Science

The Hubble Space Telescope, which has been peering into the universe for more than 30 years, has been down for the past few days, NASA said Friday. The problem is a payload computer that stopped working last Sunday, the US space agency said. NASA continues to work to resolve an issue with the payload computer

Betelgeuse, once said to be the ninth most luminous star in the sky, started dimming rapidly in December 2019. Even though Betelgeuse was always a “variable” star, meaning its brightness would fluctuate, by February 2020 it had reported a loss of nearly two-thirds of its brightness. This made astronomers wonder if it was soon going

Solar panel “wings” spread out and two camera “eyes” pointing ahead, China’s Mars rover Zhurong struck a birdlike pose as it explored the red planet in photos released by the country’s space agency Friday. Zhurong’s touchdown in May was the first ever successful probe landing by any country on its first Mars mission — a

A species goes extinct when there are none of its kind left. In other words, extinction is about small numbers, so how does big data help us study extinction? Luckily for us, each individual of a species carries with it signatures of its past, information on how connected/ isolated it is today, and other information

NASA has shared a fascinating photograph featuring three different galaxies. And with that, the space agency has also explained how these galaxies don’t let any “labels define them”. Confused? Let’s unpack. On June 13, NASA posted a photograph of three galaxies — one right in the centre and the other two spotted on the extreme

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has found the very first person who will fly with the billionaire tycoon to space and return aboard the company’s first crewed spaceflight next month. Bezos, his brother Mark, the bid winner and another person will take the flight in the New Shepherd rocket system that will allow them to enjoy

A seat on a spaceship ride with billionaire Jeff Bezos went for $28 million (roughly Rs. 205 crores) during a live auction on Saturday, concluding the month-long bidding process for the sightseeing trip on the Blue Origin’s maiden voyage next month. Within four minutes of the open of Saturday’s live phone auction, bids reached beyond $20

A new paper titled, ‘Cetacean Translation Initiative: a roadmap to deciphering the communication of sperm whales’, explains how the scientists are going to try to decode whale vocalisations. The researchers are using machine learning techniques to try and translate the clicking and other noises made by sperm whales, to see if we can understand what the

The first crew for China’s new space station prepared to blast off this week for the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious programme to establish itself as a space power. The mission is China’s first crewed spaceflight in nearly five years, and a matter of prestige for the government as it prepares to mark the 100th

Researchers in Singapore say they have found a way to charge gadgets worn by a person by tapping the human body as a medium for wireless power transmission. They say their technique draws power from one source, say a mobile phone kept in the person’s pocket and transfers it to other gadgets worn by the

A new study shows that making music and singing together can improve bonds and lower stress. This is something that many of us would have intuitively assumed, as music is a near universal source of relaxation, comfort, and connection, whether you’re humming while running an errand, or songs are blasting on speakers in the gym

A team of researchers has developed a new, economically viable system to extract lithium from seawater, while also creating freshwater. The demand for lithium — an extremely crucial element used in batteries that power electric vehicles — has been soaring for quite some time now and its land-based reserves are likely to be exhausted by

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has obtained the first images of Ganymede, Jupiter’s biggest moon, as it flew by the icy moon on Monday. Juno is the only second spacecraft to fly by Ganymede in two decades. NASA has shared two pictures on its Instagram handle, which give us a closer and detailed view of the surface

This year’s first solar eclipse will occur on June 10. It will be an annular or partial solar eclipse, meaning the Moon will not cover the sun entirely and position itself in a way that the outer edges of the sun will be visible from the Earth. This will create a spectacular “ring of fire”

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced earlier this week that he will be flying to space aboard his space company Blue Origin’s New Shephard vehicle on July 20, accompanied by his brother Mark Bezos. This was supposed to make senior Bezos the first ‘space billionaire’ to actually go into space. But it now seems that another ‘space

Not long ago, bipedal robots that can manage to walk without falling were considered to be the most advanced in the field of robotics. But an acrobatic humanoid robot that researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working on will give them a run for their money (only if that was possible). The

NASA has released yet another fascinating photograph of two swirling galaxies merging in a galactic system 140 million light-years from the Earth. As these two galaxies become one, shock waves rumble through both of them and trigger waves of new star formation, the American space agency explains. Some of these stars are very large and live

Andromeda Galaxy’s vastness is captured perfectly in a zoom-out video that was shared by World and Science, a Twitter handle that frequently shares interesting stories from the world of science. The video of Andromeda Galaxy, also known as Messier 31 or M31, has left users on the micro-blogging site awestruck. The sharp zoom0out clip shows

In a first for India, Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy, a type of gene therapy for blood cancer treatment, was successfully conducted last Friday at the Bone Marrow Transplant unit at the Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC), Tata Memorial Hostpital in Mumbai in collaboration with IIT Bombay. The Central

Imagine a robot dog accompanying you on your morning walks in the park or on the side of the road. Fascinating, right? And while it’s not really cheap, Chinese company Unitree Robotics’ robo-dog costs just about 3.6 percent of Boston Dynamics’ highly advanced product, Spot. The latest machine from Unitree — Go1 — has captured