Tag: Science

Breaking up forests is just as bad for global warming How broken up a forest is can affect local temperatures as much as the forested area, a new study has found. Using satellite data, researchers found that in tropical and temperate zones, dividing continuous forests into smaller, isolated patches significantly raised surface temperature. In high-altitude...

The field of molecular biology began when scientists attempted to answer a simple question: what molecule makes up the genetic material of an organism? In the early 1900s, when the field was still in its infancy, there were two plausible candidates: nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and proteins. At the time, proteins were the preferred...

India’s cities are bustling with taller buildings and more densely packed populations. The hotter days in many of these cities also come with high humidity, and can make the experience of heat seem unforgiving. One of the reasons is often a perceived lack of winds, which often have to make their way through the nooks...

AI agents don’t go rogue. That’s something only humans do. Nevertheless, a New York Times article – representative of much news coverage of AI – described an OpenAI hacking as “A.I. bots going rogue and independently spearheading a cyberattack.” Name-brand artificial intelligence agents have been on a hacking spree in 2026. OpenAI’s software agents hacked...

Atomic clocks are the world’s gold standard for timekeeping, at the heart of everything from GPS navigation to synchronised networks. A ytterbium atomic clock is so precise it misses one second every 23 billion years. Yet scientists are interested in more precise clocks to detect infinitesimal changes in fundamental forces and further advance navigation. In...

At any gathering, you could easily spot him by his colourful printed shirt or jacket. His tall stature, smiling face, and warm handshakes have put generations of students, researchers, and scientists at ease. Since 1956, when he joined the founding faculty of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, he has never...

Scientists have long known every tonne of carbon dioxide matters to the climate. But governments keep approving new fossil fuel projects – even as climate change worsens. Until now, it’s been difficult to say how much damage and extra warming a specific project will do. Fossil fuel companies – and government agencies approving their projects...

Mathematics always interested 18-year-old Ananda Bhaduri. Growing up in Guwahati, he spent his formative years learning topics not generally covered in school curricula. Last year, he dove into the expansive archives of mathematics problems on the internet, carefully curating the hardest ones and solving them — sometimes in solitude, at others over online meetings with...

(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!) Ancient grasslands, one of the least valued ecosystems, support a phenomenal diversity of wildlife, create livelihoods of billions of pastoralists, and store one-third of Earth’s terrestrial carbon. But they are often...

If I were to leave a blank after the word “Andromeda”, then chances are that you would be filling it in with the word “galaxy”. This is because the Andromeda galaxy is the nearest major galaxy next to our own Milky Way, making the association natural. A little over 100 years ago, however, nobody would...