Category Archives: Scicomm
The curious case of the blue coloured ice cream
From an unusual ice cream colour to quantum mechanics to ecology to semiconductors to gastroporn. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Scicomm
Tagged Alfred Hitchcock, anthocyanins, blue LED, blue screen, blue spirulina, C-phycocyanin, Charles Spence, electroluminescence, experimental psychology, FT Marinetti, gallium nitride, gastroporn, iridescence, Maria Jose San Roman, Morpho butterflies, Planck's equation, pterobilin, Rayleigh scattering, structural coloration
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Neuromorphic hype
We all know there’s a difference between operating an Indica Diesel car and a WDP 4 diesel locomotive. The former has two cylinders and the latter 16. But that doesn’t mean the WDP 4 simply has eight times more components … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged artificial neural networks, emergent properties, hype, IEEE Spectrum, more is different, neuromorphic computing, Philip Warren Anderson, science communication, superconducting synapse
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Bruno Latour (1947-2022) and critiquing science
The French philosopher Bruno Latour passed away on October 9, at the age of 75. I don’t know if many people in India have noticed but people abroad, especially in Europe, have. His passing leaves a considerable vacuum in the … Continue reading
The passive voice is political
Eric Martinez, Francis Mollica and Edward Gibson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Edinburgh won an Ig Nobel Prize for literature this year for their work on what makes legal documents so hard to read. Ironically, … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm
Tagged active voice, Ig Nobel Prize, MIT, passive voice, science communication, science writing
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A physics story of infinities, goats and colours
When I was writing in August about physicist Sheldon Glashow’s objection to Abdus Salam being awarded a share of the 1979 physics Nobel Prize, I learnt that it was because Salam had derived a theory that Glashow had derived as well, taking … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Abdus Salam, charge screening, colour charge, cutoff factor, Kenneth Wilson, off-shell, phase transition, quantum chromodynamics, quark self-energy, regularisation, renormalisation, Sheldon Glashow, virtual particles
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How do you make a mode-locked laser?
Given Mode-locked lasers are lasers that are capable of producing intense ultra-short pulses of light at a very high rate. Concepts Set 1 Take a bunch of atoms, excite them and place them in a box covered with mirrors in … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged constructive interference, dispersion, Fabry-Pérot cavity, femtolaser, gain medium, inertial confinement, Kerr-lens mode-locking, LASIK, linewidth, lithium niobate, mode-locked laser, optical cavity, Q-switching
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The strange NYT article on taming minks
I’m probably waking up late to this but the New York Times has published yet another article in which it creates a false balance by first focusing on the problematic side of a story for an inordinately long time, without any of … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm
Tagged animal ethics, Joseph Carter, minks, saviour complex, science journalism, The New York Times
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The search for a powerful natural particle accelerator
And the promise of one distant supernova remnant. Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged cosmic ray knee, cosmic rays, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, gamma rays, inverse Compton scattering, neutral pions, OMG particle, PeVatron, shockfront mechanism, supernova remnants, Swordy plot
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