An aircraft passes in front of the moon, with a red glow attributable to smoke particles in the upper atmosphere from North American wildfires, a day ahead of the full super moon, August 18, 2024. | Photo Credit: Reuters A: International Moon Day is celebrated every year on July 20 to commemorate humankind’s first landing … Read more
Proteins aren’t rigid sculptures. They twist, flex, and sometimes unravel — movements essential to understanding their function. Some proteins, like enzymes, open like clamshells to grab molecules. Others such as signalling proteins shift shape to control cell processes. Still others briefly reveal hidden gaps where drugs can bind. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools like AlphaFold have … Read more
Dr Aviru Basu’s research group. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement Scientists from the Institute of Nano Science and Technology (INST) in Mohali, IIT-Dharwad, and IIT-Kharagpur have designed a cheap, reusable water filter. Industrial plants release dyes such as Congo Red and Methylene Blue into rivers and groundwater, from where they can cause stomach, skin, and … Read more
Microscopic image of cross-sectional calf muscle from a person with Duchenne muscular dystrophy showing extensive replacement of muscle fibres by fat cells. | Photo Credit: US CDC About 10,000 rare diseases have thus far been identified in the world, and new ones are discovered every now and then. Some 80% of these conditions are genetic … Read more
Up, up, and away! The question of whether Mars supports life, or if it has in any point of its history, has been on the minds of people – both scientists and common folk – for a very long time. Flyby explorations of the red planet in the 1960s ended hopes of an inhabited world. … Read more
Image used for representative purpose only. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto In a first, starting this year, the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) will award negative scores to higher educational institutions for papers that have been retracted from journals in the last three calendar years and their corresponding citations. “This year, we will award some … Read more
The complex pattern of gravitational waves emitted by a pair of black holes circling each other before merging. | Photo Credit: Henze/NASA Scientists working with a network of observatories located around the world recently reported that they had detected a powerful and unusual burst of gravitational waves, which they called GW231123. The signal was traced … Read more
For years now, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) — the country’s nodal adoption agency — has struggled to effectively manage adoptions. While a significant number of parents are willing to adopt, only a limited number of children are legally cleared for adoption. This imbalance has not gone unnoticed. In 2022, a Parliamentary panel called … Read more
An artist’s impression of the emissions from the protostar. The circular polarisation is shown in the schematic image as a twisted light beam. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement An international team led by astronomers from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) here has discovered radio emission with a special property known as … Read more
This article forms a part of the Data Point newsletter curated by The Hindu’s Data team. To get the newsletter in your inbox, subscribe here Welcome back, data enthusiasts! Your experience of a 36°C day may not be the same as everyone’s. We at The Hindu Data Team have explored this concept in our latest interactive … Read more
The story so far: On July 16, an international collaboration of scientists based in Europe reported that they had, for the first time, observed that the matter and antimatter versions of a type of subatomic particle called a baryon decay at different rates. The result revealed a new difference in their behavior that may help … Read more
In this image posted by @gagan.shux via Instagram on July 16, 2025, astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla meets his wife Kamna, a day after his successful return to the Earth from the International Space Station (ISS), at Houston, Texas. | Photo Credit: PTI Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla who returned to earth on July 15 after … Read more
A study of 141 cities in India from 2003 to 2020 using satellite-retrieved aerosol data reveals a surprise — aerosol levels were significantly high in 57% of cities compared with the surrounding areas outside the city in south and southeast India, while the converse was true in the case of 43% of cities in northwest … Read more
Last month, residents across southern Europe, particularly in Spain, Italy, and Portugal, protested against “overtourism”. They held placards that read ‘tourists go home’, ‘your holidays, my misery’, and ‘mass tourism kills the city’, making clear their disapproval of unregulated tourism. This month, hoteliers in Mallorca, Spain hit back by putting up posters welcoming tourists. This … Read more
A bride wearing ornaments sits during a mass community marriage of sixty couples in Kolkata, India, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012. Mass marriages in India are organized by social organizations primarily to help the economically backward families who cannot afford the high ceremony costs as well as the customary dowry and expensive gifts which are still … Read more
