“Solving mathematical problems gave me a unique sensation of freedom that did not depend on what happened around me,” confessed Irina Kmit, a Ukrainian mathematician, now a professor in the mathematics department at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research topics include hyperbolic differential equations and boundary value problems. And she described maths as a … Read more
One of the strongest materials on the earth isn’t made in a factory or synthesised in a laboratory but spun by a creature barely two inches long. The Darwin’s bark spider (Caerostris darwini), found in the forests of Madagascar, weaves silk that outperforms steel and most human-made fibres in both strength and toughness. Larger webs, … Read more
As Trump floats buying Greenland, Arctic island still holds toxic US waste
This screengrab from video provided by NASA TV shows the SpaceX Dragon departing from the International Space Station shortly after undocking with four NASA Crew-11 members inside on January 14 14, 2026. | Photo Credit: NASA/AP A: On January 15 morning, Crew-11 to the International Space Station (ISS) performed a rapid evacuation, with NASA getting … Read more
(1) BJP-Mahayuti clinches BMC, major civic bodies in Maharashtra The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Mahayuti allies swept the Maharashtra civic elections, winning 25 of 29 municipal corporations, including the prestigious Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). This marks a significant power shift, ending the Thackeray family’s nearly three-decade dominance over the BMC. The Mahayuti alliance … Read more
Whenever voters hand a party or an alliance a big mandate, they also have very high expectations from the government. India’s electoral history shows that many parties or alliances have struggled to live up to that responsibility for long. Let us look at some of the examples where voters have given a party or an … Read more
The Stevens Institute of Technology in the US recently said some of its scientists plus a group at Yale University will be building “the world’s first experiment explicitly designed to detect individual gravitons”. The announcement has already drawn sceptical attention from the physics community — but also $1.3 million from the W.M. Keck Foundation. The … Read more
Prof. Ambrish Singh (R), Nagaland University, with Prof. Yujie Qiang, National Centre for Materials Service Safety, University of Science & Technology Beijing. Photo credits: Special Arrangement GUWAHATI Apple farm waste may soon help protect metal pipes, machinery, and infrastructure from corrosion. An international research team led by Nagaland University (NU) has found a way to … Read more
An image from the paper showing the corralling effect in action. | Photo Credit: ACS Nano, 2025, 19 (50), 42002-42012 A new state of matter appears to be a solid-liquid hybrid, scientists from Ulm University in Germany and the University of Nottingham in the UK have reported in the journal ACS Nano. The newfound material … Read more
Every morning, you perform a small physics activity without realising it. You squeeze toothpaste out of a tube. You apply a force and the paste flows out like a liquid. When you stop squeezing, the toothpaste stays on the brush, holding its shape against gravity. It doesn’t drip, spread or collapse into a puddle. This … Read more
A tiny crustacean discovered from the Kavaratti lagoon in the Lakshadweep islands has now been established as a new genus and a new species. The organism, which belongs to the family Laophontidae within the Copepoda class, is so minuscule that it can be properly studied only with a microscope. The crustacean has been named Indiaphonte … Read more
Point Nemo lies in the South Pacific Ocean, at 48°52.6′ south latitude and 123°23.6′ west longitude to be exact. It is about 2,700 kilometres away from the nearest land in all directions. Also known as ‘pole of inaccessibility’ which is used to describe locations that are harder to reach than any other point on Earth … Read more
The winners of The Hindu in School Science Festival held at Nanjaraja Bahadur Choultry in Mysuru on January 17. | Photo Credit: M.A. Sriram The Hindu in School Science Festival and Ramanujam Spark Quest elicited an overwhelming response from students of various schools in Mysuru city as well as Mandya and Chamarajanagar districts. The annual … Read more
A view of the Hope Island on the Kakinada coast in East Godavari district. | Photo Credit: File Photo Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on January 17, 2026 (Saturday) announced that the Andhra Pradesh Government was preparing to develop a satellite launching facility as part of the Space City project on the Hope … Read more
Planes seen parked at Indira Gandhi International Airport amid dense fog, in New Delhi on January 17, 2026. | Photo Credit: ANI Screengrab A: In weather science, ‘visibility’ is a colloquial term for a quantity called the meteorological optical range. It’s defined as the distance a beam of light can travel through the atmosphere before … Read more
The story so far: On January 12, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) PSLV-C62 mission lifted off from Sriharikota carrying the EOS-N1 satellite along with 15 co-passenger satellites. Within minutes, ISRO said the mission had “encountered an anomaly during end of the PS3 stage”, and that a detailed analysis was initiated. What was the anomaly? In a televised briefing after the launch, ISRO chairman … Read more
