World Earth Day 2026 Live | NSC Delhi

Added: 2026-05-06

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[00:06:20]and our commitment towards future present to our guest today Dr. and our commitment towards future present to our honored guest today and today. So before he present sharing some activities of guests children.

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[00:11:14]First of all, we see a whole world of people saying it's it's tradition and England are very receptive right young people. it makes it serious better. So uh first of all thank you very much for the kind introduction. So today as you all know is the world's earth and we talking about the very fascinating place called this entire and most of you I don't have to tell you where that is but and in this next about 45 minutes to 1 hour I'll tell you lots of not not much of related but kind of a story show you a lot pictures, nice pictures, pictures to tell you how the continent built and how the experience went right from beginning. So it's it's it's a very long time ago that we started going to Antarctica.

[00:12:32]uh so and I told and it's also called the frozen contail mostly this is the earth and here somewhere down at the bottom this is the particular but it's a bottom this and this is a very large I mean it's not a small it's a very large concentrate It's the largest constant on earth right and the area of this is about 14 million square kilmters. 14 million square kilometer perhaps does not give you a visualization of how large the whole place is but just try and imagine that area of this continent is equal to if you add India and China together that's how large this continent is 14 million square kilometers it's about 1 and a half times the size of the United States so this is how this entire continent is covered with ice. About 98% of this continent is covered with ice.

[00:13:46]About 90% of the entire ice resides here. You know the entire continent is full of ice, right?

[00:13:57]>> Uh it's a continent. I I'll tell you some fascinating features about this continent. It's a continent with fluctuating size between summer and winter. This is this is a satellite picture of the continent in summer, you can make out the continent, right? And if you take the satellite picture of winter 2019, it almost becomes dark because the sea all around the continent freezes, you know, and the it's a fluctuating content. fluctuates by a factor of two. Uh it enjoys several simple features, you know, highest, coldest, and so on. First of all, it's a coldest, but that's very obvious. It's extremely cold. But to tell you how cold it is, the lowest temperature on Earth ever recorded - 93° C was recorded in uh 2010 somewhere in the station Russian station was. Now this is it's it's somewhere here.

[00:15:10]Now just to give you a visualization of how cold -9° can heat. I I mean I just try and imagine that supposing you are out in the open at - 90° and then you hold a mug of boiling water and you sub that water in air it freezes.

[00:16:57]to tell the story, right? So that's the average height of the Oops.

[00:17:09]It's also the remotest continent. which all other continents are joined together by land or they are very close to each other. This Antarctica is kind of isolated and the nearest land mass to Antarctica is this tip of South America which is thousand kilome away. It's extremely the only way you can approach this mountain is by sea. It's covered.

[00:17:41]It's a continent. There are no native human that there are native populations here.

[00:17:51]This entire continent has many experimental stations. Our Indian station might we have a station party.

[00:18:01]Now I'll show you pictures later on. So it turns out there are about 44 maybe today there are maybe 48 or 50 such station and these permanent station there are 28 operate in summer and so in this entire continental cycle India and China combined together in this entire continent there are only about 45,000 people that live in summer and only about thousand people that live there in the winter. It's so empty. Has no native habitation, no trees, no houses, nothing.

[00:18:40]It probably has some of the most beautiful, you know, this is if you go and see this. This photograph is, you know, does not show you half of what you would actually see if you went there.

[00:18:57]There are these creatures shrimp like creatures which are found in the Antarctic water which are called and they are abundantly available. They're very rich in protein and uh it is estimated and most of this is eaten by whales, seals, penguins etc etc. But it's estimated that humans if we could go to Antarctica fish for these cracks. So it solve human race requirement of protein. You know I'm next for those of you who are vegetarians.

[00:19:40]So I'll just show you the cribs look like this. Small shrimp like creatures but very rich in protein and So this one okay now just what is the connection between so I'll tell you a little bit of geological history about 200 million years ago 25 million years ago the entire land mass was one big land mass called Gwana land and about many years ago years ago they started separating from each other. Now you can switch out this pieces have broke away.

