Science

The habitat concept emerged from research undertaken during the Indian leg of Shukla’s astronaut training in Bengaluru NEW DELHI: Indian astronaut and ISS-returned Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla has shared details of his academic research project exploring how future Indian astronauts could live on Moon, Mars and other extraterrestrial destinations, proposing a concept called Bharatiya Habitable…

​Representative Image of an adult female snake with distinctive scales crossing a mountain road after being discovered by a persistent youth (AI-generated image) On October 18, 2024, Zhou Jiajun of the Zhejiang Forest Resources Monitoring Centre and local biology enthusiast Chen Haojun found the incomplete remains of an unusual snake while surveying the Kuocang Mountains…

Visual observations indicated a retention time of about 61 minutes in Cell 3 and 66 minutes in Cell 4. Monastery Run Wetland 1, near Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was built in 1997-1998 as a passive treatment system for several discharges from an abandoned underground mine. Adequate retention time for iron removal from mine water before discharge to…

PC: Natural History Museum of Utah A fungus can turn an infected ant into what scientists describe as a real-life ‘zombie ’, taking over its behaviour in a way that helps the parasite reproduce. The phenomenon is linked to Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a fungus that infects several ant species. After infection, the ant may continue behaving…

Scientists have found that Mars is not the geologically uniform ball of rock it might appear from orbit. New analysis of nearly two decades of spacecraft tracking data shows that the mantle beneath the planet’s southern highlands runs between 200°C and 400°C hotter than the mantle beneath its northern lowlands, a temperature gap wide enough…

Glen Canyon Dam (Image Credit: Canva) For eight days in 1996, the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon experienced something unusual: a deliberately created flood. Scientists working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other agencies used Glen Canyon Dam to release water at rates reaching 45,000 cubic feet per second, creating a massive controlled…

A snake bite in the late 19th century offered little certainty about what would happen next. There were attempts to counter venom with chemicals and other remedies, but no established treatment could directly neutralise the poison. Then, in France in 1894, two research teams arrived at a very different idea. Albert Calmette, working within the…

The waters off New York’s Hamptons, once immortalised as shark-infested territory in Jaws, are revealing a very different story. Researchers have confirmed a summer nursery for young great white sharks in the New York Bight, with studies showing juvenile whites repeatedly using the region’s coastal waters during their early years. NOAA lists Long Island among…

For centuries, poets have been fixated on birdsong. They called it nature’s closest approximation to music. John Keats was obsessed with the nightingale’s ‘full-throated ease’, while Percy Bysshe Shelley imagined the skylark pouring forth an ‘unpremeditated art’ of ‘shrill delight’ from the heavens. William Wordsworth heard more than a call in the cuckoo; it was…

Quote of the day by Stephen Hawking Few questions have occupied the human mind for quite as long as why the universe exists, and whether human life actually has any real purpose. For centuries, people have approached these questions through religion, philosophy and science, often arriving at genuinely very different conclusions. Stephen Hawking, one of…