Mepco bill

An exploded view of the ITER nuclear-fusion facility. A human figure in orange is shown just below the image’s centre for scale. The reactor vessel is visible at the centre (with the D-shaped cross-section). | Photo Credit: DOI:10.1088/1741-4326/aa626c Researchers and investors worldwide are currently pouring billions of dollars into nuclear fusion in the hopes that … Read more

Kerala’s total R&D spending as a fraction of its GSDP is less than half of India’s 0.6% of GDP, a figure already considered inadequate. | Photo Credit: Galeanu Mihai In recent years, Kerala has framed its development strategy around equity and environmental protection. Between 2021-22 and 2026-27, it anchored its State budgets to the pillars … Read more

Extra-terrestrials have always been a fascinating subject for us humans. In the media, they have been portrayed from comically homicidal Martians in Mars Attacks to stoic Spock in Star Trek and the curious and childlike E.T. The latest to join the ranks of the non-earthling denizens of the universe is Rocky, the adorable rock-like Eridian … Read more

In December last year, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said in reply to a question in Lok Sabha on the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) upcoming missions that the Department of Space had scheduled seven major missions by March 2026. Of these, only one — the LVM3 M6 mission by NewSpace India, Ltd. (NSIL) — was … Read more

Researchers have shown a loophole in the no-cloning theorem by creating perfect copies using ideas from information theory. The protocol is illustrated here. | Photo Credit: Image created with Sonnet 4.6 Quantum physics has a rule called the no-cloning theorem that prevents you from making a perfect copy of an unknown quantum state. It has … Read more

Antaya University, Türkiye, researchers have used E. coli bacteria as a versatile factory to produce useful compounds such as insulin. | Photo Credit: Public domain We know photosynthesis is a feature of plants which absorb sunlight and use the energy to convert atmospheric CO2into glucose. While sunlight peaks in the 400-700 nm region (of wavelengths), … Read more

Iran is expected to have around 500 kg of uranium enriched to 60%. U-235 is the isotope of uranium conventionally used in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. Enrichment is the process of increasing the quantity of U-235 in the uranium mass. The rest will be U-238, which is not a good fissile material. Whereas a … Read more

This image taken from video provided by NASA shows the Earth, left, from NASA’s Orion spacecraft as it fired its engines heading toward the moon on Thursday, April 2, 2026. | Photo Credit: NASA via AP NASA’s Artemis II astronauts fired their engines and blazed toward the moon on Thursday (April 2, 2026) night, breaking … Read more

The sight of the giant rocket bearing the NASA Artemis II mission and its crew of four ascending into the sky in the early hours of April 2 (IST) brought cheers among onlookers on the ground and around the world. The mission has taken many years and several billion dollars to develop and brings the … Read more

Welcome back data enthusiasts. Over the past month, as the war in West Asia has unfolded, we have moved beyond tracking missiles, conflict maps and casualty counts to look at something less visible but just as important — the spillover costs of the conflict. In the last two weeks, we focused on how the war … Read more

On a humid evening along Beach Road in Visakhapatnam, a small crowd gathers around a telescope, waiting for a glimpse of the moon. Conversations quieten as each viewer takes a turn. Some step back in astonishment, others linger, returning for another look. These are the familiar rhythms of the Vizag Astronomy Club’s ongoing moon watch … Read more

A fisherman casts his net in the Yamuna river, laden with foam, on a smoggy morning in New Delhi. The foam is a result of high levels of pollutants, particularly ammonia and phosphates, from industrial and wastewater discharges. | Photo Credit: AFP Every year, during the preparations for and festivities of Chhath Puja in Delhi, … Read more

A fisherman casts his net in the Yamuna river, laden with foam, on a smoggy morning in New Delhi. The foam is a result of high levels of pollutants, particularly ammonia and phosphates, from industrial and wastewater discharges. | Photo Credit: AFP Every year, during the preparations for and festivities of Chhath Puja in Delhi, … Read more

