BANGALORE: Eminent space scientist and former chairman of ISRO Prof U R Rao said superstitions fuelled by television programmes were hampering the development of the country. “Astrologers have become pseudo-scientists. They are all over television. We spend 20 hours watching astrological programmes, in which predictions are made that the sun would be swallowed by a blackhole. They do not know that the closest blackhole to Earth is billion years away. We should not allow them to thrive,” he said, adding that most astrologers and TV channels were only interested in making money. “Despite having an elite group of scientists in our country, we are not seeing development. With corrupt politicians and many superstitions, how can we become a great nation?” he questioned in his inaugural address at the Dhirubhai Ambani Commemoration Day. He added, “We have to come out of superstition to progress.”Elucidating the leaps that have been achieved in the field of space and pure science, Prof Rao said that the efforts were not paying off, due to astrological claims. “We have accumulated so much of cosmological knowledge. We are now looking at discovering the Higgs Boson and figuring out the source of dark energy, which constitutes 95 per cent of the universe. Yet, we still believe that apocalypse would strike in December 2012,” lamented Prof Rao.
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