SECRET OF HAPPINESS: A merchant sent his son to learn the secret of happiness from the wisest of men. The young man wandered through the desert for forty days until he reached a beautiful castle at the top of a mountain. There lived the sage that the young man was looking for. However, instead of finding a holy man, our hero entered a room and saw a great deal of activity; merchants coming and going, people chatting in the corners, a small orchestra playing sweet melodies, and there was a table laden with the most delectable dishes of that part of the world. The wise man talked to everybody, and the young man had to wait for two hours until it was time for his audience. With considerable patience, the Sage listened attentively to the reason for the boy’s visit, but told him that at that moment he did not have the time to explain to him the Secret of Happiness. He suggested that the young man take a stroll around his palace and come back in two hours’ time. “However, I want to ask you a favor,” he added, handling the boy a teaspoon, in which he poured two drops of oil. “While you walk, carry this spoon and don’t let the oil spill.” The young man began to climb up and down the palace staircases, always keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. At the end of two hours he returned to the presence of the wise man. “So,” asked the sage, “did you see the Persian tapestries hanging in my dining room? Did you see the garden that the Master of Gardeners took ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?” Embarrassed, the young man confessed that he had seen nothing. His only concern was not to spill the drops of oil that the wise man had entrusted to him. “So, go back and see the wonders of my world,” said the wise man. “You can’t trust a man if you don’t know his house.” Now more at ease, the young man took the spoon and strolled again through the palace, this time paying attention to all the works of art that hung from the ceiling and walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around the palace, the delicacy of the flowers, the taste with which each work of art was placed in its niche. Returning to the sage, he reported in detail all that he had seen. “But where are the two drops of oil that I entrusted to you?” – asked the Sage. Looking down at the spoon, the young man realized that he had spilled the oil. “Well, that is the only advice I have to give you,” said the sage of sages. “The Secret of Happiness lies in looking at all the wonders of the world and never forgetting the two drops of oil in the spoon.”

Aseem Anand

Aseem Anand

Gravitational Waves Help Us Understand Black-Hole Weight Gain: "Black holes are almost impossible to observe directly, but armed with this powerful new tool we're in for some exciting times in astronomy. One model for how black holes grow has already been discounted, and now we're going to start looking at the others." The study was jointly led by Dr Ryan Shannon, a Postdoctoral Fellow with CSIRO, and Mr Vikram Ravi, a PhD student co-supervised by the University of Melbourne and CSIRO. Einstein predicted gravitational waves -- ripples in space-time, generated by massive bodies changing speed or direction, bodies like pairs of black holes orbiting each other. When galaxies merge, their central black holes are doomed to meet. They first waltz together then enter a desperate embrace and merge. "When the black holes get close to meeting they emit gravitational waves at just the frequency that we should be able to detect," Dr Bhat said. Played out again and again across the Universe, such encounters create a background of gravitational waves, like the noise from a restless crowd. Astronomers have been searching for gravitational waves with the Parkes radio telescope and a set of 20 small, spinning stars called pulsars. Pulsars act as extremely precise clocks in space. The arrival time of their pulses on Earth are measured with exquisite precision, to within a tenth of a microsecond. When the waves roll through an area of space-time, they temporarily swell or shrink the distances between objects in that region, altering the arrival time of the pulses on Earth. The Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA), and an earlier collaboration between CSIRO and Swinburne University, together provide nearly 20 years worth of timing data. This isn't long enough to detect gravitational waves outright, but the team say they're now in the right ballpark. "The PPTA results are showing us how low the background rate of gravitational waves is," said Dr Bhat. "The strength of the gravitational wave background depends on how often supermassive black holes spiral together and merge, how massive they are, and how far away they are. So if the background is low, that puts a limit on one or more of those factors." Armed with the PPTA data, the researchers tested four models of black-hole growth. They effectively ruled out black holes gaining mass only through mergers, but the other three models are still a possibility. Dr Bhat also said the Curtin University-led Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope will be used to support the PPTA project in the future.

Aseem Anand