From Big Bang Till Eternity
From Big Bang Till Eternity
Prologue: A Planet in Passing In one of the cold evenings of December 1968, as the Apollo 8 mission was underway, a photograph was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders. The image would come to be known as ‘Earthrise’. It showed a distant, radiant Earth lifting itself above the barren horizon of the […]
From Earthrise to Earthset: Rethinking Earth in the Age of Artemis Read More »
Introduction We use our smartphones daily, often unaware that their chips harness peculiar properties of the quantum world. The strange effects once thought confined to atoms are now a part of devices we barely notice. In 2025, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic
When Quantum Becomes Real: The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics Read More »
Introduction In the mid-20th century, British mathematician and logician Alan Turing proposed a provoking question – “Can machines think?”. Known as the “Turing Test”, it is essentially experimenting whether a machine can convincingly imitate a human to the point where it is difficult for the interrogator to tell the difference. In such a case, the machine
More Human than Human: What do LLMs passing the Turing Test reveal? Read More »
A recent discovery from the depths of the Pacific Ocean is transforming our understanding of oxygen production. Scientists have unearthed a startling phenomenon – “Dark Oxygen”, the production of oxygen without sunlight deep on the seafloor. With implications for everything from marine ecosystems to how life on Earth began, this discovery confronts conventional wisdom and
Dark Oxygen: A Groundbreaking Discovery from Ocean Depths Read More »
A remarkable collaboration of space and ground-based telescopes has helped a team of scientists identify a gamma-ray burst and detect the element tellurium in the after-effects of the explosion. Tellurium is a very rare element on Earth and this discovery can help in gaining a deeper understanding of the origins of such elements in the
Cosmic Alchemy: James Webb Detects Tellurium in a Kilonova Read More »
In the vastness of space, a mysterious force lurks, shaping the evolution of the Universe in ways never imagined – Dark Energy. Challenging our perception of the natural world, it defies our understanding, causing the Universe to expand at an accelerated pace, thereby stretching the fabric of space and time itself. What exactly is Dark
Dark Energy: A Window into the Nature of Space and Time Read More »
Humankind’s innate curiosity has driven us to explore the unknown and to seek answers to the mysteries that surround us. Among the most enduring puzzles captivating the imagination are Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). These phenomena, often encountered in our skies and beyond, offer a tantalizing blend of fascination and bafflement. What is UAP? Observations of
Beyond Beliefs: NASA’s Quest for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Read More »
Introduction: The significance of theoretical physics in shaping modern science Our society has advanced by leaps and bounds. Not invoking the role of theoretical physics in this advancement would be a denial of the massive impact it has brought into our lives. Theoretical and experimental physics constitute the realm of physics, which in turn, in
Origin of Earth – The Nebular Hypothesis My name is Earth. I am the third planet from the Sun. Lying in its ‘Goldilocks Zone’, I am the only planet in the Solar System and perhaps in the Universe with the right conditions to support life. I am home to a breathtaking diversity of life forms
Introduction In the grand tapestry of knowledge, there exists a jewel, a wondrous gem that shines with exquisite beauty—a gem known as Calculus. With its elegant underpinnings and intricate subtlety, it unbosoms the secrets of the Universe, serving as an essential tool for unraveling the enigma of the world around us. A branch of mathematics
Calculus and the Cosmic Symphony: Deciphering the Mathematics of the Universe Read More »
One of the greatest gifts that we possess as a species is to express, share and interact with fellow beings. The ability to cultivate any idea and bring out the pearls of innovations, discoveries, and inventions from the oysters of chaotic and complex environments is an achievement second to none – and all this revolves
Beyond Words: The Rise of Foundation Models & Large Language Models (LLMs) in AI Read More »
A celestial event that marks the transition from winter to spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the Spring Equinox captures the essence of rebirth and rejuvenation. Free from the winter’s icy grip, and heralding the arrival of blooms, this event has been revered by cultures around the world for thousands of years and remains an enduring
The Poetry of Spring: How the spring equinox inspires growth and new beginnings Read More »
Space is enormously huge and vast. The idea of life forming or even blooming somewhere in the Universe has been a topic of ongoing research and debate. Our solar neighbor, Mars, offers both opportunities as well as hope to find life other than flourishing on our blue planet. A recent study conducted at the Search for
The New Space Race: How Artificial Intelligence is helping us find Life on Mars & Beyond Read More »
Chasing the elusive dream of a net energy gain for decades, scientists finally achieved a breakthrough in nuclear fusion. Researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California, United States achieved 54% energy gain as a part of their inertial fusion energy experiment. Nuclear Fusion: The energy source of the Universe Sunlight is the source
