Category: Tech

Researchers discovered phosphine and ammonia in Venus’ atmosphere, which could indicate the presence of life. Venus, the second planet from the Sun, has a hostile environment with surface temperatures of around 450 degrees Celsius and an atmosphere primarily composed of carbon dioxide.

A team led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University discovered phosphine in Venus’ upper atmosphere using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.

This study, reported in Nature Astronomy, suggests that biological activity may exist in the acidic cloud deck, where temperatures hover around 75 degrees Celsius and pressures are similar to those seen on Earth’s surface. Greaves observed that phosphine may be destroyed by sunlight, leaving the source unexplained.

Another team identified ammonia using the Green Bank Telescope. On Earth, ammonia is generated by industrial operations or nitrogen-converting microorganisms. This discovery calls into question the existence of microbial life in Venus’ clouds, yet it might simply be the product of unknown chemical processes.

Scientists emphasise that these observations do not establish the existence of life. Dr Dave Clements of Imperial College London proposed that prior warm, rainy conditions on Venus may have caused life to adapt to the cloud environment. However, more research and space missions are required to validate these discoveries and comprehend their ramifications.

A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool to improve farming methods in India has been unveiled by Google: the Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API. Google VP Jeanine Banks announced the Google I/O Connect event in Bengaluru.

ALU Research API aims to increase agricultural output, facilitate access to financing, and broaden agricultural product markets. To investigate its potential applications, Google is teaming up with organisations such as Ninjacart, Skymet, Team-Up, IIT Bombay, and the Indian government.

The ALU tool provides precise landscape insights at the farm level, which are critical for agricultural transformation. When it comes to drought preparedness, irrigation concerns, and market access, the API may use high-resolution satellite images and machine learning to demarcate field borders.

Google is also making strides in the Indian language market. Developers now have access to 14,000 hours of speech data in 58 languages as the Google DeepMind team expands Project Vaani. They made the CALM framework available to the public and launched IndicGenBench to test language models on 29 Indic languages; this gave programmers a chance to address the linguistic variety in India.

Google has also cut API service prices on the Maps platform by up to 70% to support Indian developers, aiming to maintain its competitive edge against platforms like Ola Maps.

NASA published photos from the James Webb Space Telescope of two galaxies, the Penguin and the Egg, combining in a cosmic ballet. This marks two years since the telescope’s first scientific findings were revealed.

Launched in 2021, Webb began gathering data the following year, altering our view of the early universe and producing breathtaking cosmic images. Arp 142 refers to the galaxies in the Hydra constellation, which are 326 million light-years away.

Jane Rigby, NASA Webb senior project scientist, noted that the merging galaxies, each with billions of stars, show how galaxies like our Milky Way form over time. The Penguin galaxy resembles a flightless bird and is officially known as NGC 2936. It is a spiral-shaped galaxy that has been slightly distorted.

NGC 2937, often known as the Egg Galaxy due to its form, is a small elliptical galaxy. Their interaction began between 25 and 75 million years ago, and they are anticipated to fully merge in hundreds of millions of years.

Webb has observed the earliest known galaxies and shed light on planetary composition and star-forming areas. It specialises in detecting infrared light, which allows it to see through dust and gas.

The MV Sea Change, the world’s first hydrogen-powered commercial passenger ferry, will start operations on San Francisco Bay on July 19. As part of a six-month free test programme, this 70-foot catamaran will transport up to 75 passengers from Pier 41 to the downtown San Francisco ferry terminal.

The ferry, which can travel 300 nautical miles and run for 16 hours before refuelling, is intended to reduce carbon emissions by replacing diesel-powered ferries.

Jim Wunderman, chair of the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority, emphasised the project’s significance, saying that hydrogen-powered vessels will become more common in the United States and around the world. The device generates energy by mixing oxygen and hydrogen, emitting just water, making it a cleaner alternative for the shipping industry, which accounts for approximately 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Frank Wolak, president and CEO of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association, emphasised the ferry’s potential to reduce emissions from numerous ships worldwide.

The Biden administration is promoting hydrogen as a renewable energy source, offering $8 billion to expand production and distribution. Although current hydrogen production uses natural gas, proponents believe that using renewable energy will make it more environmentally friendly.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully launched Daichi-4, an advanced Earth observation satellite, on the brand-new H3 rocket. The H3 rocket reached a new level of reliability with its successful launch at Tanegashima Space Centre.

The H3 rocket dropped its payload into orbit while its remnants fell into the Indian Ocean, following a predetermined trajectory. Hiroshi Yamakawa, the head of JAXA, highlighted the progress in preserving Japan’s autonomy and global competitiveness in space access when he announced that Daichi-4 had started its mission.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida praised the launch and expressed optimism for the future of Japan’s space programme. JAXA is planning to replace the older H-IIA rocket with six H3 rockets launched every year. The credibility of the H3 is anticipated to be enhanced if the third launch is successful. The recent success of JAXA is a testament to its growth, despite its history of failed attempts, which includes an aborted launch in February and another in March.

