Department of Physics

Dr Sr Ritty J Nedumpara Endowment Lecture

Academic Year 2019-20

Dr Sr Ritty J Nedumpara Endowment lecture is an annual state level lecture instituted by the staff, students and alumnae of Physics department in honour of Dr Sr Ritty J Nedumpara. The resource person for the current year was Dr S R Vijayamohanakumar, Group Director, Technology Transfer Development Group (TTDG), Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvanathapuram. The programme was organised on 29/1/2020.

Academic Year 2018-19

Postgraduate and Research Department of Physics organized a lecture in honor of Dr. Sr. Ritty J. Nedumbara, former HOD, Department of Physics and Vice Principal. The talk was organized on 27/2/19. The lecture was delivered by Prof. Dr Joe Jacob ,Associate Professor, Dept. of physics, Newman College Thodupuzha. Dr. Joe Jacob is a member of Indian team in the discovery of the super cluster ‘saraswati’. Saraswati is an extremely massive and large super cluster found in the stripe 82 region of SDSS.It is big as 20 million billion suns. This super cluster is a major concentration of galaxies and galaxy clusters , forming a wall like structure spanning 200 Mpc a cross at red shift z=0.3.Since it was a contribution of Indian scientist’s it was named as Saraswati ,name of a goddess worshiped in India and this made a question of 1 crore in Kaun Banega Crorepati. He gave us a brief description about this cluster. It is the only few, comparatively large super cluster that had been reported such as the shapely concentration or the Sloan greatwall in the nearby universe. He hopes that this work would shed light on perplexing questions like how much matter density cluster had been formed billions of years ago.

After his inspiring talk about his discovery he moved on to his lecture about the hierarchical structure of the universe. In the past, astronomers have found that the cosmos are hierarchically assemble with galaxies being arranged in clusters, super clusters, sheets, wall and filaments. This is separated by immense cosmic voids, which together create the vast “cosmic web” structure of the universe. Then he explained about the laniakea super cluster to which our milky way belongs. It is one of the largest super clusters which spans 500 million light years. Our Milky Way galaxy which measures 100000 to 180000 light years in diameter and contains 100 to 400 billion stars is, so immense that it boggles the mind. It was an interesting fact that when it comes to the large structure of the universe, our galaxy is merely a drop in the bucket. He made just a spark in our minds that can lead to explore the whole universe.

Academic Year 2017-18

The state level event  “ Dr. Ritty J Nedumpara  Endowment Lecture Series”   in honour of our Former HOD  Dr. Ritty J Nedumpara   was  inaugurated by Prof.K L Sebastian,Dean ,Research and Development ,IIT Palakkad ,on March 9th 2018 . After the inaugural session,the endowment lecture was  delivered by Prof. K L Sebastian.The topic was “The Strange and Beautiful Quantum World ”. Around 90 participants from different colleges in Kerala attended the lecture. The complex  world of Quantum Mechanics  was unrevealed in the most simple and  comprehensible manner by Sebastian sir. The students were very much inspired by the talk