One of the best places to practice hunting for life on Mars could be in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Scientists recently studied the Salar de Pajonales, an incredibly dry and freezing salt flat located 3.5 km above sea level. Together with the fact that it is blasted by ultraviolet radiation, the Salar is a...
Tag: Science
NASA announces overhaul of Artemis lunar programme amid technical delays
NASA on February 27 abruptly said it was shaking up its Artemis lunar program that has suffered multiple delays in recent years, a bid to ensure Americans can return to the Moon’s surface by 2028. That goal remains unchanged, but the US space agency is shifting its flight line-up to include a test mission before...
Tamil Nadu launches its first Dark Sky Park in Kolli Hills for stargazing
The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday announced the launch of the State’s first Dark Sky Park at the Ariyur Shola Reserve Forest in Kolli Hills, Namakkal district. The initiative was inaugurated by Forests Minister R.S. Rajakannappan in the presence of senior officials, including Environment, Climate Change and Forests Secretary Supriya Sahu, Principal Chief Conservator of...
Kerala scientist bags Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship
Saranya J.S., a native of Tanur in Malappuram, has been selected for the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA) instituted and funded by the European Commission. The highly competitive two-year fellowship will support her project titled “Indian Ocean Warming Pattern, Surface and Subsurface Marine Heatwaves: Storylines and Mechanisms (IO-WAVE)”, to be carried out in France. Ms. Saranya’s research will examine how...
Mosquitoes began biting hominins 1.8 million years ago, study says
Between 1992 and 2020, a group of intrepid scientists walked deep into the forests of Sundaland, across the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, to collect mosquito larvae of 11 species to understand the evolutionary origins of anthropophily, or the affinity for humans. This effort, the researchers have written in a new paper in Scientific...
‘Loose connection’ prevented NVS-02 satellite from landing in intended orbit, says panel
After nearly a year’s delay, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made public the report of a committee constituted to analyse why the NVS-02 satellite, which was launched aboard a GSLV rocket on January 29 last year, couldn’t be placed in its intended orbit. The apex committee, as it is called, concluded that the main reason...
What are carbon capture and utilisation technologies? | Explained
The story so far: Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) refers to a set of technologies that capture carbon dioxide emissions from industrial sources or directly from the air and convert them into useful products. This process removes carbon from the atmosphere and puts it into the economy as inputs for fuels, chemicals, building materials, or...
Why do so many flowers have five petals?
— Ajith Kizhakkethil Many flowers are indeed pentamerous — but across flowering plants as a whole, the petal number varies widely. Monocots often have flower parts in threes. Eudicots have four or five. Many species also have fused petals, others have several petals, and yet others lack them altogether. In the flower bud, new organs...
Aliens and America: Why is the U.S. obsessed with the search for extraterrestrial life?
Aliens are real. Or maybe not. The possibility of mystical beings watching over us or even walking among us is not just the ramblings of the fringe and Reddit users, but a key political and societal debate in the U.S. President Donald Trump, on Thursday, February 19, 2026, announced that he was directing the Pentagon...
The science of taste
The science of taste The Miracle Berry contains a compound called miraculin that binds to sweet receptors and can make acidic foods like lemon taste sweet for about an hour. START THE QUIZ 1 / 5 | You don’t ‘taste’ most of what you call taste. Instead, a large share of the flavour comes from...
