Science

For centuries, people all over the world have told stories about ghosts. In many cultures, the dead are believed to come back in spirit form. Some believe ghosts live in old houses. Others think they appear near cemeteries or old battlefields. These stories have been passed down for generations. They make for good campfire tales…

A lake born from the sky. That’s how Lonar Crater Lake is often described, and once you see it, the phrase makes sense. Hidden in Maharashtra’s Buldhana district, the lake looks calm and ordinary at first. Almost too calm. Trees circle the water, old temples sit quietly along the rim, and birds move across the…

At first glance, it looks like something generated by AI or photoshopped for social media: a single tree bursting into dozens of differently coloured blossoms and, months later, yielding an improbable mix of peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, and more. But the so-called “Tree of 40 Fruit” is entirely real. It is the result of a…

As talk of Mars colonisation and permanent lunar bases accelerates, scientists are issuing a stark warning: human reproduction in space is nowhere near safe enough to even be considered.Despite decades of spaceflight, reproduction beyond Earth has never been attempted, and experts say the biological risks involved could endanger not just astronauts, but future generations. A…

A promising pancreatic cancer therapy developed by Spanish scientist Mariano Barbacid has sparked global attention for its striking results in mice. Beyond the scientific breakthrough, the project is also making headlines for the unusual way it is being funded. After preclinical success, the research has encountered a familiar obstacle: securing the substantial funding required to…

Isro chairman V Narayanan BENGALURU: Four-and-a-half years after an anomaly in the cryogenic upper stage (CUS) of the GSLV-F10 mission cost India the Geo Imaging Satellite (Gisat-1) or EOS-03, Isro is geared up to launch Gisat-1A or EOS-05, as its replacement. Gisat-1A, designed to provide near real-time images of large “areas of region of interest”…

FILE – A radiologist uses a magnifying glass to check mammograms for breast cancer in Los Angeles, May 6, 2010. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File) During the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts worried that disruptions to cancer diagnosis and treatment would cost lives. A new study suggests they were right. The federally funded study…

NVIDIA’s Cosmos Policy uses a video model to generate robot actions and predict future outcomes (Image Source – NVIDIA) Cosmos policy describes how NVIDIA has adapted an existing video prediction system for use in robotics. The model was first trained on vast collections of video, enough to absorb patterns of movement, contact, and physical change…

Elon Musk makes bold new claim: “Optimus…capable of building civilisation by itself”; a Von Neumann machine for space expansion Elon Musk has set out an expansive long-term vision for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot, framing it as more than a factory or household machine. Optimus is described as a general-purpose, bipedal, humanoid robot designed to perform…

Scientists suggest asteroids can be deflected before reaching Earth Planetary defence research often sits between modelling and imagination, with few chances to test real materials under realistic conditions. A new study changes that balance slightly. Scientists have examined how actual asteroid material reacts when struck by extreme energy, the kind involved in proposed deflection efforts….