Will 'Surya' launch bombs or satellites?
From Times of India, March 14, 2024: ISRO chairman S. Somanath confirmed to TOI in an exclusive interview that the NGLV project, internally named “SOORYA”, will be headed by (Project Director/PD) S.…
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1664 posts
The missile test before the polls
1 min read
On March 27, 2019, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted 'Mission Shakti': India's first anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test. After the event, the national broa…
Farce and friction over an Indian astronaut
2 min read
When we met Mr [Morarji] Desai, he was totally relaxed even after the long journey from Delhi. Squatting on a carpet in the Kremlin and spinning his favourite charka, he received us very gracefully an…
To the moon – or the stock market?
2 min read
Now this is quite upsetting. I learn from Jatan Mehta’s Moon Monday #166 that Intuitive Machines – the maker of the Odysseus spacecraft that landed on the moon on February 22 – may have lied about the…
When metastable systems fail to become stable…
5 min read
'Metastable systems' is a technical term for something you've definitely experienced in your daily life, as much as scientists often encounter it when studying subatomic particles. Say yo…
Government by Supreme Court
5 min read
On February 27, a bench of the Supreme Court upbraided Patanjali Ayurved and its chairman Acharya Balkrishna for continuing to disparage systems of medicine other than Ayurveda (technically, what it c…
Why not increase ISRO's budget?
3 min read
This post is in response to a question on Reddit about why the Indian government won’t increase ISRO’s space budget. There’s a good analogy in India’s research budget. As a share of the GDP, the nati…
A Q&A about philosophy in journalism
12 min read
Earlier this year, Varun Bhatta, assistant professor of philosophy at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal, reached out to ask me some questions for something he was writing…
Lookout duty
1 min read
When a user asked, “Is modi a fascist”, Gemini AI responded that Mr. Modi had “been accused of implementing policies that some experts have characterized as fascist”. “These are direct violations of…
JPL layoff isn't the fall of a civilisation
4 min read
A historian of science I follow on Twitter recently retweeted this striking comment: While I don’t particularly care for capitalism, the tweet is fair: the behemoth photolithography machine depicte…
Poonam Pandey and peer-review
2 min read
One dubious but vigorous narrative that has emerged around Poonam Pandey's "death" and subsequent return to life is that the mainstream media will publish "anything". To be su…
Schrödinger's temple
2 min read
On January 22, in a ceremony led by Prime Minister and now high-priest Narendra Modi, priests and officials allegedly consecrated the idol of Lord Ram at the new temple in Ayodhya, with many celebriti…