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 …
HIGH temperature (high Tc) superconductivity is one of the most revolutionary developments in the field of physics in the past decade. This phenomenon not only provides a new insight into the structure of matter but also opens up exciting possibilities for applications. One such application is high Tc Superconducting Quantum …
Take a glass pane that is hit by a cricket ball: it doesn't shatter; it bends, absorbs the impact and snaps back to its original shape. If the recent success of chemists at Du Pont in developing a hybrid material called star-gel is any indication, these panes may soon be …
LIGHT emitting diodes (LEDs) -- devices that emit intense light of particular colours when electricity is passed through them -- are set to revolutionise the world of artificial illumination. With the recent finding that gallium nitrides and allied compounds can produce intense blue-green light, LEDs now span the entire range …
Semiconductors have 2 energy bands -- valence band and conduction band. The valence band is filled with electrons; the conduction band has practically none. The electrical conductivity of a material is due to the flow of electrons in the conduction band; in semiconductors, this flow can be manipulated by incorporating …
A team of German physicists has discovered a new chemical element, atomic number 111, which is reported to have survived for less than 2,000th of a second. The research team, led by Siguard Hofman of Gesellschaft fuer Schwerionenforschung at Darmstadt, Germany, created the new element by bombarding the metal bismuth …
CAMERAS have reduced the world to a global village. The mechanically and electronically reproduced images flowing from the barrels of their lenses are more powerful than the bullets that flowed from the barrels of Mao 's guns. Brutal or beautiful, selling or seducing, these images can generate both anger and …
A COMMITTEE of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) -- the world body that finalises names of chemical substances -- recently abandoned a move to name an element after the American Glenn T Seaborg, who won the 1951 Nobel Prize for chemistry. The only reason given for …
WATCHING the Hollywood movie, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, one couldn't help marvelling at the special effects that made the smaller-than-ants kids look so real. But imagine watching a film with characters infinitely smaller than those miniaturised kids. And without any special effects. Recently, 2 research groups in the US …
IN OCTOBER 1993, the US House of Representatives voted to terminate funding for the $11-billion Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), the most expensive basic research project in history. However, the chances are that only a few of the representatives realised the consequences of their decision: it could scuttle the fate of …
Our perception of what constitutes fundamental particles has changed continually with the ability to "see" at smaller distances. The microcosm has revealed several layers within itself: starting from molecules and atoms to electrons and nuclei, to protons and neutrons within the nucleus and finally to quarks within the protons and …
The idea of a fundamental simplicity underlying the observed diversity of the universe is a powerful one that has stood the test of time. Admittedly, the nature of truly elementary particles has undergone a continual change, from English chemist John Dalton's atoms to the particles of the Standard Model of …
A HEAVENLY calm, if yogis are to be believed, may pervade the inner sanctum of the human mind, but the core of matter is turning out to be a hotbed of activity. Particle physicists probing the structure of protons and neutrons -- which constitute the bulk of matter -- using …
A FRESH approach has paved the way for small and compact high energy accelerators to propel electrically charged atomic and subatomic particles such as electrons and protons. Chandrashekar Joshi, A Lal and their colleagues from the department of electrical engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles claim that …
RESEARCHERS at the University of Queensland in Australia have developed a chemical process to produce superconductors -- materials that offer no resistance to the flow of current -- in quantities large enough for industrial applications (New Scientist, Vol 142, No 1921). So far, superconductivity has been obtained only in some …
IF YOU have ever blown soap bubbles as a child, you must have wished that the short-lived, rainbow-coloured spheres were more rugged. Looking at the flimsy soap film one could hardly have imagined that thinner films could be made as hard as diamond. But "thin film" technology has achieved this …
A SMOOTHLY moving bus suddenly comes to a screeching halt and you are jerked forward. You purple the air around the driver with invectives as you recover from the jolt. But if you remember your physics lessons well, you'll know that the driver isn't to blame. Inertia, or the tendency …
High-temperature gas bubbles that dance and emit light have been developed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, by passing ultrasound through water. These astounding light-emitting bubbles (LEBs) can eventually be applied for inducing ultrafast chemical reactions in liquids and initiating nuclear fusion. The LEBs are generated from distilled …
ASTRONOMERS say the sun is losing its brightness and some billions of years from now -- a short period in astronomy -- it will disappear into cosmic darkness. But life on earth may still continue as particle physicists have conceived of a sun in the lab. Particle-hunters in the US …
India's largest optical telescope is likely to be located in the Himalaya at a height of 4,000 metres by the turn of the century. The Union government has cleared Rs 1.5 crore of the Rs 50 crore project -- for design studies to be done by the Indian Institute of …
TWO PHYSICISTS in Hyderabad studying the properties of light have devised a way to expand the range of intensity of laser beams. G S Agarwal and S P Tewari, both from the University of Hyderabad, are working on methods to produce laser radiation of a desired intensity using the concept …
