Dheeraj Kalgutkar

Researchers gave dung beetles caps to block out light. An insect with a tiny brain and minimal computing power has become the first animal proven to use the Milky Way for orientation. Scientists from South Africa and Sweden have published findings showing the link between dung beetles and the spray of stars which comprises our galaxy. Although their eyes are too weak to distinguish individual constellations, dung beetles use the gradient of light to dark provided by the Milky Way to ensure they keep rolling their balls in a straight line and don't circle back to competitors at the dung pile. "The dung beetles don't care which direction they're going in; they just need to get away from the bun fight at the poo pile," said Professor Marcus Byrne from Wits University. The dung beetle is the first animal proven to use the Milky Way for orientation. Byrne and his team previously proved that dung beetles use the sun, the moon and polarised li...

Courtesy:TIME It hardly bears mentioning that the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most extraordinarily successful scientific instruments of all time. Since 1993, when the telescope's flawed mirror was set right by a set of custom-fit corrective lenses, the Hubble has captured one spectacular image after another, of everything from the familiar planets of the Solar System to quasars and galaxies at the very edge of the visible universe — and thanks to four repair missions by shuttle-riding astronauts, the telescope has managed to survive the harsh environment of orbital space far longer than anyone could have imagined. All good things must come to an end, though. The shuttle is flying no more, and within the next couple of years, the aging telescope will gradually wink out too. It will be a terrible loss to science, and it kind of makes you...