Tag: Science

The world’s largest, most comprehensive source of information for scientists and doctors to assess diseases and health worldwide is the Global Burden of Diseases study. Yet its dozens of parameters do not include one on a leading cause of disability worldwide: pain. But it is too easy to blame the study for this oversight: “For...

Scientists have found evidence of an unusual subatomic phenomenon in data collected by the Large Hadron Collider (shown). | Photo Credit: AFP You know that matter is made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Technically, matter is made of many, many more subatomic particles — so many that physicists refer to them all as the particle...

Excavation at Keeladi, Tamil Nadu. In pottery shards here, researchers found a complex mix of organic molecules, most notably of peanut residues. | Photo Credit: R. ASHOK The archaeology of food is well documented in North India’s ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, where the culinary repertoire, deduced from rigorous research on pottery shards, comprised dairy, meat,...

British physicist Stephen Hawking delivers a lecture on “The Origin of the Universe” in Brussels in 2007. | Photo Credit: REUTERS If the name “Stephen Hawking” immediately brings to your mind the image of a spectacled genius seated in his wheelchair, it is only natural. That’s how most of us think of the man who...

A tokamak is a device that uses magnetic fields to trap very hot plasma inside a ring-shaped vacuum chamber | Photo Credit: Getty Images A tokamak is a device that uses magnetic fields to trap very hot plasma inside a ring-shaped vacuum chamber. Plasma, a fourth state of matter, is a gas whose atoms have...

In 2024, as much as 38 per cent of deforestation was caused by fire. Here, the Brazilian Amazon burns. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto The world’s largest tropical forest, referred to as the ‘lungs of the planet,’ the Amazon rainforest once acted as a vast carbon sink that helped absorb human-induced CO2 emissions. But now,...

A GSLV rocket carrying second-generation navigation satellite NVS-03 lifts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. | Photo Credit: PTI The NVS-03 satellite launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on October 30, 2026, has reached the intended Geo Synchronous Orbit. See The Hindu’s visual story on India’s space journey....

Dayanand Nagaraju’s ‘Kaggantu’ is at once a literal reading of entanglement and a representation of its mysteriousness. | Photo Credit: Samriddhi Nanda/Special arrangement If you enter Science Gallery Bengaluru one of these weekends, you should find Mr. Tomkins to your right. At first glance, he might appear asleep — or dead. But look at him...

File photo of ISRO Chairman V Narayanan addresses a press conference in Sriharikota. File | Photo Credit: PTI For India’s regional satellite-based navigation, the big news towards the end of October 2026 was that NavIC — short for ‘Navigation with Indian Constellation’ — was back in the reckoning with the successful addition of the NVS-03...

‘If they bite you, or you bite them, there are no fatal consequences’ | Photo Credit: Cricket Raspet (CC BY) The common house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus) is a familiar sight in many Indian homes. Clinging to the walls under the artificial light while hunting insects and known for its distinctive thik, thik, thik call, the...