Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are now controlling everything from moderating social media, to hiring decisions, to policy and governance. Today, we have companies that are building systems to use AI that can predict where COVID-19 will strike next, and make decisions about healthcare. But in creating these systems, and in choosing the data that informs

China’s “Zhurong” rover, part of its ambitious space programme to send a probe to Mars, is set to attempt the challenging landing on the Red Planet in the next five days, Beijing’s space agency said Friday. The tricky touchdown, if successful, would come a few months behind America’s latest probe to Mars, as Beijing presses

Qantas Airlines will take a limited number of passengers on a flight that will offer the best view of this month’s rare supermoon as well as a total lunar eclipse on May 26. However, if you are hoping to be on that flight, you’re already out of luck — the tickets have been sold and

A team of researchers at Stanford University have, for the first time, decoded brain activity related to writing by hand. To further explore this, the researchers collaborated with a participant with paralysis who had sensors implanted in his brain. The team then used an algorithm that identified the letters the participant imagined and attempted to

Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano will be the next tourists to travel to the International Space Station (ISS), Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said Thursday. Maezawa and Hirano will travel aboard a Russian “Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft that is scheduled for launch on December 8, 2021 from the Baikonur cosmodrome” in Kazakhstan,

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of a galaxy cluster. The US space agency shared the image on its Instagram page, leading to a huge excitement among astronomers and sky gazers alike. The galaxy cluster, named Abell 3827, is located nearly 1.3 billion light-years away in the southern hemisphere constellation of Indus.

The world’s largest and most powerful space telescope unfolded its giant golden mirror for the last time on Earth on Tuesday, a key milestone before the $10 billion (roughly Rs. 73,440 crores) observatory is launched later this year. The James Webb Space Telescope’s 21 feet 4 inch (6.5 metre) mirror was commanded to fully expand and

NASA’s Voyager 1 probe has picked up an uncanny humming sound coming from space. NASA launched the Voyager 1 space probe 44 years ago and today it is the most distant human-made object from Earth, after exiting our solar system nine years ago. Since then, it has been exploring the near-emptiness of interstellar space and

NASA has shared an image of asteroid Bennu captured from its Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft, which is now slated for return to Earth in 2023. In the Instagram post, the space agency wrote, “Stop! 4.5-billion-year-old steroid crossing! You’re looking at a real image of asteroid Bennu captured from @NASASolarSystem’s

SpaceX will launch a satellite to the Moon next year funded entirely with the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, Canadian company Geometric Energy Corporation, which will lead the lunar mission, announced Sunday. The satellite, dubbed DOGE-1, will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the first quarter of 2022, the Calgary-based company said in a statement.

A team of researchers at Canada’s McGill University has succeeded in developing a new method to create brain implants that are as soft as the brain tissue itself. The researchers used silicon and sugar to create delicate silicone implants, the softest brain implant to the day, as thin as sewing thread (nearly 0.2 mm). Its

The US space probe OSIRIS-REx on Monday left the orbit of the asteroid Bennu, from which it collected dust samples last year, to begin its long journey back to Earth. The probe still has a vast distance to cover before it lands in the Utah desert on September 24, 2023.  OSIRIS-REx is “now moving away

Remnants of China’s biggest rocket landed in the Indian Ocean on Sunday, with most of its components destroyed upon re-entry into the atmosphere, ending days of speculation over where the debris would hit but drawing US criticism over lack of transparency. The coordinates given by Chinese state media, citing the China Manned Space Engineering Office,

Ever wondered what happens to a selfie you upload on a social media site? Activists and researchers have long warned about data privacy and said that photographs uploaded on the Internet may be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) powered facial recognition tools. These AI-enabled tools (such as Clearview, AWS Rekognition, Microsoft Azure, and Face++)

National Technology Day 2021 on May 11 celebrates the achievements and contributions of Indians to science and technology. This day serves as a reminder of India breaking into the elite group of nations with nuclear weapons. On May 11, 1998, India conducted three successful nuclear tests at the Indian Army’s Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan

