Islamabad: The emergence of life is a mystery. Nevertheless, researchers agree that water is a precondition for life. The first cell emerged in water and then evolved to form multicellular organism. The oldest known single-cell organism on Earth is about 3.5 billion years old. So far, so good. But if life emerged in water, where […]
Read MoreIslamabad: In a genome comparison conducted by a working group led by molecular biologist Leopold Eckhart of the University Department of Dermatology at MedUni Vienna, it was discovered that genes for important skin proteins arose in a common ancestor shared by humans and turtles 310 million years ago. The study has now been published in […]
Read MoreRitsuko Ando Japanese music enthusiasts, loyal to CDs long after the rest of the world went online, have begun reaching for the eject button and switching to streaming services as artists cancel in-store events and fans stay home because of the pandemic. Despite a slow decline in sales in the past decade, CDs are still […]
Read MoreChina Economic Net Beijing: China is ready to work with other countries to create a new paradigm for cybersecurity as well as a community with a shared future in cyberspace, President Xi Jinping said in a congratulatory letter to the World Internet Conference-Internet Development Forum, which opened on Monday in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. Xi hailed […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Is Earth more likely or less likely to be hit by an asteroid or comet now as compared to, say, 20 million years ago?Several studies have claimed to have found periodic variations, with the probability of giant impacts increasing and decreasing in a regular pattern. Now a new analysis by Coryn Bailer-Jones from the […]
Read MoreA team of scientists, including researchers from the California Academy of Sciences, has reconstructed a detailed “tree of life” for turtles. The specifics of how turtles are related — to one another, to other reptiles, and even to dinosaurs — have been hotly debated for decades. Next generation sequencing technologies in Academy labs have generated […]
Read MoreIslamabad: The surface of the sun has been surprisingly calm of late — with fewer sunspots than anytime in in the last century — prompting curious scientists to wonder just what it might mean here on Earth. Sunspots have been observed for millennia — first by Chinese astronomers and then, for the first time with […]
Read MoreA “molecular volume knob” regulating electrical signals in the brain helps with learning and memory, according to a Dartmouth study.The molecular system controls the width of electrical signals that flow across synapses between neurons. The finding of the control mechanism, and the identification of the molecule that regulates it, could help researchers in their search […]
Read MoreScientists have developed a lung-on-chip model to study how the body responds to early tuberculosis (TB) infection, according to findings published today in eLife. TB is a disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) and most often affects the lungs. The model reveals that respiratory system cells, called alveolar epithelial cells, play an […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Managing Director National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) Viqar Rashid Khan has said that around 0.8 million attempts of cyber-attacks on internet consumers are successfully countered every day in Pakistan. In an interview, he said NTC successfully countered 250 million cyber-attacks mainly from Israel and India.“Due to deadly virus, it is dangerous and difficult to hold […]
Read MoreIslamabad: What might look like a colossal jet shooting away from a galaxy turns out to be an illusion. New data from the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) reveal that two galaxies, one lying behind the other, have been masquerading as one. In a new image highlighting the chance alignment, […]
Read MoreIslamabad: How hot is the Universe today? How hot was it before? A new study by an international team of researchers, including members of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), suggests that the mean temperature of gas in large structures of the Universe has increased about 3 times […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Mars once had oceans but is now bone-dry, leaving many to wonder how the water was lost. University of Arizona researchers have discovered a surprisingly large amount of water in the upper atmosphere of Mars, where it is rapidly destroyed, explaining part of this Martian mystery. Shane Stone, a graduate student in the UArizona […]
Read MoreBeijing: China’s manned space program has entered the mission preparation stage with the selection of a new group of 18 reserve astronauts. According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), the reserve astronauts, including one female, have been selected recently from 2,500 candidates. Among them are seven spacecraft pilots, seven space flight engineers and four […]
Read MoreIslamabad: An expedition to probe the deep recesses of a cave that may contain fossilized specimens of early humans is currently underway in South Africa. An international team of paleoanthropologists is exploring the Rising Star Cave at a site in South Africa dubbed the Cradle of Humankind, which is located roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) […]
Read MoreIslamabad: The long, shallow grooves lining the surface of Phobos are likely early signs of the structural failure that will ultimately destroy this moon of Mars. Orbiting a mere 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) above the surface of Mars, Phobos is closer to its planet than any other moon in the solar system. Mars’ gravity is […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Water has not flowed across Antarctica’s Friis Hills for 14 million years, researchers reported at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Denver. The Friis Hills rise 2,000 feet (600 meters) above Antarctica’s Taylor Valley, one of the “Dry Valleys” west of McMurdo Sound. Fossils show tundra mosses and a lake once covered […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found the hottest and most massive double star with components so close that they touch each other.The two stars in the extreme system VFTS 352 could be heading for a dramatic end, during which the two stars either coalesce to create a single […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Griffith University academics are challenging the foundations of quantum science with a radical new theory based on the existence of, and interactions between, parallel universes. In a paper published in the journal Physical Review X, Professor Howard Wiseman and Dr Michael Hall from Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics, and Dr Dirk-Andre Deckert from the […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study, when our solar system was born 4.6 billion years ago only eight percent of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won’t be over when the sun burns out in […]