[00:20:30]You can see this triangle here. This is part of India the Indian peninsula and this is South America. This is North America and then they started drifting apart. the Indian peninsula has drifted apart and there it is drifted farther apart and there Indian peninsula has gone against the Asian plane and that's how the founders of so the connection between Antarctica is that this the western coast of India and this coast of Antarctica or rather the eastern coast of India and this northern coast of Antarctica they were once neighbors right so between India and so now many of you are probably wondering who owns Antarctica you know we Indians from India and America Indian who owns it uh nobody owns also seven countries think they do you know which of those seven countries These seven countries, United Kingdom, Argentina, Chile, Norway, New Zealand, France and Australia, each one of them claims of five, little five of Antarctica, although nobody recognizes that claim, right? The Antarctica is governed by a treaty which was first signed by 12 countries in 1959 that you know it it sets aside and Dr. and the scientific reserve establishes freedom of scientific investigations and bans miniature activities on the contrary as of presenting countries India and so does the treaty say the treaty says that the area has is used only for peaceful purpose no military activity there should be freedom of scientific investig ation and cooperation, >> free exchange of information and persuade and cooperation with the United Nation. You can go set up station wherever you like but you cannot do anything secretly. If somebody else comes in and knocks on your door and says I want to see what you are doing, you have no way in which you can hide any information from it. Everything is solved in the >> So the treaty does not recognize, dispute or establish territorial claims, right? Nobody owns that. The treaty prohibits nuclear explosions and disposal of radioactive waste, right?

[00:23:21]>> Okay. Now, a little bit of history of how we all started. We started going to Antarctica, India. We started going about 45 years ago, 1981. We sent the first expedition to Antarctica, right?

[00:23:36]It's a long time ago, 45 years ago. So this was the 21 member team led by Dr. Sad and I was a member of that team. You know, I did not appear then. I'm much younger. I was one of the youngest members of the team. I was a little older than you guys are. So I I don't hear probably not. So and in this team there were only a few of us that were scientists rest all were from the Navy army and the air force right.

[00:24:11]>> Okay. So but because we were going there for the first time you know none of us in India have experience with cold climates. So first of all we had to be given some trainings. So uh trainings in cold time. So some of us were taken to him. You know the we we actually were taken to places where you cannot board today and both those areas of the bank for today. But we were this is the area in Cargill where we were given coldation rain and climate and so on and so forth.

[00:24:50]And we were also none of us had any experience with sea conditions. We have to go by sea by ship. So we were taken on an Indian Navy ship and we were given a fantastic thing but I cannot show all those details to the okay. Uh then finally 6th of December 6th of December 1981 this is the historic day where the first time the Indian expedition to Antarctica started off from.

[00:25:26]So this was a small ship an Orian ice breaker. We chartered, we hired an Orian ship, an ice breaker because we don't India does not have ice breakers even today. Uh we it's it's quite useful to charter or hire a ship from one of those Canadian countries or so on. So this is called the ship certain uh and this was a small ship. small ship meaning the length of the ship was about 50 m 150 ft or so but it was a very nice ship right so this was I sorry this picture is not very nice and we started from Goa recognize the Indian continent here we started from Goa and we traveled by sea and this is where we land and this distance of about approximately 12,000 kilometers we covered take approximately 4 weeks or so almost one month of journey by sea. I'll show you nice pictures of those. Uh uh so this this is how we went to Antarctica, right? And uh in this journey we went on the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and Southern Indian Ocean. Show you pictures of those. Okay. So initially when we start off we see very nice quite current sea and beautiful sunrise and sunset. It takes days together. It kind of gets you know very boring you know sets in the east sets in the west and so on. But when then we cross equator when we come to this region about 40° 40 to 50° south latitude you notice this entire land mass this entire belt of 40 to 50° south has no land mass at all. So it's all oceans all around the Pacific Ocean the Atlantic Ocean Indian Ocean. So because it has a lot of water there. So this place this place the ocean is very very turbulent. You have very large cyclonic storms. It's called rolling 40 and the orange is the sea is extremely violent all the time having a large wave very disturbed sea.

