Welcome to 2026!
Let me use the CES panel that I am on later this week – Quantum + Health – to kick-off the posts for this year, beginning with:
Dear Limited Partner,
We are pleased to announce the first close of W Health Ventures Fund II, and to welcome you as a Limited Partner. Thank you for placing your confidence in our investment platform as we build generational healthcare companies in India and the United States.
- First drawdown date: 15 January 2026
The fund will acquire two warehoused incubations in Q1 2026:
Everhope is an advanced cancer care platform in India, launched by W Health in partnership with Narayana Health.
Everbright is an asset-light MSO that supports US-based psychiatry clinics in scaling advanced interventions such as TMS and Spravato for treatment-resistant depression.
Both companies address structurally complex problems in cancer care and mental health and have demonstrated promising early clinical and operational progress. Thank you once again for joining us in this next phase of growth. We look forward to working with you.
Now to something that is Maximally Inverse to the above, something which is of Limited Practicality (LP!):
Cosmology.
Many of you have asked me to create a Lecture Series on Contemporary Physics – some of you also wanted to specifically understand my Logarithmic Spectral Deformation (LSD) proposal (see A Lane to Classicality) – that can help bridge the gap between Science Communication (too little detail) and Journal Articles (that rightfully assume too much specialized knowledge as they are communications between Professional Physicists).
It is a daunting task, but I thought, why not accept the challenge?
There are already many pretty good books and blogs and videos on several of the interesting topics already, and so what could my pieces add? Can a series written by an Outsider Non-Physicist be somehow different? After all, I am using the materials developed by Professional Physicists!
Maybe just a distinctive point of view, a fresh narrative theme, and an idiosyncratic selection of what I find interesting? Since it is written by a non-physicist for non-physicists, could it be less Academically Defensive and instead have an Amused Detachment? As an example:
VC (Business): Venture Capital == VC (Physics): Variable Constant.
What am I talking about? Many things that are called Constants in physics are actually Variable, including, yes:
Hubble Constant.
And that is not the only one. More examples as we proceed throughout the year.
Over the holidays, sipping Vesper by the Fire, paying homage to Soma and Agni, I conceived of a structure:
Necklace and Gems.
Necklace – a (Supply) Chain of Science, perhaps best viewed as a string (no pun intended) plucked from the (Spider) Web of Science – narrates a conceptual thread:
Tayur Musings on Physics (TMP).
The Gems are specific deep-dives – assumes undergraduate STEM education – that provides mathematical details and numerical examples:
Tayur Lectures on Physics (TLP).
This structure is not imagined completely out-of-the blue. As an Operations Management (OM) professor, I am aware of how Physical Products (like cars) are made in factories, and one of the important constructs is:
(Multi-level) Bill-of-Materials (BOM).
So, one natural way for me to construct a lecture series is to think in terms of components, and sub-assembles and vanilla boxes and so on, and create a multi-layered set of lectures, with some Necklaces serving as Gems for other Necklaces, and having some Gems (“common components”) that can be used in different Necklaces, and making parallel sub-assembles to build different end-products for different consumer segments…
[Some of you may see a superficial similarity to Indra’s Pearls, a riff on Indra’s Net, from Flower Garland Sutra. Western audiences perhaps first read about it from Godel, Escher, Bach.]
As two examples (v1.0) of concrete pieces (obviously with ample support from LLMs):
TMP: From Stellar Explosions to Dark Energy (v1.0)
TLP: Special Relativity: Foundations and Applications (v1.0)
To construct a fascinating Necklace (on Dark Energy) one uses many Gems (which may themselves be linked together by another Necklace, with Gems, that are themselves Necklaces….you get the drift!). For example, to understand what Chandrasekhar did (in 1930, Nobel Prize 1983, see Sridhara Brahmana: Chandrasekhar Limit) – the first Gem that I mention in the first Necklace – one needs to understand Special Relativity and Pauli-Exclusion Principle. To appreciate Pauli-Exclusion Principle, you show know something about Spins. To know where Spins come from….
Anyhoo, you will read in the TMP that, at this time, there is a discrepancy on the numerical value of Hubble “Constant” based on how it is estimated, and this is called:
Hubble Tension.
Thus, my view is that Contemporary Physics is Active and Dynamic, and the lectures should embody Movement, and inherently display that we are on a Journey, and we probably don’t even know what the Next Gem is, let alone the Destination.
Physics is Work-in-Progress (WIP).
Will this approach work? I don’t know. I have been an effective teacher – Undergraduate Teaching Award, MBA Teaching Award, Perfect Scores in Executive Education, BusinessWeek Stellar Professor – over the years, and in the Fall Semester that just finished, I received a perfect 5.0/5.0 in all categories, from all students, in both Foundations of Operations Management and Quantum Integer Programming.
So the challenge is:
Can I – University Professor of Operations Management at a Business School – pull off something worthwhile in the Teaching of Contemporary Physics?
Please send me your feedback – Physicists on Correctness and Non-Physicists on Clarity – on the above two pieces as I prepare follow-on Necklaces and Gems.
Happy New Year!
