The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2026 has been awarded to Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory – ideated by this year’s physics laureate Francis Halzen – tracks neutrinos that originate...
Tag: Science
Nazis and the bomb: nuclear archaeology finds Werner Heisenberg mistook how close he was
Hans Bethe. Felix Bloch. Niels Bohr. Albert Einstein. Enrico Fermi. James Franck. Otto Frisch. Samuel Goudsmit. Lilli Hornig. Rolf Landshoff. Maria Goeppert Mayer. Rudolf Peierls. George Placzek. Eugene Rabinowitch. Joseph Rotblat. Leo Szilard. Edward Teller. Stanislaw Ulam. John von Neumann. Victor Weisskopf. Eugene Wigner. These are just some of the scientists who had emigrated from...
The Nobel-winning science of optogenetics: Explained
The story so far: The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, announced on Monday (October 5, 2026) went jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegeman and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.” The prize amount of 12 million Swedish kronor, to be shared equally between the Laureates. What is Optogenetics?...
Major study opens window to the brain when an emotion first appears
What are emotions, really? And why do we have them? Simply put, emotions are intangible responses to what we see happening around us. They arise spontaneously, without conscious thought. Emotions allowed early humans to efficiently dodge dangers as they explored the world around them. While the world and our lives in it are very different...
In this Delhi studio, tintype brings chemistry into every portrait
In an age when a portrait can be made in a fraction of a second, Vibhav Kapoor, artist and assistant professor at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, spends several minutes making one photograph, much of the time spent negotiating with chemistry. In his Delhi-NCR studio, Mr. Kapoor works with tintype, a 19th-century photographic process in...
Urban spider found building soundproof webs to keep noise out
The next time you sweep away a cobweb without a second thought, consider this: the silken structure is an engineering marvel. According to new research published last week in Current Biology, a North American spider species can change how its webs transmit vibrations. The authors have reported that spiders in urban environments can build webs...
Successful urban birds sport different colours from unsuccessful ones
In 2016, when Juan Diego Ibáñez-Álamo at the University of Granada in Spain met Kaspar Delhey, an expert in bird coloration at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, a new collaboration was born. “He suggested we study whether urbanisation is associated with differences in bird coloration,” Delhey said. Many studies have investigated how urban...
Cities warming due to combined effect of urbanisation, climate change
Recently, for two consecutive days, Delhi reported daytime temperature above 50 degree C, the highest ever recorded in the city. There is a reason why cities are experiencing higher temperatures than non-urban and rural areas. The ongoing climate change and rapid urbanisation are now defining the Anthropocene, with the cities experiencing both thereby making the...
IIT-Gandhinagar scientists demo quantum link through 5.5 km of air
Indian scientists have demonstrated a quantum-secure communications link through open air across more than five times the distance covered in a similar test last year. In the latest demo, on the night of September 27-28, scientists connected the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) and IIT-Gandhinagar. QNu Labs from Bengaluru supplied the...
Scientists puzzled as baby whales wash up dead in Argentina
Investigators in Argentina are trying to solve the mystery of baby whales washing up dead in unusually high numbers along the country’s Patagonian coast. Scores of the calf carcasses have been washing ashore around Peninsula Valdes, a major breeding ground for southern right whales in Argentina’s Chubut province. Hunted to the brink of extinction in...