NASA’s Perseverance rover has for the first time captured the low-pitched whirring of the Ingenuity helicopter’s blades as it flies through the rarefied Martian atmosphere. The space agency on Friday released new footage shot by the six-wheeled robot of its rotorcraft companion making its fourth flight on April 30 — this time accompanied by an

A new study has revealed that a tiny, carnivorous dinosaur, which had an exceptional low-light vision and whose hearing ability was as good as an owl’s, hunted its prey at night. Measuring only 2 feet, the three-toed dinosaur species named Shuvuuia had large eyes and longer cochlea — the part of the inner ear canal

Remnants of China’s largest rocket launched last week are expected to plunge back through the atmosphere late Saturday or early Sunday, a US federally funded space-focused research and development centre said. China’s foreign ministry said on Friday that most debris from the rocket will be burned up on re-entry and is highly unlikely to cause any

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced on May 3 that it is launching a formal evaluation into the Pentagon’s actions on what the military calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). The office of the DoD inspector general issued a memo a few days ago, announcing the plan and stated that it would audit how the

Three Indian-American CEOs Sundar Pichai from Google, Punit Renjen from Deloitte, and Shantanu Narayen from Adobe have joined the steering committee of the Global Task Force on Pandemic Response, which is overseeing an unprecedented corporate sector initiative to help India successfully fight COVID19. The names of the three Indian-American CEOs were added to the list

Four astronauts just returned from the International Space Station described on Thursday their reentry into Earth’s atmosphere and ocean splashdown after more than 160 days in space. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew back to Earth splashed down off Florida early Sunday in NASA’s first nighttime ocean landing in more than 50 years.

SpaceX achieved the first successful touchdown of its prototype Starship rocket during the latest test flight of the next-generation launch vehicle in south Texas on Wednesday, after four previous landing attempts ended in explosions. The feat marked a key milestone for the private rocket company of billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk in its development of

NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to travel to space 60 years ago on May 5. The space research organisation honoured Shepard and his mission with a special page on its website. The year 1961 was extremely crucial as the United States and the Soviet Union — the two dominant superpowers at the

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will send its first crew to space on July 20 and is offering one of the seats to the winner of an online auction, the company said Wednesday. The trip will last a total of ten minutes, four of which passengers will spend above the Karman line that marks the recognised

 The US Department of Defence has said it is tracking the Chinese Long March 5B-rocket that is out of control and set to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere this weekend. The Chinese rocket is expected to enter Earth’s atmosphere around May 8 and US Space Command is tracking the rocket’s trajectory amid concerns about where its debris

Researchers have identified fossil bone fragments of sauropod dinosaurs dating back to about 100 million years from an area around West Khasi Hills District in Meghalaya. The yet-to-be-published findings were made during a recent field trip by researchers from the Geological Survey of India’s Palaeontology division in North-East. The GSI researchers noted that this is

SpaceX has received more than 500,000 preorders for its Starlink satellite Internet service and anticipates no technical problems meeting the demand, founder Elon Musk said on Tuesday. “Only limitation is high density of users in urban areas,” Musk tweeted, responding to a post from a CNBC reporter that said the $99 (roughly Rs. 7,300) deposits

Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who along with three of his American counterparts, was on a six-month mission at the International Space Station, shared a fascinating picture of The Great Pyramid of Giza on his last day aboard the ISS. Images of the Earth from outer space — be it the vibrant colours of the landscape,

Two German researchers got down to answer an easy query: What makes a great bird photo? But to find the answer, they had to collect over 20,000 photos of birds from nine of the largest bird accounts on Instagram with their corresponding data. The result was startling. They found that the bird image most liked

NASA’s Hubble telescope has shared a spectacular image of an interaction between two “doomed” stars which created a sort of diamond necklace in space, saying that the Sun-like stars were separated by only several million miles and so appeared as a single bright dot in the centre of the image. NASA said the Hubble Space