Geoff Marcy
About a week go, NASA announced the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the first exoplanet, and all I could do was think of the amazing Geoff Marcy. When it comes to exoplanet astronomy and the hunt…
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Awards week
I went into this year's Nobel Prize Announcements Week a little confused about why I was excited. For me the prizes have always highlighted the recipients' work, and that's likelier than n…
Physics Nobel rewards neutrino work, but has sting in the tail for India
As neutrino astronomy comes of age, the Nobel Foundation has decided to award Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald with the physics prize for 2015 for their discovery of neutrino oscillations – a pro…
How an ancient Chinese text fought malaria and won a Nobel, while India lags behind
On October 5, Youyou Tu became only the 12th woman in history to be awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. She shared one half of the prize with William Campbell and Satoshi Omura, the dis…
Mobile network shutdowns could be human-rights violations
There's no 'non-natural disaster response' legislation that explicitly defines the extent to which state actors can interfere with the provision of public services to quell unrest.…
Summing up the 'water on Mars' announcement
I wrote an explainer summing up (almost) all we know about the recent NASA announcement of finding water on Mars for the Mumbai Mirror. An excerpt: Because with large oceans of liquid water and an at…
Space is necessarily multifarious, ISRO
Here's a great example of why space-exploration is a multifarious industry where it takes excellence on multiple fronts at the same time to make each mission a success, even on seemingly unrelated…
Defending my review of 'The Martian'
I wrote my first movie review for The Martian and I wonder if I've done it some disservice, although I think it is defensible (from myself, not anyone else). In a wonderful interview of Salman Rus…
NASA finds more signs of liquid water on Mars
NASA has announced that it has come one step closer to ascertaining the presence of liquid water on Mars, and released new evidence obtained by one of its orbiters that has renewed hopes for a direct…
PSLV lifts off with ASTROSAT
At 10 am this (Monday) morning, a PSLV-XL rocket lifted off with India's first space-borne astronomical observatory from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. The observatory, titl…
The pitfalls of thinking that ASTROSAT will be 'India's Hubble'
The Hubble Space Telescope needs no introduction. It's become well known for its stunning images of nebulae and star-fields, and it wouldn't be amiss to say the telescope has even become synon…
New National Encryption Policy doesn't seem to like encryption
A new draft National Encryption Policy put out by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology seeks to define the various encryption standards allowable on data originating from the count…