Looking for billow clouds

First I wondered where that solitary cloud was going. Then I noticed a longer ‘tail’ of similar clouds following it, looking vaguely like billow clouds. Are they billow clouds? Billow clouds are the product of a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. If two fluids are flowing in parallel layers at different velocities, and have different densities, then the …

Jayant Narlikar’s pseudo-defence of Darwin

Jayant Narlikar, the noted astrophysicist and emeritus professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, recently wrote an op-ed in The Hindu titled ‘Science should have the last word’. There’s probably a tinge of sanctimoniousness there, echoing the belief many scientists I’ve met have that science will answer everything, often blithely oblivious to …

Billow clouds, shocked streams & shedding eddies

I flew from Bangalore to Delhi on Tuesday. The flight was early in the day, at 6, and so I had the wonderful opportunity to watch a sunrise from above a sea of clouds. One very beautiful sight was the presence of uniquely shaped ones, styled like the waves in Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. I recalled having …