Happy new year!
2017 was a blast. Lots of things happened. The world became a shittier place in many ways and better in a few. Mostly, Earth just went around the Sun once more, and from what we know, it's going t…
VM
1664 posts
Politics at SESAME
1 min read
I’ve been following the story of the SESAME collaboration in the Middle East since I first heard about it seven years ago, and was really thrilled when its synchrotron achieved first light in November…
A shorter article about short gamma ray bursts lights up little
3 min read
* Identify a simple and well-defined question * Describe the question and answer it * Get the fuck out Writing with these three rules in mind makes for a good science article. You stick to the poi…
Eroding the dignity of Jayalalithaa's memories
3 min read
On December 20, P. Vetrivel, a former MLA and member of the AIADMK party, convened a press meet and released a 20-second video clip purportedly showing former Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa…
Friends no more
3 min read
Growing up, watching Friends was a source of much amusement and happiness. Now, as a grownup, I can't watch a single episode without deeply resenting how the show caricatures all science as avoida…
The journey of a crow and the story of a black hole
3 min read
The Washington Post has a review, and introduction therewith, of a curious new book called Ka, authored by John Crowley (acclaimed author of Great Work of Time). It is narrated from the POV of a crow…
In solidarity with Nautilus's writers
3 min read
In April this year, Undark published a piece that caught me by surprise: Nautilus magazine was going broke. Actually, it wasn't a surprise that lasted long. Nautilus, to me, had been doing a comme…
'Lots of people don't know lots of things'
2 min read
You might have seen news channels on the television (if you do at all, in fact) flash a piece of information repeatedly on their screens. News presenters also tend to repeat things they’ve said 10 or…
Why a pump to move molten metal is awesome
3 min read
The conversion of one form of energy into another is more efficient at higher temperatures.1 For example, one of the most widely used components of any system that involves the transfer of heat from o…
A problem worth its weight in salt
4 min read
Pictures of Jupiter's moon Europa taken by the Galileo space probe between 1995 and 2003 support the possibility that Europa's surface has plate tectonics. In fact, scientists think it could b…
Ruins of the Sutlej avulsion paper's coverage
3 min read
Reporting on the new Indus civilisation study out of IIT-K and Imperial College London was an interesting experience because it afforded an opportunity to discover how the technical fields of sediment…
Similar DNA
1 min read
From an article in Times Now News: Comparing Prime Minister Narendra Modi with former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Union Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan on Wednesday said both h…