Science

Isaac Newton (Image: Wikipedia) Isaac Newton spent his entire career proving that the universe follows precise, predictable laws. Then he lost a fortune betting on people, and admitted the difference out loud. “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people,” he is reported to have said, after watching his…

BENGALURU: Isro has completed the fifth Integrated Main Parachute Airdrop Test (IMAT-05), clearing another milestone towards the first uncrewed Gaganyaan mission by qualifying the crew module’s main parachute system to withstand the maximum expected loads during descent.“The test, conducted on July 7 at the Aerial Delivery Research and Development Establishment (ADRDE) drop zone in Sheopur…

Seaweed is no longer just an aquatic flora, it has now transformed into a nuisance, especially for scientists. Sargassum, a genus of brown macroalgae that was once largely confined to the Sargasso Sea has evolved into the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt that stretches across 5,000 miles. In May alone, scientists detected 37.5 million tons of…

Mangrove forests rank among the world’s most valuable coastal ecosystems, shielding communities from storms, storing vast amounts of carbon and providing nurseries for countless marine species. For decades, scientists warned that these unique forests were disappearing faster than many tropical rainforests because of coastal development, aquaculture and pollution. Now, new satellite observations from Nasa present…

When roads, railways or new buildings are planned, centuries-old trees are often among the first casualties of development. In Japan, however, some of the country’s most valuable trees are given a second chance. Rather than cutting them down, arborists and horticultural experts sometimes relocate them using a painstaking process that can take months or even…

For years, the idea that Mars once held vast amounts of water has remained one of planetary science’s most persistent questions. Dry river valleys, mineral deposits, and ancient lake basins have all hinted that the planet looked very different billions of years ago, but proving the existence of a true ocean has been far more…

Scientists Invented a Disease to Test Whether A.I. Knew It Was Fake. Then, Chatbots Started Saying It Was Real A made-up eye disease has exposed a real problem with artificial intelligence.Researchers in Sweden deliberately invented a condition called bixonimania to see whether popular AI chatbots could recognise false medical information. Instead, several large language models…

Albert Einstein (Image: Wikipedia) Albert Einstein wrote, “Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” The line is a straightforward claim about where genuinely original work actually comes from. Not from committees, not from rigid instruction, and not from people working under constant supervision, but from…

Far beyond Pluto, where sunlight is faint and temperatures remain extremely low, countless icy bodies drift through the outer reaches of the Solar System. These distant objects, known as trans-Neptunian objects, have long been viewed as frozen relics left over from the Solar System’s formation. Most are thought to be too small to hold onto…

Scientists have long relied on chemical traces locked inside ancient rocks to piece together the story of early life. Fossils from the deepest reaches of Earth’s history are rare, often fragmentary and difficult to interpret. Isotopes, by contrast, can survive for billions of years. Among the most informative are those linked to nitrogen, an element…

Innovation often begins with solving problems that others consider impossible. For Dr Robert Sola Okojie, a Nigerian-born engineer and inventor, that pursuit has led to a career spanning more than two decades at Nasa and groundbreaking contributions to space technology. After 21 years at Nasa and securing 21 US patents, he was inducted into the…

From hundreds of kilometres above Earth, a national celebration looked very different. While crowds gathered across the United States for the country’s 250th anniversary, astronauts aboard the International Space Station watched the evening lights spread across the planet below. On July 4, as fireworks filled the skies over Los Angeles, the display became part of…