[00:28:01]So, I'll just show you how our ship, you know, uh we get waves.

[00:28:08]We get waves which are about three stories high and the ship just tumbles around and this last day.

[00:28:20]It gets honestly very scary. You know, one one of the guys changed the team.

[00:28:27]One of the one of my expedition members said I don't know swimming you know in any case it doesn't doesn't help to know swimming if you call it the ocean and just the realization of water is 4 and a half kilometers deep I'll probably get a heart attack we won't get any chance to swim so anyway so that's that's the very important But when we cross the rolling for we come further down. So these these are birds with largest wingspan of 12 ft. So these are vapor forces and you get these alert forces which are all around the ship and they're just moving around. It's so beautiful and they they follow us for miles together >> and and many times I used to wonder I was very young I used to wonder where do they go in the night you know where do they go don't they go home and see but it turns out that these birds are you know such that there they they don't go home at all they spend spend 9 months floating around in the oceans and once in a while resting on the surface of water and eating some stuff and they only go to Australia or New Zealand uh during the breeding season. Then they breed and then they come back. They spend about 9 to 10 months just flying around the whole right.

[00:30:12]So then when we go further down south, 60° south or so, we start seeing floating chunks of ice. These are called ice packs. You see these ice things, little little pieces of ice floating on the water. It's already become very cold. And then we go, this is how the ship goes. We just going on the ship.

[00:30:36]You see chunks of ice all around. This is when you're approaching the Antarctic Santa. You're still far away, but this is around 60 to 65° south when you're traveling to Antarct we are waiting gently through the Antarctic ice pack and afterward this ice becomes very st. So you cannot take your ship. The ship gets stuck there. You cannot take it any further.

[00:31:06]That's when we bring out a helicopter ship. In the expedition, we have few helicopters to fly. You know, when you cannot go anymore, you actually fly. So we bring out these helicopters from the tech and then we fly the helicopters and start looking for some location.

[00:31:29]Uh and then we wherever the helicopter shows us some directions, we try and see the Antarctic ice patch becomes so dark or in the distance you can see some coastline but they're still far away, right? But the fortunately for us there are places where this ice is no longer very dense. These are some because of the sea current there are some places where you have open water channels.

[00:32:02]These are called penia. So then you have these clear water channels through which the ship can go. Right? These are called pollen. And you have these large iceberg. I can see these hot icebergs.

[00:32:19]>> And these iceberg some of them are really very large. You know, I mean the size of this building. And imagine this ice square you can see only one this height of this ice is about a twotory building. You know it's very tall. But eight times of that is underwater because ice only a small portion of it floats on purple of water. Rest of it is under water.

[00:32:49]So this this is how an iceberg looks.

[00:32:52]And when you go close to the iceberg, you can see these little layers here.

[00:32:58]And in each layer, I mean our the grains that they determine the p and each layer here can tell you the information about one year.

[00:33:13]Each year you get a press snowfall. you get these little layer by layer. So going about a few meters deep in the iceberg, you can already be studying the history of the atmosphere over Antarctica for a couple of million years, right? So that's the kind of science that we do. And then we go closer, you also see nice penguins for the first time, you know, penguins moving around. First penguin silence, we see nice Excellence.

[00:33:47]And now then you're waiting through the iceberg and all around you, imagine you're going on a ship and all around you are wonderful icebergs in the distance. It's very cold outside.

[00:34:07]Okay. So we also see some waves. This is a picture. I don't have a video of killer wheels but this with a picture of a killer wheel.

[00:34:18]So and then another historical 9th January 1982 was the first time our Indian ship photos landed in Antarctica. This is the Antarctic continent we went.

