Page 4 of 111
3 min read
The 'religious' function of science
We often understand science primarily in terms of its tangible successes, looking to it for advances in medicine, for the foundations of technologies, and for the tools with which to
2 min read
A bad Nobel for Mokyr
The American-Israeli economic historian Joel Mokyr has been awarded one half of the 2025 special Nobel Prize for economics "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological
3 min read
Using disorder to reveal hidden objects
When light, sound or any kind of wave travels through a complex medium like fog, murky water, or biological tissue, it scatters in many directions. Each particle or irregularity in
2 min read
Remembering 'The Melancholy of Resistance'
Congratulations, László Krasznahorkai, for winning the Nobel Prize for literature. I still remember reading his The Melancholy of Resistance (1989). It was a mostly unnerving, somewhat frightening experience because I
7 min read
What does a quantum Bayes’s rule look like?
Bayes's rule is one of the most fundamental principles in probability and statistics. It allows us to update our beliefs in the face of new evidence. In its
9 min read
Using 10,000 atoms and 1 to probe the Bohr-Einstein debate
The double-slit experiment has often been described as the most beautiful demonstration in physics. In one striking image, it shows the strange dual character of matter and light. When particles
4 min read
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
12 min read
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
5 min read
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'
5 min read
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 "
4 min read
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
12 min read
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
2 min read
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'
3 min read
A tribute to rubidium
And to Paul Feyerabend
9 min read
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
