Category: Science & Tech

Say you’re on a desert island on a quest for buried treasure. You’ve lost your map and run out of clues. Now you have two options: you could walk around with a shovel, digging holes at random and hoping for the best, or you could fly a drone overhead equipped with special cameras that can...

The hydrogen molecule H2 is the simplest stable molecule, with two protons and two electrons bound together. Scientists have studied it for more than a century because it’s small enough that theory can try to predict its behaviour from basic physics yet it’s rich enough to include many features found in larger molecules. This said,...

In the predawn darkness, a team of scientists climbs the slope of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano, one of the world’s most active and whose eruption could affect millions of people. Its mission: figure out what is happening under the crater. For five years, the group from Mexico’s National Autonomous University has climbed the volcano with kilos...

The dictionary of life has a new update. A DNA sequence that signals cells in almost all other organisms to stop synthesising proteins instead encodes a rare amino acid in some archaea, according to a study published in Science in November. Archaea are microbes that resemble bacteria in shape and size but are biologically distinct....

A “wolf supermoon” is a nickname that combines two distinct ideas: a wolf moon and a supermoon. The January 2026 wolf supermoon occurred late last week, reaching the peak of its brightness on January 2 evening (IST). ‘Wolf moon’ is a traditional name for the first full moon that happens in January. In fact many...

GUWAHATI A study published in the Indian Journal of History of Science a few months ago has challenged long-held beliefs about the origins of mineral acids, suggesting that ancient Indian scholars may have understood and used them centuries before similar knowledge appeared in Europe or the Arab world. For decades, historians believed that Arab alchemists developed mineral...