Year: 2025

Terrell-Penrose Effect: Visualizing High-Speed Relativity

Pooja Kashyap

I’ll be honest, I have always thought ‘thought-experiments’ can never be visually demonstrated. And so, we would have to keep imagining intangible concepts in our minds, like, what happens to an object traveling at the speed of light, where time would seemingly stop and length would contract. However, a group of researchers in Austria did something unbelievable. They visually demonstrated the Terrell-Penrose effect, a phenomenon predicted all the way back in 1959 but never actually observed. 

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Making Terahertz Waves Work on a Chip, Without the Bulk

Pooja Kashyap

Researchers at MIT have built a small chip that can generate terahertz waves more effectively and more affordably than what’s currently out there. That’s huge, ‘cause terahertz waves sit between radio and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum, so they can carry more data than radio waves and see through more materials than infrared light. This makes them a promising candidate for faster wireless communication, sharper medical imaging, better security scanners, and smarter environmental monitoring.

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Book Review: The Great Unknown by Marcus du Sautoy

Pooja Kashyap

Have you ever felt that curious while looking up at the night sky? The idea that we are so puny in the vastness of space doesn’t make you wonder sometimes about the mysteries that lie beyond our understanding? That’s exactly the idea Marcus du Sautoy explores in The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science, first published in 2016. He has tried to explore the limits of human knowledge. And somehow, it’s both humbling and electrifying, which makes the book so fascinating to read.

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Scientists Use VR to Teach Robots Swarming Behavior by Studying Fish

Pooja Kashyap

A team of biologists and robotic engineers recently used virtual reality (VR) to crack the code of how fish school, with the goal of teaching robots to swarm in the same way. Imagine you’re at a party where everyone’s dancing to the same rhythm, but there’s no DJ or leader telling people what to do. Everyone just knows how to stay in sync, avoid bumping into each other, and respond to changes in the crowd. That’s basically what schools of fish do, and it’s something that robots have struggled to…

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Northeastern Researchers Enhance LiDAR-Based Robot Navigation Efficiency

Pooja Kashyap

A paper from Northeastern University looks at how to improve the way robots and self-driving systems determine their location and build maps using LiDAR and IMU sensors. LiDAR sensors measure distance by bouncing laser pulses off objects, while IMU sensors track motion using accelerometers and gyroscopes. So, the paper tackles a common issue in robotics called SLAM, which is, simultaneous localization and mapping. Basically, how can a robot know where it is while it’s still building the map?

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Learning Together and Alone: How We Dynamically Adjust Our Strategies

Pooja Kashyap

Have you ever found yourself trying to solve a problem on your own, sticking with your gut and your own trial-and-error? But then there are times when you just can’t figure it out and end up watching what others are doing, hoping to pick up some clues? That back-and-forth between figuring things out solo and learning from others is what this study really dives into. It looks at how people balance learning on their own versus copying others depending on how well they’re doing.

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Universe Is an Ultimate Computer: What if Space-Time is Pixelated?

Pooja Kashyap

I’m always on the lookout for some radical take when it comes to research papers, and this time, a research article by physicist Melvin Vopson totally caught my attention. Vopson suggests, what if gravity isn’t some deep, fundamental force of nature, but actually just the universe’s way of managing its information better? Sounds strange at first, but it’s got a logic to it.

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Smarter Machines, Bigger Shifts: The New Era of Robotics

Pooja Kashyap

We’ve heard a lot about ChatGPT and generative AI, but there’s another side of AI that’s moving fast, which is, robots that can think and work on their own. These are smarter machines that can learn, make decisions, and adapt to their environment. And most of these machines are already making their presence felt in places like warehouses, factories, and even retail stores.

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Supernova Remnant in Nearby Galaxy Studied via Radio

Pooja Kashyap

Astronomers just took a fresh look at a supernova remnant called MC SNR J0519–6902 tucked away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. It’s been known since the early ’80s, but there’s still a lot we don’t fully understand about it, especially when it comes to its age and how it’s evolved over time.

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