Jayant Murthy

Let's ignore Adams' corruption and Cuomo's harassment to focus on a box a 17-year-old ticked. When I was 17, I could see ticking a box like that just because I wanted to make a point of the stupidity of narrow boundaries.

When can we stop taking these programs seriously.
- there is no global capacity to absorb US funding cuts
- nowhere with good funding and scientific environment has a hard time recruiting scientists ever
- nowhere is short of scientists, they are short of resources to do research

Ease of Doing Research in India On the recent pronouncement from DST

open.substack.com/pub/jmurthy/...

Saving children in Thailand is enough to annoy Elon.

Universities in trouble The first recognizable university, featuring established faculty, a defined curriculum, and awarding formal degrees, was the University of Bologna, established in the late 11th century.

I wrote this article on the current problems of universities for the Breakthrough Society. My first substack attempt, so please forgive the format.

jmurthy.substack.com/p/universiti...

Promising hints of life found on distant planet K2-18b Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪

👇👇👇

FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado Indiana University quietly removes profile of tenured professor and refuses to say why.

Disappearing professors.

arstechnica.com/security/202...

scroll.in/article/1080...

Deplorable, but I'm not in favor of the publishers keeping my work behind their paywalls either.

I was interviewed this week for a major US news show. My interviewer asked me why so few of my colleagues are willing to talk.

It’s not just fear of losing funding, but of being singled out by a regime that wants to purge scientists from society.

That’s why I do speak out. I wish more people would

1/n Martian Potato1 🧵

Phobos Over Mars: a time lapse from 2007 to 2021

Full size & info: flic.kr/p/2qREua9 🧪🔭
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

8 frames, captured by @esa.int Mars Express. It's stabilized on Phobos (Todd crater) to play with the disorienting effect.

All images below ⬇️

Holy cow this is spectacular news

Have there been any repercussions to Dr. Kumar? Of course, have an independent review but, if found guilty, there should be penalties.

The world is so much more interconnected than we can imagine. Which is why I worry about any large engineering project.

What does Usha think when she sees Vance saying that brown people are criminals and when he hangs out with Nazi parties?

In Civilization VII, Empires Rise and Stereotypes Start to Fall (Gift Article) The turn-based strategy game has two Ph.D. historians on the design team and a palpable appreciation of cultures across the globe. It also maintains a deeply colonialist worldview.

With a detailed exposition on why all games are colonial in nature.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/a...

‘An underground thing’: what happens to a pet when its owners are targeted by immigration raids? There’s no formal network for families caught up in mass deportations to re-home their pets, but communities are stepping up to help

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

You were merely asked to bend, but you chose to crawl.

L.K. Advani about press censorship during the Emergency.

Professor Smyth is followed by David Smith from Buglife, who is highlighting some of the key impacts of light pollution on invertebrates.

He says research has shown a 52% decline in caterpillar populations in areas with streetlights...

Karnataka’s first woman engineer didn’t let anything thwart her PhD dream—even WW2 Rajeswari Chatterjee wanted to pursue a PhD in the US, no small dream at the time. Every time she met a hurdle in the path, she merely shifted course, never straying from her goal.

My family has a long connection with Dr. Chatterjee. Her teacher in school was my great-grandfather's brother. He was blind but she told me that he knew all the students by voice. Later, she was my mother's teacher in IISc.

theprint.in/theprint-pro...

I gave Musk the benefit of doubt yesterday but, since then, he and his friends have been gaslighting us. Instead of an apology, we are told that we didn't see what we saw and shame on us for thinking anything evil.

ISRO successfully executes fourth satellite docking attempt under Spadex Mission On Sunday (January 12), ISRO carried out a trial attempt by bringing both the Chaser and Target satellites three metres closer to each other. Afterwards, the satellites were moved apart to safer dista...

After several attempts, this was the last chance. Well done.

www.indiatvnews.com/science/isro...

🧪The Japan Meteorological Agency global average surface temperature value for 2024 has been posted. The annual anomaly of the global average surface temperature in 2024 was +0.62°C above the 1991-2020 average, and was the warmest since 1891.

Scientists prize neutrality – that doesn’t cut it any more. In 2025, they must fully back the climate movement | Bill McGuire and Roger Hallam With 2024 set to go down as the hottest year on record, we know that what is coming is truly horrifying, say scientist Bill McGuire and campaigner Roger Hallam

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

‘I think there is life there. Today’: the race to put a human on Mars – in pictures Ever since the first fuzzy images of its surface were captured in 1964, Mars has sparked imaginations worldwide. As Nasa publishes its photographic archives of the red planet, will Elon Musk’s wild pr...

I'm skeptical that there will ever be more than 30 people on Mars but, still, good to go there.

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Stalin to back 'TN Iron Age parallel to Indus Valley Bronze/Copper Age' theory with carbon-dated samples Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin is expected to release report, which relies on carbon dating of samples excavated from various sites, at a technical seminar after Pongal, it is learnt.

I wish the journalist would just write about the interesting results and not try to bring politics into what should be an interesting academic work.

theprint.in/india/stalin...

Museum replica of Luna 1 spacecraft on black background

On this day in space, January 1959, the USSR launched Luna 1, the first spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravity and pass near the Moon.

📸 RIA Novosti archive, image #510848 / Alexander Mokletsov

🧪🔭

SS AMU SAT on LinkedIn: MILESTONE ACHIEVED! 🚀✨ Our payload subsystem for the SS AMU SAT project… MILESTONE ACHIEVED! 🚀✨ Our payload subsystem for the SS AMU SAT project just hit a major milestone with a successful demonstration! Proud of the team for…

www.linkedin.com/posts/ssamu-...

Is it true that up to half of people have no inner monologue? I investigated | Arwa Mahdawi Our brains are miraculous and weird things, and it turns out everyone has different ways of processing the world

I couldn't imagine not talking to myself.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...