Science

350 posts

Worlds between theory and experiment

5 min read
Scicomm Science ATLAS detector experimental physics Heinrich Hertz Higgs boson Isaac Newton Jean Perrin Johannes Kepler Josiah Willard Gibbs Large Hadron Collider leptons Ludwig Boltzmann neutrinos New Physics particle collider particle physics quantum field theory Standard Model of particle physics weakly interacting massive particles

Once Isaac Newton showed that a single gravitational law plus his rules of dynamics could reproduce the orbits of planets that Johannes Kepler had predicted, explain tides on Earth, and predict that a…

Robbing NISAR to pay ISRO

6 min read
Analysis Science AK Anil Kumar DFSAR earthquake forecasting geological profiling ground-penetrating radar Indian Space Research Organisation ISTRAC Karen St Germain L-band radar mesh antenna NASA S-band radar synthetic aperture radar The Free Press Journal

A.K. Anil Kumar, the director of ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking, and Command Network (a.k.a. ISTRAC), has reportedly made some seriously misleading comments as part of his convocation address at a Mah…

Why do we trust scientists?

7 min read
Analysis Culture Science Brian Keating Brian Wansink communalism contributory expertise epistemic dependence facts Francesca Gino Harry Collins Indian knowledge systems interactional expertise John Hardwig Max Weber Mertonian norms organised scepticism p-hacking rational-legal authority Robert Evans scientific expertise social knowledge social prestige

Individuals can’t master the mathematics of cryptography or the molecular biology of vaccines, yet they still trust these fields of science and the suggestions of their exponents to make decisions.…

On Jane Goodall

5 min read
Analysis Science Bigfoot bushmeat chimpanzees Colonialism Derek Bryceson Eslom Mpongo ethology genetically modified organisms Gombe Stream National Park hunting game Jane Goodall population control Rashidi Kikwale Seeds of Hope Tanzania whataboutery zoonotic spillover

Jane Goodall was a celebrated figure in conservation. Her work with chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania redefined primatology. However, more than a few publications as well as co…

What does a quantum Bayes’s rule look like?

7 min read
Analysis Scicomm Science Bayes's rule Bayesian network Bayesianism Choi operators commutativity completely positive trace-preserving map noise correction Physical Review Letters principle of minimum change probability quantum computing quantum information theory stochastic processes unitarity variational Bayesian inference

Bayes's rule is one of the most fundamental principles in probability and statistics. It allows us to update our beliefs in the face of new evidence. In its simplest form, the rule tells us how to…

Using 10,000 atoms and 1 to probe the Bohr-Einstein debate

9 min read
Analysis Scicomm Science Albert Einstein Bohr-Einstein debate complementarity Debye-Waller factor double-slit experiment hidden variables lasers Niels Bohr optical lattice optical tweezer Pan Jianwei quantum entanglement Quantum mechanics rubidium atoms scattered light uncertainty principle wavepacket Wolfgang Ketterle

The double-slit experiment has often been described as the most beautiful demonstration in physics. In one striking image, it shows the strange dual character of matter and light. When particles such…

Dispelling Maxwell's demon

12 min read
Analysis Scicomm Science arrow of time Charles Bennett decoherence Dennis Gabor entropy information theory James Clerk Maxwell Léon Brillouin Leo Szilard Maxwell's demon no-cloning theorem quantum entanglement quantum information Quantum mechanics Rolf Landauer Schrödinger's cat second law of thermodynamics unitarity wavefunction collapse

Maxwell’s demon is one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of physics, a puzzle first posed in the 1860s that continues to shape scientific debates to this day. I’ve struggled to mak…