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July 2014

NASA announces Mars 2020 rover payload

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On July 31, NASA announced the roster of instruments that would hitch a ride on board its planned rover to the red planet in 2020. John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for the NASA Science… 

New category: Exoplanets

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Of late, telescopes like Kepler, Spitzer and ALMA are revealing new things about exoplanets as much as they’re exposing how clueless we are about their origins. Unlike in the search for life, where our only… 

Why do tilted/eccentric orbits form?

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For all its mysteries, the Solar System is uniquely ideal in many ways. For one, while it has rocky inner planets and giant, gassy outer ones, astronomers have found that elsewhere, massive exoplanets often orbit close to… 

Accurate measurement of exoplanet radius

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Image: Imaginative illustration of Kepler 93b’s diameter being measured. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Using both the Kepler and the Spitzer space telescopes, scientists from NASA have made the most precise measurement of an exoplanet’s radius yet. Kepler… 

Science Quiz – July 28, 2014

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Every week, I create a science quiz for The Hindu newspaper’s In School product. It consists of 10 questions and only developments from the week preceding its day of publication (Monday). The answers are at… 

No country for new journalism

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Through an oped in Nieman Lab, Ken Doctor makes a timely case for explanatory – or explainer – journalism being far from a passing fad. Across the many factors that he argues contribute to its… 

Dying in a finite universe

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In his book Infinite In All Directions (2002), Freeman Dyson, one of the tallest intellectual giants of our times, attempts to rescue eschatology from the specious grip of religion and teleology with a mix of… 

Kepler data reveals a frost giant

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I’ve been most fascinated lately by studies of planet formation. Every small detail is like that one letter in the crossword you need to fill all the other boxes in, every discovery a cornerstone that… 

The new and large fly the farthest

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British Airways and Air France mutually retired the Concorde supersonic jet in 2003. Both companies cited rising maintenance costs as being the reason, which in turn were compounded by falling demand after the Paris crash…