Tag: Science

— Jesica Sandhu, New Delhi A: Not everyone senses a bitter aftertaste after eating sweet foods but some do. There are a few reasons. First, sweet foods activate your sweet taste receptors but not your bitter taste receptors. But once the sweet food has passed, the sweetness receptors become less responsive for a short amount...

It is estimated that in India on an average day, about 19,500 people celebrate their 60th birthday. The size of India’s population aged 60 and above is expected to surpass the population aged 0-14 years by 2046. Accompanying this ‘silver tsunami’ is the dizzying pace of new technologies, which go from being useful to becoming...

Picture a lizard the length of your finger clinging to a tree branch. The cause of its desperation is a 265 km/hr wind tearing through the air, threatening to peel it off like a loose sticker. Just this happened twice in two weeks to a population of small brown anoles in the Turks and Caicos...

Astronomers are closely monitoring a SpaceX rocket stage that is on the way to striking the moon. This Falcon 9 rocket had launched two satellites towards the moon in January 2025. Then SpaceX abandoned the rocket’s spent upper stage in an unstable orbit as it lacked enough fuel to return to the earth or head...

Astronomers are closely monitoring a SpaceX rocket stage that is on the way to striking the moon. This Falcon 9 rocket had launched two satellites towards the moon in January 2025. Then SpaceX abandoned the rocket’s spent upper stage in an unstable orbit as it lacked enough fuel to return to the earth or head...

For centuries, diamonds have been regarded as symbols of eternal love, characterised by their rarity, scintillation and lustre. But behind the glamour of these stones lies a cold, hard truth: an industry plagued by forced labour, civil violence, and pollution. Some of the world’s largest diamond mines, such as the Argyle mine in Australia and...

Study ‘proves’ colonists brought smallpox to South America Scientists have found direct molecular evidence that European colonisers brought smallpox to South America after recovering the first ancient smallpox genomes from the Americas, in the remains of individuals in Chile. The strains belonged to a now-extinct lineage that branched from European strains around 1296. Analysing the...

S. Somanath, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told The Hindu that scientific missions ought to be more important in the future. Excerpts: The LVM3 launch vehicle successfully placed 36 satellites of the privately owned OneWeb consortium. However, you have recently indicated that the Chandrayaan-3 mission (to place a rover on the moon)...

Only three decades ago, the Indian space programme was a diminutive affair, dominated by the newfound successes of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and a then-fledgling clump of communications satellites. Today, the programme is a large tree with a flourishing canopy. There is a slew of ongoing projects accompanied by projects being ideated, developed,...

Recent reports of nearly 120 scientists resigning from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have rightly raised concerns. ISRO has been a symbol of India’s scientific aspirations and such an exodus cannot be dismissed as an ordinary episode of employee turnover. Resignations have occurred over the years but the scale of recent departures confronts us...