Forget me. I'm there.
You don’t have to walk up to stand next to me, you don’t have to hug me. You don’t have to want to kiss me. You just have to look at me in the eye, Stranger, when you walk past. You needn't smile…
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767 posts
Lord of the Rings Day
March 25 is Lord of the Rings Day. Why do I remember the date?…
Our universe, the poor man's accelerator
That cosmic inflation may have happened at a higher-than-anticipated energy means physicists have access to the young universe through astronomical data.…
The Big Bang did bang
The Hindu March 19, 2014 On March 17, the most important day for cosmology in over a decade, the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics made an announcement that swept even physicists off their…
Go slow on the social media
Why whether the social media will inspire direct political mobilization in India is hard to say.…
The stuff we learn after a plane goes missing
(A version of this post, as written by me, first appeared in The Hindu science blog, The Copernican, on March 16, 2014.) It's likely any of you knew many of or all the following, but these are th…
Airplanes can still go missing
Airplanes are one of our largest modes of transportation in terms of physical size. With the exception of ships, airplanes have the highest carrying capacity, are quite environmentally disruptive whil…
Riffing off the Rift
At first glance, the Oculus Rift is an ingenious invention - not something you can look at and go "Hey, how come I didn't think of that?" By letting its users 'step inside the game&#…
What is a fusion reaction?
The Copernican February 21, 2014 Last week, the National Ignition Facility, USA, announced that it had breached the first step in triggering a fusion reaction. But what is a fusion reaction? Here are…
Type 1a supernova spotted in M82
(A version of this piece appeared on The Hindu, Chennai, website on January 22 as written by me.) A Type 1a supernova was spotted a few hours ago by stargazers in the starburst galaxy M82, which is o…
A useful book to have around
India's Rise as a Space Power is a book by Prof. Udupi Ramachandra Rao, former Chairman, ISRO (1988-1994), that provides some useful historical context of the space research organization from a sc…
And the GSLV flew!
The Copernican January 6, 2014 Congratulations, ISRO, for successfully launching the GSLV-D5 (and the GSAT-14 satellite with it) on January 5. Even as I write this, ISRO has put out an update on its…