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
Despite covering less than 1% of the world’s ocean area, the Bay of Bengal provides nearly 8% of global fishery production. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Strong and weak monsoons can influence marine productivity in the Bay of Bengal, a study exploring fluctuations in the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) over the past 22,000 years has … Read more
Axiom Mission 4 crew, from left to right, European Space Agency astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, and Tibor Kapu of Hungary. Photo: X/@NASASpaceOps via PTI Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla’s mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to be launched on May 29 … Read more
Image for representation. | Photo Credit: Getty Image/iStockphoto Only about one in four public-funded research and development organisations in India give incubation support to start-ups and only one in six provide support to ‘deep tech’ startups. Only 15% collaborated with industry overseas and only half of them opened their facilities to outside researchers and students, … Read more
(1) Terrorists kill 26 people in Pahalgam Between 2:40 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, a group of at least four terrorists selectively killed 25 tourists and injured 16 others on the basis of their religion. A ponywala, one of about 150 who ferries people up to Baisaran, was also killed when he tried … Read more
A: The colour of an object is determined by the spectral composition of the light reflected by it. When a surface is dry, the reflected light rays corresponding to the colour of the surface are superposed with diffused white light arising out of random scattering resulting from the roughness and irregularities of the surface. In … Read more
Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) in Bengaluru. C-CAMP said that the national Anti-microbial Resistance (AMR) Challenge was launched in August 2024. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT Four Bengaluru-based institutions, including the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), are among the winners of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) Anti-microbial Resistance (AMR) Challenge 2024-25. … Read more
Despite covering less than 1% of the world’s ocean area, the Bay of Bengal provides nearly 8% of global fishery production. | Photo Credit: L. Balachandar Strong and weak monsoons can influence marine productivity in the Bay of Bengal, a study exploring fluctuations in the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) over the past 22,000 years has … Read more
Rajeev K. Varshney from Murdoch University with a clutch of peanuts. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement A team of 19 researchers from Australia and China have unlocked the genetic key to developing higher-yielding varieties of peanut or groundnut, a major food and oilseed crop in India. Their pan-genome analysis, revealing the structural variation associated with … Read more
The next time you sweep away a cobweb without a second thought, consider this: the silken structure is an engineering marvel. According to new research published last week in Current Biology, a North American spider species can change how its webs transmit vibrations. The authors have reported that spiders in urban environments can build webs … Read more
Assorted brands of honey are seen at a supermarket in Vienna, Austria, on April 3. | Photo Credit: AFP At a laboratory in Austria’s mountainous Tyrol province, scientists are DNA testing about 100 honey samples a month to learn about their composition — and in some cases to determine whether they have been adulterated. … Read more
The International Space Station (ISS). The experiments will be conducted during the upcoming Axiom-4 mission (Ax-4). | Photo Credit: NASA TV Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has shortlisted seven microgravity research experiments, which are expected to be conducted on board the International Space Station (ISS) during the upcoming Axiom-4 mission (Ax-4). The upcoming Ax-4 mission, … Read more
Data Point: U.S. denied half a million student visas in two years | Video Credit: The Hindu International students, especially Indians, in the United States are facing an unprecedented crisis. Over 4,000 international students have received visa revocation notices, and an analysis by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) reveals that half of them are … Read more