If there’s one scientist that everyone, or at least most of us, know, then it has to be German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. As someone who has fundamentally altered humanity’s understanding of space, time, gravity and energy, Einstein enjoys fame and popularity unlike anyone else from the realm of science. The greatest achievement of a … Read more
The districts in Rajasthan, which host roughly 70% of the entire Aravalli range, are suffering from a disproportionately high volume of illegal mining, data show. While these Aravalli districts account for less than 45% of the State’s mining leases and contribute only 40% of its total mineral output, their share of illegal mining cases exceeds … Read more
Researchers at NIMHANS, Bengaluru have shed new light on early molecular events that may trigger Parkinson’s Disease (PD), proposing a shift from conventional theory that has guided drug development for decades. Their study has suggested that disease-specific chemical changes in α-Synuclein (αSyn) — a protein strongly linked to Parkinson’s — may promote the trapping of … Read more
Souvik Das, a researcher under the DST-INSPIRE programme, is attempting to examine how gravity behaves under the Sun’s extreme heat and pressure. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement The Sun may be doing more than warming planet Earth. It may also be helping scientists rethink one of nature’s most fundamental forces. Researchers at Tezpur University in … Read more
Coconut is one of the largest horticultural crops in peninsular India, and an increasing number of farmers are taking up coconut plantations due to a lack of labour availability and the intensive attention required to raise annual crops. The three States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala together account for about 82-83 % of India’s … Read more
In an “extra layer of protection,” image creation and the ability to edit photos via X’s Grok account was now only available to paid subscribers, the statement added. | Photo Credit: Reuters Elon Musk’s platform X on Wednesday (January 14, 2026) announced measures to prevent its AI chatbot Grok from undressing images of real people, … Read more
Four International Space Station crew members splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Thursday (January 15, 2026), NASA footage showed, after the first ever medical evacuation in the orbital lab’s history. A video feed from NASA showed the capsule carrying American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya … Read more
Wikipedia unveiled new business deals with a slew of artificial intelligence companies on Thursday as it marked its 25th anniversary. The online crowdsourced encyclopedia revealed that it has signed up AI companies including Amazon, Meta Platforms, Perplexity, Microsoft and France’s Mistral AI. Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of the early internet, but that … Read more
Datacentres are a growing share of global electricity consumption, and artificial intelligence (AI) is driving those power demands up. This is because AI datacentres use dense clusters of graphics processing units (GPUs) for running machine learning workloads, both when training large language models and deploying them. Since the generative AI boom shows no signs of … Read more
Daily Quiz: On ISRO’s PSLV rocket Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle | Photo credits: ISRO START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | The liquid-fuelled second stage of the PSLV rocket uses the Vikas engine, which is based on the French Viking engine. In 1974, rather than pay cash, ISRO acquired this technology from France in exchange … Read more
Although a spinning fan changes continuously, we don’t perceive its blades’ every intermediate position perfectly. | Photo Credit: Delaney Van/Unsplash A: This is an illusion caused by the way our eyes and brains sample motion in discrete snapshots and the fact that fans have identical blades. Although a spinning fan changes continuously, we don’t perceive … Read more
The story so far: Futuristic space and marine biotechnology research focuses on using underexplored environments, such as the deep oceans and outer space, to develop new biological knowledge, materials, and manufacturing processes. Marine biotechnology involves studying microorganisms, algae, and other marine life to discover bioactive compounds, enzymes, biomaterials, food ingredients, and biostimulants. These organisms have … Read more
On December 28th, traders in Tehran went on a strike following the Iranian rial crash, leading to sudden inflation and high commodity prices. In the two weeks since, the protests have spiralled into nationwide unrest–the largest demonstration Iran has seen since 2022–claiming more than 2,000 lives. While Iran has intensified its crackdown in its attempt … Read more
Imagine you’re a detective looking for proof of something extraordinary. You find what looks like the perfect clue, a smoking gun that seems to prove your theory. But what if that clue could be explained by something more ordinary? Many physicists around the world are trying to create and identify special materials with unusual electronic … Read more