A conceptual illustration of CD-35 2722, featuring an object resembling a moon (Credit: ESO) For decades, astronomers have been finding planets orbiting stars far beyond our solar system. More than 6,000 exoplanets are now known.But there is one glaring omission.Not a single moon outside our Solar System has been confirmed with the same level of…
Photo credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Pierluigi Rinaldi (Steward Observatory); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Since NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope first revealed mysterious “little red dots” (LRDs) in 2022, astronomers have been racing to understand what these strange objects really are. Compact, extremely distant and glowing red, they appear throughout the early universe, but…
Representative image of CME (Image credit: Nasa) BENGALURU: Scientists have developed a computer model that could help predict how quickly powerful eruptions from the Sun will travel towards Earth, potentially improving warnings for disruptions to satellites, power grids and communication systems.The three-dimensional model was developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), an…
While India is a country filled with annual cultural traditions, a natural one that returns every year without fail is the buzzing around the bed as soon as the monsoon rains begin pelting the ground. Most of the mosquitoes that entered homes and offices were removed with the help of α-cypermethrin, a widely used pyrethroid…
Ornithoptera priamus. Image Credit: Robert Nash/Curator of Entomology Ulster Museum/Wikipedia Butterfly wings could offer a unique solution to one of the biggest problems faced by solar panels, which is ‘sunlight that bounces away before it can be used.’ A study published in ‘Solar Energy’ explored how the tiny structures found on the black scales of…
A juvenile and an adult Black Drongo perch on a tree branch (ANI Photo) In 1935, the Japanese South Seas Development Company made a decision that would have repercussions for Mariana Islands’ ecosystems for nearly 100 years. In search of a natural method for controlling agricultural pests, they imported black drongos (Dicrurus macrocercus) from Taiwan…
A used paper towel is rarely given a second thought. Once it has wiped up a spill or dried a surface, it usually goes straight into the bin, while the material it was made from has already passed through a much longer chain of production. International Science and Engineering Fair reported that Arnav Kodavati, a…
Catatumbo lightning at night. Image Credit: Fernando Flores/Wikipedia Lake Maracaibo in north-western Venezuela is home to one of the most remarkable lightning displays on Earth. Around the southern part of the lake, thunderstorms can return night after night, producing flashes with such regularity that the phenomenon is known as ‘Catatumbo Lightning’ (because Catatumbo River meets…
Representative Image of oak trees with delayed budburst as caterpillars wait for young leaves to emerge (AI-generated image) In temperate forests, spring timing can determine whether newly hatched caterpillars find a feast or almost nothing to eat. Many herbivorous insects emerge around the time trees produce their first young leaves, when the foliage is soft…
Max Hung Nguyen was 17 when he began looking at a problem that astronomers have been studying for decades: whether the chemical make-up of a star can offer clues about the planets that form around it. The Leland High School student from San Jose used data from Nasa’s Exoplanet Archive and the Hypatia Catalogue for…
Growing up along Adobe Creek in Mountain View, Kiefer Chow spent his childhood afternoons doing something most people would call child’s play: stacking sticks and mud into makeshift dams. Years later, that same instinct would grow into something far more consequential. Alongside his sister Amelia, Kiefer founded Eco-Engineering In Action, a youth-led non-profit built on…
Detail of the main Huashan Rock art. Image Credit: Rolfmueller/Wikipedia Ancient paintings covering limestone cliffs in southern China may owe their remarkable survival to an unexpected ingredient known as ‘blood.’ A new study of the ‘Huashan rock art’ in Guangxi published in the ‘Journal of Archaeological Science’ suggests that the artists used a mixture containing…
Image(s): Left/Department of Physics, MIT/Right/MoM-BH*-1 A Hyderabad-born astronomer who left engineering school at 18 and counts Test cricket among his favourite pastimes is now helping scientists look deeper into the earliest chapters of the Universe. Rohan P. Naidu, an MIT Pappalardo Fellow in Physics, is the lead author of a new Nature study that examines…
Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) SuBastian is deployed from the research vessel Falkor (too) in the South Atlantic during the expedition. Image Credit: Alex Ingle / Schmidt Ocean Institute An international team of marine scientists has discovered 31 new species in the ocean’s vast midwater zone during an expedition in the tropical South Atlantic off the…
Supermassive black holes are expected to outlast proton decay, but will eventually evaporate completely. Image Credit: D. Berry/Nasa Earth is expected to remain alive for an almost unimaginable length of time, but new calculations suggest that even massive objects could eventually disappear through a process similar to Hawking radiation. Scientists at Radboud University in the…
Atolls can take up to 30 million years to form, but these tiny coral islands now support 31 million seabirds across the Indo-Pacific (PC: AI Generated) Atolls may look like tiny rings of sand and coral scattered across warm tropical oceans, but they are far more important than their small land areas. These unusual natural…
A wildfire in Utah has become the focus of an unusual airborne investigation, after towering clouds of smoke and hot air pushed towards the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Nasa aircraft are chasing these smoke-filled formations to understand what happens when an intense fire effectively starts generating its own weather. The clouds, known as pyrocumulonimbus…
Stephen Hawking’s words offer a genuinely powerful reminder that a difficult situation rarely means every single possibility has actually disappeared. “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at,” he said. “It matters that you don’t just give up.” He said this in a speech to the Oxford Union…
Representative Image of asteroid (585349) Eeuwes traveling through the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter (AI-generated image) A 1.5-kilometre asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter now carries the name of Astrid Eeuwes, a Dutch amateur astronomer from Nijmegen who spends much of her time studying micrometeorites, tiny particles of space material that…
Marie Curie once offered a powerful message about self-belief, perseverance and the importance of finding a purpose in life: “We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.” Curie wrote these words in a letter to her brother Joseph on March 18, 1894, when she…
