Monthly Archives: October 2019
Trouble at the doorstep
When an alumnus of the IISc wanted to organise an astrology workshop at the institute’s premises in 2017, students and various members of its teaching faculty rose in protest and wrote to the director to have the event cancelled, and … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged astrology, mental health, pseudoscience, selective outrage, Sri Sri, Vedic heritage
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Science and the scientist
Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor won the 2019 Nobel Prize for physics for discovering a famous exoplanet (51 Pegasi b) in 1995. Their claim was first verified by a top astronomer at the time named Geoff Marcy. He was later … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged 51 Pegasi b, Azeen Ghorayshi, Didier Queloz, Geoff Marcy, John B Goodenough, lithium-ion batteries, Michel Mayor, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Nobel Prize for physics, sexual harassment
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A revolutionary exoplanet
In 1992, Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail became the first astronomers to publicly announce that they had discovered the first planets outside the Solar System, orbiting the dense core of a dead star about 2,300 lightyears away. This event is considered to … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged 51 Pegasi b, brown dwarf, CRIRES, Didier Queloz, Doppler spectroscopy, ELODIE spectrograph, exoplanets, Grand Tack Model, hot Jupiters, Ignas Snellen, James Peebles, main sequence stars, Michel Mayor, NASA Kepler telescope, Nice Model, Nobel Prize for physics, orbital velocity, pegasean planets, Physics Nobel Prize, planetary migration, Proxima Centauri, radial velocity, roaster planets, Very Large Telescope, Wolf 1061
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Disentangling entanglement
There has been considerable speculation if the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for physics, due to be announced at 2.30 pm IST on October 8, will include Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. They’ve both made significant experimental contributions related … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Alain Aspect, Albert Einstein, Anton Zeilinger, Boris Podolsky, communication loophole, detection loophole, EPR paradox, John Clauser, John Stewart Bell, Nathan Rosen, Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize for physics, quantum entanglement, Rober Hanson, spooky action at a distance, Wolf Prize
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Review: ‘Salam – The First ****** Nobel Laureate’ (2018)
Awards are elevated by their winners. For all of the Nobel Prizes’ flaws and shortcomings, they are redeemed by what its laureates choose to do with them. To this end, the Pakistani physicist and activist Abdus Salam (1926-1996) elevates the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged Abdul Kalam, Abdus Salam, Abdus Salam ICTP, Ahmadiya sect, Benito Mussolini, Enrico Fermi, Nishan-e-Imtiaz, Nobel Prize for physics, Nobel Prizes, Pakistan, religious presecution, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Steven Weinberg, theoretical physics, Zia-ul-Haq, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
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Fear and delight
Earlier this week, I published my 1,100th blog post on this site. It hasn’t been a long and great journey because it hasn’t been a journey, per se, at least I haven’t seen it as one. After publishing each blog … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged blogging, imposter syndrome, inner peace, inner self, The Correspondents, writing habit
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Two sides of the road and the gutter next to it
I have a mid-October deadline for an essay so obviously when I started reading up on the topic this morning, I ended up on a different part of the web – where I found this: a piece by a journalist … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Op-eds
Tagged bias, Bob Woodward, Donald Trump, ignorance, Jay Rosen, Kary Mullis, Nobel Prizes, objectivity, Omar Kelly, Poynter, Richard Feynman, Surjit Bhalla, Swarajya Mag, The New York Times, victim-blaming, victimisation, view from nowhere, women in STEM
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The virtues and vices of reestablishing contact with Vikram
There was a PTI report yesterday that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is still trying to reestablish contact with the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan 2 mission. The lander had crashed onto the lunar surface on September 7 instead … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm
Tagged Chandrayaan 1, Chandrayaan 2, Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, K Sivan, Pragyan rover, Shillong, transparency, Vikram lander
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Unseating Feynman, and Fermi
Do physicists whitewash the legacy of Enrico Fermi the same way they do Richard Feynman? Feynman disguised his sexism as pranks and jokes, and writers have spent thousands of pages offering his virtues as a great physicist and teacher as … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Enrico Fermi, feminism, Leo Szilard, nuclear weapons, Richard Feynman, science and society, sexism, Szilard petition
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