An artist’s impression of a protoplanetary disc around a young star. | Photo Credit: NASA A: The planets are in their present order because they formed from the same spinning disk of gas and dust that became the sun. Parts of this protoplanetary disc that were closer to the sun were hotter, so only materials … Read more
US President Donald Trump has signed a presidential memorandum withdrawing from 66 organisations, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UN FCCC is the global treaty under which the UN conducts the annual Conference of Parties (COP) climate talks and under which the … Read more
China’s President Xi Jinping with Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in 2023 | Photo Credit: MIRAFLORES PALACE With close to 200 American troops entering Caracas on Saturday, the Trump administration’s invasion of Venezuela and the capture of its President Nicolas Maduro was the most dramatic U.S. intervention in Latin America since the 1989 Panama invasion. The … Read more
President Donald Trump. | Photo Credit: AP President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from a foundational climate treaty and the world’s leading global warming assessment body, as part of a sweeping exit from the United Nations system, the White House announced on Wednesday (January 7, 2026). A total of 66 international organizations were … Read more
Data shows that not all commodities exported to the U.S. were impacted by tariffs | Photo Credit: VIPIN CHANDRAN Last month, we noted that India’s trade data for November had shown a continued resilience in exports despite mounting U.S. tariffs. Not only did India’s overall exports grow, but shipments to the U.S. also rebounded. However, … Read more
As 2025 ends, Indians are consumed by two anxieties — whether artificial intelligence (AI) will take over their jobs, and whether the future belongs to 80-hour work weeks or the right to disconnect after office hours. But for millions of working women, a near 80-hour work week is already a lived reality, as their workday … Read more
“A pathway to the left leads up to a rather extensive plateau for the hills, and forms a very pleasant resort for picnics… There is plenty of room for a good foot-race, and the scenery around, from most points, magnificent. Ponies … can go up all the way.” — Guide to Masuri, Landour, Dehra Dun, … Read more
Soumya Swaminathan | Photo Credit: File Photo The jury is still out on the origin of the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus, although several hypotheses exist, including the possibility that the virus may have jumped from a secondary animal host, former World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said here on Wednesday. “We did not receive the … Read more
Hiccups | Photo Credit: Freepik Hiccups are essentially involuntary contractions (or spasms) of the diaphragm, the muscle that aids us in breathing. Each contraction comes with a sudden closing of the vocal cords, creating that familiar sound we all know. There are multiple causes of hiccups. Some include eating too fast, drinking something too hot … Read more
China’s government has long made efforts to tempt top scientists from abroad, but researchers say its institutions themselves are increasingly attracting talent thanks to their generous funding and growing prestige. State-backed initiatives like the Thousand Talents Plan have dangled fast-tracked hiring and bountiful grants to lure overseas experts in strategically important fields, as China and … Read more
File picture of Indian Space Research Organisation launching the PSLV-C61 mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota | Photo Credit: ANI ISRO is gearing up for its first launch of the new year with the PSLV-C62 mission on January 12 from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. According to an ISRO official, the primary … Read more
Imagine a diamond. You probably thought of a clear and flawless gemstone used in jewellery. But to a physicist, a perfect diamond might actually be quite boring. Something magical happens when the diamond is just a little broken. For decades, scientists have been fascinated by a specific type of defect in the diamond crystal lattice … Read more
Science quiz: A millennia-old calendar system Visual: Identify this Roman deity associated with gates and transitions, and identified as the tutelary deity of January. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | Identify this Roman deity associated with gates and transitions, and identified as the tutelary deity of January. 2 / 6 | While the Julian … Read more
A schematic illustration of the experimental technique. | Photo Credit: Cai et al., Photo Science, 2025 To understand how materials work, whether a metal in a car’s catalytic converter or the substances in a battery, scientists need to look at their surfaces at the atomic level. One of the best tools for this is X-ray … Read more
The United Nations has declared 2026 to be the ‘International Year for Rangelands and Pastoralists’. In 2022, a group of scientists from institutions in Tanzania, Zambia, the U.K., the U.S., Germany and Canada wrote an open letter urging the parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) to broaden their goals to be … Read more