With an impressive 200-kilometre observation range, the Daichi-4 satellite can keep an eye on natural calamities and trace the movements of ships. Its development cost ¥32 billion. Both disaster management and national security depend on this powerful capability.

Scientists from India have revealed a new way to determine pi, which should make it easier to extract pi from phenomena such as the quantum scattering of high-energy particles.

 Arnab Saha and Aninda Sinha of the Centre for High Energy Physics (CHEP) published this research in Physical Review Letters. According to IISc, “The new formula under a certain limit closely mirrors the 15th-century representation of pi by Indian mathematician Sangamagrama Madhava.”

Creating a model with fewer parameters to explain particle interactions in high-energy physics was the original goal of the scientists. On the other hand, they discovered an intriguing new angle on pi. A “series” is the mathematical notation for a set of related variables, such as the components of pi. It has been difficult to find the optimal parameter combination that approximatively represents pi.

A series found by Sinha and Saha enables fast pi approximation, which can be used in calculations like quantum scattering, as emphasised by IISc. Previous mathematicians and physicists needed to have the resources that Sinha mentioned as being necessary to find this series. Despite their theoretical nature, the results may have future practical uses.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is preparing for the Chandrayaan-4 mission, which is designed to retrieve samples from the Moon using India’s most powerful rocket system.

Chandrayaan-4 will be launched in different parts and assembled in orbit, unlike previous missions, because the spacecraft’s size exceeds the rocket’s capacity. This method, which is similar to the construction of the International Space Station, establishes a new standard for space exploration and is unprecedented for lunar missions.

According to ISRO, the mission’s architecture involves numerous launches because of current rocket limitations. It is creating new docking technologies to enable spacecraft components to connect in both Earth and Moon orbits to accomplish this.

Lunar missions often dock in space, but assembling modules in Earth orbit to go to the moon is a novel idea. It is a bold step forward for space exploration, even though ISRO isn’t claiming to be the pioneer. In keeping with ISRO’s Vision 2047, the Chandrayaan-4 mission has set two ambitious goals: the establishment of India’s space station by 2035 and the sending of humans to the Moon by 2040. For the NGLV, ISRO is also constructing a brand-new launch facility, which is necessary for heavier missions.

NASA just released the first pictures the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) ever taken of jets of gas coming from new stars. These jets, which are moving very quickly, hit gas and dust in the Serpens Nebula, which is 1,300 light-years from Earth. 

The picture shows the nebula, which is home to a thick group of stars that are about 100,000 years old. It is made up of thin layers of orange, red, and blue gas and dust.

Klaus Pontoppidan from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that this event records how stars formed in the past. Before, these things were either blobs or couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. But Webb’s infrared vision was able to see through the thick dust to find the stars and their streams.

NASA described the picture, pointing out a bright star in the middle with an hourglass shadow and a vertical crack in the shape of an eye close by. Small spots of light with eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are unique to the Webb Telescope are spread out in the field.

The picture has gotten more than four lakh likes and many comments on social media since it was posted. 

On Sunday, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) accomplished an important milestone with the successful completion of the third and last Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) Landing Experiment (LEX). The LEX series came to an end with this test, which took place at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR) in Chitradurga, Karnataka, at 7:10 IST.

With an emphasis on the winged vehicle termed Pushpak’s exact horizontal landing, ISRO highlighted the achievement on X, the former Twitter. At a height of 4.5 kilometres, the vehicle was dropped from an Indian Air Force Chinook chopper. Pushpak demonstrated enhanced autonomous capabilities in difficult circumstances by successfully executing runway landings and cross-range correction manoeuvres on its own.

Reusing the winged body and flying components from the LEX-02 mission, the mission’s goal was to replicate high-speed landing conditions for a vehicle returning from orbit, demonstrating ISRO’s strong design and reuse capabilities. Pushpak used its nose wheel steering system and rudder to keep the runway stable during the ground roll phase.
The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) led a team of ISRO centres, the Indian Air Force, and other organisations in this cooperative mission. S. Somanath, Chairman of ISRO, commended the group for their ongoing achievements.

Using its onboard remote sensing sensors, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Aditya-L1 spacecraft has successfully captured high solar fury. For India’s first dedicated solar mission, which launched on September 2, 2023, and reached the Lagrangian point (L1) on January 6, 2024—127 days later—this is a noteworthy accomplishment. L1, which is positioned about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, enables the spacecraft to keep an eye on the Sun all the time.

In May 2024, two important Aditya-L1 instruments recorded dynamic solar phenomena: the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and the Solar Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT). According to an ISRO statement, these instruments recorded multiple strong solar flares of the X- and M-class and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that caused large-scale geomagnetic storms.

The activity from the solar active area AR13664 was very notable. This region produced several X-class and M-class flares during the week of May 8–15, which were connected to CMEs seen on May 8 and 9. On May 11, a significant geomagnetic storm illustrated the potential effects of these solar outbursts on Earth’s space environment.

On May 17, ISRO released extensive observations from VELC and detailed photos from the SUIT instrument, demonstrating the mission’s success in deepening our understanding of solar processes.