[00:34:34]So I I'm taking this picture from the helicopter. So we flew the helicopter from here and we so we first landing of Africa by Indians 9th January 1984 a big event 45 years ago. So it just appeared on the birth page of one of the leading 15.

[00:35:04]So then we land and the penguins go around. That's me trying to we trying to feed the penguins eggs and milk and so on. But these areas are very fussy. They don't eat anything from you know from the ocean. They don't kind of penguins small little penguin and then we have large walks about just five they're called emperor penguins So since cannot be lift.

[00:36:28]The first Indian base camp we did not at that time have a permanent station. So we set up our first Indian base camp in tents. These are Indian military arcade tents and we set up five or six of them out in the wilderness. You know absolutely no trees, no outfits, nothing at all. Just ice all around. And we set up our first Indian base camp. And this is our face cam. And we used to move around in snow.

[00:36:59]And in the second expedition, we put up a small building. We called it expedition station.

[00:37:10]But this was very shortlived. And that's me in front of the Indian stages. So and another very interesting thing and in summer is that you never you have sunlight 24 hours a day the sun does not stand for 3 to 4 month it's it's it's a very weird feeling normally in so this is midnight and this is sun I'm standing in front of the station it's you can make out it's all wilderness there's nothing at So it's just nice all around.

[00:37:48]Okay. And very windish.

[00:37:51]So in the next expedition of which I was not a member, the third Indian expedition 198384, we started construction of a greater Indian station called Taling, a permanent Indian station.

[00:38:08]So and finally this is the permanent Indian stadium duction which was constructed.

[00:38:17]It was not an Indian station. We had purchased it from a British company struck fly. So this was set up in March 1983. It was a twostory building had two wings you know wing a and green field.

[00:38:33]So this is the kind of station that we constructed a twotory building. Now I went back in 1988 89 you know six or seven six years later and then you know what I found is that entire year we used to before we used to enter the station ground floor and go up and so on. Now after a period of 6 years I go and this entire station is under ice. You know you all read a little bit of physics in school.

[00:39:12]What happens is if you have ice and if you have a hot object it gradually sinks into ice. It just melts because of pressure and it goes down gradually till the entire station is under the ice. So we are now this is the top of the station and we are actually this me. So this is a true photograph of the 8th India expedition and we are standing on top of Dakshin station. Underneath here I'm under the seat is the station and when we clear the top you can see the see the top portion the only the room earlier is to station from the ground floor but from the chimney.

[00:40:08]But inside the station everything was perfect. Every everything functioning nothing gets damaged except that the whole station sinks in the eyes.

[00:40:20]But over >> we had to abandon the station in 1989 because it was very dangerous because in Antarctica one of the most dangerous things have fire supposing there's ice all around but there is no water. If you have fire through the station and all these stations are made of wood because of the if it catches fire then it's going to be a disaster. So we had to unfortunately abandon this dakshin nongri station in 1989 and construct a new station called Mi. I'm going to show you pictures of Mi. So I went again a third time in 1988 89 in the eight expeditions using a much larger ship called motorbed ship very large ship uh and then we went uh remember I said 98% of the continent is covered with ice there only small portion about 2% of the continent where it is not covered with roots and this is one of those days.

[00:41:40]This this shimata range is a mountain range. This is about 70 80 kilometers from where we land in Antarctica in the coast. So we have to use the helicopter to travel 70 80 kilometers and get to this place and this is not covered with ice and that's where we set up our permanent station three and initially in 1988 8788 we start constructing the three station we started on basis stills and then we carry all the material for construction on helic helicopters and gradually the station is coming up and you can see the pre-fabricated uh boards etc. And finally this is the second Indian permanent station.

[00:42:33]This is a very large station and I'm really proud of that station not because it was constructed under my leadership certainly because of that but primarily because this stations imagine almost 40 years ago almost 37 38 years ago this station was completely made in India.

