Reply by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in compliance to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order dated January 21, 2024 in the matter of ‘News item titled “Feeling anxious? Toxic air could be to blame” appearing in Times of India dated 10.10.2023’. NGT had directed CPCB to file a …
AFTER much dithering, Russia has joined Europe, Canada and Japan in the US-led international space station project. Russia will merge its Mir programme with the US Freedom programme for the project, the first of its kind. Orbiting where Russia's Mir 1 is currently deployed, the project will consist of the …
A SATELLITE that plunged into the sea is lying unclaimed and has become a point of debate between USA and China. The US Space Command says the satellite, launched by the Chinese on October 8, fell into the Pacific Ocean 1,600 km west of Peru. However, China disowns any connection …
DINOSAURS went extinct because the lumbering, gormandising behemoths were unable to adapt to a changing world. The contemporary car -- a fuming, fuel guzzling, latter-day dinosaur -- probably awaits the same fate. With oil getting scarcer and air fouler, it won't be long before today's cars are veered out of …
The successful completion of all launch preparations for the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) did much to dispel the shadow of gloom in the Indian space establishment, cast in July by the US forcing Russia to withhold transfer of cryogenic technology to India. In a more cheerful mood than he …
NOW THAT the Russians have finally backed out of the deal to supply India with cryogenic rocket-engine technology, Indian space scientists face their biggest technological challenge ever. With more countries wanting communication facilities, satellite launching promises to be big business in the highest of high-tech leagues. The US, afraid of …
Each launch vehicle progressively developed by India is capable of placing bigger payloads into higher orbits. The country's hope of carving a niche in the space-launch market rests on the GSLV
Moscow's abrupt cancellation of the $350-million cryogenic engine deal with India is self-interest, pure and simple. This was conceded by no less a person than Yuri Koptev, who headed the Russian space team in the "negotiations" in Washington. Cancelling the contract with India, Koptev told a recent parliamentary hearing in …
You seem to have a fascination for models on diverse subjects. Does your background have something to do with this? I'm basically a chemical technologist. I have co-authored a book on polymer science -- a rather popular book, I would say. As far as my personal background is concerned, I …
US SCIENTISTS are making the most elaborate efforts yet to detect gravitational waves, which are the distortions in the fabric of space and time predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. These waves are produced during violent events in the universe, such as the collision of two neutron stars or …
POLITICAL support for expensive scientific projects, plagued as they are by cost overruns, is dwindling in the US because with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the defence applications of space research are now less urgent. Besides, US scientists have suggested -- for the first time in modern memory -- …
ANALYSIS of satellite imagery publicised in June has cheered environmentalists because it shows Brazil's Amazon forests are being cleared at a much slower rate than had been widely estimated. David Skole of the University of New Hampshire and Compton Tucker of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in the US …
INDIAN Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials are not unduly worried by the stalled transfer of cryogenic rocket technology from Russia to India. They believe alternative cryogenic engine technology, which uses supercooled gases to fuel rockets, can be developed indigenously if Russia gives in to US pressure and withholds the transfer …
MANY OF the nation's premier scientific establishments have utilised government funding poorly and failed to meet their 1991-92 objectives, complains the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The CAG report, placed before Parliament on May 7, made its complaint on the basis of an audit of the working …
• Although the ministry of non-conventional energy sources spent Rs 69 crore -- 62 per cent of its expenditure on solar energy programmes -- on installing solar photovoltaic devices during 1986-92, evaluation studies indicate most of the units are not functioning because of "lack of proper maintenance, poor performance of …
HEAT ALWAYS flows from a hotter body to a cooler one, according to the second law of thermodynamics. But then why is the Sun's atmosphere hotter, by several million degrees, than its surface where all the energy is generated? Astrophysicist Jack Scudder has furnished an ingenious mechanism to explain how …
AN AMERICAN satellite has provided firm evidence that cosmic rays -- showers of energised particles from space that bombard the earth from all directions -- are produced within earth's own galaxy -- the Milky Way. Speculation was rife on whether these radiations emanated from within the Milky Way or outside …
WHILE it was still dark on a recent February night, a swath of light streaked across Europe for a few moments, telling the world that brightness at midnight had become a reality. For six minutes beginning 0522 GMT (1052 AM in India) on February 4, sunlight reflected by a space-based, …
THE ARNOLD Schwarzenegger-starrer, Lost Actfon Hero, is to be advertised in space. Columbia Pictures is paying $500,000 to have the movie's logo and name painted in large red, yellow and orange letters on the payload of the unmanned commercial rocket, Conestoga 1620, due for launch in early May. The payment …
A US B-52 bomber has been given a new role -launching satellites Recently, a modified B-52 dropped rocket carrying a Brazilian satellite an altitude of about 12.8 km. Five seconds later, the rocket motors fir sending the 150-kg satellite into a 515-km orbit above the earth. Orbital Sciences of Fairfax …
EXPERIMENTAL observations have amply confirmed the Big Bang theory, but some of its shortcomings have led scientists to develop the so-called inflationary theory, to pursue their bid to trace the early history of the universe. Proposed originally by Alan Guth of MIT in 1980, the inflationary theory predicts the density …
