Gaganyaan: The ingredient is not the recipe
For all the hoopla over indigeneity – from ISRO chairman S. Somanath exalting the vast wisdom of ancient Indians to political and ideological efforts to cast modern India as the world’s ‘vishwaguru’ –…
Science
363 posts
An 'expanded' heuristic to evaluate science as a non-scientist
The Hindu publishes a column called ‘Notebook’ every Friday, in which journalists in the organisation open windows big or small into their work, providing glimpses into their process and thinking – th…
“Why has no Indian won a science Nobel this year?”
For all their flaws, the science Nobel Prizes – at the time they’re announced, in the first week of October every year – provide a good opportunity to learn about some obscure part of the scientific e…
The journal's part in a retraction
What explains a journal's peer-review producing two different results on two separate occasions?…
On India's new 'Vigyan Puraskar' awards
The Government of India has replaced the 300 or so awards for scientists it used to give out until this year with the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar (RVP), a set of four awards with 56 laureates, The Hindu…
Scientists' conduct affects science
Nature News has published an excellent feature by Edwin Cartlidge on the "wall of scepticism" that arose in response to the latest superconductivity claim from Ranga Dias et al., purportedly…
The UAE's hacks for international prominence
The UAE seems to be making a sincere attempt to whitewash itself, according to a New York Times report on September 1, by hosting the COP28 climate talks. This is both unsurprising and fascinating – b…
The Kapitza pendulum
Rarely does a 'problem' come along that makes you think more than casually about the question of mathematics's reality, and problems in mathematical physics are full of them. I came across…
Checking the validity of a 'valid' ISRO question
The question of whether resources directed to space programmes are a diversion from pressing development needs, however, is a valid one. As an answer, one can uphold the importance of these programmes…
Looking (only) for Nehru
I have a habit of watching one old Tamil film a day. Yesterday evening, I was watching a film released in 1987, called Ivargal Indiyargal ('They Are Indians'). In a scene in the film, an offic…
Landing Day
Good luck, Chandrayaan 3. Good luck also to all the journalists covering this event from within India – a unique location because it's where you will feel the most excitement today about the missi…
The shadows of Chandrayaan 2
When in September 2019 the surface component of the Chandrayaan 2 mission failed, with the 'Vikram' lander crashing on the moon's surface instead of gently touching down, there was a sense…