[00:42:55]The only two items in this station that everything else was made in India. This the the prefabricated boards. This entire station was constructed by the uh the R&D engineers of the Indian army. Uh you know the this this site it had diesel generators. All protect generators. We had washing machine consuming ulu water pumps. Everything was Indian. I'm really proud of and it's still functioning today. So only few things to square reported in this station. One was the satellite communication terminal. We we don't make satcoms in India. We don't make satellite communication terminals in India. So that had to be reported. And there was one more idea that that is a machine which converts the kitchen waste into harmless product. So that thing was imported. Everything else in that station was imported. So this is the mic station leaving behind the winter. This is the mic station and this mic station is functional even today. Now I just this is my last shot uh of Priy station just before I left uh back for India.

[00:44:25]And uh I I I show this picture just to show you how the station was. You know the station has a main wing. It is twotory for the scientists and the logistics personnel they live here.

[00:44:40]It has a wing tail which contains all the laser generators. All the generators are kept here. And you can see the fuel bags. They are stored very far away.

[00:44:52]I'll show you in another picture. And this station houses kitchen and the bathrooms. And there is a separate section here. This is the toilet. Now one of the things in Antarctica about which we have to be extremely extremely careful is disposing of human waste. You know because of extremely cold temperature nothing degrades. So if you are careless about disposing human waste out in the into your lake from where you're getting water and it'll never degrade for years. So we have to be extremely careful about that. So what we do in Antarctica is we construct a toilet in which every time you finish after you finish there are burners here that burns the human waste. These are called incinerated toilets and because there is fire hazard this toilet has kept separate from state. So this these are special things about this and this is a photograph of the police station much later one of my friends gave me you can still see all these in the accelerated toilet you can see a lot of fuel bars oil bars that are stored here this will run station for next one year or so it will also be used for uh running the uh the the the vehicles.

[00:46:30]Okay. Another picture of the administration.

[00:46:34]Now very briefly the what are the studies that we do in Antarctica. We study the air in Antarctica for pollution and we study radio communication and we also do some geological study. The geology of Antarctica is very interesting. the policy long time ago it was neighbors with India so it's very important for us to study the geology of so years later 2012 she set up yet another station the third Indian station called and that as I said the Mi is here RC is about 3,000 kilometers from Mi so this station is also a wonderful station But it's not made in India. It's it's it's something that we purchase uh ready from a German company. But it's a wonderful station.

[00:47:35]And these are the two station M and that are operational in Antarctica today.

[00:47:43]Okay. Before I show you this picture just just one session see I I've been showing you all these pictures of Antarctica and you must be thinking ah this is so light wonderful nice pictures moving all around but remember you get such opportunities to get this picture only for very short time most of the time it's terrible weather and when I say terrible weather. I made terrible storm called blizzards in Antarctica. When the blizzards are very strong, the wind is so terribly high and the ice is all around. I'm just showing the short video of how it is when we have attracted storm. We have such things a blinding and ant you just go out and we cannot see no years. It's a complete white out. It's extremely extremely exhilarates like that right another thing uh that one has to be extremely careful about is fire as I said before you know we have ice all around but we don't have so if you have fire then there is no way in which you can use that ice to you know put off that fire so a fire hazard is one of those really dangerous thing. One of one time in the eighth expedition we had we had an incinerator toilet which caught fire. Fortunately, it was all the way from the main station so nothing happened. But I'm just one of those critical things that must be extremely careful about. Now what is science in Antarctica? Why do they go to Antarctica? Many of you who are very young right now, maybe a few years later, if you are sufficiently motivated, if you get infused by this, maybe some of you get precise and some of you will land down in an exped uh And many projects are international for people.

[00:50:13]So Indian scientist studying in we are studying materology the weather right we are studying geology study of ice we studying earth sciences minerals and all that astronomy and astrophysics aeronomy this is the study of the upper atmosphere radio communications marine biology and this is very important our Indian army is very human biology under stress. You have extreme periods of cold, darkness, isolation, terrible times in Antarctic, winter. So human behavior kind of spread. So these are things that Indians are studying.

