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Drops of 98% concentrated sulphuric acid rapidly dehydrates tissue paper, leaving behind carbon, which stains it black. | Photo Credit: Public domain Researchers have found that certain peptides — short chains of amino acids that make up proteins — are not only stable in 98% concentrated sulphuric acid but also fold into the complex 3D…
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Scientists have used the world’s largest telescope to study the sun to capture the highest-resolution pictures yet of the sun’s surface, revealing small, violent plasma whirlpools moving across it. The discovery could change how scientists understand the way energy and magnetic fields move through the sun’s atmosphere. These whirlpools seem like an efficient way to…
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Nine employee associations at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have written to the space agency’s Chairperson, V. Narayanan, seeking official clarification on the proposed transfer of its manufacturing and operational functions to private entities. File | Photo Credit: Reuters Nine employee associations at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have written to the space…
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The story so far: Following sustained local protests and pressure from civil society groups, Google has reportedly said its planned 1-GW data centre in Visakhapatnam district will use air-cooling technology to cool its servers. While air-cooling requires less water, it comes with its own trade-offs. Why does a large data centre generate heat? A large…
Read More “Google, TCS, and the physics of air-cooling a large data centre | Explained” »
A year after the launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission and the Axiom-4 mission that sent astronaut-candidate Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station, the U.S. space agency has formally extended an invitation to India to join its ambitious ‘Moon Base’ programme under the Artemis Accords. At the ninth meeting…
Read More “Space Wrap newsletter: Will ISRO be part of NASA’s moonshot?” »
Valles Marineris stretches more than 4,000 km across Mars’s equatorial region and is thought to have once contained extensive bodies of water, including paleolakes. Researchers estimate that these waterbodies contained about 2,369 trillion cubic metres, with simulations suggesting that roughly half was released during the catastrophic breach. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement The recent catastrophic…
Read More “Valles Marineris flood may have raised ancient Martian sea level by 34 metres: study” »
It was in about 430 BCE that the crucial, mind-altering, breathtaking idea of ‘everything’ being made up of atoms emerged. A cheerful Greek philosopher, Democritus, who spent a truckload of time observing nature, eventually figured out the foundational maxim of many sciences today and coined the Latin word “atomos”, which is where “atom” comes from….
Read More “Arvind Gupta: Seeing the simple things around us!” »
The Mercator map distorts the relative size of land masses by expanding those nearer the poles. It makes Greenland appear roughly the same size as Africa, though Africa is about 14 times larger. | Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons The United Nations on Friday (September 4, 2026) voted for a shift away from the 16th-century Mercator…
Read More “U.N. approves resolution in support of map that shows Africa’s true size” »
A view of a planetary nebula. Image used for representation only. Credit: NASA Dark matter, the unseen substance that makes up most of the universe’s matter, could play a more dramatic role than previously thought. A new study suggests that heavy dark matter particles trapped inside a dense star could accumulate at its core, collapse…
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A team of Indian researchers has produced the first comprehensive molecular and functional profile of the venom gland of Stegodyphus sarasinorum, a colonial spider species found across the Indian subcontinent, to identify numerous proteins and small molecules that could serve as promising leads for future drug discovery. Published in Springer Nature’s peer-reviewed, open-access journal Scientific Reports,…