Epstein's friends from the 'Reality Club'
New York magazine has published an alphabetised list of the names of people that find mention in Jeffrey Epstein's 'black book', a log book of sorts in which he kept track of the people he…
Science
363 posts
Prestige journals and their prestigious mistakes
On June 24, the journal Nature Scientific Reports published a paper claiming that Earth's surface was warming by more than what non-anthropogenic sources could account for because it was simply mo…
To be a depressed person reading about research on depression
It’s a strangely unsettling experience to read about research on an affliction that one has, to understand how scientists are obtaining insights into it using a variety of techniques that allow them t…
The 'could've, should've, would've' of R&D
ISRO's Moon rover, which will move around the lunar surface come September (if all goes well), will live and and die in a span of 14 days because that's how long the lithium-ion cells it's…
Making history at the speed of light
Last week, Sophia Gad-Nasr, an astroparticle physicist and PhD student at University of California, Irvine, tweeted this question: https://twitter.com/Astropartigirl/status/1135533079852773376 To wh…
A religious environmentalism
June 5 was World Environment Day, which is presumably why an article entitled 'Hindu roots of modern 'ecology'' was doing the rounds on Twitter, despite having been published in 2016.…
Justifying organic chemistry
Johanna Miller writes in Physics Today about how she was able to enjoy learning organic chemistry in her senior year of undergraduate study: by understanding that science is a collection of concepts,…
Science in the face of uncertainty
In 2018, scientists from IISc announced they'd found a room-temperature superconductor, an exotic material that has zero resistance to electric current in ambient conditions – considered the holy…
Using 'science' appropriately
Ref: https://twitter.com/shekhar_mande/status/1129957335877672960 (Setting aside the use of the word 'faith') The work that some parts of CSIR has done and is doing is indeed very good. Howe…
A tale of two horrors: poop and aliens
I saw this tweet yesterday: Information like this always reminds me of one fact that awakened me to the behind-the-scenes role that the natural universe plays in our cultural lives. The organic com…
Clouds, rain and radar – Addendum
My piece on May 12 calling out Prime Minister Narendra Modi's baffling conviction in his knowledgeability about surveillance radar systems and atmospheric attenuation has prompted some criticism a…
Clouds, rain and radar
I am not a person jo saare vigyan ko jaanta ho – lekin maine kaha itne cloud hain, baarish ho rahi hai ki ek benefit hain ki hum radar se bach sakte hain. This is Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Transl…