Childhood memories of Ganeshotsav are some of the fondest I have. We grew up with not much, but these 10 days of the year were special as kids. Rules were relaxed, parents were in good spirits, amazing food to be had, various competitions and activities.
Yesterday was Ganesh Chaturthi 2023, and my wife made Modak at home for the first time. We then did a small cleanup, lit diwa and udbatti and had a good time. I am not religious, but cannot deny the atmosphere was very nice :) Any excuse for spending quality time together is good, and this one came with fond childhood memories.
Ganesh is the deity of new beginnings. In that spirit, I learned a bit about the Big Bang today. It is mind boggling that all matter we can interact with today is made in a window of about 9 minutes, about 10s out from the Big Bang. Most people take more time to make their chai/coffee in the morning.
The swirl of foam on top of my drink today makes me think how cool it is that we figured out our galaxy is spiral. When I started looking into it, it is not at all clear to me how that conclusion is reached. So far, I have these links that have good pointers:
- https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/1225/how-can-we-tell-that-the-milky-way-is-a-spiral-galaxy
- https://www.astronomy.com/science/how-we-learned-the-shape-of-the-milky-way
These point to a bunch of new concepts, but I want to figure out how it is all put together to arrive at 4-arm spiral shape of the galaxy we are embedded in. Vaguely, and maybe incorrectly, I think this has to do with observing the "21cm" radiation that neutral Hydrogen emits rarely, using it to build a distribution of where this H is concentrated.
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