The area of a charged rotating (Kerr) black hole is given by \begin{equation} \label{eqn:kerr-area-relation} A = 4\pi \left[ 2 M^2 + 2 (M^4 – L^2 – M^2 Q^2)^{1/2} – Q^2 \right] \end{equation} This relation can be inverted to express the mass $M$ as a function of charge $Q$, area $A$ and angular momentum $L$: \begin{equation}… Continue reading Euler's Theorem and the Smarr Relation
For anybody who manages a wordpress installation, a question that inevitably arises at some point or another is how to migrate their site from one hosting provider to another. Ideally, any such migration tool should have the following capabilities: Allow backup files of a reasonable size say 512 MB or 1 GB for free Allow… Continue reading Plugins for Migrating WordPress Installations
There are few things in life more disappointing than watching a beautifully crafted, socially responsible, disruptive technology platform self-destruct from the inside out. With the launch of the so-called “web-extensions” versions of Mozilla Firefox – which now extends to the once reliable ESR (Extended Support Releases) branch – Mozilla has destroyed much of the appeal… Continue reading How to kill a great platform
So one month ago there was this wonderful workshop on “Optimising, Renormalising, Evolving and Quantising Tensor Networks” – or EVONET18 – organized by the Max Planck Institute for Complex Systems (MPIPKS) in Dresden, Germany. I was fortunate enough to be selected for a poster presentation and had the great privilege of mingling and discussing physics… Continue reading EVONET18 – Tensor Networks for One and All
Prologue A disease has spread throughout this great land of ours. To be sure, this disease is not new to us Indians. In some ways it has become part of our very national DNA. It has been with us for thousands of years. What harm then, one might ask, could such a familiar disease do… Continue reading An Epidemic in India
There are many research centers and researchers in India working in hep-th (High Energy Physics, Theory), gr-qc (General Relativity/Quantum Cosmology) and quant-ph (Quantum Physics). However they are scattered all over the place and I have not been able to find a place which lists the names of places and individuals working in these fields in… Continue reading Theoretical Physicists in India
Recently the Chief Minister of Karnataka, Mr. Siddharamaiah, made the following observation on twitter regarding the recent communally motivated murders in the Dakshin Kannada (South Karnataka) district. Expressing grief as the deaths of both victims from different communities, he described the tragic incidents as the results of “competitive fanaticism” between extremists on either side This… Continue reading Competitive Nationalism and (the myth of) Islamic Homogeneity
Found a really nice set of five simple exercises for treating herniated or bulging discs. The exercises are: Cat-cow Bird-dog Lying prone face down with elbows tucked in under your sides Superman – with your arms either by your side, or folded behind your head, or stretched out in front Cobra or Mackenzie press-ups.
In statistical mechanics we are mostly concerned with the statistical averages of various physical quantities when the system is in equilibrium. Fluctuation is a common phenomenon in nature. Fluctuation means how much a quantity deviates from its average value. The average value of the thermodynamic observables and the size of their fluctuation about their equilibrium… Continue reading Fluctuation Dissipation in Quantum Gravity
One common problem with wordpress sites is that they can seem sluggish compared to, lets say, sites built with static or single-file CMSs such as grav. There are several online tools which can help you check how fast your site is and how to optimize its performance. Two of these are pingdom and Google’s pagespeed… Continue reading Speeding up WordPress