Plastic has a habit of staying around long after its useful life has ended. Some materials can be collected and recycled with relative ease, while others prove far more stubborn. Polyvinyl chloride, commonly known as PVC, sits firmly in the latter category. Used in products ranging from pipes and electrical cables to flooring and medical…
In the dry storytelling of palaeontology, certain discoveries tend to arrive with a kind of quiet disruption. Not the sort that rewrites textbooks overnight, but one that shifts the edges of what was assumed about a landscape long gone. In Ethiopia’s Afar region, a set of fragmented crocodile fossils has done something like that. The…
For centuries, one of the most extraordinary living giants in Asia stood unnoticed among the remote mountains of Taiwan. Hidden within rugged forests and protected by difficult terrain, the colossal tree escaped scientific documentation despite its immense size. Now, after years of painstaking exploration, researchers have finally located and measured what is recognised as the…
Nikola Tesla (Image: Wikipedia) Some quotes survive because they explain an idea. Others survive because they make people stop and think.This remark from Nikola Tesla belongs to the second category.Hatred is not something people usually measure. Nobody talks about it in terms of units, numbers, or output. Yet most people know how exhausting it can…
Inside the limestone chambers of South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave, small fragments of bone have been telling a story that is only now becoming legible. The material itself is unremarkable at first glance, scattered, fragile, long stripped of any obvious context. Yet when placed under particular wavelengths of light, some of it behaves differently, as though…
The San Andreas Fault, long embedded in California’s public imagination, has once again drawn scientific attention after new analysis suggested it may be holding more accumulated stress than at any point in the past thousand years. The finding does not come with any reliable sense of timing, but it has reopened questions among researchers who…
For a few precious months each year, the brightest and most photogenic region of the Milky Way rises high enough above the horizon to create one of nature’s most spectacular night-time displays. June marks the beginning of peak Milky Way season across much of the Northern Hemisphere, offering photographers their best opportunity to capture the…
Quote of the day by Richard P. Feynman One of the more unusual qualities of Richard Feynman was that he did not seem particularly interested in being the smartest person in the room.That may sound odd for a physicist who won the Nobel Prize and became one of the most recognisable scientific figures of the…
Quote of the day by Louis Pasteur (Image source: Wikipedia) Not every quote explains itself immediately. Some sit quietly for a while before their meaning becomes clearer. The quote by Louis Pasteur is one of those. It speaks about inspiration, personal conviction and the unseen reasons behind human actions. At a glance, the wording may…
Isro chairman V Narayanan (Right) NEW DELHI: Isro chairman V Narayanan has revealed that the space agency is collaborating with the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) to develop an advanced artificial heating system for future lunar landers that can operate for up to 200 Earth days on the surface of the Moon.The announcement is important…
