The prototype ‘laundry gun’ in action during a fabric treatment test. Astronauts heading on long missions to Mars could face a surprisingly ordinary problem: how to keep their clothes clean without wasting precious water. Scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, working with NASA‘s Marshall Space Flight Center, have developed a small device that…
There is a difference between knowing something and being able to see what might come next. Knowledge gives people facts, experience and established ways of understanding the world. Imagination works in a less certain space, where an idea can be considered before there is evidence to prove whether it will work. Albert Einstein often spoke…
Astronomers have found what is currently the fastest known star in the Milky Way, a faint star racing through the extreme environment around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Called S301, the star reaches a staggering speed of about 15,500 miles per second, or 25,000 kilometres per second, which…
Evidence of the oldest life on Earth has been discovered in India. In recent scientific findings in eastern India, biological traces buried for almost 3.5 billion years were revealed. The revelation suggests a much more distant and organic origin for the planet.The samples were taken from the Singhbhum geological block, which preserves cellular remains trapped…
Annapurni Subramaniam (Indian Institute of Astrophysics, FB) India’s space science community is celebrating a big event as Professor Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, has been awarded the COSPAR Vikram Sarabhai Medal for 2026. It is among the most prestigious international honours recognising outstanding contributions to space research in developing…
NEW DELHI: People with no high BP, diabetes or smoking habit lived nearly 13 years longer without dementia than those with all three risk factors, a long-term US study has found. Those without any of the three lived an average 30 years without dementia from age 55, compared with 17.5 years among those with all…
The four-hectare barley field was abandoned in 1961 after researchers harvested its final crop, allowing nature to take over without further human intervention. In 1961, researchers at Monks Wood in Cambridgeshire harvested a final crop of barley from a four-hectare agricultural plot known as Stocking Close, ploughed the soil and walked away. They did not…
An ecosystem collapse in Montana remains a lasting lesson in how well-intentioned wildlife management can have devastating consequences. When state wildlife officials introduced a non-native, tiny crustacean into nearby lakes in 1968, the goal seemed simple. They believed stocking the opossum shrimp, Mysis diluviana, would provide an extra food source and help increase populations of…
The gopher tortoise is a land-dwelling reptile native to the southeastern United States that digs deep burrows used by hundreds of other animals. More than two decades after two Mississippi landowners began restoring their land to help an endangered tortoise, their work has now created a new home for one of North America’s rarest amphibians….
For millions of years, birds have been changing in ways that are difficult to see from the present day. A skeleton in a museum may look like a fixed record of one species, but taken together, thousands of specimens can reveal how bodies changed across vast stretches of time. That is what a team at…