If I glance at your passport, I am able to figure out — depending on where you are from — your age, your country of origin, your full name, your social security number, and your gender, among other things, and in order to retrieve these bits of information from your passport, I need first and foremost to be able […]
Tag: Astrophysics Page 1 of 2
Taking a step back from our day-to-day activities can sometimes have an invigorating effect, as it allows us to pause for a moment, reflect on where we stand, and see where we want to go from there. This article gives a literal spin to this reflective exercise: Where do we actually stand in the broader […]
It goes without saying that it is hard to observe something that we cannot perceive with our own eyes. Luckily, science and technology have come a long way in helping us to detect the unseeable. Think of optical and atomic force microscopes showing how the Shewanella oneidensis bacterium extracts oxygen from toxic metals, mirrors and […]
Going from one point in space to another without actually traversing the distance. Does that sound mind-bendingly improbable? And stretching our mind even a bit further, the destination of that eccentric journey may well be located in a different universe altogether or lie in the past. It is Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity that […]
Sometimes we are gazing at the stars, scintillating reassuringly across the sky, as if we are yearning for a long-forgotten speck of what once felt as home. An enigmatic melancholy, barely noticeable, yet ever so present, falls upon us. Would that nostalgic state of mind not make more sense if we knew that the body […]