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 …
J J Wiseman and P T P Ho of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, US, have reported the presence of a remarkable system of filaments of molecular gas behind the Great Nebula of the Orion constellation; this constellation is one of the most studied star formation regions in space. …
Fibre optics has increased the data transmission speeds between computers considerably but applications like video conferencing require even more speed. Now for the first time, three separate groups have crossed the terabit threshold. These researchers from Fujitsu, Nippon Telephone and AT&T; have used a new technique to transmit more than …
Electron crystallography, although catching up fast, has a disadvantage: there is a strong interaction between the electrons of the probe and the sample itself. Now, T E Weirich and his colleagues have obtained the complete determination of an unknown structure for the compound Ti_11 Se_4 by electron crystallography. This is …
Two European experiments performed with helium 3 uphold the theory of defect formation during phase transition, and clear some of the fog over the genesis of our universe
cosmology is one of those sciences where experimentation is rare. The scientist observes the universe and draws his own conclusions. But this might change now with reports of two experiments on the dynamics of phase transition in the early universe. These pioneering experiments, performed in France and Finland, have confirmed …
galaxy formation and early evolution is one of the least understood areas of cosmology and astrophysics. The basic problem is one of detecting faint galaxies located at large distances. The astronomer is limited to observing far-off objects which are very bright, like quasars and radio galaxies. But now, E M …
nanometre-sized molecular materials hold great promise for future generation devices. These materials could serve as building blocks of electronic devices of an amazingly small size or could even form the basis for self-assembling machines. But before all that, it is essential to understand the fundamental electrical and mechanical properties of …
The 33-year-old radio telescope facility at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, is being upgraded. For many years the workhorse of radio astronomy, Arecibo has played a very important role in improving our understanding of the cosmos. The upgradation involves putting a huge aluminium shell at the centre of a 90-metre arm which …
the standard cosmological model has been notably successful in explaining many of the observations in our universe. From the cosmic microwave background radiation to the genesis of matter, the model provides us with a simple and elegant tool for understanding the cosmos. Though there have been many refinements and extensions …
nanotechnology, or the ability to manipulate matter on an atomic scale is one of the most revolutionary developments in material science in recent years. What was in the realm of conjecture is now a laboratory reality. With the development of tools like the scanning tunnelling microscope (stm), the field has …
Six years after COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) gave us the detailed spectrum of the cosmic microwave background, it has detected the faint infrared radiation emitted by the most ancient of the galaxies. The galaxies themselves are too far away and faint to be observed, but the dust surrounding them gives …
J Siegel and his colleagues at the University of California in San Diego, US, have synthesised a cage-like molecule similar to buckyballs and fullerenes, but one whose size and shape as well as overall chemistry is far easier to manipulate. The molecule used by Siegel is corannulene, which is shaped …
The physicists at Los Alamos national labs in US have announced a large amount of new data from the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector. This data supports their earlier claim that there are neutrino oscillations between different kinds of neutrinos. With 22 events in which the group observed evidence of oscillations, …
optical astronomy has come a long way since the time of Galileo. From the crude telescopes used to observe the moons of Jupiter, to the large self-correcting mirrors in the latest generation of optical telescopes, the range of instruments available to today's astronomer is astonishing. There is however the persistent …
the smooth, white surface of your bathroom sink hides the fact that the process of making it is a notoriously dirty and polluting one. Aluminium oxide ceramics which find applications in a range of products (from sinks to lasers) are made by dissolving aluminium oxide powder in organic solvents and …
anyone familiar with the radios of the previous generation will remember vacuum tubes: these glass tubes which functioned as amplifiers formed the heart of essentially all electronic gadgets from primitive computers to radios. The essential component of the vacuum tube was a cathode which was heated to give electrons. The …
that the shape of a material can be distorted by applying sufficient force is well known. What is not very clearly understood are the processes going on at the atomic level which take place, when for instance, a piece of metal is bent. But now a group of scientists have …
The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) has detected Water inthe planetary nebula NGC7027. The ISO is ideally suited for observations, since it is outside the earth's atmosphere, which acts a major absorber of infrared radiations. Thus a major advance has been made in solving the "missing oxygen problem". The amount of …
