Mani Bhaumik

Several students get the jitters at the very mention of science. For them, science is all about fat textbooks, sundry formulae and jaw-breaking numericals.

Mani Bhaumik’s The Cosmic Detective attempts to break this boundary between study and enjoyment. The book, accepted by Unesco for the International Year of Astronomy, entices readers with the question, “Are you feeling a little lonely in this universe?” and goes on to talk about the origin of the universe, what stars are made of, asteroids, black holes and nebulae.

“When I was growing up in my village, I would look at the sky and want to know the mysteries that lay behind it,” recalls Bhaumik, a pioneer in the world of laser technology, having developed the excimer laser that made possible the Lasik technique of eye surgery. But he couldn’t do so, not even as a Ph.D student at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“I was told that if I worked on cosmology, I wouldn’t have a job,” laughs the man, who hails from the village of Krishnagunj in Midnapore.

This book is for that child that lives in everyone. It is illustrated with excellent colour photographs of space phenomena taken from the websites of space agencies like Nasa, European Space Agency and the Hubble telescope.

Printed on art paper, they are bound to capture the attention of frisky youngsters and adults. Feast your eyes on a close-up of the rings of Saturn, of Jupiter’s moon, Io, pitted with active volcanoes, the only other celestial body apart from the Earth to offer proof of the existence of volcanoes.

This book, as his other work, Code Name God, posits the accepted theory that everything in the universe has originated from a single source.

“We are all cosmic kids,” he exclaims, “If only people understand this, they would realise how senseless it is to fight in the name of religion.”

There are plans of starting a television series titled Cosmic Quantum Ray. The book has been translated into Bengali too, with the title, Bishwajiboni.