Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
Neutrons, the neutral constituents of the atomic nucleus are excellent tools for probing the structure of biological compounds and for determining the constituents of materials. Understandably, there is a heavy demand for neutron sources. Till now, low energy neutrons from atomic reactors have been used for biological experiment while neutrons …
AFTER seven years in space, the Hubble space telescope's efficiency is coming down. Radiation has degraded some of the telescope's electronics, while micrometeoroids have occasionally slammed into its mirror, damaging the surface. The craft also suffers from the effects of extreme temperature changes as it passes in and out of …
THE age of the universe as measured by some recent experiments seems to be less than that of some of the objects in it. The measured age of globular clusters in our galaxy is about 13 to 18 billion years, while the age of the universe Seems to be closer …
A WEAK force comes into play when two parallel plates are placed a fraction of a millimetre apart in a vacuum, pulling the plates together. But numerous attempts to measure this effect, predicted by the Dutch scientist Hendrik Casimir in 1948, have failed. Now Steven Lamoreaux at the Los Alamos …
EXTRATERRESTRIAL life has been speculated about by many scientists for long. Some efforts like the search for extraterrestrial intelligence have been going on for some time now, though most of the research has been at the theoretical level. With the discovery of giant planets and other solar systems (planets orbiting …
John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, in a recent paper say that tide-like variations in the pull exerted on the orbit of the solar system by the rest of the galaxy causes comets to pummel Earth once every 30 million years. Most comets orbit …
the possibility of life on Mars has been given a jolt by two new analyses, one published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta and the other accepted for publication by the same journal. This could well end claims made by nasa scientist David McKay and his team in August 1996, of …
an understanding of the emergence of structure in the universe is one of the most perplexing problems in cosmology. The matter is complicated because of a paucity of observations of the universe at early times. Among the furthest objects seen by astronomers are quasars, which are relatively small objects at …
how do you tell whether a cat is alive or dead without looking at it directly? Serge Haroche, a physicist at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ens) in Paris has a simple answer: "Let a mouse run past its nose and see what happens to the mouse. Haroche is not, however, …
ganymede, the largest satellite in the solar system with a radius of 2640 km, might have an internal magnetic field. This is the evidence brought back by the Galileo spacecraft from its two fly-bys of Ganymede, which revolves around Jupiter. The evidence is of significance as internal magnetic fields are …
einstein's theory of general relativity, formulated in 1915, is widely acknowledged as one of the most elegant theories in physics. Einstein's special theory of relativity, formulated in 1905, replaced the Newtonian concept of space and time as absolute entities by a world-view where space and time depended on the observer. …
in the specialised world of modern science, it is difficult to find cosmologists, planetary scientists and microbiologists in the same room. But a host of disciplines gathered in Washington dc, recently to discuss the expansion of work on the origins of the universe, planetary systems and life itself. The goal …
although most of us have only encountered x-rays at the radiologists clinic, they are among the most useful tools for physicists. From x-ray diffraction, which is still the most important tool for studying crystal properties, to the study of electronic properties of various chemical and biological systems, x-rays find immense …
the invention of the scanning tunnelling microscope (stm) in the early eighties revolutionised the study of the very small. The whole nanoworld opened up to the probing tip of the stm and it became possible not only to observe the microscopic world but also manipulate it to assemble and fabricate …
quasars are among the most fascinating objects in the universe. These relatively small objects are believed to be at the far edges of the universe. Given their distances, the amount of energy received from them is truly enormous, leading to one of the great unsolved mysteries of cosmology: what is …
Comets are known to reside in a vast spherical halo called the Oort cloud, extending for about a light year beyond the orbit of Pluto. The forces responsible for their coming towards us are still not known. Now, John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Southwestern Louisiana, US …
In June last year when the Cluster mission was blown up because of a faulty launcher, most people thought that it was the end of the mission. But now the European Space Agency's Space Science Advisory Committee has recommended that the mission be reflown. All four of the mission's satellites, …
A group from the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK has analysed the isotopic composition of samples from ALH84001, the original Martian meteorite and reported results that support claims of the existence of life on Mars. On the other hand, Jeffery Bada of the Scripps Institute of Oceanogrphy analysed the …
R w Schoenlein and his collaborators at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, US, have reported the generation of ultrashort pulses of X- rays using an infrared laser. The X- rays have a wavelength of 0.4 angstrom and the pulse duration is 300 femtoseconds (one femtosecond is 10-15 seconds). They scattered a …
