Science

Many of us who enjoy nature, wildlife or just being outdoors have one thing in common – we all love the sensorial experiences that the outdoors provides. Like the sight of the flowing river, the touch of cool breeze in the mountains, the smell of the forest, calls/ songs of the birds to name a

Astronomers and amatuer skywatchers will get to see the longest lunar eclipse of this century this month. In two weeks from now, on November 19 (Kartik Purnima), Earth will pass between the Sun and Moon, creating a shadow on the Moon’s surface. The near-total lunar eclipse will peak just after 1:30pm IST, when the Earth

The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared a stunning wide image of one of the biggest impact basins in the Solar System, located on Mars. Hellas, with a diameter of 1,430 miles (2,300km) and a depth of over 4.3 miles (7km), is believed to have formed between 3.8 billion and 4.1 billion years ago after

NASA is gearing up for the launch of its first planetary defence test, which will involve a spacecraft intentionally crashing into an asteroid to impact its trajectory. The US agency has filled the spacecraft with fuel, performed some final tests, and is running rehearsals for the final mission. Named Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the

A federal judge on Thursday rejected a lawsuit by Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin against the US government over NASA’s decision to award a $2.9 billion (roughly Rs. 21,559 crore) lunar lander contract to rival billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Judge Richard Hertling of the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington granted the government’s

Astronomers from India have observed an X-ray binary system in space, known as GRS 1915+105, using the AstroSat, the first dedicated Indian astronomy mission. At a distance of some 28,000 light-years away from the Earth, this system is a superluminal low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB). It was first detected in August 1992. But AstroSat observations confirmed

Agnikul Cosmos, an Indian space tech startup looking to take advantage of the massive space travel opportunity of the next decade, has been grabbing headlines in the recent times. From signing deals with Alaska Aerospace Corporation in the US, to signing an MoU with ISRO for accessing its infrastructure and technical expertise, Agnikul Cosmos has made giant leaps

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced a new mission where human-made emissions of greenhouse gases will be tracked from space. ESA, in collaboration with the European Union’s (EU) Earth-monitoring programme Copernicus, announced this mission during the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow on November 2. It will incorporate a constellation of satellites called

Boston Dynamics and IBM have joined forces to deploy the popular — but controversial — robot dogs at the US National Grid sites for autonomous inspection. The Boston Dynamics robot, named Spot, will be integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) and other required features developed by IBM Research. The new robot will be initially deployed at the electric and gas utility sites in

NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) saw its first harvest of crops on October 29. The agency shared a photo on Twitter and mentioned that the station’s first harvest was chilli peppers. This harvest was a part of an ISS experiment, called Plant Habitat-04 study. Astronaut Megan McArthur, who is stationed at the ISS, posted another

The help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been deployed by tech firms and NGOs worldwide to fight the climate change crisis. Gadgets 360 caught up with some, including the team at Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) — a New Delhi-based NGO — and IBM India, to talk about their efforts to apply tech

NASA has shared a stunning image of a giant eye-shaped nebula that is among the brightest and closest to Earth. The image, captured by the agency’s Spitzer Space Telescope, showed a deep vacuum surrounded by a sparkling cloud of dust and gas. The dust and gas are spread over a two-light-year diameter around a central

A massive solar flare could create dazzling northern lights over parts of the US on Sunday, according to NASA. The space agency said a sun storm erupted on October 28 and sent a vast cloud of charged particles that should reach Earth on Halloween (Sunday, October 31). When these particles hit Earth’s atmosphere, they will

Microblogging site Twitter, which regularly tests new features ahead of their official rollout, has created a new way for some people to check out these new features before everyone else. Twitter has announced that subscribers to its paid Twitter Blue service will get early access to some new features under a new Labs banner. Like

For many, the evolution of humans is a discipline of great interest and curiosity – a way of ascertaining who we are and where we come from. Hence, finding and naming our ancestors is necessary. The practice of assigning names is of significance in science for several reasons, primarily because it helps researchers spread all

After spending nearly half a year, every year, gathering and calculating carbon emissions data on spread sheets, Salesforce.com’s climate team was fed up. So in 2017 they built an app to crunch the numbers – and now they sell it for $4,000 (roughly Rs. 3 lakh) a month. As global companies prepare pledges to help

Virtual clothing trials are the next big thing that can bring fashion and technology together. Computer scientists all around the world are trying to experiment with deep-learning techniques that can be used to virtually dress a 3D avatar (digital versions of humans). Developments in this field are being made in India too. Two researchers at

With so much research getting published every day all over the world, a super-smart search engine has become essential to help parse through seemingly endless scores of academic papers. Faced with the challenge, a technologist has found a way to unlock the world’s research papers for easier computerised analysis. He has released an index of

More than a year after NASA launched the Perseverance rover for Mars, the space agency is bringing the focus back on how its precise landing spot was decided or who chose where it should land. In an Instagram post, NASA said that the rover made the decision moments before it touched down on the surface

China has launched a military satellite that will test its “space debris mitigation technology,” the state media reported earlier this week. The satellite was launched on Sunday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre, Sichuan province, Southwest China. Though only a few details were available about the classified launch, some state media reports said the mission