Shining a Light on the Future
14 Oct 2023 under Features
Next-generation solar material offers promise in revolutionising renewable energy In 2021, a 7 MW ‘agro-photovoltaic’ solar plant was commissioned at Degaon village in the Dhule district of Maharashtra. What’s unusual about this plant is that agricultural crops grow amongst rows of solar panels that stretch over them like a canopy, saving a tremendous amount of […]
How Randomly Moving Electrons Can Improve Cyber Security
12 Aug 2022 under Focus
In October 2017, tech giant Yahoo! disclosed a data breach that had leaked sensitive information of over three billion user accounts, exposing them to identity theft. The company had to force all affected users to change passwords and re-encrypt their credentials. In recent years, there have been several instances of such security breaches that have […]
Using Bacteria to Build Settlements on Mars
14 Jun 2022 under Focus
In collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), a team of researchers from IISc has developed a sustainable method for making bricks out of Martian soil, using bacteria and urea. These “space bricks” can be used to build structures on Mars that could facilitate human settlement on the red planet. The method for making […]
To See the World in a Grain of Sand
14 Jun 2022 under Features
Tejas G Murthy’s lab studies the mechanical behaviour of granular materials using computed tomography Matter is often classified into solids, liquids and gases. But if you think about sand, these lines begin to blur. Each particle of sand is a solid, but a collection of sand particles flows and takes the shape of the container […]