I find him in between me and helio / perched onto the cosmic cobweb / stygian is the work of paradise / crawling on quantum cadaver / I feel him adroit, in the void / reverberations of his / echo lures me in entropy / and strings pearls of / my cosmogyral choker / I find him between andromeda and me / hieroglyphed in the papyrus of / time, inked dark fluid / I wrote him odes, now / leached by primordial nucleosynthesis / and he found me, a phantasm of the dark / an unfathomable gravity / waltzing in the lacuna / with a veil of oblivion / a warped discrepancy in / the master equation / I find him everywhere
🪐Weekly Astrobiological Musings🪐
The world of astrobiology has been swirling with novel research now supported by data from JWST, Hubble Space Telescope, Euclid and TESS. Scientists have been eyeing sub neptune planets (in hopes of discovering a world teeming with tropical life and water), neptunian trojans, a part of the scientific community still anticipating the discovery of Vulcan or now famously known as planet nine, nitrogen rich planestesimals and everything else; from the macro to micro. It is interesting to see the river of research papers being published every week and the new directions our infinitely meandering riverine of exobiology science is taking. From magnetic auroras on Jupiter’s poles to vivanite and greigite being found on Mars’ Jazero crater now popularised as the “leopard spots” or “the most significant evidence of life found yet”.
Which brings us to today's guide (reading research papers)
Reading science, especially dense topics can feel like skimming through Egyptian papyrus and tablets (unless you are Egyptian yourself). Here’s a proven step-by-step guide to go from confusion to clarity, designed to make you a pro at understanding even the most advanced concepts.
Learn to Love: Pick one subject that catches your interest and you are genuinely passionate about. Science is messy and requires you to love it to its full potential.
Start with the Hard Stuff- Don’t start with beginner material. Go straight for advanced-level research papers or academic articles. Pro Tip: Look for open-access journals or preprint archives like arXiv.org Yes, you will feel lost, but that’s the point. When you don't understand a sentence (which will statistically be the third sentence in the paper).
Look up the citations on research AI tools like Elicit, Perplexity, and Scholarcy. Ask for a summary of that paper or concept. Repeat for every unclear line until you understand the context. As you understand individual sentences, connect them to create a coherent whole.
Now go to basics: Once the hard work is done, now skim through beginner-friendly books and articles. This fills in the gaps with easy-to-digest explanations and creates those amazing aha! moments as the dots connect.
✨ Bonus Tip: Beginner resources will feel like a breeze because your brain has already built neural pathways from tackling the harder content first!
Rinse and Repeat
Start out with Level 5 and then move to Level 1, you are guaranteed to succeed.
What is coming this week:
An ode to greek goddesses wevaed in with celestial motifs in a way that blends together classic literature and astronomy
A review of article of the lastest research paper by royal astronomical society of nitrogen right planestesimals
I would like to welcome all our new subscribers, I hope you enjoy this meteoric voyage