The record of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) over the last decade has been remarkably broad for an agency of its size and budget. Its rockets, especially the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), have sustained reliable access to orbit, rendering operations with multiple satellite classes almost a matter of routine today. And ISRO is … Read more
ISRO to launch Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun. File | Photo Credit: ANI On the second anniversary of India’s maiden solar mission, Aditya-L1 reaching the Lagrangian point (L1), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday (January 6, 2026) made the Announcement of Opportunity (AO) soliciting proposals for the first … Read more
The 2019 draft version of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 made two sweeping assertions in seven words: “teaching is strengthened through research and vice-versa.” Are these assertions supported by evidence, however? This article restricts itself to the first part of the assertion — that teaching is strengthened through research — because of its direct … Read more
Say you’re on a desert island on a quest for buried treasure. You’ve lost your map and run out of clues. Now you have two options: you could walk around with a shovel, digging holes at random and hoping for the best, or you could fly a drone overhead equipped with special cameras that can … Read more
The hydrogen molecule H2 is the simplest stable molecule, with two protons and two electrons bound together. Scientists have studied it for more than a century because it’s small enough that theory can try to predict its behaviour from basic physics yet it’s rich enough to include many features found in larger molecules. This said, … Read more
(1) U.S. attacks Venezuela and captures President The U.S. carried out strikes in Venezuela’s capital city Caracas and other places in the country on Saturday last week (January 3, 2026) in the latest escalation to simmering tensions between the two countries since September last year. Following the strikes, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on Truth … Read more
In the predawn darkness, a team of scientists climbs the slope of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano, one of the world’s most active and whose eruption could affect millions of people. Its mission: figure out what is happening under the crater. For five years, the group from Mexico’s National Autonomous University has climbed the volcano with kilos … Read more
The presence behind this name can hardly be missed. | Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons SH. Siberian High. Siberian Anticyclone. The presence behind this name can hardly be missed. Winter will tell you why. Siberian High is a wind system; an intense, robust, massive system of biting cold, dry air that controls winter weather over Eurasia. … Read more
The dictionary of life has a new update. A DNA sequence that signals cells in almost all other organisms to stop synthesising proteins instead encodes a rare amino acid in some archaea, according to a study published in Science in November. Archaea are microbes that resemble bacteria in shape and size but are biologically distinct. … Read more
An image comparison the size of a supermoon (left) and the micromoon, which is the moon at its apogee micromoon (right), as seen from the earth. | Photo Credit: NASA A “wolf supermoon” is a nickname that combines two distinct ideas: a wolf moon and a supermoon. The January 2026 wolf supermoon occurred late last … Read more
A significant telescope If we were to talk about the most popular telescopes of all time, it is unlikely that you will be mentioning the Airy Transit Circle (ATC). You’ll probably recall space observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble, and you might even spare a thought to the early versions made and … Read more
GUWAHATI A study published in the Indian Journal of History of Science a few months ago has challenged long-held beliefs about the origins of mineral acids, suggesting that ancient Indian scholars may have understood and used them centuries before similar knowledge appeared in Europe or the Arab world. For decades, historians believed that Arab alchemists developed mineral … Read more
Vegetation can cool a surface by evapotranspiration, i.e. water evaporating from soil and transpiring from leaves, carrying heat away. | Photo Credit: EqualStock/Unsplash Cities around the world are getting hotter for two reasons: the climate is warming and urban areas often trap heat more than the countryside. Planting more vegetation, especially trees, has become a … Read more
The story so far: Climate change is real, and for India to continue meeting domestic food demands, agriculture needs to cope with the increasing unpredictability of the weather, declining soil health, and growing air pollution. What is climate-resilient agriculture? Climate-resilient agriculture uses a range of biotechnology and complementary technologies to guide farming practices and reduce … Read more
Nearly 4 lakh more women were deleted than men in West Bengal, analysis shows. | Photo Credit: Manvender Vashist Lav In West Bengal, like in Tamil Nadu and Bihar, more women than men were deleted during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, an analysis of polling station-level data shows. While 58 lakh … Read more