hypernova

The power of the Sun

VM

Oct 25, 2016

This video was pretty cool until the end. “Harness the power of the Sun”? This torch emits 2,300 lumens from a battery that lasts 30 minutes. The Sun? About 98,000 lumens, equivalent to 100 billion megatonnes of TNT blowing up per second for 9 billion years. This is also a chance to marvel at the hypernova, a.k.a. the superluminous supernova: a few billion billion megatonnes of TNT per second, a.k.a. 10 million Suns blowing up per second. It’s the hypernova that actually harnesses the power of the Sun.

Justice delayed but a ton of bricks await

From 'SC declines Ramdev, Patanjali apology; expresses concern over FMCGs taking gullible consumers ‘up and down the garden path’', The Hindu, April 10, 2024: The Supreme Court has refused to accept the unconditional apology from Patanjali co-founder Baba Ramdev and managing director Acharya Balkrishna for advertising medical products

Feel the pain

Emotional decision making is in many contexts undesirable – but sometimes it definitely needs to be part of the picture, insofar as our emotions hold a mirror to our morals. When machines make decisions, the opportunity to consider the emotional input goes away. This is a recurring concern I'm

Cheers for everyone but the bustard

Behold, the legerdemain of spinning bad news into good: Setting aside the meaningless headline, we have a lede (and the rest of the article, for that matter) that claims the Supreme Court of India "struck" a fine balancing act between the transition to renewable energy and protecting the

It's the little things

'What Muslim Women Face Every Day at Work', The Wire, April 4, 2024: [Nisha] Shah, who prays five times a day, says such Islamophobia at the workplace – amongst highly educated Indian youth – has become more audacious. She says her two-three prayer breaks are shorter than the frequent smoke

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Justice delayed but a ton of bricks await

Feel the pain

Cheers for everyone but the bustard

It's the little things