Author: Bhagyeshwari Chauhan

Engineering grad. Amateur Writer. Astronomy enthusiast. Eccentric. Explorer.

The earliest evidence of surgical treatments dates back to around 10 thousand years ago. Archaeological excavations revealed trephinated human skulls: skulls with holes in them. From then on, countless innovations in surgical procedures have taken place: smaller and precise instrumentation, drastically reduced post surgery mortality and minimally invasive surgery. Today, we witness robots performing this. But how did surgical robots come into the picture? Also Read: Quantum Computing and Neural Chips: The Future of Computing After Moore’s Law The Rise of Surgical Robots Today, the medical realm has hugely benefited from surgical robots. These have immensely extended a surgeon’s capabilities by…

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The past decade has had India witness a burgeoning electronic music scene. In a time when adoption of electronic dance music was skepticized, Nikhil Chinapa’s ‘Submerge has been a major driving force in this changing this music trend for the better. Founded by Nikhil Chinapa, Pearl and Hermit Sethi in 2003, Submerge today enjoys a huge fan following owing to its EDM promotion through upcoming DJs and events in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and Hyderabad. Functioning as an artist management company, a concert organizer, and promoter, and as a booking agency, Submerge organizes plenty of electronic dance concerts in India today. No…

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Remember that time when Moore’s law completely disrupted the computing industry?Decades after decades, as computer chips started getting smaller, virtually every electronic company sprang into action to create the next multipurpose smart device. There was a time when phones looked like this: You could call, text, maybe play snakes at that time, and it had about 6 megabytes of memory – which was cutting edge at the time. Then, every two years, phones got faster and smaller. Storage capacities rose from 8GB to 16GB to 32 GB and so on. This incremental technology we have been witnessing over the years…

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When Elon Musk gives a TED talk, you ought to hear him out. Last month, in a one-on-one conversation with Chris Anderson, Musk opened up about his gigantic plans for humanity’s future in the 4 most pressing topics of innovation. He outlines the key underlying concepts behind realizing his outlandish visions of alleviating vehicular congestion, his part-time role in Hyperloop, his Mars Colonization plans, and Tesla’s introduction of a new line of electric vehicles. If you haven’t seen it already, do so right away The Boring Company With an ever-growing global population, vehicular congestion is inevitable. However, Musk believes that…

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It is amply clear by now, or has been for quite some time, that Elon Musk is on a mission to transform the future of the human species. In a time when electric cars, solar roofs and re-usable rockets seemed like a distant dream, this entrepreneur with an impeccable business style sprang into action and brought this futuristic tech in our reach. Today, Tesla has built itself a global mass market and SpaceX has demonstrated re-usability of its Falcon rocket boosters and is planning to colonize Mars. Meanwhile Solar city (now acquired by Tesla) is powering up an entire island. Musk’s companies signify technical prowess…

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Arrival is another brilliant directorial venture from Denis Villeneuve. Villeneuve is the virtuoso French-Canadian filmmaker behind thrillers like ‘Prisoners’ and ‘Sicario’. The movie is adapted from Ted Chiang’s award winning tale ‘Story of Your Life’, a contemplation of how powerful language can be in shaping a civilization. “Language is the cornerstone of any civilization” Before setting out to watch this sci-fi thriller, I knew little about what the story encompasses. There’s Dr Louise Banks, a linguistics professor (played by academy award nominee Amy Adams). Louise is recruited alongside physicist Ian Donnelly (played by oscar nominee Jeremy Renner) by a US government functionary (played…

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We’ve been beguiled by the stars ever since Astronomy was discovered. Or is it the other way round? In ancient times, our curiosity for exploring beyond the unknown could only be quenched by astute observation and fertile imagination. Ever since the birth of the telescope 400 years ago, we have gradually unraveled the physics behind numerous cosmic events, gazed into the far reaches of the universe, discovered stupendous number of galaxies and other cosmic bodies, and observed physics-defying phenomenon like quasars and black holes. In this quest for knowledge, super telescopes of the past have opened new frontiers of space science research and…

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Humans have always been on a never ending quest to explore distant cosmic shores for potential life and habitat. In this pursuit, the space industry has witnessed humongous growth over the past three decades. The rise of private rocket company called SpaceX, a recent emergence of another by the Amazon founder called Blue Origin, a private organization set to land the first humans on Mars called Mars One, and the ground-breaking research of organizations like NASA and ISRO – all of which are relentlessly pursuing the idea of expanding our reach beyond the realms of our home planet Earth. In this…

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Exploration is embedded in our very DNA. We venture out into unresolved scientific territories, to demystify mysteries, and to open our minds to unimaginable realities. But most of all, we do it because we crave exploration. We always have! About 200,000 years ago, the first modern humans originated in Africa. Before long, they began venturing into unchartered lands beyond their origin, to satisfy curiosity and ensure further survival. This marked the beginning of man’s evolution, paving the way for developed civilizations on Earth. But the Earth was never enough. Our ancestors gazed into the skies in awe, wondering what lied beyond the vast expanse…

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Our telescopes have been gazing into the deepest parts of the universe, unraveling mysterious findings as well as hinting at others. Ever since man stepped on the moon, we have envisioned to explore what’s beyond and form mankind’s first mark on the un-explored planets of the solar system. While NASA plans to land humans on Mars in 2030s, Voyager 1 — the space craft that has traveled the furthest from Earth than any man made object in existence — has entered interstellar space to show us the cosmos like never before. We’ve talked enough about interstellar travel. Literature on the topic is immense,…

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It is abundantly clear that climate change is real. But what’s more – it has already begun to have a pernicious effect on natural ecosystems, globally. According to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Science, 2016 has been the hottest year on record. While a target temperature rise of 1.5–2°C (2.7-3.6°F) compared to the pre-industrial climate is acceptable, 2016 was approximately 1.3°C (2.4°F) warmer than we had thought relative to the pre-industrial time period. To put in perspective – it translates to almost an extra decade of warming. This global temperature rise than normal has begun to show dire effects on sea levels and…

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A hundred ago, physicists worldwide held on to Isaac Newton’s depiction of the universe created more than 200 years ago. They believed space and time were immutable, and could be quantified using known measurements. Gradually, astronomers worldwide made more accurate observations and performed calculations to map the structure of the observable universe. They began to discover something very confounding: a mysterious force that has existed since the big bang. This, they called “Dark Energy”. The term ‘Dark Energy’ is often confused with Dark matter due to the latter’s infelicitous name. Dark energy is not matter – it is simply energy. It permeates the universe,…

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