Tag: Science

Canopied with vibrant little star-shaped flowers, the tropical milkweed shrub is a favourite of millions of migrating monarch butterflies in America, which lay their eggs on them, feed on their leaves and stems as caterpillars, and then as strikingly patterned butterflies, feast on the flowers’ nectar, among other plants. The plant does more for the...

Millions of people around the world drink mineral water every day because their tap water is unsafe or because they prefer the taste. It’s packed with naturally occurring minerals that support bone and muscle health and governments and health organisations promote it as a clean, reliable source of hydration. What is mineral water? Mineral water...

Military ships and oil tankers dominate how we imagine the Persian Gulf today. Yet beyond this familiar imagery of geopolitics and petroleum lies a mosaic of vulnerable ecosystems. It wasn’t always this way. Just six decades ago, these waters were busy not with warships but fishing boats, and the glittering megacities that now line the...

Scientists in Geneva took some antiprotons out for a spin — a very delicate one — in a truck, in a never-tried-before test drive that has been deemed a success. If this so-called antimatter came into contact with actual matter, even for a fraction of an instant, it would have been annihilated in a quick...

In 2006, London woke up to a tragedy. Six healthy men involved in a phase I clinical trial of theralizumab, a monoclonal antibody (mAb) designed to treat rheumatoid arthritis, developed multiple organ failure. The antibody triggered an intense immune reaction that the researchers didn’t observe in rhesus monkeys in preclinical tests because their immune cells...

The moon’s surface is covered by ancient lava flows that are often different from those found on the earth. While volcanic rocks on the earth rarely contain more than 2% titanium dioxide (TiO2), some lunar basalts — common volcanic rocks — carry up to 18%, a fact that planetary scientists have struggled to explain for...

Evidence to support an older age for the formation of the Moon, around 4.51 billion years ago, as per a paper published in the journal Nature. This new analysis suggests that a ‘remelting’ of the Moon’s surface around 4.35 billion years ago may have masked a far older history. The Moon is thought to have been formed through...

Biotechnology graduates are the architects of the next animal science revolution in the country, experts said at a webinar on “Biotech Careers: Food and Nutrition” on Sunday (March 22, 2026). The webinar was jointly organised by the Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai, and The Hindu as part of the series titled “Biotechnology: Role in Industry...

On March 10, a journal called Science of Climate Change published a paper calling into question the foundations of climate change. The paper concluded that after accounting for some sources of uncertainty in the climate data, the ‘correct’ changes in the oceans’ heat content and Earth’s energy imbalance are practically zero. In other words, the...