Image used for representational purpose. | Photo Credit: S.R. Raghunathan The story so far: The office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Centre for Technology, Innovation, and Economic Research have released a detailed assessment of public-funded research and development in India. In all, 244 … Read more
In his 1997 book ‘Dominance Without Hegemony’, historian Ranajit Guha recounted how Mahatma Gandhi, “perhaps India’s foremost ideologue of self-discipline”, created an “elaborate” set of rules about how people should behave around him as they travelled the country. To Gandhi, Guha wrote, a haphazard crowd was “unmanageable”, “uncontrollable”, “undisciplined”, and ultimately entailed a “mobocracy”. Gandhi … Read more
The Voyager 1 spacecraft was 25 billion km away in February, somewhere in the outer edge of the solar system. It’s the farthest a human-made spacecraft has gone from the earth. The hope is that in the distant future, a human astronaut will be able to go where Voyager 1 has been — a journey … Read more
The Central government’s plans in the Nicobar Islands, especially land taken over for deforestation, will affect the native Shompen tribe, which needs forests for its livelihood. | Photo Credit: Public domain The famous tree crusader and tree lover Shri ‘Vanajeevi’ Ramaiah who passed away last month was a firm believer that trees are vital for … Read more
Fishers venture out to fish in mechanised boats in Mandapam North Sea, June 16, 2023, after the end of the 61-day fishing ban. | Photo Credit: Balachandar L./The Hindu The total allowable catch (TAC) is a limit on the total quantity of fish that fishers can catch in a particular area. It’s usual for agencies … Read more
Representative image. An American man named Timothy Friede has subjected himself to more than 200 snakebites and 700 injections of venom over 18 years. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto For millennia, there have been stories of people who tried to make themselves immune to poison by regularly ingesting small, non-lethal doses of it. The practice … Read more
Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land on Venus set to plunge to earth half-century after failed launch
In 2024-25, pharma products formed close to 40% of all India’s exports to Pakistan | Photo Credit: Eblis The closure of the Integrated Check Post at Attari has brought to a complete halt the already negligible trade between India and Pakistan. The shutdown followed the recent terror attack on tourists in Pahalgam, Kashmir. In 2024-25, … Read more
Bird beaks come in almost every shape and size – from the straw-like beak of a hummingbird to the slicing, knife-like beak of an eagle. We have found, however, that this incredible diversity is underpinned by a hidden mathematical rule that governs the growth and shape of beaks in nearly all living birds. What’s more, … Read more
G.S. Vaitheeswaran | Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT G.S. Vaitheeswaran from University of Hyderabad’s (UoH) School of Physics has been elected as a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry for his contributions to understanding the electronic structure of solids, particularly in the field of energetic materials. The fellowship will enable Prof Vaitheeswaran to expand … Read more
The Science Quiz: Mathematical puzzles 1 / 6 | Visual: Name the game whose starting setup is shown here. The point is to move the entire stack of disks to another pole, one at a time, but at no point allowing a larger disk to sit atop a smaller one. 2 / 6 | Pick … Read more
The Large Hadron Collider has been responsible for astounding advances in physics: the discovery of the elusive, long-sought Higgs boson as well as other new exotic particles, possible hints of new forces of nature, and more. Located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the border of France and Switzerland, the LHC is … Read more
Tourists enjoys horse ride at Gulmarg Famous ski resort north of Srinagar on April 30, 2025, a week after the Pahalgam massacre. | Photo Credit: IMRAN NISSAR The targeted killings of tourists in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir took place at a time when the region was witnessing a tourism boom. The number of visitors … Read more
An international team of solar physicists led by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have traced giant tides of plasma beneath the Sun’s surface at a region called near-surface shear layer (NSSL). According to a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the plasma’s currents shift with the Sun’s magnetic heartbeat and could have a … Read more
In a major milestone, scientists working on the world’s largest nuclear fusion project have completed its main magnet system with India playing a key role in building critical infrastructure. This system will power the core of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) Tokamak reactor, which aims to demonstrate that fusion, the energy source of the sun … Read more
Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, left, claps as cricketer Virat Kohli looks on. (Image used for representation only) | Photo Credit: Bikas Das (This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Subscribe now!) What’re the odds you clapped your hands … Read more
Puttur city municipality in Dakshina Kannada district use Bio CNG generated from wet waste to operate its six vehicles since August 2024. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT In a rare initiative in Karnataka, Puttur City Municipal Council in Dakshina Kannada district has been converting wet waste into Bio Compressed Natural Gas (BioCNG) with the help … Read more
The fundamental idea behind artificial intelligence (AI) stems from the British mathematician Alan Turing, who in the 1950s defined the idea of intelligence in a machine. During World War II, when attempting to break encryption code the Nazis used to transmit secret messages, he wondered whether machines would be able to find patterns in large … Read more
While distrust in fake news is high, confidence in systemic solutions such as a free press remains low | Photo Credit: EVGENIY MALOLETKA In India, while there is widespread anxiety about misinformation and fake news, people largely do not attribute it to government influence. Instead, a relatively large share do not mind greater state censorship, … Read more
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose Liberal Party won Canada’s federal election, though the outright majority is still in question. | Photo Credit: DAVID KAWAI It is rare for the results of an elections in one country to be swayed by the leader of a neighbouring country. Yet that was the case in Canada’s 2025 … Read more
Cosmology is in for exciting times, going by the latest research that suggests the key to revealing the fundamental nature of the universe lies in finding out how clumpy it is. Accepted theory has it that after the universe was explosively born in a ‘Big Bang’ in the void some 13.8 billion years ago, it … Read more
The portion of Chandrayaan-3’s landing site taken by Vikram Lander after the successful landing. Photo: ISRO In a new finding, scientists of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) have revealed that the landing site (Shiv Shakti point) of the Chandrayaan-3 mission is a promising site to access primitive mantle samples, which was otherwise lacking in the … Read more
Chinese astronauts (from left) Wang Haoze, Cai Xuzhe, and Song Lingdong wave as they attend a see-off ceremony for the Shenzhou-19 mission at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, October 30, 2024. | Photo Credit: AP Three Chinese astronauts returned to earth on April 30 after six months on the country’s space station, … Read more
Assistant Professor, Department of Physics at IIT Hyderabad, Saranya Ghosh (in white shirt) with his team of faculty members and students, who were part of the CMS collaboration that won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2025. | Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT Researchers from IIT Hyderabad are part of the team that received the Breakthrough … Read more
Snipers in helicopters have shot more than 700 koalas in the Budj Bim National Park in western Victoria in recent weeks. It’s believed to be the first time koalas have been culled in this way. The cull became public on Good Friday after local wildlife carers were reportedly tipped off. A fire burned about 20% … Read more
The vast rural expanses of India are often overshadowed by the country’s urban-centric digital growth; digital isolation has long stifled progress. Starlink’s ambitious satellite network now promises to turn night into day, literally and figuratively, by beaming high-speed internet across terrains where cables don’t reach and towers don’t exist. But as this technological advance prepared … Read more
We’ve all been there – trying to peel a boiled egg, but mangling it beyond all recognition as the hard shell stubbornly sticks to the egg white. Worse, the egg ends up covered in chewy bits of adhesive membrane in the end. The internet is littered with various “hacks” that claim to prevent this problem. … Read more
What is behind Trump’s crackdown on U.S. universities?
The Science Quiz: Don’t go to these places for summer break 1 / 6 | Visual: The red dot here shows the location of the world’s third-deepest trench, off the Philippines. It shares its name with a ship that bombed Chennai (then Madras) during World War I. Name it. 2 / 6 | Mount ____, … Read more
In late 2019, a wave of billions of desert locusts flew into western India through Pakistan. Their journey had already spanned several thousand kilometers since they first erupted in the arid plains of East Africa. Locusts are grasshoppers that, in the right conditions, multiply rapidly. They grow larger and change colour in response to their … Read more