Fusion Energy Breakthrough: Revolutionizing Sustainability Read More »
Earth as an ecosystem is so much diverse and yet so complex. The beauty lies in the intricate balance of all the constituents thriving within it. From the tallest trees to the smallest creatures, each species play a vital role in maintaining balance and contributing to its stunning natural beauty. The ecological balance that our
AI for Sustainability: Protecting Forests For A Resilient Ecosystem Read More »
The world of Quantum Mechanics is remarkably bizarre. Even though we and our daily life experiences are governed by classical physics, the things that make us up are not. As we probe deeper and deeper into this queer world, the things that unfold defy our intuitions on an unimaginable scale. In the world of Quantum
Earth – a marvelous blue marble in the vastness of space is the only known place in the Universe that supports life. Our planet has witnessed multiple phases, of destruction and restoration alike, and has emerged triumphant on numerous occasions. But, at present, we stand at the cusp of an unimaginable and unpredictable future, and
AI for Sustainability: Harnessing Technology for a Better Future Read More »
In the 1960s, the world was grappling with events of wars and hostile relations among nations. With so much blood already shed and countless lives lost in World War I & II, time was surely testing human survival on their very own planet. With advancements in technology around the globe, powerful nations were not only
Artemis I: Carrying the Hopes of Humanity Read More »
Our day-to-day lives are composed of numerous things and objects, all of which define or construct our experience of the world that we live in. Our work tables, mobiles, laptops, that bus honking down the road, your favorite restaurant, that bench in the park, your favorite person, and you – all of them are fundamentally
What is the World Made of? Read More »
Located around 6500 light years away, in the constellation Serpens Cauda, a region of space is brimming with star formation processes. Lying within the Eagle Nebula, these gigantic sprouts of interstellar dust and gas resemble pillars, and have congruously been named the ‘Pillars of Creation’. Read our detailed analysis on James Webb’s first images by
The Pillars of Creation – JWST Edition Read More »
Coming straight from the pages of a science fiction book, humanity achieved yet another milestone the past week. NASA, in collaboration with the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and other international partners, deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a binary asteroid system on 26th September 2022. This is the first step toward solidifying our planet’s
World’s First Planetary Defense Read More »
Apart from the classical world that humans interact with, there exists another realm of sub-atomic particles governed by Quantum Mechanics.
Quantum Mechanics: An Introduction Read More »
A puzzle that has been bothering researchers about the presence of heavy quarks inside a proton seems to have got a convincing closure, at least for now. Scientists with the non-profit NNPDF collaboration have provided a shred of conclusive evidence that protons do contain an intrinsic charm quark, thus opening up new research in the
Protons are Even More ‘Charm’ing Read More »
Back when the early humans started to wonder and contemplate the night sky, it would have been far easier than in the current times to appreciate the beauty of the universe with a naked eye. The murky sky would have been brimming with countless stars, some in the backdrop of the Milky Way, and some
Dark Matter: The Invisible Glue and Why does it even matter? Read More »
The space that we are in, or which constitutes our observable universe, is infinite. But why is there a concept of infinity? Couldn’t there be an end to space? Space could very well be finite with some edges around it beyond which it should cease to exist. If it has some sort of a shape,
What are the different levels of the Multiverse? Read More »
There are times in our lives when waiting certainly yields fruits of success through the seeds deeply rooted back in time. The James Webb Space Telescope, a modern marvel of human endeavor and engineering, has revealed its first full-color images and spectroscopic data, thereby heralding the dawn of a new era in astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics,
Analysis of James Webb’s First Images Read More »
This article was revised on 21st June 2023. The official astronomical summer season is here and today marks the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Days have begun to get longer during the last few months and today is the day when it will be the longest. By the longest day, we usually
The First Day of Summer – Summer Solstice Read More »
You might have thought about the vastness of space and the universe, does it have any edge, where it extends up to, and what lies outside it. With the recent focus and discussions in contemporary science and movies, the term multiverse is no longer science fiction but conventional wisdom. What about another ‘you’ in a
The Multiverse Is (Un)real Read More »
On a dark summer night, when one gazes towards the sky, a hazy band of white light is visible. This band constitutes most of our galaxy, the Milky Way, visible from Earth’s perspective. Within the band and the constellation Sagittarius, lies a supermassive object, whose presence was revealed by decades of studies of observations of
