NEW DELHI: NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has pulled off a dramatic flyby of Mars, capturing striking close-up views of the Red Planet, including the massive Huygens Crater, as it slingshots deeper into the solar system on its billion-mile journey to a mysterious metal-rich asteroid.The spacecraft swept just 4,609 kilometres above Mars on May 15, using the…
IIT Kanpur director Manindra Agrawal has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific honours. The recognition places him among an elite group of scientists whose work has shaped modern knowledge, including figures such as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Agrawal received the honour for his pioneering contributions…
Scientists from China have identified the existence of human-like speech pathways in the brains of marmoset monkeys, providing insights into the evolution of speech and communication in primates. According to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, marmoset brains contain an arcuate fasciculus, which is believed to be responsible for…
The spectacular planetary nebula, NGC 6302, resembling the delicate wings of a cosmic butterfly is located nearly 4,000 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The Hubble space telescope captured the remarkable details, revealing the final stages of a star’s life. Spanning over 3 light-years across, this glowing cloud of gas shines intensely in ultraviolet light,…
Scientists are analysing information from NASA’s MAVEN mission, which reportedly came across patterns that did not fit any known behaviour in the Martian atmosphere. At first, the signals looked like simple noise or random interference. But the pattern kept repeating in a structured way that slowly began to attract attention. Over time, this small curiosity…
It is reported that scientists at Tohoku University in Japan have found that certain gold nanoparticles can display nearly fluid-like properties that enable them to respond by changing their structures to heat and pressure. The findings may revolutionise the future of biomedical engineering, intelligent surfaces, drug delivery technologies, and microfluidic devices. Reported in the journal…
The low-cost ocean current energy generator invented by a teenager is getting international attention yet again for its promise of providing clean electricity to distant coastal areas. Hannah Herbst, a 15-year-old inventor from Florida, came up with an innovative renewable energy system worth only $12 that can generate electricity using ocean currents and recycled materials…
The Moon’s revolution around the earth is an example of gravity and motion in action which is quite intriguing. While it might appear that the moon just revolves around the earth, scientists state that it is actually falling towards earth all the time but is moving sideways at high speed so that it does not…
Deep inside the forests of northern Finland, scientists discovered something that sounded almost impossible at first: microscopic particles of real gold hidden inside ordinary tree needles. Researchers studying Norway spruce trees near the Kittila gold mining region found that the trees contained tiny solid gold nanoparticles absorbed from underground mineral-rich groundwater. The surprising discovery revealed…
Image: Left/Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul/Right/Canva Scientists have found the remains of a huge 90-foot dinosaur in Thailand, thus confirming the discovery of the biggest dinosaur ever found in Southeast Asia. The recently discovered species called Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis is a very large sauropod dinosaur that lived in the region some 113 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous…
There is a special kind of tyranny in being born into a world designed for somebody else’s hand. The scissors are wrong. The classroom desk is wrong. The ink smudges the wrong way. The handshake, the ritual, the factory machine, the spiral notebook, the cricket field, the guitar, the language itself, all seem to whisper…
At an age when most teenagers are focused on schoolwork and video games, Taylor Wilson was attempting something that even advanced laboratories struggle to achieve. Working from his parents’ garage in Reno, Nevada, the 14-year-old successfully built a functioning nuclear fusion device known as a fusor. Using vacuum chambers, high-voltage equipment, deuterium gas and self-taught…
Charles Darwin (Image: Wikipedia) People generally remember Charles Darwin as the man who transformed science. His name immediately brings thoughts of evolution, natural selection and discoveries that changed how human beings understand life itself. Most people imagine him surrounded by notebooks, specimens and scientific observations. The picture that often comes to mind is of someone…
For nearly a century, thousands of strange holes carved into a barren Peruvian hillside puzzled archaeologists, historians, and even conspiracy theorists. Stretching across the dry slopes of the Pisco Valley in southern Peru, the massive formation contains more than 5,000 carefully arranged pits that can only truly be appreciated from the air. Some believed they…
The world’s largest river delta is so massive that most people never guess it. Image credit – Wikimedia When people consider world-famous river deltas, the Nile often comes first due to its importance in the history of Egyptian civilisation. However, in terms of the size of the delta, lands are compared among experts and geographers,…
In 1940, a cracked silicon crystal at Bell Laboratories led Russell Ohl to discover the p-n junction, a pivotal moment for electronics. Strange current jump on a fractured piece of silicon opened the door to solar cells. Image credit – Wikimedia In 1940, a cracked silicon crystal at Bell Laboratories led Russell Ohl to discover…
The Chemists were vapourising carbon and noticed a perfect 60-atom cage. Image credit – Gemini While conducting experiments on the vaporisation of carbon atoms in 1985, chemists Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, and Richard Smalley obtained surprising results that showed the stability of a cluster comprising only 60 carbon atoms. This molecular structure became famous by…
Earthquake-resistant technology may soon become simpler, cheaper and far more reliable thanks to a newly patented steel sphere cylinder developed by researchers at the University of Sharjah. The passive seismic damping device, created by civil engineering professor Moussa Leblouba, uses friction generated by steel balls inside a hollow cylinder to absorb earthquake vibrations in buildings,…
Parakeets fluttering in and out of people’s houses, gardens and urban parks are becoming a regular occurrence in many places. However, experts suggest that the bright green parakeets might actually provide information on climate change, biodiversity, urban ecology, habitat shifts and the state of the environment. In fact, according to the research done on ring-necked…
When Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado returned to his family land in Brazil during the 1990s, he reportedly found a devastated landscape instead of the lush forest he remembered from childhood. Years of deforestation, cattle grazing and soil degradation had stripped the land of wildlife, water and greenery. Rivers had dried up and much of the…
