China has finished building its Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a bittersweet development given that the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) has been in limbo for years. Both JUNO and INO were designed to study subatomic particles called neutrinos, which are very hard to catch because they rarely interact with matter. This is why both INO...
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November 26, 2025November 26, 2025Science & Tech
Google Meet outage hits users in India
Thousands of users across India found themselves abruptly locked out of Google Meet calls after what appears to have been a wide-scale service disruption. Reports clustered around error messages and “502 — Bad Gateway” notifications, with many users unable to access meetings. The outage struck just days after a massive disruption triggered by Cloudflare, underscoring...
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November 26, 2025November 26, 2025Science & Tech
Names proposed by Kerala-based researchers approved for Martian land forms
A 3.5 billion-year-old crater on Mars will henceforth be known after M.S. Krishnan, the pioneering Indian geologist. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has approved it and several other names for Martian landforms proposed by two Kerala-based researchers. Apart from ‘Krishnan,’ the IAU has also accepted several Kerala-based names for smaller landforms associated with the crater....
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November 26, 2025November 26, 2025Science & Tech
Science for All | Moss spores survive space exposure, challenging life’s bounds
(This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Subscribe now!) How far can plant life be pushed in harsh environments? Climate change as much as humans’ plans for colonies on the moon or Mars make this question urgent. Scientists already...
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November 26, 2025November 26, 2025Science & Tech
WiFi signals can quietly surveil you: study
Modern WiFi standards have a feature called beamforming that helps routers push signals more efficiently towards connected devices. To do this, phones and laptops regularly broadcast short reports describing how they ‘see’ the wireless channel. These reports are unencrypted and can be picked up by any other device in range. Are these reports rich enough...
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November 26, 2025November 26, 2025Science & Tech
How can candle wicks hold a flame for so long?
Q: How can candle wicks hold a flame for so long? – Sadhika G. A: A candle wick holds a flame because it isn’t just a string that burns. Its main purpose is to deliver fuel to the part of it that’s very hot. When you light the wick, the heat quickly melts the wax...
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November 26, 2025November 26, 2025Science & Tech
Publish or perish: making sense of India’s research fraud epidemic
Research fraud is a global problem and has become worse due to the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The problem is even more acute in India’s higher education sector where both the number of journal publications and retractions are growing rapidly. However, journal retractions do not capture the scope of research fraud since it...
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November 26, 2025November 26, 2025Science & Tech
Science quiz: 110 years of general relativity
Science quiz: 110 years of general relativity Each exact solution of the mathematical relations of general relativity (Q1) has a name. Name this person, who solved the relations for what space looks like around a spherical and non-rotating black hole, while serving as a soldier in World War I. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6...
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November 25, 2025November 25, 2025Science & Tech
Tetrapod-shaped nanoparticles could make plastics easier to process, finds IIT study
A collaborative study by researchers from three Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has found that adding tetrapod-shaped nanoparticles to certain synthetic plastics can significantly reduce their viscosity, making them easier and less energy-intensive to process. Plastics owe their versatility to long molecular chains called polymers, which make them moldable and stretchable. However, many synthetic plastics...
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November 25, 2025November 25, 2025Science & Tech
Why did Hayli Gubbi erupt now?
Hayli Gubbi is a shield volcano in Afar, Ethiopia, and a member of the Erta Ale Range. It’s located at the edge of the East African Rift where the African and Arabian plates are slowly pulling apart. A shield volcano is a broad, gently sloping volcano that consists of many thin, fluid lava flows. Its...
