A Beautiful Idea: Why Explore Space?

It’s good to be home! After a week sweltering in China for work and turning into a human puddle in 80% humidity, it’s nice to be back in Delhi… where I can swelter and turn into a puddle in 70% humidity…  Anyway, my heat-woes aside, I’m kicked to be sharing this with you folks something…

God of Gravity

So… I had a strangely hilarious little exchange with someone over at Google+ (yes, I’m one of those rare animals that actually uses it!) and it made me chuckle aplenty and even made me think of something I’d not really considered before about “gravity”, the think we take so for granted. …or I could just…

Supernova… Et tu, Eta Carinae.

As seen on Cosmos: Eta Carinae! At the turn of the 19th century, the binary star system Eta Carinae was faint and undistinguished. In the first decades of the century, it became brighter and brighter, until, by April 1843, it was the second brightest star in the sky, outshone only by Sirius (which is almost…

Hubble spots the Eye of Sauron! In Space!?!

Floating at the centre of this new Hubble image is a lidless purple eye, staring back at us through space. This ethereal object, known officially as [SBW2007] 1 but sometimes nicknamed SBW1, is a nebula with a giant star at its centre. The star was originally twenty times more massive than our Sun, and is…

Reassessing Heroism

When anyone uses the term “hero”, everyone (myself included) almost instinctively think of people who are brave in the face of death and who are self-sacrificing – we think of the idealised figures like Che Guevara, Rob Roy, Tipu Sultan, Joan of Arc and of course the ones like William Wallace in Braveheart who are…

The Drones are Planets?!

Oh for f***s sake! I was just sent this obscure and otherwise missed-without-even being-news article from the BBC network that the good folks of the Indian Army, who are guarding our border with China, actually… well just read this and see for yourself: Tensions have been high in the disputed Himalayan border area between the…