Sagittarius A* – Black Hole at the heart of the Milky Way Read More »
Perhaps the most mysterious and intriguing thing in the Universe would be a region of infinitesimal small area around an infinitesimal dense point, popularly known as a Black Hole. The region where the current understanding of physical laws breaks down and the notion of even time and space is irrelevant, Black Holes do provide us
Black Holes: An Introduction Read More »
The James Webb Space Telescope (also called JWST or Webb) is the world’s largest, unbelievingly capable, and most complex space telescope ever built in human history. It is an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It is a successor to the highly versatile Hubble Space Telescope
James Webb Telescope – Earth’s Time Machine Read More »
It was in the earlier 1920s that after achieving all the fame in the world, Einstein was not still content. Brilliant breakthroughs in physics such as the Photoelectric Effect, the Brownian Motion, the Special and General Theories of Relativity, to name a few, had come from the genius mind of Einstein. But there was still
A Mathematical Beauty: String Theory Read More »
Let me begin with a story of our neighbor, Mars. At one point in time, it was believed to have the present Earth-like conditions, with streams of water flowing over its surface, an atmosphere, and a magnetic field of its own. As time passed, Mars turned into a desolate planet with no activity of life
Auroras – The Northern Lights Read More »
This article was revised on 20th December 2022. It’s not been many months since the Autumn Equinox. Our planet had started to appear reddish-brown especially in the Northern Hemisphere and since then the days have begun to decrease in the terms of daylight duration. Slowly over time, cool breezes have started flowing and the daylight
The First Day Of Winter Read More »
Created by the movement of bodies of heavy masses and traveling through the vastness of space, the waveforms associated with the curvature of spacetime are known as the gravitational waves. Quite similar to the formation of ripples in a pond or a lake whenever you throw a stone in it, gravitational waves travel outwards through
What Are Gravitational Waves? Read More »
Ever since the famous ‘Turing Test’, the debate for developing machines with human mind-like capabilities has only grown. The test is for a computer in which it can use written communications to fool a human interrogator into thinking that it is a person. While today’s machines do imitate certain actions of humans, no computer has
The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence Read More »
Deflecting a space object seems no longer an element of science fiction – courtesy of NASA’s DART mission, a part of the Planetary Defense strategy established in 2016. The mission launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vanderberg Space Force Base in California on Wednesday, Nov 24, 2021. What is Planetary Defense?You might have heard
Defending Earth – NASA’s DART Mission Read More »
Moons are fascinating, aren’t they? Orbiting around the planets, they seem to have undertaken the solemn oath of being together, gravitationally bounded, in the large family of ours, the Solar System. One of them, among 219 known to date, is quite interesting. Saturn’s largest moon and the second-largest in the Solar System – Titan. One
Life Beyond Earth: Titan Read More »
Imagine you had a glass filled with water and you accidentally spill it over. A thought spontaneously would have occurred in your mind – what could if I was able to undo it? Unfortunately, as we experience in our daily lives, any such action is not permissible. What prohibits then reversing the time and going
Why Does Time Move Only Forward? Read More »
In continuation to my previous article 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics – Part 1, we shall here discuss in detail the complex systems whose study fetched Giorgio Parisi one half of the 2021 Nobel prize in Physics. His discoveries of hidden patterns in random complex materials are one of the most influential contributions to the theory
2021 Nobel Prize in Physics – Part 2 Read More »
As I was leafing through one of the magazines, I had fresh memories of the news of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics which the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced recently. It has been awarded “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems”. With complexity making waves in my mind, I began
2021 Nobel Prize in Physics – Part 1 Read More »
Stars!! Oh, how beautiful they are! Sparkling like diamonds in the night sky, generating curiosities in the minds of young and the olds alike, and guiding travellers and voyagers across the ages. Each one of us, at some point in our lives, has watched them twinkling and might have wondered why they do so. I
Atmospheric Scintillation: Why Stars Twinkle And Planets Don’t Read More »
This article was revised on 23rd September 2023. It’s the time of the year again!! The Autumn Equinox, also known as Fall equinox is here (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the leaves are slowly turning to hues of red, yellow and brown. The word “equinox” has its roots in Latin where “equi” means equal and
The First Day of Autumn Read More »
52 years ago, the most spectacular event happened that changed our civilization as a whole. 3 humans, aboard on a Saturn V rocket were to do something never ever done before – to land on the Moon, yes the same Moon that has been lighting up Earth’s night sky since ages, and every human being,
First Moon Landing Read More »