Beijing: An international team of astronomers has unveiled the first three-dimensional (3D) map of the properties of interstellar dust in the Milky Way.

This breakthrough will provide critical support for precise astronomical observation, and for studies in the areas of astrochemistry and galactic evolution, Xinhua news agency reported.

The research was led by Zhang Xiangyu, a Chinese doctoral student at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in collaboration with his advisor, Dr. Gregory Green.

It was based on data from China’s Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) and the European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, and its findings have been published as the cover story of the latest issue of the Science academic journal.

The interstellar medium — the matter and radiation in the space between stars — is crucial for the Milky Way’s material cycle and star formation. Most elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in the interstellar medium exist as solid dust particles.

Dust absorbs and scatters starlight, making distant stars appear dimmer and redder in a phenomenon known as “extinction.” Most astronomical observations require extinction correction, Xiangyu said.

By integrating precise stellar parameters from LAMOST with low-resolution spectroscopic survey data from Gaia, astronomers compiled the first comprehensive catalogue detailing the absorption and scattering from interstellar dust for over 130 million stars.

Using this catalogue, they have successfully constructed a 3D map of dust distribution and properties across the Milky Way, reaching distances of up to 16,308 light-years away.

This milestone achievement leverages LAMOST’s unique advantages, including its large field of view and multi-object spectroscopic capabilities, Xiangyu said.

The 3D map covers vast spatial scales, revealing close correlations between dust properties, star formation and the structure of the Milky Way. It provides critical insights for research in the areas of astrochemistry and galactic evolution, he noted.

In addition, the observation of dust distribution challenges long-standing expectations related to the intermediate-density regions near dust cloud centres and suggests potential new mechanisms for interstellar organic matter growth, Xiangyu said.

“Dust serves as the building material for planets like Earth and plays a catalytic role in the Milky Way’s chemical evolution. The newly released 3D map opens a new window for the study of dust and the Galaxy. It not only offers a vital reference for astronomical observations but also provides fresh perspectives and possibilities for the exploration of astrochemistry, star formation, the galactic carbon cycle, and even the origin of life,” he said.

IANS

New Delhi: ISRO Thursday that it has accomplished de-docking of the SpaDeX satellites, clearing the way for future missions such as exploring the moon, human spaceflight, and building its own space station.

Union Minister Jitendra Singh announced the successful de-docking of satellites in a post on X.

“SpaDeX satellites accomplished the unbelievable de-docking. This paves the way for smooth conduct of ambitious future missions, including the Bharatiya Antriksha Station, Chandrayaan 4 & Gaganyaan,” Singh said.

“Congrats, team ISRO. And heartening for every Indian,” he said.

Singh said Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s continuous patronage keeps the spirits soaring.

The SpaDeX mission was launched December 30 last year when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) placed in orbit two satellites — SDX01 and SDX02 — to demonstrate the docking experiment in space.

After several attempts, the space agency successfully docked the two satellites January 16.

PTI

New Delhi: SpaceX has postponed the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, which was scheduled to carry a crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and return the “stranded” NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.

The launch, originally planned for today from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, was scrubbed less than an hour before liftoff due to a hydraulic system issue with a ground support clamp arm on the rocket.

NASA and SpaceX confirmed the delay of the Crew-10 mission, which was intended to replace Williams and Wilmore aboard the ISS. The postponement was caused by a technical problem with one of the support arms holding the Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A.

SpaceX posted on social media, saying, “Standing down from tonight’s launch opportunity of @NASA’s Crew-10 mission to the @Space_Station,” confirming the scrubbed launch.

Despite the setback, SpaceX and NASA are optimistic that the mission can still launch within the next two days. New launch windows are available on Thursday and Friday, and if the hydraulic issue is resolved, the mission could lift off later this week.

The Crew-10 mission was set to carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, to replace Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.

The astronauts aboard the Dragon spacecraft have safely exited, and the rocket is secure.

The mission’s delay impacts the timely return of Williams and Wilmore, whose stay on the ISS has been extended due to the technical issues. NASA had factored in a quick turnaround for the SpaceX Crew Dragon to minimise consumable use at the ISS, making a prompt launch essential for continued station operations.

New Delhi: Union Minister for Railways, Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Wednesday welcomed Elon Musk’s affordable satellite internet service Starlink to India.

India’s leading telecom giants, Airtel and Jio Platforms, have partnered with SpaceX to bring Starlink Internet services to the country.

“Starlink, welcome to India! Will be useful for remote area railway projects,” the Union Minister posted on X social media platform.

