I have moved to Substack
I have started a weekly popular science newsletter The Spacetime Beat . This blog will still be around for writing about topics outside of pop science.
Nirmalya Kajuri's Blog
Articles about science and academia.
Latest posts
Simple Fixes to Make Goodreads Suck Less
If you have ever looked up a book on Goodreads to get a distilled sense of its strengths and weakness, you will have noticed that the top reviews are singularly unhelpful for this. They typically read like pages from a reading diary long form personal reflections filled with quirky gifs and in-jokes. These long, personality-driven [ ]
A Science Wishlist for the New Government
Lok Sabha elections are underway in India. In a few weeks, a new government will be sworn in. Right now every TV channel, social media platform and tea shop is abuzz with political discussions. Various voting issues are being debated and dissected 24/7. In all this talk, you never hear the word science uttered. Science [ ]
Fund your conference like Danny Ocean: a step by step guide
Some scientists are lucky not to have to worry too much about funding their conferences. But most of us need a step by step guide to secure funding for their conference. In the spirit of helpfulness, I have decided to pen down a guide to accomplishing this non-trivial task. To research for this article, I [ ]
How to explain Quantum Gravity to your cousins
During my PhD days, I was often asked by friends and relatives what this quantum gravity thing that I work on really is. As most of them were in tech, I came up with a tech-based analogy to explain it to them. This is what I used to say. Imagine your computer is running a [ ]
Newton’s gravity vs Electromagnetism
Newton s gravitational force law and Coulomb s law of electrostatics look very similar. So much so that it has inspired memes: But this similarity between Newtonian gravity and electrodynamics only holds in the realm of statics i.e when the charge/mass is standing still. As soon as we leave the restful comfort of statics and consider moving [ ]
How I almost lost my PhD
I was in my adviser s office, both of us trying frantically to come up with an idea that could save my thesis. My already-submitted thesis which I had suddenly discovered to be wrong. Let me back up a bit. After six long years of grad school I had managed to grind out the bare-minimum two [ ]
Three times Jaggi Vasudev made unscientific claims (Number 1 will blow your mind.)
Jaggi Vasudev (Sadhguru to his fans) is in the habit of making extraordinary assertions dressed in scientific jargon. Although completely nonsensical, they can sound like the truth to people who don’t know the relevant science. In this article I have compiled three (out of many) instances of Vasudev making unscientific claims. I have drawn heavily [ ]
Henrietta Leavitt and the Astronomical Cow Puzzle
There is a famous scene in the British comedy show Father Ted . Father Ted is explaining to a confused friend that cows that are far away are not, in fact, as tiny as they appear. This is a small cow , Ted says, holding a small toy cow, the ones out there are far away. Confusing [ ]
An Ode to Crackpots
Tim Burton s Ed Wood (1994) is one of my favorite movies. The eponymous Wood was a director who gained notoriety for his low-budget, so-bad-its-awesome movies. In Burton s film, which was not entirely true to life, Ed Wood is a man obsessively committed to his eccentric vision. His films flop, he gets laughed at, yet he [ ]