Science

In 2023, researchers tested whether a building could be cooler than the air outside while still relying on natural ventilation. The experiment used two insulated boxes in California to study how radiative cooling, thermal mass and temperature-driven airflow could work together without fans or mechanical systems. The test box had an uninsulated aluminium roof covered…

To study proprioception alone, the researchers had to remove other cues that normally affect a tree’s growth. A tree might look like it’s stuck in place, quietly suffering whatever weather comes. But below that stillness is a remarkable system for sensing, responding and correcting its own posture. But new research suggests that trees can sense…

High in the mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan, communities are reviving an age-old practice to answer a modern water crisis: they are ‘marrying’ glaciers. As natural glaciers shrink and meltwater becomes less reliable, local people are carrying pieces of ice from existing glaciers to carefully chosen sites, where male and female ice are brought together and buried…

Gisat-1A is the programme’s second attempt, and its success finally gives India the capability that Gisat-1 was meant to establish. BENGALURU: When Isro’s GSLV-F17 lifted off from Sriharikota early Friday and successfully placed Gisat-1A or EOS-05 into its intended orbit, the mission did more than add another Earth observation satellite to India’s growing fleet.It ended…

NASA’s Hubble captures Saturn’s mysterious 10-sided atmospheric wave at its south pole (Image: X/ @NASAHubble) Saturn has revealed another strange feature in its atmosphere, and this time it is hiding around the planet’s south pole. New observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have captured a giant, evolving 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling the southern pole of…

A pair of cotton pants is not usually considered scientific equipment. Yet across Switzerland, thousands of them spent weeks underground as part of an unusual experiment into the condition of the soil beneath people’s feet.More than 1,000 volunteers took part, burying underwear and teabags at sites ranging from private gardens and farmland to grasslands and…

Image Credit: Left/The Wire/Right/CNN A cockroach producing something resembling milk sounds like an unlikely subject for serious scientific research. Yet one species has developed a remarkably unusual way of nourishing its young. The Pacific beetle cockroach, Diploptera punctata, gives birth to live offspring rather than laying eggs, and its developing young feed on a milk-like…

Harvard neuroscientists have kept tiny clusters of human brain cells alive in laboratory dishes for more than five years, setting a new record that could change how researchers study the human brain. The peppercorn-sized brain organoids, each containing more than one million cells from the cerebral cortex, survived for roughly three times as long as…

With countries fighting wars and natural calamities sweeping away civilisations, it seems a global collapse might be a spark away. But the possibility of entire humanity vanishing off the face of Earth seems a little less plausible with the years of effort we have spent preparing solutions for such situations. However, not everyone can be…

The Burmese python has become a symbol of two completely different conservation battles. In Florida, wildlife managers search for and remove the giant snake because its introduced population is threatening native wildlife in the Everglades. Thousands of kilometres away in Bangladesh, researchers are putting radio transmitters on the same species to understand where it moves,…