Starlink, welcome to India!

Will be useful for remote area railway projects. pic.twitter.com/rQPmjeKkGt

— Ashwini Vaishnaw (@AshwiniVaishnaw) March 12, 2025

A day after Airtel’s announcement about partnering with SpaceX to bring Starlink internet service to India, Jio Platforms Wednesday announced a similar pact with the US-based company.

Airtel and SpaceX will explore offering Starlink equipment in Airtel’s retail stores, Starlink services via Airtel to business customers, opportunities to connect communities, schools, and health centres, among many others, in even the most rural parts of India.

Airtel and SpaceX will also explore how Starlink could help expand and enhance the Airtel network, as well as SpaceX’s ability to utilise and benefit from Airtel’s ground network infrastructure and other capabilities in India, said the company.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman, Bharti Enterprises, said that a new era of seamless global connectivity beckons for customers. Mittal said that soon, customers will be able to carry their mobiles to the remotest part of the world, with them in the skies and blue oceans.

In his opening remark at the recently concluded ‘Mobile World Congress 2025’ in Barcelona, Mittal made a call to both the telecom and satellite players to work together, combine their strengths, and complete the mission of connecting the unconnected, covering the oceans and the skies as well as difficult-to-reach areas.

“I am glad that this is being followed through with active announcements of partnerships between satellite companies and telecom operators,” he said in a statement.

For the telecom industry, the addition of satellite technology should be no different from bringing new technologies to its customers.

“Just like 4G, 5G, and 6G in the future, we will now have one more technology in our mix, i.e. SAT-G,” said Mittal.

IANS  

New Delhi: The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) has proactively identified and blocked more than 3,962 Skype IDs and 83,668 WhatsApp accounts used for Digital Arrest scams so far, the Parliament was informed Wednesday.

The I4C under the Ministry of Home Affairs, in collaboration with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), launched a caller tune campaign for raising awareness about cybercrime and promoting the Cyber Crime Helpline Number 1930 and ‘National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal’ (NCRP).

The caller tune is also being broadcasts in regional languages, delivered 7-8 times a day by telecom service providers (TSPs).

The government and telecom service providers (TSPs) have also devised a system to identify and block incoming international spoofed calls displaying Indian mobile numbers appear to be originating within India.

Till February 28, more than 7.81 lakhs SIM cards and 2,08,469 IMEIs as reported by police authorities have been blocked by the government, MoS in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

Directions have been issued to the TSPs for blocking of such incoming international spoofed calls.

The Central government has also launched a comprehensive awareness programme on digital arrest scams.

The ‘Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System’, under I4C, was launched in 2021 for immediate reporting of financial frauds and to stop siphoning off funds by the fraudsters.

So far, financial amount of more than Rs. 4,386 crore has been saved in more than 13.36 lakh complaints.

Efforts are also underway to use artificial intelligence (AI) for identifying mule accounts, while over 19 lakh such accounts have been caught and transactions worth Rs 2,038 crore prevented in the fight against cybercrime, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said last month.

A mule account is a bank account used by criminals to transfer stolen money. The person who owns the account is called a “money mule”.

Vandenberg Space Force Base (US): NASA’s newest space telescope rocketed into orbit Tuesday to map the entire sky like never before — a sweeping look at hundreds of millions of galaxies and their shared cosmic glow since the beginning of time.

SpaceX launched Spherex observatory from California, putting it on course to fly over Earth’s poles. Tagging along were four suitcase-size satellites to study the sun. Spherex popped off the rocket’s upper stage first, drifting into the blackness of space with a blue Earth in the background.

The $488 million Spherex mission aims to explain how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years, and how the universe expanded so fast in its first moments.

Closer to home in our own Milky Way galaxy, Spherex will hunt for water and other ingredients of life in the icy clouds between stars where new solar systems emerge.

The cone-shaped Spherex — at 1,110 pounds (500 kilograms) or the heft of a grand piano — will take six months to map the entire sky with its infrared eyes and wide field of view. Four full-sky surveys are planned over two years, as the telescope circles the globe from pole to pole 400 miles (650 kilometers) up.

Spherex won’t see galaxies in exquisite detail like NASA’s larger and more elaborate Hubble and Webb space telescopes, with their narrow fields of view.

Instead of counting galaxies or focusing on them, Spherex will observe the total glow produced by the whole lot, including the earliest ones formed in the wake of the universe-creating Big Bang.

