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 …
The CHandra’s Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) experiment aboard Chandrayaan-2 orbiter will study in situ, the composition of the lunar neutral exosphere in the mass range 1–300 amu with mass resolution of 0.5 amu. It will address the spatial and temporal variations of the lunar exosphere, and examine water vapour as …
Why does a developing nation have such an ambitious space programme? Subhadra Menon traces its foundations back to the work of one visionary physicist 60 years ago.
The Sun’s activity cycle governs the radiation, particle and magnetic flux in the heliosphere creating hazardous space weather. Decadal-scale variations define space climate and force the Earth’s atmosphere. However, predicting the solar cycle is challenging. Current understanding indicates a short window for prediction best achieved at previous cycle minima. Utilizing …
Observations of binary stars containing an accreting black hole or neutron star often show x-ray emission extending to high energies (>10 kilo–electron volts), which is ascribed to an accretion disk corona of energetic particles akin to those seen in the solar corona. Despite their ubiquity, the physical conditions in accretion …
We present the survey strategy and early results of the “Satellites Around Galactic Analogs” (SAGA) Survey. The SAGA Survey’s goal is to measure the distribution of satellite galaxies around 100 systems analogous to the Milky Way down to the luminosity of the Leo I dwarf galaxy (Mr < -12.3). Original …
Pluto’s atmosphere is cold and hazy. Recent observations have shown it to be much colder than predicted theoretically, suggesting an unknown cooling mechanism. Atmospheric gas molecules, particularly water vapour, have been proposed as a coolant; however, because Pluto’s thermal structure is expected to be in radiative–conductive equilibrium, the required water …
Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system. With a colourful ring system surrounding the planet, it is highly attractive. Only brief observations, using telescopes, Pioneer-11, Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 in situ recorders have been made. Comparatively impressive details of Saturn have already been obtained. A space mission named …
NASA's Cassini spacecraft continues to yield surprising discoveries, more than a month after it burned up on its mission-ending dive into Saturn. New data from the probe suggest that Saturn's majestic rings are showering tiny dust particles into the planet's upper atmosphere, where they form a complicated and unexpected chemical …
Rossby waves are a type of global-scale wave that develops in planetary atmospheres, driven by the planet’s rotation. They propagate westward owing to the Coriolis force, and their characterization enables more precise forecasting of weather on Earth. Despite the massive reservoir of rotational energy available in the Sun’s interior and …
When the Moon’s shadow races across the continental United States on 21 August, researchers will be waiting — in planes, on mountaintops and at other carefully chosen vantage points along the roughly 110-kilometre-wide path of totality. Thanks to the sheer number of observers, solar physicists hope to learn more from …
Astronomers have studied the carbon monoxide in a galaxy over 12 billion light years from Earth and discovered that it's running out of gas, quite literally, and headed for a 'red and dead' future. The galaxy, known as ALESS65, was observed by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in 2011 …
Giant radio galaxies (GRGs) are one of the largest astrophysical sources in the Universe with an overall projected linear size of ∼0.7 Mpc or more. The last six decades of radio astronomy research has led to the detection of thousands of radio galaxies. However, only ∼300 of them can be …
Seven small planets whose surfaces could harbour liquid water have been spotted around a nearby dwarf star. If such a configuration is common in planetary systems, our Galaxy could be teeming with Earth-like planets.
Chandrayaan-1, the first Indian planetary exploration mission, will carry out high resolution remote sensing studies of the moon to further our understanding about its origin and evolution. Original Source
On 25 September, a sensational rumour appeared on Twitter: Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist, reported hearing that the world’s largest gravitational-wave observatory had seen a signal, barely a week after its official re-opening. The rumour had been spreading around physics circles for at least a week. If it is true, and …
Convective motion in the deep metallic hydrogen region of Jupiter is believed to generate its magnetic field, the strongest in the solar system. The amplitude, structure and depth of the convective motion are unknown. A promising way of probing the Jovian convective dynamo is to measure its effect on the …
Physicists think they may have discovered a fifth force of nature, and if this is true, then it would totally redefine how people understand how the universe. One of physics' most straightforward fundamentals is that everything in the universe is controlled by four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetic force, …
Direct observations of sunspot numbers are available for the past four centuries, but longer time series are required, for example, for the identification of a possible solar influence on climate and for testing models of the solar dynamo. Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past …
Solar magnetism displays a host of variational timescales of which the enigmatic 11-year sunspot cycle is most prominent. Recent work has demonstrated that the sunspot cycle can be explained in terms of the intra- and extra-hemispheric interaction between the overlapping activity bands of the 22-year magnetic polarity cycle. Those activity …
