Norbert Wiener was one of the most unusual mathematicians of the 20th century: a child prodigy who graduated from Tufts at 14, earned a Harvard PhD at 18, and spent most of his career at MIT. During World War II, his work on anti-aircraft fire-control problems helped lead him to the idea of cybernetics, the…
Carl Jung (Image: Wikipedia) Some quotes remain relevant no matter how much society changes. They live on through generations because they talk about emotions that almost everyone has at some point in their life. One such quote comes from the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, whose writings about the human mind, personality, emotions, and…
The Universe keeps throwing up surprises, and black holes are right at the centre of it. The biggest ones detected so far do not seem to fit the usual story of how stars die. A new study reportedly suggests that these extreme objects might not form in a single collapse at all. Instead, they could…
David Attenborough is among the most recognised broadcasters in the world, admired for his calm narration and deep connection with the natural environment. Born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, England, he has spent most of his life bringing the wonders of the natural world to global audiences. Through decades of documentary filmmaking, he…
A strange underground discovery in Kerala’s Palakkad district has suddenly drawn attention from scientists, biodiversity researchers, and even people interested in traditional medicine. In the village of Karakurussi, a farmer digging land for cultivation reportedly uncovered several unusual mushroom-like structures hidden beneath the soil. At first glance, they did not look especially remarkable. Yet researchers…
Archaeologists have revealed that many Scottish loch islands are not natural but are ancient man-made crannogs, constructed as early as 3600 B.C. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons As one looks out into the hazy water surface of a Scottish loch, the small, perfect circles of an island surrounded by trees just appear to be a naturally…
Beneath the Salton Sea’s arid surface lies a vast geothermal basin holding supercritical fluid rich in lithium, dubbed “Lithium Valley.” Image Credits: via Wikimedia Commons The Salton Sea has long been considered an area of ecological strife, an evaporating salt lake located in the California desert, characterised by arid banks rather than economic prosperity. However,…
Six million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea evaporated, leaving behind a vast salt desert and mineral deposits. Image Credits: via Wikimedia Commons It is hard to think of the earth where you are standing as being once one of the most inhospitable locations on earth, while sunbathing on a beach in the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, had…
The world’s largest iceberg, A-23A, transformed from white to electric blue as it entered warmer waters, a sign of its ageing process. Image Credits: NASA Earth Observatory In nature, the spectacular events always occur at the last possible moment. For many years, the world’s largest iceberg, called A-23A, was just a giant piece of frozen…
A secret tunnel has been discovered in Bloxham village, Oxfordshire. This discovery confirms old village tales of hidden passages. The tunnel likely served as an escape route for Catholics during religious conflicts. Image Credit: Bloxham Underground Tunnel Society Think of yourself entering an elegant, ancient cottage right in the centre of Oxfordshire and finding that…
The extraordinary aerial photograph captured by NASA on its Earth Observatory site shows the evolution of a “sea of rotating clouds” in the region around Antarctica as a result of fierce winds, forming a phenomenon called the Von Kármán vortex streets. This astonishing image was taken by NASA using Landsat 8 over Peter I Island…
At just 17, Dasia Taylor turned a science fair idea into a medical innovation with real-world promise. While studying at Iowa City West High School in Iowa, she began working on colour-changing surgical sutures that could signal infection before a wound became visibly worse. Her inspiration came from a practical problem: expensive “smart” sutures already…
A jawbone like this was never expected to matter so much. It came up from the seabed off Taiwan, quiet and unremarkable at first glance, almost easy to overlook. For years, it sat in collections as an uncertain fragment, something that didn’t quite belong anywhere in the human story. No clear signs. No obvious connection…
While exploring the White Mountains, or Lefka Ori, in the western part of the Greek island of Crete, researchers came across a striking moth that looked distinctive enough to warrant closer study. The species was later described as Pyralis papaleonei, named after Pope Leo XIV. The naming choice was intended to carry both scientific and…
While staying at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo during a lecture tour, Albert Einstein found himself in an awkward situation. A hotel bellboy had delivered a message to his room, but the physicist realised he had no cash to leave as a tip. Instead of apologising and sending the worker away empty-handed, Einstein picked up…
It looks like time travel, closed timelike curves, quantum mechanics, and quantum entanglement are once again at the centre of discussions among scientists who recently came up with a new way to send signals from the present into the past. According to some scientists working on quantum communication and spacetime geometry, information can potentially be…
A former NASA scientist has reignited public curiosity around near-death experiences after claiming she “died” three times and saw the same unusual vision each time. Ingrid Honkala, a marine scientist with a background reportedly connected to NASA and the US Navy, says these moments changed how she understands consciousness, reality, and even the idea of…
We usually discard plastic waste as it reaches its end-of-life for common people, but a research team at the University of Adelaide has made a major discovery that’s changing how the world deals with plastic waste. By harnessing solar energy, they’ve found a way to convert waste into valuable green hydrogen. This involves photocatalytic reforming,…
For centuries, humans have tried to imagine how the rest of the animal kingdom sees the world, but we have always been limited by the three-colour palette of our own eyes. While we can take still photographs that mimic these perspectives, capturing the world in motion has remained a technical hurdle. Unlike traditional filming methods,…
A groundbreaking study by the Kimberlite Research Group at the University of Cape Town has pinpointed where the world’s most precious diamonds originate. Standard diamonds form within Earth’s lithospheric plates. However, ‘CLIPPIR’ gems – those similar to Cullinan diamonds in size and purity – emerge from much greater depths. As noted in China.org, Associate Professor…
