Soumya's Weird Musings

 On May 18, 2016, a blog was born. Were it still active today, it would have been active for five years. Alas, it was not meant to be. This is the story of what Amateur Astronomy meant to me.     At one point, it was not a frequent occurrence for me to find someone as passionate about astronomy or astrophysics as I consider myself to be. So I was glad to make a friend who had the idea to publish our ideas in the form of a blog. But call it circumstance. Call it accountability. I don’t know. At one point, the frequency of posts was reduced suddenly. At the time, even I didn’t know the cause for it. I suppose I should have taken it as a warning of this blog’s dismal future. We were only two students with a lot to share and enthusiastic to do so. But you can only escape schooling for so long. That is exactly what happened. I make no secret of how my final year of high school affected me. And so, I bear no anger towards the person I was supposed to run the blo...

 How wonderful it is to have a national holiday dedicated to science. I want to make a preemptive statement here that I have been on a visit to RRCAT twice before: once in 2016 and once in 2017. (That would put me in tenth and eleventh class respectively.) As a result, I already had an idea of what to expect from the webinar. That being said, I feel that Science Day this year was at an advantage due to being virtual. It goes against intuition, I know. But I do have a justification for saying that. A lot of the work that happens at RRCAT – which is also what puts it at the frontiers of research – is high-energy research, or even research that requires extreme environments. Even in an in-person visit, it would not have been possible to look at those experiments as closely as we would have liked. Thus, that is a parameter that remained largely unchanged over a virtual meet. By virtue of having visited RRCAT before, I feel justified saying that in terms of the material that was...

“You’re like Hanuman,” said my mother. I started. “Excuse me?” “You always need to be reminded of your own ability.” Abilities, indeed. It can be difficult for me to toot my own horn. It’s not a good thing to do to begin with, but in some sense, I could use the ability. What are my skills? What can I be confident about? Granted, these are questions I’ll keep asking myself for a long time, maybe even for the rest of my life. However, certain things I would like to be confident about. I’m hoping that opening up about it will help somehow. And maybe along the way, I may answer a question I have been asked so many times that it’s gotten stale for me. Honestly, even beginning to write this article is a huge step for me, one I struggled to take as I typed this. Astrophysics and astronomy. That’s what this article is about. And even then, there’s so much I’d like to encapsulate. This…subject (let’s call it that for now) has been an important part of my life for thirteen years now. As...

English source (also written by me): https://astronomyamateurs.blogspot.com/2017/03/in-defense-of-philosophy.html इस लेख का विषय दर्शनशास्त्र दो कारणों के लिए है। पहला ये, कि पिछले कुछ महीनों में मुझे इस विषय पर नई जानकारी मिली है, और दूसरा ये, कि मुझे ऐसा दिखा है कि कई लोगों को इस शास्त्र की उपेक्षा करना बड़ा आसान लगता है।   कहने को तो ये प्रश्न भी उठाया जा सकता है कि विज्ञान के बारे में लिखते-लिखते बीच में ही दर्शनशास्त्र क्यों आ गया। इसी कारण से मुझे दर्शनशास्त्र का पक्ष लेना उचित लगता है। आज दर्शनशास्त्र का मतलब कुछ ऐसा हो गया है कि इस शास्त्र में बेहूदा या परेशान कर देने वाले सवाल उठाए जाते हैं। यदि कल परीक्षा या ज़रूरी काम हो, तो कोई अपने अस्तित्व के कारण के बारे में चिंतन क्यों करना चाहेगा ? करना चाहिए। कुछ भी कहिये, आज दर्शनशास्त्र के कारण ही हमारी दुनिया को आकार मिला है। कई बार, कई संस्थाएँ आपको उनके इरादों के बारे में बताना चाहेंगी। उनका कहने का मतलब यही रहेगा कि उनके अमूर्त विचार क्या हैं। अमूर्त विचार... मैंने इन शब्दों का इसलिए उपयोग किया क्योंकि इंसानों के ...

  Conceived: 30 Aug, 2020 Completed and Recited: 29 Sep, 2020 With this poem, I attach a recitation which is my attempt at bringing a tune to it. Hope you enjoy. Shut the doors to my heart And hope that it's a start Can't really trust who you are  And I know I belong among the stars. Watch me raise the walls that I have built Against your words laced with gilt And when the gilt corrodes, a light is shone: The Universe is what I call my own. And yet you could be a treasure trove Sometimes the glitter can be gold And diamonds are made from coal; But remember you won't outshine my goal. Yes, I've seen the black and white  Changing days bring changing tides But 'til I know who you are I belong among the stars.

There’s crazy drama around me. It’s like witnessing two middle schoolers fighting. Because of the risk of sounding holier-than-thou, I don’t want to get into it. It’s just a sentence to remember as you read the rest of this. Instead, I will talk about my shenanigans as I stroll on my house’s roof, looking at the sky above me. There was this one evening when the moonrise followed the setting sun almost as if the dance was choreographed – the night of the full moon and a few days before and after, the moon rises just as the sun sets. It’s one of my favorite things about the Sun-Moon-Earth system. It took me some time to notice the moonrise that night, of course – the moon was blocked by buildings for the better part of my walk that evening. But when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie… That’s when you’re reminded that there’s so darn much that makes life interesting, catches and holds your attention. The visual is something along these lines: I was facing southeast. The...

Over the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of being a participant in the IAAC: International Astronomy and Astrophysics Competition. In late April or early May, I received a link to participate in the competition. It wasn’t very high-stakes, and honestly, I don’t really have a competitive bone in my body. I had just got done deciding that I didn’t need to demonstrate my love for or proficiency in science to anyone. But something just…called to me, I guess. It was by sheer luck that they had just extended the deadline because of the COVID pandemic, or I would have missed my chance. I downloaded the document for the qualifiers and looked at the questions. They were easy enough that I breezed through them in the span of one evening and sent my answers off confidently. I had to wait an agonizingly long time to hear back, though. But when I did, I had qualified for the pre-final round. The pre-final round was difficult, but no less fun. Honestly, it was an extension of my knowled...