The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has conducted the testing of a sub-scale thrust chamber for LOX-Methane Engine which would be inducted in the next generation of launch vehicles. The test was conducted at the Thrust Chamber Test facility at ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC), Mahendragiri on January 27, 2026. “The sub-scale thrust chamber and single...
Category: Science & Tech
Spreading endlessly: The ad infinitum story
1,2,3,4,5,6,7…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..∞ The dots lead us to infinity. Or so I can say and immediately end this article here. Try imagining the highest number imaginable (which is, in layman’s terms ‘infinity’). Can you? Let’s hold that thought as it will become a crucial point of departure for our deep understanding of the infinity. The brain-melting vagueness...
Investigation into PSLV failures ‘ongoing’, next launch date in June: Minister
The investigation into the causes behind the consecutive failures of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is ongoing, and an external team is also involved in the probe. But none of the companies that had satellites onboard the doomed rockets have expressed reservations over their reliability. ISRO is considering a...
Is it okay for an Indian scientist to have taken Jeffrey Epstein’s money?
A decade ago, I heard a talk by an environmental activist in Chennai. This person almost always worked in settings with significant resource constraints and on activities that society had a tendency to overlook. Jeffrey Epstein had not been the well-known name it has become in India, and around the world, today. But the activist...
Indonesia says it will restore access to Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot
Indonesia will restore access to Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok after the billionaire’s social media platform X promised to comply with the country’s laws, a government official said on Sunday. Grok has faced a global backlash after it emerged that its image creation feature allowed users to sexualise pictures of women and children using simple...
X back up after brief outage hits US users, Downdetector shows
Elon Musk’s social media platform X was back up after a brief outage affected more than 19,000 U.S. users on Sunday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. The outage lasted about 45 minutes and was largely resolved by 12:04 p.m. ET, the website said. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The...
General relativity survives its most rigorous single-event test yet
On January 14, 2025, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories (LIGOs) recorded a cosmic tremor unlike any before. Named GW250114, the signal was the ‘loudest’ gravitational wave scientists had ever detected. In a study published in Physical Review Letters on January 29, an international team of researchers reported that it had used this powerful signal to...
IIT-Gn team builds precise sieve for industry with molecular ‘donuts’
Imagine trying to filter sand from pebbles using a fishing net: it won’t work because the holes are too big and uneven. In chemistry, separating molecules that are almost the same size is just as difficult. However, a new study from IIT-Gandhinagar has offered a solution: a synthetic membrane capable of distinguishing between molecules with...
‘Gorillas are what we want to be’: conservation leader Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka
Uganda’s history with mountain gorillas is inseparable from its political turmoil. Mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) are restricted to Central Africa and number around a thousand individuals. They inhabit dense volcanic, bamboo, and montane forests at elevations of 2,200-4,300 m. Yet from Uganda’s independence in 1962 through Milton Obote’s centralisation, Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship, and...
Union Budget 2026-27: space budget recovers but misses crucial private sector reforms
The Indian space program has moved out of its post-pandemic slump and is entering a phase of sustained, if also cautious, consolidation. Since 2012-2013, the national space budget has grown by 182%. This sounds massive but most of the growth actually happened in the last decade, especially between 2014 and 2019. Allocations have increased more...