“This cosmological glow captures all light emitted over cosmic history,” said the mission’s chief scientist Jamie Bock of the California Institute of Technology. “It’s a very different way of looking at the universe,” enabling scientists to see what sources of light may have been missed in the past.

By observing the collective glow, scientists hope to tease out the light from the earliest galaxies and learn how they came to be, Bock said.

“We won’t see the Big Bang. But we’ll see the aftermath from it and learn about the beginning of the universe that way,” he said.

The telescope’s infrared detectors will be able to distinguish 102 colors invisible to the human eye, yielding the most colorful, inclusive map ever made of the cosmos.

It’s like “looking at the universe through a set of rainbow-colored glasses,” said deputy project manager Beth Fabinsky of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

To keep the infrared detectors super cold — minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 210 degrees Celsius) — Spherex has a unique look. It sports three aluminum-honeycomb cones, one inside the other, to protect from the sun and Earth’s heat, resembling a 10-foot (3-meter) shield collar for an ailing dog.

Besides the telescope, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket provided a lift from Vandenberg Space Force Base for a quartet of NASA satellites called Punch. From their own separate polar orbit, the satellites will observe the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and the resulting solar wind.

The evening launch was delayed two weeks because of rocket and other issues.

New Delhi: The Reliance Industries’ digital services company Jio Platforms Limited has signed an agreement with SpaceX to offer Starlink’s broadband internet services to its customers in India, the company said Wednesday.

The agreement is subject to SpaceX receiving authorisation to sell Starlink in India.

The development came a day after Jio’s rival Bharti Airtel signed a similar pact with SpaceX.

“Our collaboration with SpaceX to bring Starlink to India strengthens our commitment and marks a transformative step toward seamless broadband connectivity for all.

“By integrating Starlink into Jio’s broadband ecosystem, we are expanding our reach and enhancing the reliability and accessibility of high-speed broadband in this AI-driven era, empowering communities and businesses across the country,” Mathew Oommen, the Group CEO of Reliance Jio, said.

The pact enables Jio and SpaceX to explore how Starlink can extend Jio’s offerings and how Jio can complement SpaceX’s direct offerings to consumers and businesses.

Jio will make Starlink solutions available through its retail outlets as well as through its online storefronts, the statement said.

Through this agreement, the parties will leverage Jio’s position as the world’s largest mobile operator in terms of data traffic and Starlink’s position as the world’s leading low Earth orbit satellite constellation operator to deliver reliable broadband services across the country, including the most rural and remote regions.

Jio will not only offer Starlink equipment in its retail outlets but will also establish a mechanism to support customer service installation and activation, according to the statement.

It also said that the agreement with SpaceX is part of Jio’s commitment to ensuring that reliable Internet is fully accessible to all enterprises, small and medium businesses, and communities across India.

Starlink complements JioAirFiber and JioFiber by extending high-speed internet to the most challenging of locations in a quick and affordable manner, the statement said.

Jio and SpaceX are also evaluating other complementary areas of cooperation to leverage their respective infrastructure to enhance India’s digital ecosystem further.

“We applaud Jio’s commitment to advancing India’s connectivity. We are looking forward to working with Jio and receiving authorisation from the Government of India to provide more people, organizations and businesses with access to Starlink’s high-speed internet services,” Gwynne Shotwell, the President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX, said.

PTI

New Delhi: Telecom operator Bharti Airtel Tuesday said it has partnered with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for providing Starlink’s high-speed internet services to its customers in India.

This agreement is subject to SpaceX receiving authorisations to sell Starlink’s satellite communications-based services in India, Airtel said in a statement.

The agreement will enable Airtel and SpaceX to further explore how Starlink could complement and expand Airtel’s offerings, and how Airtel’s expertise in the Indian market could complement SpaceX’s direct offerings to consumers and businesses.

Bharti Airtel Managing Director and Vice Chairman Gopal Vittal said that working with SpaceX to offer Starlink services to Airtel customers in India is a significant milestone and further demonstrates company’s commitment to next-generation satellite connectivity.

“This collaboration enhances our ability to bring world-class high-speed broadband to even the most remote parts of India, ensuring that every individual, business, and community has reliable internet. Starlink will complement and enhance Airtel’s suite of products to ensure reliable and affordable broadband for our Indian customers – wherever they live and work,” Vittal said.

Under the pact, Airtel and SpaceX will explore offering Starlink equipment at Airtel’s retail stores, Starlink services via Airtel to business customers, opportunities to connect communities, schools, and health centres, among many others, in even the most distant rural parts of India.

