Category: Science

Pruning to let more light into the canopy often reduces one-sided flowering. | Photo Credit: Kevin Saunders/Unsplash – Gayatri Chandrashekar Shrubs and trees often flower and fruit more on the sunlit side because the planet’s energy budget on that side is different. Sunlit leaves capture more usable light so they photosynthesise more and make more…

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An optical colour composite image of the viewing field taken from the PanSTARRS survey. The yellow cross-hair indicates the position of the star. | Photo Credit: DOI: 10.1126/science.adt485 When a sufficiently massive star runs out of fuel, its core collapses and triggers a supernova, a dramatic explosion that scatters the star’s outer layers into space….

Read More “The curious case of the star that may have swallowed itself” »

What is ‘snowball earth’? Source link

In 1974, Antony Hewish won the physics Nobel Prize for discovering pulsars. His graduate student, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, had actually spotted the first one in the data; she’d also built parts of the telescope herself, analysed the charts, noticed the anomaly, and helped confirm that it was real. But she didn’t win the prize. At…

Read More “Who wins the science prize when AI makes the discovery?” »

Every instinct tells you to lean back. You’re standing at the top of a slope that drops away beneath you like the edge of the world, and every fibre of your being screams to press your weight into the mountain behind you. To hold on. To stay safe. And that’s exactly how you fall. Something…

Read More “Lean into the abyss: the counterintuitive beauty of skiing” »

With rising temperatures, longer heatwaves, and a rapidly growing urban economy, cooling in India is rapidly shifting from a lifestyle choice to a basic need, driving up air-conditioner use in homes and workplaces. This surge is now a major part of cities’ power demand, in turn raising concerns about blackouts and higher emissions and about…

Read More “How district cooling can ease India’s climate and urban planning troubles” »

Scientists noticed that loggerhead turtles are getting smaller in size, reducing their reproductive output: smaller females produce smaller clutch sizes. | Photo Credit: Brian Gratwicke (CC BY) The spectre of climate change has come to haunt one of the ocean’s most ubiquitous — yet vulnerable — turtles: the strong-jawed loggerhead, named after its exceptionally large head. These omnivorous marine reptiles have been…

Read More “Loggerhead turtles face four-pronged threats due to climate change” »