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6 min read
Frugality is a toxic chalice
From 'Earth Imaging Satellite NISAR Exposes NASA's Weaknesses, ISRO's Strengths', NDTV, July 26, 2025: At the end of the day, the US scientists have
5 min read
Physicists test if they can load antimatter on a truck
Physicists in Europe have reported that it’s possible to transport charged particles on a truck for four hours without disturbing them in any way. This seemingly run-of-the-mill announcement, reported
5 min read
Quasiparticles do the twist
Physics often involves hidden surprises in how matter behaves at the smallest scales. A fundamental property in physics is angular momentum, which describes how things spin or rotate, from planets
5 min read
Sniffing out the mystery chemistry of superheavy atoms
Remember the periodic table from your high school classroom? The table orders elements by how the valence electrons in their atoms are arranged. However, quantum physics calculations predict that in
4 min read
A laser to make light of many shapes
Lasers can produce a slender beam of light of just one wavelength. For this simple feature, they are everywhere in modern technology, from the internet to medical devices and even
2 min read
Found: clue to crack the antimatter mystery
Imagine you’ve put together a torchlight. You know exactly how each part of the device works. You know exactly how they’re all connected togetger. Yet when you put
2 min read
Watch the celebrations, on mute
Right now, Shubhanshu Shukla is on his way back to Earth from the International Space Station. Am I proud he’s been the first Indian up there? I don’t
4 min read
A blog questions challenge
I hadn’t checked my notifications on X.com in a while. When I did yesterday, I found Pradx had tagged me in a blog post called “a challenge of
5 min read
Sharks don't do math
From ’Sharks hunt via Lévy flights’, Physics World, June 11, 2010: They were menacing enough before, but how would you feel if you knew sharks were employing advanced mathematical concepts
3 min read
The hidden heatwave
A heatwave is like the COVID-19 virus. During the pandemic, the virus infected and killed many people. When vaccines became available, the mortality rate dropped even though the virus continued
5 min read
Quantum clock breaks entropy barrier
In physics, the second law of thermodynamics says that a closed system tends to become more disordered over time. This disorder is captured in an entity called entropy. Many devices,
5 min read
A new beast: antiferromagnetic quasicrystals
Scientists have made a new material that is both a quasicrystal and antiferromagnetic — a combination never seen before. Quasicrystals are a special kind of solid. Unlike normal crystals, whose atoms
8 min read
Tracking the Meissner effect under pressure
In the last two or three years, groups of scientists from around the world have made several claims that they had discovered a room-temperature superconductor. Many of these claims concerned
6 min read
Enfeebling the Indian space programme
There's no denying that there currently prevails a public culture in India that equates criticism, even well-reasoned, with pooh-poohing. It's especially pronounced in certain geographies where
1 min read
Iran's nuclear options
From 'What is next for Iran’s nuclear programme?', The Hindu, June 28, 2025: As things stand, Iran has amassed both the technical knowhow and the materials required