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‘Are we ready for this?’: Wknd interviews the astrophysicist who captured signs of life on a distant planet

Updated on: Apr 26, 2025, 15:07:09 IST
By Snehal Fernandes
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PREMIUMThe gas signatures Madhusudhan and his team at Cambridge have detected are the surest signs of life outside Earth that humanity has ever encountered. How we interpret and build on this data, from 124 light years away, will be crucial, he says.
The gas signatures Madhusudhan and his team at Cambridge have detected are the surest signs of life outside Earth that humanity has ever encountered. How we interpret and build on this data, from 124 light years away, will be crucial, he says.
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At 45, Nikku Madhusudhan has made the discovery of a lifetime. How did he know where to look? What else could these gas signatures be? An exclusive interview.

Walking home from his University of Cambridge office late at night, Nikku Madhusudhan would often look at the sky and wonder whether we were really alone in the universe.

The professor of astrophysics and exoplanetary science had always been fascinated by how the world works. As a young man, he studied geotechnical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology at Banaras Hindu University (IIT-BHU). He then earned a Master’s researching electromagnetic properties of meta-materials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Snehal Fernandes

Snehal Fernandes is senior associate editor, who joined HT in 2006. She heads the Mumbai edition’s city reporting team that writes on civic and urban governance, transport and infrastructure, health, and education. She is also the National Science Editor. With a career spanning more than two decades, her expertise lies in writing on science and technology, space, environment, sustainable development, climate change, and nuclear energy. Her work consistently breaks down, and without oversimplyfying, science and research developments into an easy read for a broad audience. In 2009, she was among the very first journalist to report on the opposition to the Jaitapur nuclear power plant in Ratnagiri (Konkan) following the Indo- US civil nuclear agreement and consistently followed it with multiple stories from ground zero; wrote about the introduction and subsequent halt to the cultivation of genetically modified (BT) brinjal, and has interviewed Nobel laureates and award winning scientists. In 2012, she was awarded ‘The Press Club Award for Excellence in Journalism’ (Political category) for reports on the mining scam in Goa. Prior to HT, she wrote on education and transport at the Indian Express. She graduated in sociology from St Xavier's College, and firmly believes in the phrase by Karl Marx that ‘Religion is the opium of the people’. When she is not keeping a tab on the going-ons in Mumbai and the scientific world, you'll find her reading world news, or watching crime/espionage series or political dramas. She can repeatedly watch Kill Bill with the same interest as Planet of the Apes and Spiderman. For someone who was not remotely interested in dogs or cats, she loves every bit of her time with her two-year-old Indie cat Bunny.

james webb space telescopeHT Wkndht weekendDwight Wheatley
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