The ‘sacred lotus’ plant is native to North and Central India and grows in ponds, lakes, and gently flowing waters. | Photo Credit: T. Voekler (CC BY-SA) Thermogenesis is the word for the way living things create their own body heat. While we usually only think of birds and mammals as being warm-blooded, all complex … Read more
The Ministry of Finance is set to scrap curbs on Chinese firms bidding for government contracts, which were introduced in 2020. The curbs were imposed following a deadly clash between the countries’ troops in the Galwan Valley. They required Chinese bidders to register with an Indian government committee and obtain political and security clearances. According … Read more
Schizophrenia is usually described as a disorder of thought, perception, and behaviour — a disease of the brain. Yet for years, researchers have noticed a quieter, more persistent pattern in the lives of people with the condition. Compared to the general population, they are more likely to have weaker bones and to suffer fractures, in … Read more
Those who perform exceptionally well at a young age versus those who do so in adulthood are rarely the same people, according to a December 2025 study in Science. This means “most early top performers don’t become top performers at peak age, and … most top performers at peak age weren’t early top performers,” the … Read more
In 1946, the U.S. put a price on Greenland for the first time. The country’s then-president, Harry Truman, offered Denmark $100 million in gold, which Copenhagen refused. More than half a century later, Donald Trump, another U.S. president, has doubled down on his quest for U.S. control of Greenland. But this time, the stakes are … Read more
“Too good to be true! Is it really possible to get our cohorts on board? Is it really free? How do we get to use the facility?”. These were some of the questions clinicians, researchers and start-up founders raised, quite surprised after the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) revealed that it was ready … Read more
Dark clouds loom over the catchment area of the Cauvery. July 14, 2018. | Photo Credit: E. Lakshmi Narayanan/The Hindu An international research team has found a systemic drop in land elevation across India’s river deltas driven mostly by human activities. The researchers were motivated by the lack of high-resolution data of river deltas’ subsidence … Read more
The connection between bats and evil spirits is, unfortunately, a deep, cross-cultural myth that refuses to die, but did you know there is another, more fun spirit they are intricately associated with? Agave plants, the source of tequila and mezcal, depend on bats, especially the Mexican long-nosed bat, for pollination and seed dispersal, says bat … Read more
NASA astronaut (Retd.) Sunita Williams. | Photo Credit: PTI National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Sunita Williams — one of two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station — has retired. The space agency announced the news on Tuesday (January 20, 2026), saying her retirement took effect at the end of December. Williams’ … Read more
After four decades of government-led space exploration, the new millennium has ushered in a commercial revolution where private companies now lead and fund the industry’s most significant breakthroughs. Space is now a fast-growing industry, expected to exceed $1 trillion in value by 2030. The application of innovative technologies, notably partial reusability of rockets by these … Read more
Rice is a C3 plant, and C3 photosynthesis is less water-efficient in hot or dry conditions than C4 plants, e.g. maize. | Photo Credit: Steve Douglas/Unsplash A: Many rice-growing systems deliberately flood the fields and most of the water is lost to the air or to the ground. Farmers often maintain shallow flooding to stabilise … Read more
“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