Did we see the conspiracies coming?
Tweets like this seem on point… … but I’ve started to wonder if we’re missing something in the course of expressing opinions about what we thought climate deniers would say and what they’re actuall…
VM
1664 posts
Games and life
6 min read
Running through the games on my phone and what I like about them…
Agalloch
1 min read
Agalloch is a synonym of agarwood. In parallel, Aquilaria agallocha and Agalochum malaccense are synonyms of Aquilaria malaccensis, the accepted scientific name of a tree that produces much of the wor…
A cynical archaeology
1 min read
From ‘ASI submits Bhojshala survey report to Madhya Pradesh High Court’, The Hindu, July 15, 2024: The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on July 15 submitted its scientific survey report of the di…
India-based neutrino oblivion
5 min read
In a conversation with science journalist Nandita Jayaraj, physicist and Nobel laureate Takaaki Kajita touched on the dismal anti-parallels between the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) and the J…
‘Animals use physics’
1 min read
What came first: physics or the world? It’s obviously the world, whereas physics (as a branch of science) offered ways to acquire information about the world and organise it. To not understand somethi…
The problem with a new, rapid way to recycle textiles
4 min read
Researchers from the University of Delaware have developed a chemical reaction that can break polyester in clothing down to a simpler compound that can be used to make more clothes. The reaction also…
Clocks on the cusp of a nuclear age
7 min read
Scicomm
Science
caesium standard
calcium fluoride
fine structure constant
frequency comb
Indian Standard Time
ISOLDE
lithium strontium hexafluoroaluminate
metastability
nuclear clock
nuclear isomer
nuclear physics
optical atomic clocks
Planck equation
strong interaction parameter
strong nuclear force
thorium-229
thorium-229m
vacuum ultraviolet
You need three things to build a clock: an energy source, a resonator, and a counter. In an analog wrist watch, for example, a small battery is the energy source that sends a small electric signal to…
Buildings affect winds
2 min read
A 2022 trip to Dubai made me wonder how much research there was on the effects cities, especially those that are rapidly urbanising as well as are building taller, wider structures more closely packed…
You're allowed to be interested in particle physics
7 min read
This page appeared in The Hindu’s e-paper today. I wrote the lead article, about why scientists are so interested in an elementary particle called the top quark. Long story short: the top quark is th…
A new source of cosmic rays?
2 min read
The International Space Station carries a suite of instruments conducting scientific experiments and measurements in low-Earth orbit. One of them is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which studie…
Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore are not in danger
4 min read
NASA said earlier this week it will postpone the return of Boeing’s crew capsule Starliner back to ground from the International Space Station (ISS), thus leaving astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita W…