Science

363 posts

The rationalists' eclipse

4 min read
Culture Science Against Method annular solar eclipse BR Ambedkar Caliban and the Witch capitalism myth Paul Feyerabend Periyar pseudoscience rationalism science communication scientism solar eclipse superstitions superstitious beliefs Sylvia Federici

The annular solar eclipse over South India on December 26 provided sufficient cause for casual and/or inchoate rationalism to make a rare public appearance – rarer than the average person who had deci…

To see faces where there are none

2 min read
Science arXiv Björn Brembs conspiracy theories Elisabeth Bik image manipulation impact factor Ingelfinger rule journal rank Nature Medicine Ohio State University open knowledge pareidolia peer review preprints research fraud William Romoser

This week in "neither university press offices nor prestigious journals know what they're doing": a professor emeritus at Ohio University who claimed he had evidence of life on Mars, and…

A new map of Titan

3 min read
Scicomm Science Cassini mission Chandrayaan 2 Chandrayaan 3 complex hydrocarbons Enceladus Europa Ganymede geomorphology global map habitability hydrocarbons Io NASA Dragonfly Saturn sharp-edged depressions synthetic aperture radar Titan topography

It’s been a long time since I’ve obsessed over Titan, primarily because after the Cassini mission ended, the pace of updates about Titan died down, and because other moons of the Solar System (Europa,…

Playing the devil's advocate on Starlink

4 min read
Op-eds Science Challakere science city Elon Musk environmentalism India-based Neutrino Observatory ISRO Kulasekarapattinam low-cost internet Mauna Kea mega-constellation non-rivalry Outer Space Treaty satellite constellation space-based internet SpaceX Starlink Sterlite Thirty Meter Telescope Thoothukudi

After SpaceX began to launch its Starlink satellite constellation to facilitate global internet coverage, astronomers began complaining that the satellites are likely to interfere with stargazing sche…

Why are the Nobel Prizes still relevant?

6 min read
Culture Op-eds Science Abhijit Banerjee Albert Einstein Appa Rao Podile Booker Prize Brian Keating Caltech Chien-Shiung Wu CV Raman Esther Duflo Fermilab Göran Hansson gender-based discrimination Hindutva Hugo Award impact factor Isaac Asimov John B Goodenough late capitalism Lise Meitner Margaret Atwood nationalism Nature journal Nobel laureates Nobel Prize prestige bias Prime Minister Narendra Modi sexism The Big Bang Theory Vera Rubin

Note: A condensed version of this post has been published in The Wire. Around this time last week, the world had nine new Nobel Prize winners in the sciences (physics, chemistry and medicine), all bu…