Read MoreIslamabad: A team of scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has made the most detailed global map yet of the glow from a planet orbiting another star, revealing secrets of air temperatures and water.The map provides information about temperatures at different layers of the world’s atmosphere and traces the amount and distribution of water vapor […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Scientists using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have produced new maps of Jupiter that show the continuing changes in its famous Great Red Spot. The images also reveal a rare wave structure in the planet’s atmosphere that has not been seen for decades.The new image is the first in a series of annual portraits […]
Read MoreChina Economic Net Wuyishan: Sitting cozily in his burlywood house, tea grower Wu Erlong spooned up some tea, took a small sip, and sniffed the aroma on the spoon.“These are freshly-made tea leaves. The quality is quite good,” said Wu, a resident of Xiamei Village in the city of Wuyishan, east China’s Fujian Province.Wuyi Mountains […]
Read MoreStockholm: Three scientists shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries about the black hole, one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced last week.The prize has been awarded with one half to Roger Penrose and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel […]
Read MoreCovert Report Islamabad: Humans worry about greenhouse gases, but between 1.8 billion and 800 million years ago, microscopic ocean dwellers really needed them.The sun was 10 to 15 percent dimmer than it is today – too weak to warm the planet on its own. Earth required a potent mix of heat-trapping gases to keep the […]
Read MoreCovert Report Islamabad: About one fifth of Earth’s atmosphere is oxygen, pumped out by green plants as a result of photosynthesis and used by most living things on the planet to keep our metabolisms running.But before the first photosynthesizing organisms appeared about 2.4 billion years ago, the atmosphere likely contained mostly carbon dioxide, as is […]
Read MoreCovert Report The latest global health challenge has revealed what many in the tech industry have long known — digital transformation is changing the landscape of business. Once a mere line item on business plans, the coronavirus pandemic has moved digitization from consideration to requirement.While many executives have digitized parts of their business, we’re entering […]
Read MoreNewswire Islamabad: Earth-like planets orbiting close to small stars probably have magnetic fields that protect them from stellar radiation and help maintain surface conditions that could be conducive to life, according to research from astronomers at the University of Washington.A planet’s magnetic field emanates from its core and is thought to deflect the charged particles […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Certain primordial stars – those between 55,000 and 56,000 times the mass of our Sun, or solar masses — may have died unusually. In death, these objects – among the Universe’s first-generation of stars — would have exploded as supernovae and burned completely, leaving no remnant black hole behind. Astrophysicists at the University of […]
Read MoreNewswire Islamabad: Boiling oceans and searing air temperatures will render our planet uninhabitable in the distant future, University of East Anglia scientists claimed.We do at least have time to book our tickets to Mars or any of the other 1,000 “suitable” planets detected so far, according to Andrew Rushby of the University of East Anglia […]
Read MoreIslamabad: For decades scientists have believed that galaxy mergers usually result in the formation of elliptical galaxies. Now, for the first time, researchers using ALMA and a host of other radio telescopes have found direct evidence that merging galaxies can instead form disc galaxies, and that this outcome is in fact quite common. This surprising […]
Read MoreCovert ReportAn international team of astronomers have announced the discovery of a rare molecule — phosphine — in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments.Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes — floating […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Humanity is on the threshold of being able to detect signs of alien life on other worlds. By studying exoplanet atmospheres, we can look for gases like oxygen and methane that only coexist if replenished by life. But those gases come from simple life forms like microbes. What about advanced civilizations? Would they leave […]
Read MoreAstronomers have discovered a transiting exoplanet with the longest known year. Kepler-421b circles its star once every 704 days. In comparison, Mars orbits our Sun once every 780 days. Most of the 1,800-plus exoplanets discovered to date are much closer to their stars and have much shorter orbital periods. “Finding Kepler-421b was a stroke of […]
Read MoreThe discovery of two new jumbo-sized viruses is blurring the lines between viral and cellular life and could point to the existence of a new type of life, scientists suggest. The two large viruses, detailed in this week’s issue of the journal Science, have been dubbed “Pandoraviruses” because of the surprises they may hold for […]
Read MoreIslamabad: An international group of astronomers has used the ESO 3.6-metre telescope to identify a planet just like Jupiter orbiting at the same distance from a Sun-like star, HIP 11915. According to current theories, the formation of Jupiter-mass planets plays an important role in shaping the architecture of planetary systems. The existence of a Jupiter-mass […]
Read MoreMcGill Physics student Evelyn Macdonald and her supervisor Prof. Nicolas Cowan used over a decade of observations of Earth’s atmosphere taken by the SCISAT satellite to construct a transit spectrum of Earth, a sort of fingerprint for Earth’s atmosphere in infrared light, which shows the presence of key molecules in the search for habitable worlds. […]
Read MoreBy Emily Conover Like a metronome that sets the tempo for a musician, a fundamental cosmic clock may be keeping time throughout the universe. But if such a clock exists, it ticks extremely fast. In physics, time is typically thought of as a fourth dimension. But some physicists have speculated that time may be the […]
Read MoreIslamabad: Huawei has confirmed that it will be upgrading 13 devices to EMUI 10.1 in Western Europe. The company’s latest in-house OS is an incremental update on EMUI 10, which will be replaced by EMUI 11 later this year. Huawei has finalised its update schedule for EMUI 10.1 in Western Europe. The company has published […]
Read MoreYale University astronomers, using a new type of telescope made by stitching together telephoto lenses, recently discovered seven celestial surprises while probing a nearby spiral galaxy. The previously unseen galaxies may yield important insights into dark matter and galaxy evolution, while possibly signaling the discovery of a new class of objects in space. For now, […]
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