Elon Musk recently claimed that in three years, there will be more expert surgical robots than surgeons on the earth. The statement generated considerable excitement, speculation, and outrage in equal measure. While medicine is a deeply personal enterprise, it is also rooted in science. The fundamental challenge in surgery is not precision but adaptability. Surgery...
Tag: Science
Daily Quiz: International Day of Human Space Flight
Ravish Malhotra is the Indian Air Force officer seen with Rakesh Sharma who served as the backup cosmonaut in 1984 Published – April 14, 2026 05:11 pm IST Read Comments Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit
What is the Hubble tension?
A: There is a major disagreement among physicists about how fast the universe is expanding. Astronomers use a value called the Hubble constant to measure it. However, the two main ways to calculate this number have produced different results. In the first method, astronomers use the cosmic distance ladder. They observe nearby objects like pulsating...
New cell therapy shows promise to treat frailty among elderly
In many Indian homes, ageing unfolds quietly. A grandfather who once walked to the local market now pauses every few steps. A grandmother takes days to recover from a minor fall. Such changes are often dismissed as “normal ageing”. Medicine, however, increasingly recognises these signs as part of a condition called frailty, which is a...
Artemis II lunar mission draws flood of conspiracy theories
From false claims that a historic lunar fly-by was staged in a movie studio to unfounded narratives that footage of the crew was AI-generated, the Artemis II mission has been clouded by a blizzard of misinformation. The falsehoods — circulating across tech platforms including X, TikTok, and Facebook — have also added fresh fuel to...
Flavour puzzle: physics doesn’t know why matter comes in ‘flavours’
At the smallest scales, nature often repeats itself. It makes families of subatomic particles that look identical in almost every way. Yet when scientists measured them, they found these ‘copies’ didn’t line up neatly. Some are far heavier than others for no clear reason. Some change into one another at oddly chosen rates. While physicists...
What are sentinel species?
A sentinel species is a species whose members’ health signals the condition of the ecosystem in which they live. Scientists monitor them because they are among the first to respond to stressors in their environment, such as pollution and disease, and their response also tends to be more apparent than most other species. In other...
Study unravels why men experience more skin infections than women
Men experience more skin infections than women — doctors have known this for a while. They have proposed both behavioural and physiological reasons for this difference but the exact mechanism has been unclear. Recently, scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Centre in Texas in the U.S. reported that the male sex hormones, androgens, which include testosterone,...
What is the secret to a great cup of tea?
Tea is the world’s most popular drink, except for plain old water. Whether we’re talking matcha, Earl Grey or oolong, it’s all made from the leaves of one species of plant, Camellia sinensis. (Any other tea-like brew is technically a tisane or herbal tea.) That one tea plant yields teas in an astonishing rainbow of...
Science Snapshots: April 12, 2026
Night time lights are not just getting brighter New data challenge the traditional view that nightlights are becoming brighter everywhere. Based on satellite data from 2014 to 2022 of artificial nightlight, researchers found a nightscape both brightening and dimming. While global brightening, mainly due to urban expansion and rural electrification, increased radiance by 34% from...
