James Webb Space Telescope
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JWST and the sorites paradox
Where does beauty end and ugliness begin? Continue reading
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Ways of seeing
A lot of the physics of 2015 was about how the ways in which we study the natural world had been improved or were improving. Continue reading
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The pitfalls of thinking that ASTROSAT will be ‘India’s Hubble’
The Hubble Space Telescope needs no introduction. It’s become well known for its stunning images of nebulae and star-fields, and it wouldn’t be amiss to say the telescope has even become synonymous with images of strange beauty often from distant cosmic shores. No doubt saying something is like the Hubble Space Telescope simplifies the task of… Continue reading
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Money for science
Spending money on science has been tied to evaluating the value of spin-offs, assessing the link between technological advancement and GDP, and dissecting the metrics of productivity, but the debate won’t ever settle no matter how convincingly each time it is resolved. For a piece titled The Telescope of the 2030s, Dennis Overbye writes in The… Continue reading
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Why you should care about the New Horizons probe nearing Pluto
The Wire May 29, 2015 47 days 23 hours 39 minutes! — Dr. Alex Parker (@Alex_Parker) May 27, 2015 Alex Parker is a planetary astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute, Texas, and he posted his tweet just as I started writing this piece. And not just for Parker – it’s an exciting time for everyone, an exhilarating period… Continue reading
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Looking for life? Look for pollution.
Four-thousand years on Earth and we’ve a lot of dirt to show for it. Why would an advanced alien civilization be any different? That’s the motivation that three astrophysicists from Harvard University have used to determine that powerful telescopes could look for signs of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in alien atmospheres as signs of alien civilization. “If the civilization reaches… Continue reading
About Me
I’m a science editor and writer in India, interested in high-energy and condensed-matter physics, research misconduct, pseudoscience, science’s relationship with society, epic fantasy, open source/access/knowledge systems, H.R. Giger’s art, Goundamani’s comedy, Factorio, and most things that require a lot of time to get the hang of.