Curiosity as a public good
India has won 22 Ig Nobel prizes to date. These awards, given annually at Harvard University by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, honour studies that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”…
September 2025
Dispelling Maxwell’s demon
Maxwell’s demon is one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of physics, a puzzle first posed in the 1860s that continues to shape scientific debates to this day. I’ve struggled to make…
Behold, liquid carbon
Carbon is famous for its many solid forms. It’s the soot in air pollution, the graphite in pencil leads, and the glittering diamond in expensive jewellery. It’s also the carbon nanotubes in biosensors and fullerenes…
CSIR touts dubious ‘Ayurveda’ product for diabetes
At 6 am on September 13, the CSIR handle on X.com published the following post about an “anti-diabetic medicine” called either “Daiba 250” or “Diabe 250”, developed at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM):…
A cricket beyond politics
On September 11, the Supreme Court was asked to urgently hear a petition that sought to cancel the Asia Cup T20 match between India and Pakistan scheduled for September 14 in the UAE. The petition,…
Is the Higgs boson doing its job?
At the heart of particle physics lies the Standard Model, a theory that has stood for nearly half a century as the best description of the subatomic realm. It tells us what particles exist, how…
A danger of GST 2.0
Since Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement last week that India’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) rates will be rationalised anew from September 22, I’ve been seeing a flood of pieces all in praise —…
Lighting the way with Parrondo’s paradox
In science, paradoxes often appear when familiar rules are pushed into unfamiliar territory. One of them is Parrondo’s paradox, a curious mathematical result showing that when two losing strategies are combined, they can produce a…
Challenging the neutrino signal anomaly
A gentle reminder before we begin: you’re allowed to be interested in particle physics. 😉 Neutrinos are among the most mysterious particles in physics. They are extremely light, electrically neutral, and interact so weakly with…
GST 2.0 + WordPress.com
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced sweeping changes to the GST rates on September 3. However, I think the rate for software services (HSN 99831) will remain unchanged at 18%. This is a bummer because…
What does it mean to interpret quantum physics?
The United Nations has designated 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Many physics magazines and journals have taken the opportunity to publish more articles on quantum physics than they usually do, and…