Science

NASA posted a couple breath-taking images of the annular solar eclipse as seen from the United States on its official Instagram handle, calling it a “view of a lifetime” The solar eclipse that occurred on June 10 is the first solar eclipse of this year and was witnessed in its partial form from Ladakh and

A gigantic dinosaur discovered in Australia’s outback has been identified as a new species and recognised as one of the largest to ever roam the Earth, according to palaeontologists. The Australotitan cooperensis, part of the titanosaur family that lived about 100 million years ago, has finally been named and described 15 years after its bones

New research has found that it is possible for people to learn click-based echolocation in just 10 weeks. This worked for people at very different ages, and this was shown to be a skill anyone could learn, not just the visually impaired. For the longest time, bats and dolphins were the two commonly cited examples by

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has invented a fibre with digital capabilities that can sense, store, analyse, and infer activities after it’s sewn into a shirt. Yoel Fink, professor and principal investigator at the Research Laboratory of Electronics and a senior author on the study, said that these fibres

A new study has found that a single mysterious event about 19 million years ago wiped nearly the entire population of sharks. Scientists behind the new research say that studying the shark teeth buried in deep-sea sediment, revealed that the current diversity among sharks is only a tiny remnant of a much larger variety that

NASA’s long-awaited flagship observatory — the James Webb Space Telescope — is slated for take-off after October this year, as the space agency continues its talks with the European Space Agency (ESA) to fix a final launch date. This comes after their initial announcement in July last year in which the Webb Telescope was due

Researchers at Australia’s Queensland Museum have found a new, adorable frog species in the swampy, lowland forests of New Guinea. Named the “chocolate frog”, it has big, cartoonish eyes and its skin is the colour of milk chocolate. The candy-coloured amphibian is closely related to the green tree frog that’s common in Australia. The researchers

NASA’s Juno will come within 645 miles (1,038km) of Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede and gather significant observations. On Monday, June 7, at 1:35pm EDT (11:05pm IST), the flyby will be the closest a spacecraft has come to the solar system’s largest natural satellite since NASA’s Galileo in May 2000. NASA said that besides the striking imagery,

Nasa’s 31-year-old Hubble Space Telescope has made another incredible discovery — it has found a “lopsided” spiral galaxy that has been deformed by the gravitational tug of another nearby galaxy. NASA has shared the stunning image of the galaxy called “NGC 2276”, which is located in the constellation Cepheus, about 120 million light-years away from

Whatever or whoever they are, they’re still out there. US intelligence is after them, but its upcoming report won’t deliver any full or final truth about UFOs. The tantalising prospect of top government intel finally weighing in — after decades of conspiracy theories, TV shows, movies and winking jokes by presidents — will instead yield

Jeff Bezos has announced he will be flying to space with his brother on July 20. The former Amazon CEO will be among the travellers on the first passenger flight of Blue Origin. Blue Origin’s reusable suborbital rocket system named New Shepard will take its first astronaut crew to space along with Bezos and his

A team of scientists from Bengaluru’s Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) has developed a device that can emulate the cognitive actions of a human brain, and is more efficient than conventional techniques. The new AI technology enhances computational speed and power consumption efficiency. The team fabricated an artificial synaptic network (ASN), resembling the

A team of scientists in Namibia, in southwest Africa, has recorded a phenomenal cosmic explosion, the brightest so far, of gamma radiation from a collapsing star. They said usually these explosions occur when a massive star — five or 10 times the mass of the Sun – abruptly detonates and turns into a black hole.

A team of palaeontologists has unearthed the bones of a dinosaur in Queensland, Australia. The discovered parts of spine, scientists said, could belong to a new species altogether and may well be the youngest dinosaur discovered in Australia to date. The remains were uncovered after experts from the Eromanga Natural History Museum carried out digging

NASA announced two new missions to Venus on Wednesday that will launch at the end of the decade and are aimed at learning how Earth’s nearest planetary neighbour became a hellscape while our own thrived. “These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world, capable of melting lead at the

NASA on Wednesday shared a stunning image, captured from space, of the 2019 Hurricane Dorian to mark the beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season. Dorian was the most powerful storm to hit the Bahamas since records began. In a long Instagram post, the American space agency explained through five pointers how it is preparing to

Scientists in Israel has successfully experimented on 250 mice, boosting their life expectancy by nearly 23 percent, something they believe can be replicated on humans too. Scientists achieved these incredible results by increasing the supply of SIRT6, a protein that starts declining with age. “These findings show that SIRT6 optimises energy homeostasis in old age

The UK’s Royal Navy is testing the accuracy and effectiveness of artificial intelligence (AI) to defeat missile attacks for the first time at sea. The test of the leading-edge software is being done against supersonic, ballistic, as well as cruise missiles during the largest exercise of its kind off the coasts of Scotland and Norway,

NASA is conducting a study to see how astronauts feel about growing their own vegetables aboard the  International Space Station (ISS). Growing your own vegetables and eating them fresh has multiple benefits, health and nutrition-wise. The space agency says the study will also allow it to understand whether gardening in leisure time can help astronauts

A three-man crew of astronauts will blast off in June for a three-month mission on China’s new space station, according to a space official who was the country’s first astronaut in orbit. The plans for the station’s first crew were confirmed to state television by Yang Liwei, the manned space programme’s deputy chief designer, as