Tag: Science

Researchers have found a previously unknown metal alloy created by the blast of the Hiroshima atomic bomb in 1945. The material was found inside small, glass-like beads called hiroshimaites, which were recovered from the beach sands of Hiroshima Bay. These beads formed when the intense heat of the blast vaporised building materials, soil, and metals,...

The story so far: The Union Cabinet has cleared the Pradhan Mantri Surya Sarovar Yojana (PM-SSY), a central-sector scheme to build 5,000 MW of floating solar photovoltaic (FSPV) capacity on India’s reservoirs and waterbodies. It carries a total outlay of ₹5,070 crore and offers Central Financial Assistance (CFA) of up to ₹1 crore per MW,...

The story so far: On July 30, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) released a set of guidelines called ‘Authorisation for Undertaking Planned Re-entry of Space Objects’. These guidelines provide a new framework for how companies and government agencies must handle the reentry phase of a space mission. What is a planned re-entry? Objects in...

When a wall of water suddenly crashes from the sky and sweeps away homes and roads within minutes, one of the first words officials and the media in India reach for is ‘cloudburst’. However, the term is often misused in a way that can distract from poor planning and crumbling infrastructure. What counts as a...

The late 18th and 19th centuries marked a period of profound intellectual and cultural awakening across India, with Bengal emerging as its prominent centre. Although similar currents of intellectual, social, and cultural reform were taking shape in several other parts of the country, the scale, diversity, and enduring influence of this awakening found their fullest...

— Mahua Ray A: The primary reason plant-based foods are rarely salty while animal products have a more savoury taste profile is because animals have nervous systems and blood and plants don’t. Animals generally need lots of sodium to maintain their extracellular fluids like blood and lymph and to fire neurons. And because salt is...

Astronomers have used data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope to piece together the clearest yet map of star formation across most of the Andromeda Galaxy over the last 500 million years. The Andromeda is 2-2.5-times wider than the Milky Way, and the two galaxies have a coin-toss’s chance of colliding within the next 10...

India does not lack respected homes for theoretical physics research. Asked why it needs another, Jainendra K. Jain — founding director of the Lodha Theoretical Physics Institute (LTPI) — answers by describing what the place will not do. It will be “smaller” than the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) , narrower in scope than...