Airtel and SpaceX will also explore how Starlink could help expand and enhance the Airtel network, as well as SpaceX’s ability to utilise and benefit from Airtel’s ground network infrastructure and other capabilities in India, the statement said.

PTI

When you hear the term “Silicon Valley,” you immediately think of tech giants, startups, and groundbreaking innovations. But have you ever wondered why silicon is in the name? The answer isn’t just about computers—it’s about a revolution that changed the world!

What’s so special about Silicon?

Silicon is the essential material used to make semiconductors, the tiny chips that power everything from smartphones and laptops to satellites and AI systems.

These chips are the brain behind modern technology, allowing devices to process information at fast speed.

How it all started: The birth of Silicon Valley

The story begins in the 1950s and 1960s when a group of scientists and engineers started working on semiconductors in California’s Santa Clara Valley. Back then, this region was filled with orchards and farmland, but soon, it became the heart of the computer revolution.

Companies like Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, and HP were among the pioneers, manufacturing silicon-based microchips that would go on to power the world’s most advanced technologies. As more semiconductor companies emerged, the region was nicknamed “Silicon Valley” because of its dominance in silicon chip production.

But today, Silicon Valley doesn’t make many Silicon chips!

Interestingly, while the name “Silicon Valley” comes from chip manufacturing, the region today is more focused on software, artificial intelligence, and venture capital investments. The actual manufacturing of silicon chips has largely moved to countries like Taiwan and South Korea, with companies like TSMC and Samsung leading global production.

Also Read: Watch: Man hypnotised a chicken? Internet can’t believe this viral video!

Still, Silicon Valley remains the world’s tech capital because of its innovation, startup culture, and the presence of industry giants like Apple, Google, and Tesla.

The legacy of the name

Even though silicon chip production isn’t the primary focus anymore, the name ‘Silicon Valley’ has stuck, symbolising the birthplace of modern technology and innovation. Today, cities across the world—like Bengaluru (India), Shenzhen (China) and Tel Aviv (Israel)—are often referred to as their countries’ versions of Silicon Valley due to their booming tech industries.

So, why is California’s Silicon Valley called that? Because it all started with silicon chips, the foundation of today’s digital world. Even though the focus has shifted to software and AI, the name remains a powerful symbol of technology, innovation, and the future.

PNN

Bengaluru: India is rapidly emerging as a global leader in the Web3 space and is expected to become the world’s largest Web3 developer hub by 2028, according to a report Tuesday.

The latest ‘India Web3 Landscape’ report by Hashed Emergent showed that the country recorded the highest year-on-year (YoY) growth in developer participation in 2024, adding more than 4.7 million developers to GitHub.

This accounts for 17 per cent of all new Web3 developers globally, making India the second-largest crypto developer base in the world.

The report states that 45.3 per cent of Indian Web3 developers contribute to coding, 29.7 per cent focus on fixing bugs, and 22.4 per cent work on documentation.

Popular areas of development include gaming, non-fungible token (NFTs), decentralised finance (DeFi), and real-world assets (RWAs).

A significant portion of India’s Web3 developers are newcomers, with over 50 per cent having entered the space in the last two years. Most of them are under the age of 27.

Hackathons — an event where computer programmers work together closely to create something new — continue to be the primary gateway for developers.

However, Web3 firms are also actively collaborating with universities in Odisha, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, and Kerala to introduce students to blockchain technology early on.

“The country’s unique blend of technological agility, entrepreneurial spirit, and digital adoption are driving progress,” said Tak Lee, CEO & Managing Partner at Hashed Emergent.

He added that “we now see renewed retail participation, shifting investor trends, and deeper integration of Web3 solutions by enterprises and the government.

“Last year, we noted India’s global leadership in Web3 adoption and today, that promise is turning into tangible advancements led by Indian innovators.”

India also ranks third globally in terms of Web3 startup founders, with over 1,200 startups operating in the sector.

Investor confidence in the country’s Web3 ecosystem has surged, leading to a 109 per cent increase in funding compared to 2023.

In 2024, Indian startups raised $564 million, taking the total investment in the sector to over $3 billion, the report said.

The primary focus has been on DeFi applications, including staking solutions, tokenisation platforms, and decentralised exchanges.

The report highlights AI, RWAs, and staking solutions as key areas attracting significant investment.

Several global venture capital and homegrown firms are betting big on Indian Web3 projects. Additionally, ecosystem funds from Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchain networks have made substantial investments, further boosting India’s standing in the global Web3 landscape.

