Carolle Varughese

Fame, neglect, demotion and love. What a dramatic decade it has been for Pluto. From its discovery in 1930 way out in the Kuiper belt, this dwarf planet has been on quite the roller coaster. Last year it revealed its heart and stole ours back.

We’re getting good at finding exoplanets, but trying to find evidence of life is a little bit more complicated than I thought. It fabulously integrates the different sciences; bringing together people with various expertise to scratch their heads collectively as they try and figure out how to solve the next step in this massive conundrum. Let’s look at some of […]

New Zealand is solving some of the most captivating mysteries within the universe. One of the many research facilities is nestled within the Mackenzie basin at the Mt. John University Observatory in Lake Tekapo. It is home to some of the largest telescopes found in New Zealand; the largest being the 1.8m MOA II telescope. It uses a relatively old concept called gravitational microlensing, however this technique has only been put into play for the last 10 years to find exoplanets.