The US, UK and Australia’s Nuclear Submarine Deal

THE recent Australia, US and UK 368 billion dollar deal on buying nuclear submarines has been termed by Paul Keating, a former Australian PM, as the worst deal in all history. It commits Australia to buy conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines which will be delivered earliest in the 2040s. These will be based on new nuclear reactor designs yet to be developed by UK.

The West No Longer World Leaders In 84% of Critical Technologies

I MET Prof Thomas Kailath seven years back in Delhi, where he talked about how India was on par if not leading, with countries like China in science and technology in the 90s but falling rapidly behind China today with its much bigger investments. Kailath, originally from Kerala but settled in the US, is one of the foremost names in the world in communications, control and signal processing.

Ukraine War’s Continuing Threat: Last Nuclear Agreement now Suspended

THE Ukraine War has now completed one year. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of the war is that the New START, the last remaining arms control agreement on nuclear weapons and missiles, has also gone into limbo. On February 21, President Putin announced that Russia has “suspended” its participation in New START, though it will still observe the limits set on the nuclear missiles and warheads till the agreement expires in 2026.

India-US Deal for Predator Drones

EARLY this month, it was announced that India was on the verge of signing a deal with the US for acquisition of 30 high-end armed predator drones, 10 each for the army, air force and navy, at a total cost of around $3 billion (Rs 24,000 crore).

Why Do We Have a Balloon Hysteria in the US?

THE newsfeeds from the US seem to be completely insane. First, an F22 Raptor, the most expensive US military aircraft, is used to shoot down a Chinese balloon over the Atlantic ocean. Three more "unidentified flying objects" – definitely not balloons are shot down in three days, two over the US and one over Canada.

ChatGPT: The Promise, Hype & Concerns

CHATGPT – the AI-powered chatbot – has taken the tech world by storm. Launched as a prototype and made available for public testing two months ago, on November 30, 2022, it has generated quite a buzz. It gathered one million subscribers in less than a week. People worldwide have been amazed and amused at its almost human responses on a wide range of topics.It has produced poetry, Shakespeare-like prose, software code and medical prescriptions. Teachers and educators have expressed alarm over the use of ChatGPT by students to complete assignments.

Exploring Jupiter’s Icy Moons

PEOPLE here on our humble planet, termed “the pale blue dot” due to the way the Earth looks when seen from space, usually get excited at human space flights time when they involve landings on the Moon or, potentially in preparation for a Mars landing sometime in the near future. Even moon landings, however, soon ceased to electrify live audiences in the US and elsewhere when, just a couple of lunar landings after Neil Armstrong’s historic maiden landing on the Apollo 11 mission, they began to be viewed as rather routine, with even TV networks not relaying live telecasts!

Joshimath Sinking a Disaster Foretold

JOSHIMATH'S sinking recently was a disaster waiting to happen. Although cracks started appearing in buildings in late 2021, they have widened alarmingly, and new cracks appeared in more than 800 houses and roads a year later. According to images released by the National Remote Sensing Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation, Joshimath has witnessed a rapid subsidence of nearly 5.4 cm in 12 days—between December 27, 2022, and January 7, 2023. The ISRO report also stated that a subsidence of nearly 9 cm was recorded in April-November 2022.

Green Energy Plan for Indian Capital but not for its People

THE recent announcement of the Union Government of an Rs. 20,000 crore (Rs. 19,794 crore) National Green Hydrogen Mission has created two kinds of questions. The most common reaction is what is green hydrogen? And do we have a plan for a green hydrogen path for which Rs. 20,000 crore is being earmarked?Let us get one fact straight: all shades of hydrogen—green, blue or grey—are only on how hydrogen is produced, not the colour of the gas. Regardless of how hydrogen is generated, it remains the same colourless, odourless gas.

Of Covid Variants and Scariants

THE news of the opening up of China from the Covid-19 protocols and its current epidemic has overtaken the threat of two emerging SARS-CoV-2 lineages – XBB and BQ.1. China is seeing the spread of BF.7, which is much closer to the original Omicron strain. Our existing immunity, from either vaccines or infections, should therefore continue to protect us from infections partially and much better against serious infections.The threat of the Chinese variant, as the news media calls it, is much lower than that from the US and Europe.

Search form

Peoples Democracy

SCIENCE & DEVELOPMENT