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 le
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 o
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,
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 Fumi
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 sc
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 launche
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
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 demonstr
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
The largest genome ever known, exceeding the human genome by more than 50 times, was found in a little, unassuming plant called Tmesipteris oblanceolata. With 160 billion base pairs, this fern surpasses both the previous record holder, Paris japonica, and the biggest genome, the marbled lungfish, by a substantial margin. Jaume Pellicer, an evolutionary scientist at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, co-authored the study. Since he had previously assumed that P. japonica had the maximum genome size, this discovery caught him off guard. This plant, which is indigenous to the archipelago o