Science

Don Joyce, a Nokia director working from home at a remote lake cottage in Canada, recently abandoned his painfully slow phone-line Internet in favour of satellite broadband service Starlink, offered by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Starlink, which cost him CAD 600 (roughly Rs. 36,000) for hardware and a lofty CAD 150 (roughly Rs. 9,000) monthly subscription, provides

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Saturday said that the active number of the company’s Starlink satellite Internet service users crossed the “strategically important threshold” of 69,420 on Friday night. The billionaire entrepreneur — who often posts about his electric car company, Tesla, rockets, and of course cryptocurrency on Twitter — in another tweet said that

A Harvard astrophysics professor has suggested the mysterious interstellar object “Oumuamua” could be linked to the dozens of UAVs reported by US military planes over the years. Oumuamua is considered as the first known interstellar visitor to our solar system. Avi Loeb claimed that Oumuamua, first discovered in 2017, could be a listening device designed

Raheva was only a year old when she died after colliding with a net of power-lines as she was flying through a morning sky from the coastal grasslands of Jakhau towards her natal ground in Naliya, Gujarat. Alfin lived longer, but in melancholy. By the time she matured at the age of three years, her

On April 6, NASA’s Perseverance rover took a historic selfie beside the Ingenuity copter on the Martian surface. It used a camera, called WATSON, at the end of its robotic arm to snap the shot. Surprisingly, when the final image was released by the US space agency, the robotic arm was not visible and it

A highly awaited US intelligence report on dozens of mysterious unidentified flying object sightings said most could not be explained, but did not rule out that some could be alien spacecraft. The unclassified report said researchers could explain only one of 144 UFO sightings by US government personnel and sources between 2004 and 2021, sightings

Bones belonging to a “new type of early human” previously unknown to science have been found in Israel, researchers said Thursday, claiming to have shed new light on human evolution. Excavations in the quarry of a cement plant near the central city of Ramla uncovered prehistoric remains that could not be matched to any known

Billionaire Richard Branson’s spaceship company Virgin Galactic said on Friday it received approval from the US aviation safety regulator to fly people to space, turning up the pressure on rivals in the nascent and expensive space tourism sector. The approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) comes at a critical time for Branson as his space

Alzheimer’s is an irreversible and progressive brain disorder that affects memory and thinking skills, eventually rendering most patients unable to perform everyday tasks. But a leading clinical-stage biotech company has published completed phase II results of AADvac1, its tau vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease, with positive results. ADAMANT, a 24-month randomised, placebo-controlled, trial, was conducted to assess

Launching one of the richest individuals on Earth into orbit has proved a leap too far for insurers, who are not ready to price the risk of losing Jeff Bezos or his fellow space travellers. Amazon CEO Bezos, a lifelong space enthusiast, has been vying with Elon Musk and Richard Branson to become the first

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk will list SpaceX’s space Internet venture, Starlink, when its cash flow is reasonably predictable, the billionaire entrepreneur said late on Wednesday. “Going public sooner than that would be very painful,” Musk said in a tweet. “Will do my best to give long-term Tesla shareholders preference.” At least a few

The next full Moon, that most people on the planet will be able to watch on June 24 at 2:40pm EDT (June 25 at 12:10am IST) is known by different names in different regions and cultures. Around this time, the Moon appears full for about three days — in this case from the morning of

A large mass of rock and ice avalanche caused the Chamoli disaster in February 2021 in which over 200 people lost their lives in Uttarakhand, a new study that used satellite evidence has confirmed. The avalanche triggered a mud and debris flood, causing massive destruction along its route. On February 7, 2021, a large mass

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now being adopted for automation in various sectors — from diagnosing medical conditions to regulating traffic and help drive vehicles. It is also used for running chatbots for customers to spotting signs of fraud in financial transactions. This new technology is also being adopted to read people’s emotions and to “speak”

Starlink, the satellite Internet unit of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, expects to be able to provide continuous global coverage by around September but will then need to seek regulatory approvals, its president Gwynne Shotwel said on Tuesday. “We’ve successfully deployed 1,800 or so satellites and once all those satellites reach their operational orbit, we will have

