Year: 2019

Neutron stars are created when giant stars die in supernovae and their cores collapse, with the protons and electrons essentially melting into each other to form neutrons. Neutron stars are city-size stellar objects with a mass about 1.4 times that of the sun. Born from the explosive death of another, larger stars, these tiny objects … Read more

The Neptune-sized planet, which orbits an Earth-sized star, is being slowly evaporated by the white dwarf, causing the planet to lose some 260 million tons of material every day. For the first time, astronomers have discovered evidence for a giant planet orbiting a tiny, dead white dwarf star. And, surprisingly, the Neptune-sized planet is more … Read more

For a long time, this was a purely theoretical question. Over the past decade or so, however, astronomers have found more than a dozen confirmed instances of “circumbinary planets”—that is, planets that orbit around a close double star. A particularly interesting case is the planet Kepler-1647b, which circles two roughly sunlike stars. This planet also … Read more

White holes are black ones in reverse, spewing out matter– and they could give us our first glimpse of the quantum source of space-time. In the textbooks, Gravitation and Cosmology, Nobel prizewinning physicist Steven Weinberg wrote that the existence of black holes “very hypothetical”, there is no [black hole] in the gravitational field of any … Read more

This star has been going nova every year, for millions of years. A nova star is like a vampire that siphons gas from its binary partner. As it does so, the gas is compressed and heated, and eventually, it explodes. The remnant gas shell from that explosion expands outward and is lit up by the … Read more

In pursuit of life everlasting, some turn to God. Others turn to science. Medicine is aimed at improving and extending healthy lives but it can’t stop the ultimate frontier DEATH. But with evolving technology, we might have a way around it in future. Until then what to do? Here comes in rescue Cryonics. Cryonics is … Read more

Brain ageing is inevitable to some extent, but not uniform; it affects everyone, or every brain, differently. Slowing down brain ageing or stopping it altogether would be the ultimate elixir to achieve eternal youth. Are there steps, we can take to reduce the rate of decline? At around 3 Kg in weight, the human brain … Read more

When inventor Frederick Banting discovered insulin in 1923, he refused to put his name on the patent. He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives. Banting’s co-inventors, James Collip and Charles Best, sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1. They … Read more

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions in the cosmos. These explosive events last a fraction of a second to several minutes and emit the same amount of gamma rays as all the stars in the universe combined. Such extreme amounts of energy can only be released during catastrophic events like the death of … Read more

    From the big freeze to the big crunch, planet x to strangelets converting all normal matter into strange matter. The likelihood of any of those events happening are very small. Nevertheless — that does not mean the Earth is not in danger of some cataclysmic event taking place before the sun swells into … Read more

Despite the obvious doom and gloom associated with mass extinctions, they have a tendency to capture our imagination. After all, the sudden demise of the dinosaurs, presumably due to an asteroid strike, is quite an enthralling story. But not all mass extinctions are quite as dramatic and not all have an easily identified culprit. The … Read more

The idea of an Earth with two moons has been a science fiction staple for decades. The properties of the Moon’s far side has many scientists thinking that another moon used to orbit the Earth before smashing into the Moon and becoming part of its mass. But what if the Earth actually had a second … Read more

Generating endless energy with zero emissions by just slamming hydrogen atoms together has been somewhat of a pipe dream for decades. Building a fusion reactor isn’t that hard, all things considered. But building a useful one is a different matter. Now, scientists may be getting a tiny step closer to feasible fusion power, thanks to … Read more

Alien worlds may be all the rage, with their mystique and promise, but the orb we call home, planet Earth, has all the makings for a jaw-dropping blockbuster movie: from the drama of explosive volcanoes, past meteor crashes and catastrophic collisions between rocky plates to the seeming fantasy of the ocean’s deep abysses swirling with … Read more