Science

NASA said on Thursday it plans to assemble a team of scientists to examine “unidentified aerial phenomena” — commonly termed UFOs — in the latest sign of the seriousness with which the US government is taking the issue. The US space agency said the focus will be on identifying available data, the best ways to

NASA is a step ahead to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Scientists are certain that the icy moon has a vast ocean under the frozen outer shell. To explore the possibilities on this moon, NASA is launching the Europa Clipper Mission. Recently, the team delivered a major component of this mission. The main body of

The detection of a new and strange fast radio burst originating from a galaxy located 3 billion light-years away has left astronomers puzzled. Fast Radio Burst or FRB are bursts of radio waves in space that are milliseconds long. Usually, these radio bursts occur and don’t repeat. However, in the latest observation, the radio burst

A tiny meteoroid struck the newly deployed James Webb Space Telescope in May, knocking one of its gold-plated mirrors out of alignment but not changing the orbiting observatory’s schedule to become fully operational shortly, NASA said on Wednesday. The little space rock hit the $10 billion (roughly Rs. 780 crore) telescope sometime in late May and

Astronomers have detected two big, unexplained objects erupting from the universe’s brightest black hole. The supermassive black hole 3C 273 was discovered in a 1959 survey of cosmic radio-wave sources as a quasar (quasi-stellar object). The light emitted by these black holes is brilliant enough to be mistaken for starlight. Scientists have spent decades studying

According to a study, devices made of commonly available oxide and carbon-based materials can manufacture pure hydrogen from water for weeks. The discovery could aid in overcoming one of the major challenges in solar fuel production: present earth-abundant light-absorbing materials are limited in terms of performance or stability. The move to full decarbonisation and the

NASA will launch three rockets within weeks from northern Australia for scientific research, authorities said on Wednesday, marking the first time the space agency will fire rockets from a commercial facility outside the United States. The Australian government has granted regulatory approval for the rockets to be launched from privately owned Equatorial Launch Australia’s (ELA)

For the first time, scientists have constructed simulations that directly mimic the whole life cycle of some of the greatest collections of galaxies discovered 11 billion years ago in the distant universe. Cosmological simulations are essential for understanding how the universe came to be the way it is today, but many of them do not

A 190-feet wide asteroid is going to approach Earth soon and NASA has already announced its approach. To give you some perspective, the asteroid is larger than the Colosseum (157 feet) situated in Rome. According to the space agency, the asteroid will make its closest approach to our planet on Wednesday, June 8. It isn’t

Alzheimer’s disease has long been a challenge for scientists to figure out its causes. But a new study has offered some hope. The study, conducted on mice, suggests that “poisonous flowers” bulging with the cellular debris could be the main cause of this disease. The study challenges the long-standing idea that the build-up of a

Postnatal gene therapy may be able to prevent or repair many of the harmful effects of Pitt-Hopkins syndrome, a rare genetic condition, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. This autism spectrum illness is characterised by severe developmental delays, intellectual incapacity, respiratory and movement abnormalities, anxiety, epilepsy, and moderate but

A new study based on asteroids that collided with Earth has given some of the turmoil a chronological frame. Astronomers believe asteroids have remained virtually unchanged since their genesis billions of years ago in the early solar system. However, not all asteroids stayed intact. Repeated collisions gradually robbed the insulating mantles of their iron cores,

China on Sunday launched a new three-person mission to complete assembly work on its permanent orbiting space station. The Shenzhou 14 crew will spend six months on the Tiangong station, during which they will oversee the addition of two laboratory modules to join the main Tianhe living space that was launched in April 2021. Their

China on Saturday unveiled a three-member astronaut crew that will travel by the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft on a six-month mission to complete the construction of the country’s space station currently orbiting the earth. The Shenzhou-14 spacecraft carrying astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe will dock with the Tiangong space station currently under construction, the

A team of international researchers from the US and the UK have received a grant of $750,000 to develop portable, rapid biosensors capable of detecting noroviruses and mycotoxins in foods and agricultural products. The researchers say noroviruses are the leading cause of foodborne illness globally and are highly contagious. They cause a pandemic every few

In a step that may help achieve better network connectivity in the near future, scientists have developed a beam-steering antenna that enhances data transmission beyond 5G standards. This will give access to a range of frequencies for mobile communications that were earlier out of reach. With the size of an iPhone, the beam-steering antenna has

NASA is set to launch a probe to the International Space Station (ISS) on June 10 that will monitor climate change on Earth. Named Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT), this probe will study the composition of mineral dust from Earth’s arid regions and how the desert dust carried through the atmosphere affects the

With an upgraded supercomputer and strategic modelling program, a team of geologists have successfully forecasted a volcanic eruption in the Sierra Negra volcano five months before it took place. The volcano forecasting modelling program was set up in 2017 by geology professor Patricia Gregg and her team. They installed the program on the Blue Water

There’s a treat lined up for skywatchers this June as they will be able to watch five planets, visible with naked eyes, arranged in their natural order from the Sun – from left to right as you scan the horizon. These five planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The spectacular celestial show will

Marking a significant breakthrough in the research for cancer treatments, scientists have developed a compound that can kill some hard-to-treat cancer types. The findings are part of a new study published recently in the Nature Science. The new compound targets the vulnerability that wasn’t explored by researchers before. According to study leader and professor of