IANS 

New Delhi: A new study has found that shifting away from cultivating rice to alternative cereals such as millet, maize and sorghum could help tackle production losses related to climate by 11 per cent, thereby potentially boosting farmer incomes.

Farmers in India are known to prefer harvesting rice for its economic viability. Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are among the top producers, accounting for a significant fraction of the country’s rice production.

However, changes in temperatures and rainfall, increasingly driven by climate change, disproportionately affect rice production, thereby threatening food security in a warmer future, a team of researchers, including those from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, said.

They added that a farmer’s decision on how much land area to plant a certain crop is heavily influenced by ups and downs in the crop’s price in the market, potentially impacting their income and profit.

“Optimised allocations of harvested area can reduce climate-induced production loss by 11 per cent or improve farmer net profit by 11 per cent while maintaining calorie production and cropland area,” the authors wrote in the journal Nature Communications.

“Such improvements would be possible by reducing the harvested areas dedicated to rice and increasing the areas allocated to alternative cereals,” they wrote.

The findings of possible income boosts could offer an economic incentive to the farmers and encourage them to shift from rice towards climate-resilient crops, the authors said.

“This research highlights the need for policymakers to consider the economic factors influencing farmers’ decisions and to implement policies that promote the cultivation of climate-resilient crops,” study author Ashwini Chhatre, associate professor and executive director at Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business, said.

For the study, the team looked at five main cereals grown during the monsoon (kharif) season — finger millet, maize, pearl millet, rice, and sorghum.

Data on yield, harvested area and harvest price were taken from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad.

The findings also highlighted the importance of addressing the present pricing structures — currently biased in favour of cultivating rice, the authors said.

“Our results demonstrate the importance of cropping patterns and harvested area allocations for achieving co-benefits in production and profit, and for ultimately enhancing the resilience of cereal production to both environmental and economic disruptions,” they wrote.

Switching away from cultivating rice has also been suggested in previous studies for preserving groundwater, which is a fast-depleting resource.

Harvesting rice relies heavily on groundwater for irrigation.

A 2024 study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that replacing 40 per cent of area sown with rice with other crops could help recover 60-100 cubic kilometres of groundwater lost since 2000 in north India.

PTI

New Delhi: Elon Musk Monday said a massive cyber attack has hit his ‘X’ social media platform, which disabled millions of users across the globe, including in India, from accessing the popular platform.

The X platform went down in a massive global outage as users were unable to access the micro-blogging platform.

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing…,” said the billionaire in a post.

“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” he said, adding that it is an attempt to silence him and his platform.

‘X’, formerly Twitter, went non-operational for millions of users during the day.

According to platform outage tracking platform DownDetector, the X outage peaked at around 15:00 hours

A user commented: “Is Twitter down? Anyone getting the same issue? Can’t open the comments section”.

“Thanks for the update. It’s unreal how badly they want to shut down free speech,” another posted.

“Looks like someone really doesn’t want X to thrive. Wonder who’s behind it,” said another.

DownDetector reported a huge spike, with users rushing to lodge their complaints about the social media site on other platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

During the downtime, ‘X’ stopped working completely while the users were unable to post tweets or even open pages on the platform.

‘X’ was acquired by Musk in October 2022 for $44 billion.

After the acquisition, ‘X’ rarely went off the grid, unlike its peers Facebook and Instagram.

Recently, the tech billionaire raised prices of its top-tier subscription service (Premium+) for his X social media platform by a massive 35 per cent for both new and existing users in India, including across global markets.

IANS

San Francisco: Elon Musk’s X social media platform suffered multiple outages early Monday.

Complaints about outages spiked Monday at 6 a.m. and again at 10 a.m, with more than 40,000 users reporting no access to the platform, according to the tracking website Downdetector.com.

Outage reports spiked again around noon and the latest appears to be ongoing.

Downdetector.com said that 56% of problems were reported for the X app, while 33% were reported for the website.

In March 2023 the social media platform then known as Twitter experienced a bevy of glitches for over an hour as links stopped working, some users were unable to log in and images were not loading for others.

New Delhi: The new Income Tax Bill prescribes the existing process for tax authorities to gain access to the digital space or a computer device only during search and survey operations, and it is not aimed to breach the online privacy of common taxpayers even if their case lands into scrutiny, a top I-T department official said Monday.

The powers for such a coercive action “already existed” in the 1961 Act, and these have only been reiterated in the Income Tax Bill of 2025, he said.