Grace M. Hopper. File | Photo Credit: Public domain Published – April 01, 2026 11:20 am IST Read Comments Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit

In an experiment with six pucks with narrow channels suspended in a bath of E. coli, all pucks spun clockwise. Scientists said this marks the first step towards developing ‘chiral fluids’. | Photo Credit: Grober, D., Dhar, T., Saintillan, D. et al., Nat. Phys. (2026) Escherichia coli bacteria are the workhorse of microbiology labs. These … Read more

Be it our phones, tablets or our laptops — everyday, we interact with various digital devices designed to make our lives easier. Especially since the pandemic, even children have been exposed to this electric world at a very young age. Earlier, parents would desperately brandish toys to distract crying children, now they tamp down tantrums … Read more

Women voters have become a central point of discussion in elections in India in recent times. Rightly so, because parties in power roll out women-centric schemes, sometimes even direct cash transfer ones, to win their support. Opposition parties too make promises about initiating schemes for women’s welfare, if elected. These promises seem to making some impact, which … Read more

NASA’s Artemis II mission to fly by the moon, comprising of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion crew capsule, soars into the sky from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. on Wednesday (April 1, 2026). | Photo Credit: Reuters The four astronauts aboard the Artemis II have reached orbit. … Read more

Four astronauts are set to embark Wednesday (April 1, 2026) on a trip around the Moon marking humankind’s deepest venture into space, an odyssey that aims to launch the US into a new era of interstellar exploration. The NASA mission dubbed Artemis 2 has been years in the making after facing repeated setbacks and massive … Read more

NASA’s Artemis II lunar flyby mission, with the next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion crew capsule, sits on Pad 39B ahead of the launch of the Artemis II mission at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. File | Photo Credit: Reuters The NASA Artemis II mission … Read more

In this 2024 image provided by U.S. NOAA Fisheries, a Rice’s whale is visible from onboard the NOAA Twin Otter aircraft off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico. | Photo Credit: AP One of the world’s rarest whales lives in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Trump administration wants to expand oil … Read more

Certain kinds of mutations in gene TP53, which encodes the p53 tumour suppressor protein, often dubbed the ‘guardian of the genome’, could perhaps be making acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) one of the hardest cancers to treat, new research has found. The study, led by Caner Saygin, assistant professor at the University of Chicago Medicine, was recently … Read more

In the 1960s Ed Dwight was the first Black astronaut candidate — but he never got his chance to go to the Moon. He said he’s now living out that once-denied dream vicariously through Victor Glover, who is set to make history on the Artemis 2 Moon mission that could take off as soon as … Read more

The NASA Artemis II mission is set to launch no earlier than April 1, 2026. If the lift-off is successful, the giant rocket will send humans to near the moon for the first time in more than half a century. In so doing, it will make an important milestone for the U.S. space programme. Its … Read more

A Spanish galleon (right, foreground) might carry dozens of animals to provide fresh eggs, milk, and meat for the first few weeks of a voyage. | Photo Credit: Public domain — Prabhakar Jonnalagadda A: To preserve a food item meant to remove moisture, increase acidity and/or to use natural preservatives. Meats and fish would be … Read more

India’s long wait for a dengue vaccine may finally be coming to an end. Takeda’s tetravalent dengue vaccine, TAK-003 (called ‘Qdenga’), recently received clearance from the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) under the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for use among individuals aged 4 to 60 years. This marks a significant milestone in the country’s … Read more

Throughout human history, the sky symbolised freedom — vast, open, untouched. Today, that no longer holds. The earth’s orbital environment has become crowded, fragile, and vulnerable, threatened by what is today evidently a failure of governance rather than just of engineering. The language of space sustainability has grown familiar in international forums and policy documents. … Read more

When the conflict in West Asia, which began with the U.S. and Israel’s attack on Iran on February 28, escalated into a regional war, analysts said that the war would last as long as Iran had missiles or until the Gulf nations ran out of interceptors. However, with “emergency” military sales, piling monetary costs and … Read more