Star Wars and the dynastic principle
Late last week, I picked up Ram Guha's Patriots and Partisans. I know shamefully little about India's modern political history – before and after Independence – certainly beyond the virtual bo…
The black hole image's question of kind
In my latest op-ed for The Wire, where I defended the criticisms of some people who called the EHT's black hole picture too blurry, there are two lines that aren't entirely true. This post att…
To creativity, and conviction
The physicist David Thouless passed away earlier this month. I confess I didn't know much about him or his work until he won a part of the Nobel Prize for physics in 2016. After that, I read up ab…
What it means to be scientific
<!-- wp:paragraph --> On April 1, a few days after India successfully completed its ‘Mission Shakti’ ASAT test, an editorial in the RSS mouthpiece Organiser read: In the initial days, scie…
India tests ASAT weapon
In a live address to the nation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India had successfully tested an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile against a live satellite in low-Earth orbit. Though he didn…
T.V. Ramakrishnan's pseudoscience
In November 2018, T.V. Ramakrishnan reviewed a book called Modern Atomism, edited by J. Pasupathy and published in 2017, for Current Science. To the uninitiated, TVR is a condensed matter physicist of…
Look right and left before you cross
For as long as there were two political groups at loggerheads with each other, there has been an aspiration to be – or remain – on friendly terms with someone on the other side. “Don’t let politics ge…
Lord of the Rings Day
A happy Lord of the Rings Day to you! March 25 is celebrated as such around the world (though not by too many people, I imagine) to commemorate what still endures as an excellent work of epic fantasy…
LHCb spots CP violation in charmed mesons
Where did we come from? That's a really big question for anyone to answer. And if we want to answer such questions, we're going to have to break it down into smaller questions, and then break…
Rich-poor divide
Deadly air exposes rich-poor divide, Channel News Asia, March 21, 2019: Delhi's affluent, who are often better informed about the dangers of pollution, increasingly expect the same safety measure…
Re: science journalism in India
Download e89pragatipodcast.mp3 A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed – together with the amazing Nandita Jayaraj – by Pavan Srinath on the Pragati Podcast. Our conversation was…
What went boom in Balakot?
Did the Indian Air Force strike the various structures at the madrasa in Balakot with lethality sufficient to have caused “heavy casualties”, as foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters on Febru…