Author: Krishna Reddy

Roll back approximately twenty years. What do you see? Mankind had just tapped into the power of transistors. We started exploiting combinations of multiple silicon transistors to perform basic binary tasks. We did not stop there, however. Mankind’s best minds worked together to innovate further. There were smaller transistors – offering higher power. Capacities doubled almost every 18 months – validating Moore’s law every single time. Apart from exponentially faster computing systems, the current pace of technological progress also teases us with fully autonomous machines or robots. These fully autonomous machines will not tire, will not rest and will be highly efficient. As…

Sony DADC has put out Cake on Blu-ray & DVD, an absolute treat for all Jennifer Aniston fans. The film stars Jennifer Aniston in the lead along with the talented Sam Worthington, Anna Kendrick, Adriana Barraza, Felicity Huffman, and William H. Macy. We got ourselves a copy to check it out.  Daniel Barnz directs this stirring drama film while Patrick Tobin wrote this piece of art. This movie won Daniel Barnz a Golden Goblet award for best screenplay at the Shanghai International Film Festival. Jennifer Aniston expectedly performs, what I would call a spectacular job in the film – it even earned…

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, It Follows is an attempt at a classic American supernatural horror motion picture. The movie debuted at 2014 Cannes Film Festival. It then went on to receive a a limited release on March 13, 2015 while a wide release was on March 27, 2015. Now, Sony DADC has put out the DVD & Blu-ray. We checked it out for you. Plot Annie, played by Bailey Spry is seeing fleeing her house in fear. She drives to the beach and calls her father with tearful eyes. By next day morning, she’s found murdered. The focus then shifts to Jay…

The first thing that may come to your mind when I mention shared dreaming is probably Inception. Undoubtedly, the movie from Christopher Nolan was fascinating. It also asked us a very interesting question – is shared dreaming possible? Or is mutual dreaming destined to remain science fiction? Before we explore the plausibility of dream sharing, it’s important to understand how dreams work in the first place. Dreams are, simply put, a series of images, ideas, or even emotions that usually occur involuntarily within the mind while we sleep. There isn’t any scientific consensus on why people dream, but we sure know *when*…

Antarctica has long remained an isolated continent. Textbooks in school don’t tell us much about it, and only a few careers involve anything to do with Antarctica. For a long time, it has conjured only one visualisation to us – plain white. Plain white is not far away from the truth. Antarctica has always a mystery to humankind. The continent is pure, both metaphorically and figuratively. There is much more to Antarctica than ice and water. In fact, the continent holds some valuable lessons for humanity – lessons that’d go a long way in ensuring our future, both on Earth & among…

Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity allows wormholes to be a possibility. But no one has ever observed a wormhole yet. Black holes were theorised to exist as a result of General Relativity, and later observed as our tech improved. Our own Milky Way has one at the center called Sagittarius A*. Wormholes however, remain elusive – which relegates wormholes slightly towards the realm of science fiction. Just the spacetime ones though, because physicists have now managed to create ‘magnetic’ wormhole. Related: 100 Years Later, Relativity Is As Relevant As Ever To understand a magnetic wormhole and its significance, we need an understanding…

With the pace of advancement the artificial intelligence industry is witnessing, it isn’t unreasonable to fear a lot of human jobs will be replaced by automated systems and robots. At the same time, it is realistic to expect that none of these fears are going to slow down the advent of better artificial intelligence. When have humans ever stopped innovating owing to ethical pressure (except maybe in the case of human cloning)? Like it or not, the robots are coming. And since they are, it won’t be surprising if they eventually replace most jobs – such as lawyers, music production,…

Is our life real? Are we truly living? Or are we just segments of computer code? Wake up Neo. There’s isn’t just one answer to this. In fact, we currently do not have a perfect answer. Physicists are engaged in a deep debate on the nature of our reality, with strong arguments supporting the notion that our universe may be a simulated. If this is true, the next big question is – why? Is Life a Simulation? Is there a way to find out? According to the brain in a vat scenario, our minds cannot tell if we’re perceiving a simulated…

Relativity is more than a hundred years old. The year 2015 was the International Year of Light. The title isn’t exaggerated focus – Relativity effects our daily life in fundamental ways. Einstein’s Relativity theory essentially tells us that all our satellites in outer space are travelling through time. The proper term for this is time dilation. If not kept in check, the satellites would basically travel to the future, technically. Let’s focus on navigational satellites (popularly, but incorrectly referred to as ‘GPS’). The Global Navigation Satellite System is possible because of Relativity. In other words, the theory is why GPS or…

We humans have been ranting about saving the planet for quite a while now. A significant fraction of our species wants us to cut down on the frankly scary amount of waste we spew into our atmosphere, while another economically-oriented fraction wants us to focus on meeting our enormous energy needs first. Solar energy is a great way to go about generating clean energy. Even Tesla’s Gigafactory, poised to change the world, will be powered by this energy source. But there’s merit in the argument that you can’t have solar generating enough for all of us. Which is why, there’s nuclear…