ofthe global crisis on the developingworld.UNESCO had summoned a day-

long conference on this theme, andthe conclusions of one panel (at whichI moderated) were sobering. KevinWatkins, director of UNESCOsGlobal Monitoring Report on Edu-cation for All, summed up the task:




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If anyone had any doubt that brokenpromises like this leave a great dealmore than a bitter taste, he had onlyto hear the passion of another speak-er, Aminata Traore, a West Africanactivist and former minister ofculture and tourism for Mali. Herswas a howl of outrage at the many illsbestowed on Africa by the outsideworld, and particularly colonial pow-ers. She was loudly applauded. Andthis was before the G-20 meeting inLondon, which while pledging to domore for the poorest -- a pledge fol-lowed by an energetic push for thepoor from U.N. Secretary GeneralBan Ki Moon in a meeting of all U.N.

agencies, the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund in Paristhe following weekend -- sets thedeveloped world up for yet anothertest that it may unk in the eyes ofthe poorest.At the UNESCO gathering, Jos

Manuel Salazar, a Costa Rican whoheads the employment sector at theInternational Labor Organization,was also blunt about the effects ofcrisis on Africa. It is very clear thatthe crisis will reverse the modestgains, he said. The effects will out-last the crisis.The impact of the crisis on develo-

ping countries has made few head-lines in the Western news mediacompared to the attention heapedupon the swindler Bernard Madoff,the high-ying investment bankersof Wall Street, London and HongKong, or the trans-Atlantic dispute

over what to do rst to get out of thenosedive: spend, or regulate.One interesting aspect of that chat-

ter was the fall in global markets af-ter Moodys Investor Service wrotein February that the indebtedness of

Eastern Europe, and particularly itsweak banks, would drag down theirowners, mostly large banks in West-ern Europe.

etary Fund or other institutions for help.And so to a third scene of the world in

crisis, Warsaw. A 24-hour visit in March-- around the 10th anniversary of therst opening of the Wests most exclu-sive club, the entry of Poland, the Czech

Republic and Hungary into NATO -found a country calmly determined torelay that it is not, thank you, in crisis.From the president on down, ac-

forum

A man from Jaipur (India), the crisis particularly hurts the poor.

UNESCO/E.Gallo

Europe ater the crisisThe crisis has exposed many riftsand weaknesses in the European po-litical structure so painstakingly assem-bled since World War II. But the coun-tries that most recently beneted - theex-Communist nations which regainedliberty in the 1990s - are not uniformlyglum, nor are all going hat in hand to theEuropean Union, the International Mon-

knowledgement of the crisis was plain,but gloom was not, as in New York orLondon these days, setting the tone ofthe conversation.Indeed, Pavel Swieboda, a former

diplomat who now heads a think tank,the Center for European Strategy,

jauntily revealed over breakfast that hewas off to the rst of a series of discus-sions under the title Europe After the

Crisis.And, yes, maybe the anniversary and

the satisfaction of the political elite athaving spent 10 years in NATO and al-most ve in the European Union tintedthe mood. But it was surely refreshingto hear people who 20 years ago werewaging politics underground extollingnot the joys or woes brought by mon-ey, but, at a packed Warsaw Univer-sity forum, the many ways in which to

guard very jealously its best guaran-tor democracy.

Alison Smale,Executive Editor,

International Herald TribuneA disused ofce in the wake of the bankruptcy of a company.

PhilipToledano



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