Science

Satellite startup OneWeb’s past decade has resembled a space opera. Founded by a US entrepreneur and headquartered in London, it has partnered with Google and Elon Musk, supplied Arianespace, attracted investment from Hughes Network Systems and SoftBank Group and fallen into bankruptcy. It was then rescued by the UK government and India’s Bharti Global. The

Debris from a Chinese rocket is set to crash to Earth some time over the next few days, with the potential for wreckage to land across a wide swathe of the globe. Part of a Long March 5B rocket China launched on July 24 will make an uncontrolled reentry around July 31, according to the

A chess-playing robot grabbed the finger of a seven-year-old boy and broke it during the ongoing match with him at the Moscow Open last week, according to news reports. The incident took place on July 19 and videos of it were soon circulated on the Internet. A clip, shared by the Baza Telegram channel, shows the

The chance of someone being killed by space junk falling from the sky may seem ridiculously tiny. After all, nobody has yet died from such an accident, though there have been instances of injury and damage to property. But given that we are launching an increasing number of satellites, rockets, and probes into space, do

A unique mattress and pillow system that uses heating and cooling to trick the human body into sleeping has been developed by engineers in the United States.  Sleep is possible when the body temperature declines at night as part of the 24-hour cycle. Therefore, researchers explained this new mattress stimulates the body to trigger the

Researchers have suggested a new way to detect planets that orbit around dead stars known as Cataclysmic Variables (CVs), which are essentially binary star systems that have two stars in extreme proximity to each other. The lack of distance between them leads to one star drawing material from the other, thereby dimming the second star.

In what may lead to the development of new treatments for heart diseases, researchers have created a novel artificial intelligence (AI) technique that can detect plaque erosion in heart arteries. The technique uses optical coherence tomography (OCT) images to monitor arterial plaque. The finding is crucial as the disintegration of the plaque can serve as

E.coli is a type of bacteria that has been a major health concern and has led to numerous deaths. While the bacterium is found in the intestines of healthy humans and animals, the history of its evolution has remained unknown. Now, researchers, at McMaster University, have successfully reconstructed the first ancient genome of E.coli by

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter has captured images of portions of the Martian Valles Marineris, the largest system of canyons in the Solar System. Valles Marineris, like many other geological features on the red planet, dwarfs all terrestrial analogues. The Valles Marineris, in particular, is 4,000 km long, 200 km wide and up

After capturing the deepest and sharpest infrared picture of the distant universe, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has inspired some captivating photos, formed using its data. A citizen scientist named Judy Schmidt processed the raw data obtained by JWST and transformed it into some of the most breathtaking pictures of two spiral galaxies. The

Due to the harsh glare of the Sun, astronomers, while searching for asteroids in space, point their telescopes away from the centre of the solar system. Most of the asteroid surveys are conducted at night and tend to scan the region beyond Earth’s orbit for asteroids. A new study proposes that this method creates a

Swedish battery maker Northvolt and Finnish-Swedish forestry company Stora Enso are trying to develop batteries from forestry byproduct lignin, the companies said on Friday. A part of wood that binds tree fibres together, lignin accounts for 20-30 percent of a tree and used to be burned for energy. After years of research and development, it

Our planet was recently hit by solar winds triggered by the snapping of a gigantic canyon of fire filament on the Sun. The event, earlier predicted to take place on July 20 or 21, slammed Earth on Wednesday. However, one doesn’t need to panic as the G1 geomagnetic storm was a mild one posing no

Physicists have managed to make a stunning discovery in quantum computing. By shining pulsed lights on qubits, the equivalent of computer bits in quantum theory, scientists observed a new phase of matter that seemed to occupy two different time dimensions instead of one. This new phase of matter allows qubits to remain much more stable.

On the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, NASA announced on Wednesday that it’s shooting for a late August launch of its giant, new moon rocket. NASA will attempt the more than month-long lunar test flight with three mannequins, but no astronauts, as early as August 29. There are also two launch dates

American space agency NASA on Tuesday announced that it will delay the launch of its water-hunting VIPER Moon rover by a year in a bid to allow more time to develop a landing vehicle for the mission.  According to a statement by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration

The M S Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences (MSRUAS) will build a student satellite “Ramaiah Sat” coinciding with ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ to commemorate 75 years of Indian independence. The MSRUAS under Gokula Education Foundation (medical) on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Indian Technology Congress Association (ITCA) to develop and build the nano

A video has surfaced on YouTube where a massive prominence can be seen on the Sun. It is so big that many users say the Sun appears to be breaking apart. The video also shows the prominence in motion along with an eruption of solar flare. Shared on YouTube on Monday by Space Movie, the

A team of paleoanthropologists have unearthed a human fossil that is estimated to be around 1.4 million years old. The fossil was found at the Sima del Elefante archaeological site in Spain during excavations on June 30. The fossil contains fragments of a human skull and is said to be the oldest ever found in

In a landmark discovery, researchers have rearranged atomic bonds in a single molecule for the first time. Chemical engineers from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the University of Regensburg in Germany, and IBM Research Europe collectively began their experiment with a substance called 5,6,11,12-tetrachlorotetracene (with the formula C18H8Cl4). It is a carbon-based