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ASTROPHYSICS NEWS

A scene from Project Hail Mary, where interstellar travel meets imaginative biology. (Express Image/TMDB)

Project Hail Mary science: What the film gets right, what it gets wrong

April 29, 2026 3:31 pm

Project Hail Mary blends real physics with bold speculation. Here's a look at the concepts the film handles, and how the science measures up.

Astronauts report flashes of light caused by galactic cosmic rays passing through their eyes. (Representational Image Generated via ChatGPT)

Galactic cosmic rays: Invisible rain that never stops falling

March 25, 2026 4:39 pm

Galactic cosmic rays from distant corners of the galaxy streak through your body -- as though you barely exist -- at nearly the speed of light.

Priyamvada Natarajan: ‘There is an overall obsession with just our lifetime, without thinking about future generations... We need to move from this short-termism’

Astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan: ‘There is an overall obsession with just our lifetime, without thinking about future generations... We need to move from this short-termism’

February 03, 2026 5:04 pm

Priyamvada Natarajan is among the top astrophysicists in the world whose work has significantly advanced our understanding of black holes, dark matter and the structure of the universe.

An Aurora Borealis is seen in the sky above Nuuk, Greenland, on Tuesday, January 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Largest solar storm in 20 years: What on Earth it means

January 23, 2026 3:55 pm

Earth has been struck by its strongest solar radiation storm in over 20 years, triggering rare aurorae far from the poles and raising concerns for satellites, aviation, and power grids.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity replaced Newton’s force of gravity with the curvature of spacetime, a radical idea still shaping modern physics. (AI-generated image

Gravity's secrets: From Newton's apple to black holes, it is still a mystery

September 23, 2025 11:13 am

From Newton’s falling apple to Einstein’s curved spacetime, our understanding of gravity has come a long way, yet this familiar force remains one of the biggest puzzles in physics.

Physicists once tried to chase light - and in doing so, discovered the hidden architecture of space and time. (AI-generated image: DALLE)

Speed of light: Why nothing in our universe can go faster

September 26, 2025 1:44 pm

From early experiments with lanterns to Einstein’s revelations about space and time, the speed of light has proven to be far more than a number: it’s the cosmic constant that defines reality.

Inside the Large Hadron Collider at CERN - the massive underground machine that confirmed the Higgs boson’s existence and helped complete the Standard Model’s picture of the universe. (Image: Instagram/CERN)

Building blocks of our Universe: How scientists tamed the particle zoo

September 23, 2025 11:18 am

What do quarks, electrons, and photons have in common? They’re all part of the Standard Model - the theory that helped physicists make sense of the tiniest building blocks of the universe.

A conceptual rendering of a tokamak fusion reactor, designed to confine plasma in a magnetic field and mimic the Sun’s energy on Earth. (AI-generated image: DALLE)

Bottling the Sun: Why nuclear fusion is now an engineering challenge

September 23, 2025 11:19 am

Scientists have long known how nuclear fusion works, but controlling it is the real challenge. With recent breakthroughs, the dream of limitless, clean energy is finally shifting from science fiction to engineering reality.

Dr Karan Jani teaching students in a classroom

'Moon a perfect place...': Astrophysicist with Vadodara roots explores ISRO partnership on possibility of sending payload on Chandrayaan-5

August 25, 2025 5:23 am

Dr Karan Jani is a part of the team of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), in Hanford and Livingston, that observed the gravitational-wave signal, recording the “chirp” from what were black holes of 150 crore years ago, on September 14, 2015.