The official rejected claims made in some reports and opinion pieces that the tax authorities have been granted “additional” powers to breach the passwords of electronic records, including email, social media handles and Cloud storage space of the taxpayers.

“Such reports are nothing but fearmongering. The tax department is not into snooping on social media accounts or online activities of a taxpayer.

“These powers are only to be executed during the course of a search or survey operation, and that too when the assessee being searched or surveyed refuses to share the passwords for digital storage drives, emails, Clouds and communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram, etc.,” the officer told PTI.

Section 247 of the Income Tax Bill, 2025, which is before Parliament at present, prescribes an authorised officer to gain access by “over-riding” the access code of computer system or ‘virtual digital space’.

The government has brought the new Bill in order to change the decades-old I-T Act of 1961 with an aim to make the bulky direct tax law simpler and easier for the taxpayers.

Under the existing law, Section 132 enables an authorised officer to require any person who is found in possession of books, accounts or other documents in the form of electronic record to afford facility to inspect such documents and also to seize such document (including electronic record as per Section 2(22AA) of Income Tax Act, 1961).

“Tax crimes and the methods of tax evasion have attained a new level of sophistication with the advent of smart Internet-based tools and technology,” the official said.

Gaining access to digital devices and spaces during coercive actions like search and survey is vital to find evidence, and these raids are limited when you see the data,” a second official said.

The tax department conducts about 100-150 “full blown” searches and surveys in a financial year, and this enforcement action is not aimed towards the common taxpaying individual or entity.

Also, out of the about 8.79 crore income-tax returns (ITRs) filed annually, only about 1 per cent are selected for scrutiny, the official said.

“The provisions related to ‘virtual digital space’ do not apply even to these cases under scrutiny. It is applied only during the process of a search or survey and not even before this action is mounted.

“The tax department does not snoop or make a back door entry against any individual or entity through their social media accounts,” the first official said.

As per officials in the tax department, gathering evidence from digital accounts is not only “essential” to prove tax evasion before a court of law, but also for computing the exact amount of tax evaded.

During search and seizure operations, it has been found in some cases that the person in control of books, documents and records, etc., does not cooperate with the proceedings or provide necessary facilities to access the evidence.

In this digital and e-enabled world, information is stored in servers and storage facilities abroad, which are not accessible from India, and the access code is not provided by the person concerned.

In such circumstances, the entire exercise of search and seizure gets redundant and can result in the tax evader going scot-free, officials said.

PTI

New York: The mission of US company Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander Athena has come to an early end because the lander tipped over while touching down on the Moon, and its battery quickly drained, the company said.

According to NASA, the uncrewed lander landed at a region near the Moon’s South Pole at about 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time Thursday, more than 400 meters from its intended landing site, Xinhua news agency reported.

The mission, code named IM-2, landed closer to the lunar South Pole than any previous lander, said NASA.

Intuitive Machines said images collected later confirmed the lander was on its side, preventing it from fully operating NASA’s lunar drill and other instruments before its batteries were depleted.

Among the data collected by the lander, NASA’s PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1) suite, which includes the lunar drill known as TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain), successfully demonstrated the hardware’s full range of motion in the harsh environment of space, NASA said.

With the direction of the Sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Athena was not able to recharge, according to Intuitive Machines. The company said the mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission. The southern pole region on the Moon where Athena landed is lit by harsh sun angles and limited direct communication with the Earth. This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain.

Intuitive Machines said it believes the insights and achievements from Athena’s mission will open this region for further space exploration.

“While this mission didn’t achieve all of its objectives for NASA, the work that went into the payload development is already informing other agency and commercial efforts,” said Clayton Turner, associate administrator for space technology, NASA Headquarters.

Intuitive Machines is one of the leading service providers in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, part of the agency’s lunar exploration efforts. Under the initiative, NASA is working with multiple American companies to send NASA science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon.

Last year, Intuitive Machines made history when its first lunar lander, Odysseus, made a soft touchdown on the lunar surface. It marked the first American spacecraft to land on the lunar surface in more than 50 years.

However, Odysseus also tripped over its own feet during its final descent on the Moon, and its mission ended earlier than expected. Intuitive Machines has two more deliveries for NASA in the future, with its IM-3 mission slated for 2026, and IM-4 mission for 2027.

Bhubaneswar: People in Odisha will now be able to access over 400 government services, including birth and death certificates and driving licenses, on WhatsApp, officials said.

