Believe it or not, a tank of cleaning fluid buried underground is telling us about what goes on at the center of the Sun. and the startling news is that the Sun may have stopped burning, albeit temporarily. According to theory, the nuclear reaction include the Sun should produce atomic particles known as neutrinos, which escape directly into space and …

The ancient Greeks called them ‘hairy stars’. In fact, they were seeing comets-heavenly bodies with long, streaming tails that travel endlessly around the sun. Before they were understood, comets were believed to foretell plagues, war and death. A comet was seen over Rome after the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. Another, Halley’s comet, appeared over Europe in 1066, …

Did you know that whales, dolphins, and porpoises use a number of different sounds to communicate. They have one of the most highly developed animal ‘languages’. The finback whale produces a very low-pitched sound which it repeats over and over again-scientists think that the finback uses this sound to talk to other whales a long distance away.

Yes, an electric field affects plant growth. In the presence of an electric field, the height of the stem and the length of the roots are more than those without an electric field. The change in growth rate depends on electric field, temperature and humidity. Experiments show that if an electric field intensity of 25 kv/m is applied and temperature …

Not necessarily. Although many types of wine, particularly red ones, improve with age, there are some which do not keep so well, and may become unpleasant if kept for too long. Also, it has became fashionable recently to drink some wines when they are ‘new’ this means that the wine has been made from grapes harvested in the same year. …

Before we can answer this question, we must look at exactly what a comet is. As you probably know, a comet looks rather like a star with a long, milky ‘tail’ stretching across the sky. In fact these ‘tails’ are not tails at all because they always point away from the sun and do not trail behind. A comet seems …

It is not the size of brain that makes one person brilliant and another dullard, for most adults have brains of the same size and weight-about 11/2 kilograms. Rather, it is the way the brain develops. Your brain stores information from your past experiences, helping you to remember, learn, and think. But people differ in how much they remember, how …

You have no doubt seen films or photographs of whales sending up impressive plumes of what looks very much like water. The usual cry of whalers is ‘Thar she blows!’ for this was and occasionally still is the way the whales are spotted. However, the spout is not so much water as steam. After a dive lasting perhaps up to …

Dolphins and whales live in the deep blue sea, but strangely these animals are not able to see the colour blue! Leo Peichl of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and his colleagues discovered during routine tests that seals do not respond to the blue colour. Intrigued, they carried out similar tests on few other species, such …

A science study suggests that the nerves in the stomach act as a circadian clock, limiting food intake to specific times of the day, and acting as a type of ‘stomach clock’. For the study, a research team examined how the nerves in the stomach respond to stretch, which occurs as a consequence of food intake, at three-hourly intervals across …