Some facts are bigger than numbers – a story
Some facts are just boring, like 1 + 1 = 2. You already knew them before they were presented as such, and now that you do, it's hard to know what to do with them. Some facts are clearly important,…
black holes
7 posts
The Government Project
Considering how much the Government of India has missed anticipating – the rise of a second wave of COVID-19 infections, the crippling medical oxygen shortage, the circulation of new variants of conce…
The weekly linklist – July 25, 2020
I've decided to publish this linklist via Substack. Next weekend onwards, it will only be available on https://linklist.substack.com. And this is why the list exists and what kind of articles you…
All the science in 'The Cloverfield Paradox'
I watched The Cloverfield Paradox last night, the horror film that Paramount pictures had dumped with Netflix and which was then released by Netflix on February 4. It's a dumb production: unlike H…
The journey of a crow and the story of a black hole
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…
Neutron stars
When the hype for the announcement of the previous GW detection was ramping up, I had a feeling LIGO was about to announce the detection of a neutron-star collision. It wasn't to be – but in my ex…
Ironing out an X-ray wrinkle
A version of this post, as written by me, originally appeared in The Copernican science blog on March 1, 2013. -- One of the techniques to look for and measure the properties of a black hole is to s…