An agreement regarding this was signed between the Centre for Modernising Government Initiative (CMGI) and Meta India in Bhubaneswar Friday. A total of 429 government services will be available on a single WhatsApp number, officials said.

Chief Secretary Manoj Ahuja said, “The government of Odisha is committed to delivering seamless public services, ensuring that every citizen experiences convenience and efficiency at the last mile. This commitment is underscored by our investment in technology and training, aiming to eliminate bureaucratic hurdles and enhance overall accessibility.”

Development Commissioner Anu Garg said she was confident that the Unified WhatsApp Bot will empower people.

CGMI’s Executive Director Vineet Bharadwaj said ease of access to public services is still a challenge in Odisha.

“Currently, there are four modes of accessing any public service in the state — visiting the office concerned, accessing the web portal of the department concerned, accessing the specific mobile app of that particular service, or through assisted service (by visiting a Common Service Center),” he said.

“Recognising the need for a more user-friendly and accessible mode for public service delivery, we believe that WhatsApp will enable citizens to avail the desired services on a single platform through a single number,” he added.

Bharadwaj said the state government was aiming to deliver all public services notified under the Odisha Right to Public Services Act through WhatsApp by the end of this year.

Meta India’s director of business messaging Ravi Garg said, “We are thrilled to partner with the government of Odisha and bring the power and reach of WhatsApp to millions of people in the state, giving them easy access to citizen services at their fingertips.”

PTI

New Delhi: Ice could be present at more locations right beneath the Moon’s surface at the poles than previously thought, a study of data collected by the Chandrayaan-3 mission has suggested.

Large, yet highly local, changes in surface temperatures can directly affect the forming of ice, and looking into these ice particles can reveal “different stories about their origin and history”, lead author, Durga Prasad Karanam, Faculty, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad told PTI.

This can also tell us about how ice accumulated and moved through the Moon’s surface over time, which can provide insights into the natural satellite’s early geologic processes, he said. The findings are published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission, launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) from Bengaluru, achieved a soft landing near the Moon’s south pole on August 23, 2023. The landing site was named the ‘Shiv Shakti Point’ three days later on August 26.

For this study, the researchers analysed temperatures measured at and to a depth of 10 centimetres beneath the lunar surface. Measurements were taken by the ‘ChaSTE’ probe on-board the Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander.

The lander touched down at the edge of the Moon’s south pole region, about 69 degrees south latitude.

At this landing site — “a Sun-facing slope angled at six degrees” — the authors found that temperatures peaked at about 82 degrees Celsius and dropped to -170 degrees Celsius in the night.

However, barely a metre away from the landing point — a flat surface — temperatures peaked at about 60 degrees Celsius.

“That slight slope resulted in an increased solar radiation at the ChaSTE penetration point,” Karanam said.

Further, the team developed a model of how slope angle can affect surface temperature at a high lunar latitude, such as the latitude of the landing site.

The model indicated that, for slopes facing away from the Sun and towards the Moon’s nearest pole, a slope inclined at an angle greater than 14 degrees may be cool enough for ice to accumulate close to the surface.

The slope conditions suggested by the model were found to be similar to those of landing points, proposed for NASA’s manned mission to the Moon’s south pole — the ‘Artemis’.

The authors, therefore, suggested that potentially, there could be multiple places on the Moon where ice can form and be accessed more easily than previously thought.

In response to PTI’s question on the chances of ice turning into water on the Moon, Karanam said, “Water in liquid form cannot exist on the lunar surface because of (an) ultra-high vacuum. Therefore, ice cannot transform into liquid, but would rather sublimate to vapour form.”

“As of the present understanding, Moon might not have had habitable conditions in the past,” Karanam said.

However, ice is a potential resource for future on-site exploration and habitability of the Moon, and that more measurements, such as those from ChaSTE, are needed to gain a comprehensive picture, he added.

“Techniques and strategies need to be developed for extraction and usage of ice for long term sustainability on the Moon,” the lead author said.

The authors wrote, “ChaSTE findings not only indicate fine scale spatial variability in regolith temperatures but also suggest that high-latitude regions are potential sites for scouting water-ice, resource prospecting and habitation.”

“Such sites are not only scientifically interesting but also pose less technical challenges for exploration in comparison with regions closer to the poles of the Moon,” they wrote.

PTI

New Delhi: Teenagers who do not get the right amount of sleep may be at an increased risk for high blood pressure or hypertension — a common risk factor for cardiovascular diseases –, warned research on Friday.

