A vortex in my bucket
One of the taps in my bathroom at home issues water in laminar flow – without any turbulence. Sometimes the flow from the tap to the bucket looks like it's frozen: there are no disturbances on the…
Scicomm
331 posts
Hype from Fermilab
Where do you think the following bit of text is from? A wormhole, also known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge, is a hypothetical tunnel connecting remote points in spacetime. While wormholes are allowed b…
On that anti-mRNA vaccines video
The Times of India has published an irresponsible article today on a video by a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claiming with dubious evidence that all mRNA vaccines are h…
Should journos pay scientists for their expertise?
I recently came across a question posed on Twitter, asking if experts whom journalists consult to write articles should be compensated for their labour, especially since, in the tweeter's words, &…
Notes on covering QM
1. I learnt last year that quantum systems are essentially linear because the mathematics that physicists have found can describe quantum-mechanical phenomena contain only linear terms. Effects add t…
The identity of scientific papers
This prompt arose in response to Stuart Ritchie's response to a suggestion in an editorial "first published last year but currently getting some attention on Twitter" – that scientists s…
New LHC data puts 'new physics' lead to bed
One particle in the big zoo of subatomic particles is the B meson. It has a very short lifetime once it's created. In rare instances it decays to three lighter particles: a kaon, a lepton and an a…
Notes on the NIF nuclear fusion breakthrough
My explainer/analysis of the US nuclear fusion breakthrough was published today. Some stuff didn't make it to the final draft for space and tone constraints; I'm publishing that below. 1. Whi…
The strange beauty of Planck units
What does it mean to say that the speed of light is 1? We know the speed of light in the vacuum of space to be 299,792,458 m/s – or about 300,000 km/s. It's a quantity of speed that's very ha…
A 'quantum consciousness' absurdity at IIT Mandi
As you go downward, inward, smaller and smaller, you get more vast conscious experience. This is the idea in Indian knowledge systems. At the bottom of it, or the very base of it, at the source, is Br…
The curious case of the blue coloured ice cream
From an unusual ice cream colour to quantum mechanics to ecology to semiconductors to gastroporn.…
A fountainhead of intrigue
Recently, a Chinese-American mathematician named Yitang Zhang claimed to have resolved the Landau-Siegel zeroes conjecture, which is related to the Riemann hypothesis. (Specifically, disproving the co…