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India and the US have “a natural synergy” and similar aspirations and it is important for them to work together in the field of science and technology not only for the welfare of their own people but also to solve global problems, a top American scientist has said.

“(Through) global collaborations, we can then devise solutions that can be global, but also applicable for local situations,” National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Dr Sethuraman Panchanathan said.

Over the past few months, the India-US collaborations in the field of science and technology have gained momentum and is reflected in the fact that India’s two top Cabinet ministers – External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman – having meetings with Panchanathan at the NSF headquarters here.

In addition, Panchanathan has had meetings with Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh both here and in India and with Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in India in the last few months.

The discussions with Sitharaman ranged around some of the key existing and futuristic areas of collaboration like AI (Artificial intelligence) for agriculture and COVID-19.

“Two large democracies wanting their citizens to be prosperous, why should we not work together?” he asked.

Panchanathan, both India and the United States have “a natural synergy” and similar aspirations.

“This a very important moment for global collaborations,” Panchanathan told PTI in a recent interview adding that it is time for like-minded partners to be able to work together and do some amazing things for individual nations, but also solve global problems.

“If you take climate, for example, climate not only brings together multiple disciplines that have to contribute, and also be able to arrive at inspirations from the problem being something that they can build new technologies, new solutions, new science, scientific approaches, and so on. But the context of global nature is very, very important,” he said.

Because of the fact that India and the United States share common values, common aspirations, and also the desire for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden to want to work together and “there is there is an impetus to do more, better and faster,” Panchanathan said.

“I’m very proud to say that we had 35 new projects that we launched when I was at IIT Delhi, within a year,” he said.

“We are funding our US side of investigators, and India’s six digital technology hubs at the Indian Statistical Institute, IIT Bombay, Delhi, Chennai, and Jodhpur. These are the six institutions’ digital technology hubs,” he said.

The Indian-American scientist, who now is driving America’s scientific research and development, said he is passionate about developing and spreading innovation centres.

“It is very important to make sure that we’re investing in fundamental scientific research. We are making sure that there are generations of young talent, who are inspired by science and want to pursue scientific careers. And making that a very very exciting as well as a rewarding career,” he said.

“The second thing, I find this, you also have to make sure that you’re investing in things that make a difference to the context. You’re not trying to replicate something from a different place. But putting it in the context of what the nation needs…. and investing in building those engineering technology and science inspired solutions,” he said.

He said India is full of talented people.

“How do you get domestic talent to play for the country? ….how do you make sure that every bit of talent feels that they have the chance to express themselves to the fullest, and contribute to the nation, the future of the nation,” he said.

Panchanathan said there is a need to build an entrepreneurial culture that not only leverages science and technology but also leverages the context and comes up with innovative solutions.

These things are all simultaneously important and highly interrelated.

“So it’s very important, in my view: strong opportunities, strong innovation centers, strong science, fundamental science investments, and a strong desire to take the context and build solutions,” the top Indian American scientist said.

Panchanathan was born and raised in Chennai.

Panchanathan is married to Sarada “Soumya” Panchanathan, an academic paediatrician and informatician, who has taught medical students, pediatric residents and informatics fellows. They have two children.


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NASA captures a rare Uranus stellar occultation this month

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NASA captures a rare Uranus stellar occultation this month

NASA’s astronomers got a rare chance to study Uranus when the planet moved in front of a distant star — a rare event called a “stellar occultation.” The occultation of Uranus occurred the morning of the April 7th and lasted for one hour. The occulation was visible from western North America and it was the first bright Uranian occultation since 1996. The Langley NASA Research Centre mobilised an international team of more than 30 scientists who combined observations from 18 observatories to gather important facts. The contribution of these two groups, together, led to phase coverage being restored and was key to the possibility of investigating the vertical structure of its atmosphere.

NASA’s Rare Uranus Occultation Unlocks New Atmospheric and Ring Discoveries

According to Space.com, planetary scientist William Saunders stressed the enormity of the effort and that it could not have been accomplished without the help of every telescope. “By observing this occultation from so many large telescopes at so many altitudes, we can determine the temperature structure of Uranus’ atmosphere at a level of detail that was not possible before,” Saunders stated. As per NASA’s official release, the newly gathered data could significantly advance plans for future Uranus exploration missions.

During the occultation, researchers measured the temperatures and chemical composition of Uranus’ stratosphere, capturing changes unseen since the last event nearly three decades ago. Uranus is about 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometres) from Earth. Uranus has no firm surface; rather, it is covered by a swirling mass of water, ammonia, and methane clouds. This low-freezing-point substance is the slushy, icy layer that veneers a volumetric rocky mantle, which is surrounded by an atmosphere of mostly hydrogen and helium.

The scientists also observed that ice and gas giants like Uranus may be natural laboratories for learning about atmospheres. This absence of solid ground means that cloud formation, storm development, and connections between wind patterns are all part of a unified system— a kind of warm, wet, swirling ocean of air that we call the atmosphere.