Footprints from at least six different species of dinosaur – the very last dinosaurs to walk on UK soil 110 million years ago – have been found in Kent, a new report by researchers has claimed. The discovery of dinosaur footprints by a curator from Hastings Museum and Art Gallery and a scientist from the

Plastic waste — that includes carry bags, soft drink or water bottles, more — may soon be converted into vanilla flavouring using genetically engineered bacteria. According to new research by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, there’s a way to turn plastic waste into vanillin — the main flavour component of vanilla beans — using

Betelgeuse, once said to be the ninth most luminous star in the sky, started dimming rapidly in December 2019. Even though Betelgeuse was always a “variable” star, meaning its brightness would fluctuate, by February 2020 it had reported a loss of nearly two-thirds of its brightness. This made astronomers wonder if it was soon going

Summer Solstice is occurring today — the longest day of the summer season in the northern hemisphere when the Sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer. This day signals the beginning of the summer season in the northern hemisphere and the start of winter in the southern hemisphere. Through the year two such astronomical

Jim Mellon, the billionaire investor-author, has said the food production industry will transform as early as 2030 and that 50 percent of all meat eaten by humans on the planet will either be plant-based or cell ag (cellular agriculture) produced within the next 10 years. He said that half of the seafood will also be produced using

NASA has shared a stunning image of the Lagoon Nebula, a giant blue cloud of gas and dust where stars are currently forming. The image had thousands of stars, or giant flares, twinkling like dots on a massive black canvas. The Lagoon Nebula, also known as NGC 6523 or Messier 8, is located some 4,400

The Hubble Space Telescope, which has been peering into the universe for more than 30 years, has been down for the past few days, NASA said Friday. The problem is a payload computer that stopped working last Sunday, the US space agency said. NASA continues to work to resolve an issue with the payload computer

NASA has launched a contest for space enthusiasts to name the manikin, a spacesuit-donned dummy, that will fly around the Moon during an upcoming mission. The dummy, which the space agency affectionately calls “moonikin”, will fly around the lunar surface and help gather data during the uncrewed Artemis I test mission expected later this year before

Under bright-blue morning skies, China launched its first crewed space mission in five years Thursday, sending three science-minded military pilots rocketing to a new orbiting station they’re expected to reach around midafternoon. The astronauts, already wearing their spacesuits, were seen off by space officials, other uniformed military personnel and a crowd of children waving flowers

Researchers in Australia have developed a new technology that uses infrared imaging to allow people to see clearly in the dark. These ultra-thin films could one day turn regular spectacles into night-vision goggles and also revolutionise several sectors, such as autonomous vehicle navigation, optical tomography, and food quality control. The film is thinner than human

The first astronauts arrived at China’s new space station on Thursday in the country’s longest crewed mission to date, a landmark step in establishing Beijing as a major space power. The trio blasted off on a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwest China’s Gobi desert, and their craft docked at the

A seat on a spaceship ride with billionaire Jeff Bezos went for $28 million (roughly Rs. 205 crores) during a live auction on Saturday, concluding the month-long bidding process for the sightseeing trip on the Blue Origin’s maiden voyage next month. Within four minutes of the open of Saturday’s live phone auction, bids reached beyond $20

Elon Musk on Tuesday shared a stunning video on Twitter of Starbase High Bay, the launch site of SpaceX rockets in South Texas, US. Also known as the Boca Chica launch site, the spaceport Starbase was primarily constructed by SpaceX to provide an exclusive launch site to accommodate its launch manifest and meet tight launch

The first crew for China’s new space station prepared to blast off this week for the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious programme to establish itself as a space power. The mission is China’s first crewed spaceflight in nearly five years, and a matter of prestige for the government as it prepares to mark the 100th

A new paper titled, ‘Cetacean Translation Initiative: a roadmap to deciphering the communication of sperm whales’, explains how the scientists are going to try to decode whale vocalisations. The researchers are using machine learning techniques to try and translate the clicking and other noises made by sperm whales, to see if we can understand what the