A tribal adivasi woman preparing her hut ahead of monsoon season in Gujarat. File | Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji Gujarat has become the first Indian State to launch a genome sequencing initiative focused exclusively on tribal communities. At a high-level consultation chaired by State Tribal Development Minister Kuber Dindor here, the Tribal Genome Sequencing Project … Read more
Eight healthy babies were born in Britain with the help of an experimental technique that uses DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating rare diseases to their children, researchers reported on Wednesday (July 16, 2025). Most DNA is found in the nucleus of our cells, and it’s that genetic material — some … Read more
The tremors that were felt in Delhi on July 10, 2025, at 9.04 a.m. with a magnitude of 4.4 on the Richter Scale — as reported by the National Center for Seismology (NCS) — are a wake-up call for India’s seismic vulnerability. The epicentre, which was located approximately 20 kilometres southwest of the city at … Read more
The universe is made mostly of matter, not antimatter, but scientists believe that after the Big Bang, both must have existed in equal amounts. One of the big mysteries in physics is understanding why matter dominates the universe today and what happened to all the antimatter. A key clue comes from something called CP violation … Read more
Science Quiz: Properties of light 1 / 6 | Name this scientist in the picture, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2018 for her work in developing a technique that revolutionised high-intensity laser physics and boosted fundamental research in optics. 2 / 6 | Certain transparent crystals, such as calcite, can split a single … Read more
Since the 1990s, scientists have discovered hordes of planets outside the solar system together with tantalising hints of life — or more accurately hints of hints of life. So far, however, there exists no proof that there’s life anywhere in the universe except on the earth. Does that mean our quest for alien life has … Read more
People in Kolkata on July 15, 2025 watch the live screening of the Dragon “Grace” capsule’s splashdown off San Diego in California. | Photo Credit: PTI Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday lauded the success of the Axiom Mission 4 and the achievement of Indian Air Force pilot and astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, who travelled to … Read more
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. File | Photo Credit: PTI Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday (July 15, 2025) said Shubhanshu Shukla has not just touched space, he has lifted India’s aspirations to new heights. Axiom-4 crew return highlights Group Captain Shukla, along with his three crew members of the Axiom-4 mission, returned from the … Read more
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and Axiom-4 crew assisted out of the Dragon Spacecraft onto the recovery vehicle, after their return to earth from the International Space Station 18 days later, on July 15, 2025. | Photo Credit: ANI The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday (July 15, 2025) said that Indian astronaut Group Captain … Read more
To tap into the expertise of retired scientists, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) — the newly constituted body for funding scientific research — has announced the Prime Minister Professorships. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto To tap into the expertise of retired scientists, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) — the newly constituted body for … Read more
CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) Atal Incubation Centre (AIC) is planning to go ahead with the next stage larger-scale trials of the indigenously developed mRNA vaccine technology for tackling Chikungunya. “Chikungunya is a serious, major debilitating disease in India and it does not yet have a vaccine. We have already demonstrated the ability to … Read more
A view of the SpaceX Dragon spaceship after it spalshed down off the coast off San Diego on July 15, 2025. Photo: YouTube/ Axiom Space Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and his Axiom-4 mission 4 (Ax-4) crew members returned to earth on Tuesday (July 15, 2025) as their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft splashed down at … Read more
The impending collision of two black holes is seen in this still image from a computer simulation released by the LIGO collaboration in 2016. | Photo Credit: Reuters A: A black hole merger happens when two black holes — extremely dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape — get close … Read more
Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) Group Captain Shukla and crew on track to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down today: SpaceX Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla and his Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) crew members who departed from the orbiting laboratory on Tuesday (July 14, 2025) onboard the SpaceX Dragon are on track to re-enter the … Read more
Varghese, A., Gusarov, I., Gamallo-Lana, B. et al, ‘Unravelling cysteine-deficiency-associated rapid weight loss’, Nature (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08996-y In the 1930s, when scientists were beginning to uncover the molecular basis of nutrition, they already knew that proteins were a vital part of the diet, but they didn’t fully understand why. More specifically, they didn’t know whether all … Read more