One of the great advantages of being a physicist in Texas is that you are genuinely surrounded by incredible physicists across the Houston–Austin–Dallas–College Station area. The summers are hot, of course, but what better way to spend an afternoon than talking to a fellow physicist? Last time, we were at Rice University, and this time we are at Texas A&M University to talk to Professor Shenglong Xu. In today’s episode, we talk to Professor Shenglong Xu. He is a theoretical physicist wo...

Have you ever wondered what the universe was like in its very first moments? Why did matter win over antimatter? What is dark matter made of? What is dark energy? And could the answers to these questions change the way we understand particle physics itself? Well, in today’s episode, we talk to Prof. Andrew J. Long of Rice University about all of this fascinating stuff. Andrew is a theoretical physicist working at the intersection of particle physics and cosmology. His research explores some o...

In the 1920s, physicists like Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Einstein, Planck—and many others—realized something deeply unsettling and beautiful: the universe at microscopic scales is nothing like what we observe in everyday life. This was the era when quantum mechanics was discovered. And I’m intentionally saying discovered, not born, because that word choice matters. Quantum mechanics isn’t just a framework we invented—it’s closer to the idea that we uncovered something that was already true abou...

Recently, I came across a definition of a good theory: it should explain as much as possible, with as few ingredients as possible, and with as much accuracy as possible. I think that is something every serious physicist can relate to. And really, that is what modern theoretical physics is striving for — not just identifying what the universe is made of, but understanding the mathematical framework that makes the laws of nature hang together. That is why the mathematical formulation of quantum...

Most of what we know about the universe actually comes from what we can’t see. Only a tiny fraction of the cosmos is made of “normal” matter—the stuff that makes up stars, planets, and us. The rest is a mysterious combination we call dark matter and dark energy, which, although invisible to our telescopes, is absolutely crucial for how the universe expands and how structures form over billions of years. So how do we even study something we cannot see? One of the most powerful tools we have ...

Hello Everyone, welcome to The Knowmads Podcast. I'm your co-host Prachi, and I'm your co-host Bhavay. `Chaos' is one of those words that has escaped physics and entered everyday language. We use it to describe messy rooms, traffic, even our inboxes. But in physics, chaos has a very precise meaning, (or it doesnt). Well, classically, chaotic systems are those, that even though they are completely deterministic, they are extremely sensitive to their initial conditions. Even the tiniest c...

Imagine: it’s a lazy Sunday morning, you’re sipping your raspberry-flavored iced latte, and an interstellar traveler lands in your backyard. It starts walking toward you—what do you do? Are you terrified or calm? If you’re a scientist stuck on a problem for years, do you ask for help? If you’re an influencer, are you already crafting your next post? If you’re a cook, are you hunting for new recipes? Honestly, with our limited human experience and understanding, it’s hard to even imagine such ...

The universe is about 14 billion years old. Ever wondered—how do we even know the age of the universe? How can we look up at the sky and read time itself? We do this by studying the afterglow of the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR)—relic radiation from the very beginning of the universe. Physicists build ultra-cold microwave telescopes—cryogenic cameras with incredibly sensitive detectors—that can spot tiny temperature changes and faint polarization, and even ...

Science and philosophy have always been woven together. Some of history’s greatest minds—Aristotle, Galileo, Aryabhata and even Einstein—were as much philosophers as they were scientists. This has also been true for ancient Indian civilization, where science and philosophy were explored with extraordinary depth, not as separate pursuits, but as complementary paths to knowledge. These insights were preserved in Sanskrit, a language whose precision allowed complex ideas to be recorded wi...

Imagine walking deep into a dense forest without a map or GPS. Initially, you kind of know where you started. But as you wander further, eventually, it's impossible to tell where you came from — every direction looks the same. That's thermalization. The initial state's details get scrambled across all degrees of freedom and as a result local observables settle into a stable, time-independent state called the equilibrium state. The fact that macroscopic objects equilibrate with their env...