Norbert Wiener was one of the most unusual mathematicians of the 20th century: a child prodigy who graduated from Tufts at 14, earned a Harvard PhD at 18, and spent most of his career at MIT. During World War II, his work on anti-aircraft fire-control problems helped lead him to the idea of cybernetics, the…
Carl Jung (Image: Wikipedia) Some quotes remain relevant no matter how much society changes. They live on through generations because they talk about emotions that almost everyone has at some point in their life. One such quote comes from the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, whose writings about the human mind, personality, emotions, and…
David Attenborough is among the most recognised broadcasters in the world, admired for his calm narration and deep connection with the natural environment. Born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, England, he has spent most of his life bringing the wonders of the natural world to global audiences. Through decades of documentary filmmaking, he…
The Universe keeps throwing up surprises, and black holes are right at the centre of it. The biggest ones detected so far do not seem to fit the usual story of how stars die. A new study reportedly suggests that these extreme objects might not form in a single collapse at all. Instead, they could…
A strange underground discovery in Kerala’s Palakkad district has suddenly drawn attention from scientists, biodiversity researchers, and even people interested in traditional medicine. In the village of Karakurussi, a farmer digging land for cultivation reportedly uncovered several unusual mushroom-like structures hidden beneath the soil. At first glance, they did not look especially remarkable. Yet researchers…
Archaeologists have revealed that many Scottish loch islands are not natural but are ancient man-made crannogs, constructed as early as 3600 B.C. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons As one looks out into the hazy water surface of a Scottish loch, the small, perfect circles of an island surrounded by trees just appear to be a naturally…
The extraordinary aerial photograph captured by NASA on its Earth Observatory site shows the evolution of a “sea of rotating clouds” in the region around Antarctica as a result of fierce winds, forming a phenomenon called the Von Kármán vortex streets. This astonishing image was taken by NASA using Landsat 8 over Peter I Island…
The world’s largest iceberg, A-23A, transformed from white to electric blue as it entered warmer waters, a sign of its ageing process. Image Credits: NASA Earth Observatory In nature, the spectacular events always occur at the last possible moment. For many years, the world’s largest iceberg, called A-23A, was just a giant piece of frozen…
Beneath the Salton Sea’s arid surface lies a vast geothermal basin holding supercritical fluid rich in lithium, dubbed “Lithium Valley.” Image Credits: via Wikimedia Commons The Salton Sea has long been considered an area of ecological strife, an evaporating salt lake located in the California desert, characterised by arid banks rather than economic prosperity. However,…
Six million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea evaporated, leaving behind a vast salt desert and mineral deposits. Image Credits: via Wikimedia Commons It is hard to think of the earth where you are standing as being once one of the most inhospitable locations on earth, while sunbathing on a beach in the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, had…