[00:51:03]So thank you very much for Definitely if you have any question here station you made that sing How did you used to breathe over there when you open eyes you know the chimney which sticks out of the eyes so uh you don't I mean you're not completely also >> suffocated over there >> see I I mean I you can take examples from your own house sometimes In winter we close we close all doors windows immediately will shut the whole house so little oxygen that take you a complete silly ch before you s and we have exhaust fan but it's very dangerous because everything is down below there is any accident you cannot remove fat from anyone.

[00:53:29]should have seen.

[00:53:40]So there are a few kind of factory and Indian station does not have a facility for air landing but we have a Russian station and we sometimes use the Russian aircraft to travel by certainly we can go by here.

[00:53:59]>> Next question was have you come across any cold sea giants or cold creatures?

[00:54:06]>> Sorry.

[00:54:07]>> Have you come across any cold sea giants? Amen.

[00:54:13]>> This this this is similar question as we as when it's dark in Antarctica. Have you seen the ghosts know our marshals? So we have maybe if you are patient enough we see some aliens. I think we should take one.

[00:54:35]>> Yes.

[00:54:36]I have a question and that is how far does water free at?

[00:54:41]>> Oh, where we were? No, no, it seems very in summer when we go are not so bad. It's only about - 10 - 15 which is not only 10 over inside building soil with salt water and salt water does not at 0° centigrade. It freezes. The freezing point gets uh lowered. The water freezes in Antarctica in the surrounding water at close to -2°.

[00:55:40]And if you put supposing I accidentally fall into that super cold water of -2°, I'll have only about 20 minutes of smoke.

[00:55:53]It's so cold. So we unfortunately I did not show they had an event of accident crash where some people fell into the water. So fortunately there were >> Sir I have one more question. How hard is it to get out of the water like in >> Well, you cannot get out by yourself.

[00:56:19]Somebody has to come and rescue you by a night or a helicopter with a snake.

[00:56:25]Somebody has to come and rescue you. You cannot swim out of water. At least I cannot do that. I don't know.

[00:56:34]>> Sir, one more question.

[00:56:35]>> I I think we'll probably get I think we last question from >> Oh boy, there's lots of questions. This can go on forever.

[00:56:50]Yes.

[00:56:58]>> Very cold over.

[00:57:01]>> Sorry, I missed that part. What the >> It's very corresponding.

[00:57:11]>> Okay. So, uh very good question. Thank you. See in the first few expeditions we uh we did not have a faka permanent station. We sorry we used to live in tents and there was no facility for cooking and we had a small stove. So we had mostly taken these uh dehydrated foods from the defense research board.

[00:57:39]You know you have dehydrated rice and dehydrated whatever you take some water boil it in that kitchen but on the ship when they came back to the ship had a proper kitchen and they could carry food for 3 to four months. So on the ship there was no problem of eating. But in the in the tents where we set up camp we have to use frozen hot frozen actually dehydrated you know cooked chapati dehydrated.

[00:58:24]Yeah. So it was not very useable, no fruits, no man.

[00:58:34]Sorry.

[00:58:41]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:43]I don't know.

[00:58:46]Okay.

[00:58:50]So I think lots of questions are there.

[00:58:52]So you just made question to us.

[00:58:56]Sir, >> sir. Now I request it to the other.

[01:00:01]shared with us actually remained with us for a long time.

[01:00:06]Now I request director sir to kindly sit with our guest of respect from science center Delhi.

[01:00:17]Can we have a round of applause?

[01:00:40]National Science Center Delhi. Kindly deliver the code of thanks.

[01:00:53]On the occasion of our day just narate a story from the place which is which remain untouched on the earth. So next four and for my three telepathy station walking the significance of scientific discovery there. Thank you. Thank you.

[01:01:14]Thank you very much. I am thankful to the schools teacher principal who joined us for this program and Thank you all. Hey,