Two women scientists won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for creating genetic ‘scissors’ that can rewrite the code of life, contributing to new cancer therapies and holding out the prospect of curing hereditary diseases. Emmanuelle Charpentier, who is French, and American Jennifer Doudna share the SEK 10 million (roughly Rs. 8 crores) prize
Science
Britain’s Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and U.S. scientist Andrea Ghez won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole, the award-giving body said on Tuesday. Penrose, professor at the University of Oxford, won half the prize for his work
Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a $149 million (roughly Rs. 1,090 crores) contract to build missile-tracking satellites for the Pentagon, the US Space Development Agency (SDA) said on Monday, in the company’s first government contract to build satellites. SpaceX, known for its reusable rockets and astronaut capsules, is ramping up satellite production for Starlink, a growing constellation of
If you have ever gone bird watching under a dense canopy, you’ve probably strained your ears more than your eyes to find a specific bird. Several species are cryptic and rarely seen or caught on camera, and the best way to find them is by their calls or songs. But, relying on calls and songs
A team of US astrophysicists has produced one of the most precise measurements ever made of the total amount of matter in the Universe, a longtime mystery of the cosmos. The answer, published in The Astrophysical Journal on Monday, is that matter accounts for 31.5 percent, give or take 1.3 percent, of the total amount of
A drone, 7 GoPro cameras, 2 Wi-Fi GoPro trigger remotes, a Canon DSLR, multiple camera lenses, 7 heavy duty tripods, 8 memory cards, 8 walkie-talkies, 7 high capacity power banks, a anemometer, countless charging and data transfer cables, an optically stabilizing binocular, a 4TB external hard drive, all packed in two black military grade pelican
Can a small American aerospace company get to Venus before NASA returns to our superheated planetary neighbour? That’s what Peter Beck, the CEO of Rocket Lab, is hoping as he sets his sights on launching a low-cost probe in 2023. Over the past decade his company has become very good at putting satellites in to
After a four-year journey, NASA’s robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx will descend to asteroid Bennu’s boulder-strewn surface on October 20, touching down for a few seconds to collect rock and dust samples, the agency said Thursday. Scientists hope the mission will help deepen our understanding of how planets formed and life began and provide insight on asteroids
An international team of scientists said Monday it had joined forces to combat the spread of anti-Semitism online with the help of artificial intelligence. The project Decoding Anti-Semitism includes discourse analysts, computational linguists and historians who will develop a “highly complex, AI-driven approach to identifying online anti-Semitism,” the Alfred Landecker Foundation, which supports the project,
Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Monday improvements to be unveiled at the electric-car maker’s “Battery Day” event would not reach “serious high-volume production” until 2022, knocking its shares lower. Many analysts and industry officials expected Musk to unveil battery improvements at the widely-anticipated event, extending the automaker’s lead over General Motors, Volkswagen
Apple chief Tim Cook said Monday he views the recent increase in fires, hurricanes and floods as strong proof that climate change is real. The disasters should sway those denying science that shows greenhouse gases are dangerously changing weather patterns, Cook said in a talk streamed during an online event by The Atlantic magazine. Cook
NASA on Monday revealed its latest plan to return astronauts to the Moon in 2024, and estimated the cost of meeting that deadline at $28 billion (roughly Rs. 2,05,787 crores), $16 billion (roughly Rs. 1,17,592 crores) of which would be spent on the lunar landing module. Congress, which faces elections on November 3, will have to sign
The foggy morning had given way to a brilliant sun. Despite the chill in the air, I could feel sweat starting to bead down my neck as my field assistant and I made our way to a waterhole in the Kanha Tiger Reserve. It was December 2019, and I had just started the fieldwork component
A hospital in India has deployed a customer-service robot to patrol its wards, connecting coronavirus patients to friends and relatives. Mitra, meaning ‘friend’ in Hindi, is best known for interacting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event in 2017. Its piercing eyes are equipped with facial recognition technology to help it recall people it has
Elon Musk is hailed as an innovator and disruptor who went from knowing next to nothing about building cars to running the world’s most valuable automaker in the space of 16 years. But his record shows he is more of a fast learner who forged alliances with firms that had technology Tesla lacked, hired some
Nearly two thirds of people in leading Western European countries would consider augmenting the human body with technology to improve their lives, mostly to improve health, according to research commissioned by Kaspersky. As humanity journeys further into a technological revolution that its leaders say will change every aspect of our lives, opportunities abound to transform