#TMOTU (The Mapping Of The Unknown) --- SynTalk

Was the Earth ever flat? Do we live in a ‘flattish’ Universe? What did we first notice in the starry sky; & was anything fixed? How did the notion of the atom come to be? Have you heard accounts of maps/globes that do not exist anymore? Was the ‘World’ once – just – Asia, Europe and Africa? Do maps always orient us spiritually within the larger (ever-changing) Cosmos? Is the Universe static? Are maps a theory? What comes first – theory or observation? How can we map something we don’t see or is largely empty? Is all Dark Matter of one kind, & how do we know that it exists? Are all stars of one kind? Could stars be cubes? Is it easy to add a newly discovered continent to an existing map? Why did the idea of Antarctica come to be? What did we first establish to be ‘real’ – the atom or the Americas? What is the shape of the Universe, & is every point on it unique? Are we bounded in time (& Space?)? Is mapping (always) observer dependent? Can everything be understood in terms of pictures? Would maps (even if sometimes incorrect) continue to offer new possibilities? &, will we keep going beyond what we already know? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from quantum mechanics (Prof. Partha Ghose, ex-S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata), astronomy (Prof. Ajit. K. Kembhavi, IUCAA, Pune), & comparative literature (Dr. Ayesha Ramachandran, Yale University, Connecticut). Listen in...