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University in the US defined insomnia as reporting difficulty falling and/or staying asleep and defined objective short sleep duration as less than 7.7 hours, based on the median total time asleep in a lab-based sleep study.

The study on more than 400 teenagers in the US showed that teenagers who reported insomnia and slept less than 7.7 hours were five times more likely to have clinical hypertension than “good sleepers” (those who did not report insomnia and obtained sufficient sleep defined as 7.7 hours or more).

Teenagers who slept less than 7.7 hours but did not report insomnia had nearly three times the risk of elevated blood pressure compared to good sleepers. Those who self-reported insomnia but obtained sufficient sleep did not appear to be at higher risk for elevated blood pressure or stage 2 hypertension.

Teenagers need 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, yet the average high school student is estimated to sleep only 6.5 hours per weeknight.

The findings suggest the combination of insomnia and inadequate hours of sleep likely contributes to more severe conditions than lack of sleep alone, the researchers noted.

Julio Fernandez-Mendoza, Professor of Psychiatry at the varsity noted that while poor sleep was a risk factor for high blood pressure in adults, its associations in adolescents were unknown.

“While we need to explore this association in larger studies on teenagers, it is safe to say that sleep health matters for heart health, and we should not wait until adulthood to address it,” Fernandez-Mendoza said.

“Not all teenagers who complain of insomnia symptoms are at risk for cardiovascular issues. However, monitoring their sleep duration objectively can help us identify those who have a more severe form of insomnia and are at risk for heart problems.”

The study was presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions 2025, being held in New Orleans.

IANS

 Keonjhar: The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) said that a group of scientists associated with it discovered a species of soil-dwelling roundworm in the Keonjhar district of Odisha.

The species, Crassolabium dhritiae, is named after ZSI Director Dr Dhriti Banerjee in recognition of her outstanding contributions to zoology and taxonomic research.

The ZSI said in a statement that the discovery was made in the ‘deccan peninsula biogeographic zone’ in Keonjhar by a research team led by Dr Debabrata Sen, while Dr G P Mandal and Samprit Deb Roy were its other members.

“These microscopic organisms, though often overlooked, are vital to soil health and play a crucial role in nutrient cycling and organic matter decomposition. Their diverse feeding habits contribute significantly to maintaining a balanced and healthy soil ecosystem,” the ZSI director said.

Crassolabium dhritiae is characterised by its medium-sized, slender body, rounded lip region, long pharynx, certain specific features in its female reproductive system and a distinct tail shape.

“This discovery is a significant addition to our understanding of nematode biodiversity. Crassolabium Dhritiae brings the total number of known Crassolabium species worldwide to 39, with nine now recorded in India. This highlights the importance of continued research in these understudied ecosystems,” Sen said.

Banerjee congratulated the researchers for the discovery and emphasized the importance of soil nematodes.

The news of the finding was published in the online journal Acta Zoologica Bulgarica.

PTI

As AI technology advances rapidly, a new trend is emerging. Couples are now using ChatGPT to resolve their relationship disputes. Due to the high cost of traditional therapy, many couples are turning to chatbots for advice and to settle long-standing conflicts.

For Dom Versaci and Abella Bala, ChatGPT has been a game-changer. Instead of spending large sums on human therapy, the couple has been using an AI-powered tool to work through their issues, as reported by the New York Post. Interestingly, they have relied on ChatGPT to mediate their conflicts for six months. “ChatGPT has saved our relationship,” said Abella Bala, a 36-year-old influencer talent manager from Los Angeles.

For just $20 a month for the premium package, ChatGPT provides couples with valuable communication tips. This affordable AI-powered tool has helped the Los Angeles couple resolve their differences without expensive therapy or heated arguments, fostering a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives. “ChatGPT is really helpful in weirdly reducing conflict; neither of us wants to argue back and forth with a robot,” said Abella Bala. “Therapy is expensive, and sometimes you need a neutral third party to tell you who’s going crazy,” added Dom Versaci.

Also Read: KIIT student suicide: NHRC team discusses case with Odisha Police, probe underway

Robo-therapy is gaining popularity among cost-conscious couples across the U.S. Since therapy sessions with a human practitioner can be prohibitively expensive. New Yorkers, for instance, face fees of over $400 per session; many couples are opting for chatbots as a more affordable alternative.

However, it is important to note that ChatGPT’s capabilities are still in their early stages, and the advice offered is often generic and limited in scope. According to Ashley Williams, a licensed mental health advisor in New York, AI technology is not yet ready to replace the expertise of trained mental health professionals.