In the recent few days, the discovery of “winged insects” and life forms similar to predators in images from NASA’s rovers on Mars has intrigued scientists as well as confused them in equal measure. It is certainly an interesting idea to see insects flitting about the planet’s surface or even seeing lizard-like creatures hiding amid…
The latest research on a Neanderthal infant from Amud Cave in Israel is giving a clearer picture of how different early development may have been in our extinct relatives. The remains, dated to around 51,000 to 56,000 years ago, suggest something unusual, as reported by Current Biology. The baby was not small in the way…
Challenge to Elon Musk’s SpaceX: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to attempt first reused booster launch of New Glenn rocket Blue Origin, the US space company founded by Jeff Bezos, is set to attempt a major milestone on Sunday as it reuses a rocket booster for the first time in the launch of its heavy-lift New…
A fossil that appears to shine like gold has been quietly misleading scientists for decades. Found in black shale deposits in southwest Germany, these 183-million-year-old remains, mostly ammonites, were long considered classic examples of pyritisation. In simple terms, researchers believed the original biological material had been replaced by pyrite, a mineral often called fool’s gold…
MUMBAI: Three days after the successful splashdown of Artemis-2, the Trump administration on Tuesday issued a memorandum which among other things includes safely deploying nuclear reactors in space orbit as early as 2028, and on the moon in 2030.Dated April 14, the document issued by Michael J Kratsios, assistant to the President for science and…
BENGALURU: In the vast hierarchy of the universe, the smallest galaxies are often overlooked. But a new study now suggests they may hold clues to one of astronomy’s most persistent questions: how black holes first formed and evolved.Researchers at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru have examined whether dwarf spheroidal galaxies, the tiny,…
Image: Left/Wikipedia/Right/ESA Space exploration got another boost recently when Elon Musk’s SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Rosalind Franklin rover into the red planet, Mars, in 2028 via the strong Falcon Heavy rocket. Sponsored by NASA and under the leadership of the European Space Agency, this mission is expected to start a new journey for…
A supermassive black hole binary system (two black holes orbiting each other) has been directly identified in the final stages of orbital decay in all of astronomy. These two supermassive black holes (each boasting a combined mass ranging from 100 million to 1 billion solar masses, the mass of the Sun) are located at the…
Water scarcity is emerging as a major threat in contemporary agriculture, necessitating the development of innovative means by which every drop of water should be put to use efficiently. Previously, irrigation was done through a universal method, in which all the trees were watered, thus causing inefficiency at times due to wastage. Luckily, an innovation…
NASA has released a document that sketches out one of its most ambitious space plans in decades. The so-called “Moon Base User’s Guide,” published in early April, lays out what it might actually take to build a permanent human presence on the Moon. It does not read like a finished blueprint. It feels more like…
