Scicomm
Pamela Philipose, the public editor of The Wire, raised an important question towards the end of her latest column: Sudhir Angadi wants to know why The Wire is “loaded with so much of negativity”. He wants a response to his question before he decides whether he will continue to read
Scicomm
The authors of a 2017 paper about why fake news spreads so fast have asked for it to be retracted because they've discovered a flaw in their analysis. This is commendable because it signals that scientists are embracing retractions as a legitimate part of the scientific process (which
Scicomm
About 300 million years ago, something happened. And the Moon was hit by meteorites twice to thrice as often after this period than before. The Solar System has always been a dangerous place for careless travellers. Out there are large clouds of dust, millions of rocks dislodged from ancient collisions,
Scicomm
On January 15, Harsh Vardhan, the Union science and technology minister, mulled renaming India's Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) as "Bharat Mata Mantralaya". (In Hindi, the ministry is currently called the 'Prithvi Vigyan Mantralaya'.) Vardhan was speaking at a function to mark the 144th
Scicomm
The world's largest particle physics laboratory has unveiled its design options for the Large Hadron Collider's successor – what is expected to be a 100-km long next generation 'supercollider'. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) submitted the conceptual design report for what it
Scicomm
There are many kinds of materials that become superconductors at low temperatures. One famous kind is the cuprates, compounds of copper and oxygen. Some cuprates have been known to become superconductors at temperatures higher than most other materials (although they’re still pretty low temperatures). Scientists are interested in them
Scicomm
At first glance, this tweets appears to state something obvious: https://twitter.com/nature/status/1071217062930980870 Of course the three-dimensional arrangement of links and nodes, and the space they occupy, influences the ultimate form of the network. But being a tweet, it doesn’t capture a pivotal detail in
Scicomm
Laser light has been used to cool atoms down to near absolute zero. The technique is simple, if versatile. (And includes some history involving a little-known Indian physicist.) Laser light is shined on an atom that's made to move towards the source of light. When the atom
Scicomm
There are two broad problems I've seen so far with writers/journalists quoting activists in science, health and environment stories as experts. (This post deals entirely with the Indian context.) First: Who has time for activism? The answer almost always is someone on the mainland, far away from
Scicomm
You are taught in school that protons and neutrons are particles. However, unless you get into physics research later in life, the likeliest way you are going to find out that they are technically quasiparticles is through the science media. So here it is. 😄 Setting aside their electric charge, protons
Scicomm
What is dust? It feels ridiculous just asking that question sitting in India. Dust is everywhere. On the roads, in your nose, in your lungs. You lock up your house, go on a month-long holiday and come back, and there’s a fine patina on the table. It’s
Op-eds
Bora Zivkovic, the former 'blogfather' of the Scientific American blogs network, said it best: journalists are temporary experts. Reporters have typically got a few days to write something up on which scientists have been working for years, if not decades. They flit from paper to paper, lab to