A bad Sprite ad
One of the advertisements during the ongoing T20 cricket World Cup on Star Sports India has been for Sprite, the carbonated beverage from the Coca-Cola Company. In the ad, it’s a hot day, two people…
The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture
On Monday night, I kid you not, I dreamt of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. It was only by name, a fleeting mention in a heated conversation I was having with a friend. I’m not…
Developing Tamil Nadu
“If the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) comes to power, it will ruin the developed State of Tamil Nadu” — Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said this in his address to a local conference organised…
From the Heisenberg cut to the Copenhagen interpretation
The following post was motivated by this exchange (on X.com), which prompted me to write out my understanding of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the part the Heisenberg cut plays in it. I…
That humans quest for cosmic dawn
From ‘Cosmic dawn: the search for the primordial hydrogen signal’, Physics World, November 18, 2025: The EDGES instrument is a dipole antenna, which resembles a ping-pong table with a gap in the middle. It is…
To be Indian is to set records
For all the ways in which the Indian people are divided these days, they’re seemingly united in their desire to set records. On January 22, a tinkerer named Sohan Rai, a.k.a. “Zikiguy”, said on Instagram…
String theory and reconciliations
According to particle physics, the fundamental building blocks of the universe are point-like particles, essentially small dots of energy with no dimension. String theory posits that these dots are actually minuscule vibrating loops of energy.…
Out there: using a moon to spot dark matter
The search for dark matter, the invisible ‘glue’ that holds galaxies together, has long focused solely on subatomic particles and this could be a mistake if a new study Physical Review D is to be…
Savouring playtime
I work in an office with many lovely and smart people and I find engaging them in conversation is playtime. It’s a social activity, almost always enlivening, and I (and hopefully we all) get to…
My political views
When I first had any views at all, I think I was in the second year of my engineering studies, in 2007, and decided I was a right-winger. Of course I understood very little of…
Heat capacity
Someone asked me recently to name the thing I’ve been most grateful for in 2025. After giving it some thought, I realised it had to be the heat capacity of water. And not just for…