This is according to postdoctoral researcher Emma Dahl of the California Institute of Technology. “We can find out why we have clouds, why we have storms, and why we have wind, not from the many thousands of objects that we have on the surface here on the Earth, but from the total atmosphere that we have over the mountain,” Dahl said in the NASA statement.

Over the next six years, Uranus will occult several dimmer stars, offering further chances to observe the process, according to NASA officials. But the next big event with a brighter star is expected in 2031, presenting yet another opportunity for astronomers to refine their ideas of this remote ice giant’s highly active atmosphere and delicate rings. 
 

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Super Earths are Quite Common Outside the Solar System, New Study Reveals

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Super Earths are Quite Common Outside the Solar System, New Study Reveals

A team of international astronomers, led by Weicheng Zang from the Centre for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (Cfa), had announced the discovery of a planet whose size is twice that of Earth, and orbits around its star at a distance farther out than Saturn. These findings reveal how planets differ from our existing solar system. The discovery was first published in the Journal Science on April 25, 2025. Scientists fetched this data from the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet), also known as the largest microlensing survey to date.

This Super Earth, called a planet due to its size being bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, is more significant as it is a large study where the masses of many planets have been measured relative to the stars that they orbit. As per physics.org, the team of researchers found fresh information about the number of planets that surround the Milky Way.

Study by KMTNet

According to the study conducted using Korean Microlensing data in which light from faraway objects is amplified through the use of an interfering body, called a planet. This technique is very effective for finding planets at a far distance, between Earth and Saturn’s orbit.

This study is considered to be large for its kind because there are about three times more planets, including planets that are eight times smaller than the previous planets found with the help of microlensing. Shude Mao, a professor, said that the current data gives a hint of how cold planets are formed. With the help of KMTNet data, we can know how these planets were formed and evolved. KMTNet has three telescopes in South Africa, Chile and Australia.

Understanding the Exoplanets

Such studies show that the other systems can have a small, medium and large variety of planets in Earth’s orbit. CFA-led research suggests that there can be more Super Earth Planets in other solar systems’ outer regions. Jennifer Yee says that there is a possibility that outside the Earth’s trajectory, other galaxies may have more such planets that are bigger than Earth’s size yet smaller than Neptune.

Findings and Implications

Youn Kii Jung, who operates KMTNet, says that in Jupiter-like orbits, the other planetary systems may not be similar to ours. Scientists will try to determine how many such planets exist. A study indicates that there are at least as many super-Earths as there are Neptune-sized planets in the universe.

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Magnetic Fields Could Significantly Influence Oscillations in Merging Neutron Stars, Study Finds

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Magnetic Fields Could Significantly Influence Oscillations in Merging Neutron Stars, Study Finds

Magnetic fields may significantly complicate how scientists interpret gravitational wave signals from neutron star mergers, a new study has revealed. These collisions, where two super-dense stellar remnants merge, have long offered astrophysicists a way to probe matter under extreme pressure. The results from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Valencia reveal that robust magnetic fields form more complex and lengthy patterns in gravitational waves, thereby making it harder to decipher the inner workings of neutron stars. Results could doom post-merger signal interpretation strategies and the equation of states of dense matter as scientists prepare to observe the next generation of gravitational wave observatories.

Magnetic Fields Found to Distort Frequency Signals in Neutron Star Mergers

As per the study published in Physical Review Letters, the researchers simulated general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics — how the strength and arrangement of magnetic fields affect the frequency signals from the remnants left behind after a merger. They went represent real-world conditions by applying two different equations of state (EoS) for neutron stars, different magnetic field configurations, and several mass combinations.

According to lead researcher Antonios Tsokaros, the magnetic field can cause frequency shifts that can misidentify scientists into misattributing them as indications of other physical phenomena like phase transitions or quark-hadron crossover.

The discoveries also imply that scientists need to be cautious about how they interpret signals from neutron-star mergers, lest they slip into assuming how they form. They found that strong magnetic fields can change the emitted signals’ typical oscillation frequency, shifting them from what they should be and from what was predicted by one or another of the competing equations of state at play within these ferocious events.

They also discovered that in the most straightforward type of galaxy mergers they considered in their simulations, the magnetic field became overly amplified so that a greater proportion of the remnants of the merger are more likely to produce further gravitational wave emissions.

Magnetic Fields Hold Key to Unlocking Secrets of Neutron Star Mergers

Neutron stars are what remains of massive stars that have collapsed, and they contain matter so dense that a full teaspoon would weigh billions of tonnes. They have thermodynamic properties that are determined by the EoS and magnetic fields, some orders of magnitude stronger than those that one can produce in a human laboratory.

These extreme features also make neutron stars useful for probing the laws of physics under intense pressure and magnetism. Ever since it was detected in both gravitational waves and gamma rays in 2017, the scientific community has been buzzing about research on neutron star mergers, leading to ever-growing numbers of studies related to these types of mergers.

Professor Milton Ruiz also warns that it would be a mistake to misinterpret observations in the future without considering the effects of the magnetic fields. Higher-resolution simulations are needed, the researchers said, to refine our understanding of how magnetic fields shape cosmic happenings, and endeavours like the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer loom on the horizon.

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