Science

Sunlight at night, sold on demand by an American space start-up using Indian rockets, is moving from science fiction towards commercial reality. California-based Reflect Orbital plans to place giant mirrors in low-Earth orbit and steer reflected sunlight onto chosen spots on the ground after dark. Customers could include solar farms wanting longer generating hours, rescue…

According to this new study, intelligent women get less help from their teammates (Canva) “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” The famous quote was written by Simone de Beauvoir, a French author, academician and feminist. The quote captures the struggle of women to fit into roles defined by society rather than being…

Image of a Massive Black hole (Canva) Black holes are mysteriously the most fascinating and dreadful part of the universe. Scientists have been trying to know how they work. Not until very recently did scientists even know what they looked like. It was only on April 10, 2019, that the first image of a black…

For years, residents of Pamarawan, a small fishing village on the edge of Manila Bay in the Philippines, watched floodwaters enter their streets and threaten homes whenever strong monsoon winds or typhoons sent waves crashing towards the coast. Even a concrete breakwater, standing up to four metres high, was not enough to keep the water…

AI representation of digging a copper mine in Las Manilas Have you ever wondered where the things our ancestors used came from? Today, we can order almost anything from anywhere in the world, and a product can travel thousands of kilometres before reaching our doorstep. But what about people who lived thousands of years ago?…

Photo from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of NGC 4449 dwarf galaxy Image Credits: NASA Our cosmic neighbourhood is full of surprises, some you cannot even imagine. In a paper published on Monday in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope studied 37 nearby dwarf galaxies and found that much of the oxygen they…

What can eating one avocado and mango every day do? An apple a day keeps the doctor away.We all laud apples for their health benefits. Of course, no other fruit has an entire idiom centred around its pros. But, we often overlook these other fruits in the supermarket aisle, as the apple tempts us with…

PC: Youth Service America At 18, Abhinav Mehta has helped build a student-led battery recycling network that has collected and recycled more than 23,000 used batteries. The initiative began with a small collection bin in a corner of his school commons. Mehta had noticed that used batteries were often being thrown away instead of being…

Image Credit: Denkstorm News The Ocean Cleanup has secured $121 million in funding in 2026 to expand its efforts to prevent plastic waste from reaching the oceans, with a programme targeting 30 major polluting cities across Asia and the Americas. The initiative aims to stop up to one-third of plastic entering the oceans through rivers…

A former NASA researcher has won a $100,000 global award for developing a toilet that works without conventional flushing water or sewer connections, offering an alternative to communities struggling with inadequate sanitation infrastructure. Diana Yousef, founder and CEO of change:WATER Labs, received the 2026 Global Citizen Waislitz Disruptor Award for her company’s iThrone technology, which…

Cane toadPhoto credit: Canva Australia’s attempt to solve one pest problem in 1935 created another that has spread across the country for nearly a century. Cane toads were introduced to control beetles in Queensland’s sugar cane fields, but they became one of the nation’s most damaging invasive species. Now, a A$28 million partnership involving Curtin…

(Image credit: deadseascrolls.org/Tsila Sagiv) Some incredible findings emerge from happy accidents. In 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd searching for a stray animal near the Dead Sea threw a stone into a cave and heard the sound of pottery breaking. This led to the discovery of a collection of ancient manuscripts hidden for centuries, finally giving…