Ethiopia's first satellite was sent into space, a landmark achievement for the ambitious country that also caps a banner year for Africa's involvement in space.
A Chinese Long March 4B rocket hoisted the first Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite (ETRSS-1) aloft from the Taiyuan space base in northern China.
The 70kg satellite was developed by the Chinese Academy of Space Technology with the help of 21 Ethiopian scientists.
Dec 21, 2019
Device to Detect Bacterial Attack on Crops
Rishikesh Amit Nayak created a device which can detect a bacterial attack on crops and alert farmers on the type of bacteria, potential diseases and prevention. Nayak's technology won the best innovation price at Avishkar make-a-thon competition.
Nayak claims his invention is more advanced than the current bacterial attack detection technology used by NABARD. He said that theirs gives results in a month, while his invention can do it in 12 hours. His technology uses thermal imaging instead of chemical composition. A dip or rise in temperature of plants can help us detect their health.
Boeing Astronaut Ship Stalls in Orbit
The Boeing Company is going to have to cut short the uncrewed demonstration flight of its new astronaut capsule.
The Starliner launched successfully on its Atlas rocket from Florida, but later suffered technical problems that prevented it from taking the right path to the International Space Station.
It appears the capsule burnt too much fuel as it fired its engines, leaving an insufficient supply to complete its planned mission.
Starliner will now come back to Earth.
A landing is expected at New Mexico's White Sands testing range.
The craft will use parachutes and airbags to make a soft touchdown on desert terrain.
Flight controllers recognised the problem but were unable to intervene quickly enough because the capsule was passing between satellite links.
New Form of Uranium Found
A new form of uranium has been discovered which is likely to have implications for current nuclear waste disposal plans.
Many governments are planning to dispose of radioactive waste by burying it deep underground. However, new research has found that in such storage conditions a new chemical form of uranium can temporarily occur, while small amounts of uranium are released into solution. If uranium is in solution, it could make its way into groundwater.
Governments are searching for a way to safely dispose of the waste, and an international consensus is moving towards geological nuclear waste disposal – burying it several hundred metres underground. Many countries are already building such disposal units.
Dec 20, 2019
Scientists Find Iron Snow in Earth's Core
The Earth's inner core is hot, under immense pressure and snow-capped, according to new research that could help scientists better understand forces that affect the entire planet.
The snow is made of tiny particles of iron – much heavier than any snowflake on Earth's surface – that fall from the molten outer core and pile on top of the inner core, creating piles up to 200 miles thick that cover the inner core.
This may sound like an alien winter wonderland, but it is akin to how rocks form inside volcanoes.
Dec 19, 2019
Genome Extracted from Ancient Gum
Danish scientists have managed to extract a complete human DNA sample from a piece of birch pitch which is about 5,700 years old, used as a kind of chewing gum.
The Stone Age sample yielded information to determine the source's sex, what she had last eaten and also told them she probably had dark hair, dark skin and blue eyes.
India World's Third Largest Producer of Scientific Articles
According to a latest US report, India emerged as the world's third largest publisher of science and engineering articles.
China, which accounts for 20.67 per cent of all global publications in scientific articles, is at the top position, followed by the US at 16.54 per cent, as per the statistics compiled by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
The data released stated that in 2008, India published 48,998 science and engineering articles. This increased to 1,35,788 articles in 2018 and the country now accounts for 5.31 per cent of the total world publications in science and engineering.
In China, the number of global scientific publications increased from 2,49,049 in 2008 to 5,28,263 in 2018.
The other countries which made it to the top 10 list are Germany (1,04,396), Japan (98,793), UK (97,681), Russia (81,579), Italy (71,240), South Korea (66,376) and France (66,352).
Dec 18, 2019
Star Named after Indian Scientist, Exoplanet Gets a Sanskrit Name
A yellow-white dwarf star in the constellation Sextans, located 340 light years away, was named Bibha, which means "a light beam" and refers to Bibha Chowdhuri, a pioneering Indian scientist who was the first woman researcher-faculty at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1949.
Bibha's exoplanet was christened Santamasa, a Sanskrit word that means "clouded", which refers to the nature of the exoplanet's atmosphere.
The names of the two astronomical bodies were announced by the Paris-based International Astronomical Union (IAU) along with the names of 111 sets of exoplanets and host stars.
Bibha and Santamasa symbolise what the physical and lighting conditions of the HD 86081 system could be.
Earlier this year, IAU, which is celebrating 100 years of its existence, threw open IAU100 NameExoWorlds campaigns assigning various countries with the task of naming a star and its exoplanet.
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