Latest stories from the News Desk

Science is ever evolving, just like the human race

Scientific knowledge, whether about a human species or the planets, is powerful because it is provisional and cumulative.
Orion and its dimming star Betelgeuse shine over a stargazer in this sentimental night-sky photo

According to an article published by National Geographic last December, “decades of photometric data show that Betelgeuse brightens and dims in cycles, with one notable cycle vacillating on a roughly six-year time scale and another rising and falling every 425 days or so.”
The moon will ‘eclipse’ Mars before dawn Tuesday! Here’s how to see it.

As the waning crescent moon rises in the small hours of the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 18, skywatchers will be preparing for an unusual event. That morning the moon glides in front of orange, starlike planet Mars for viewers in much of central and eastern North America, in what is known as an occultation.
Experts are scanning the stars for ‘technosignatures’ from alien civilisations

Alien hunters are scaling up their efforts in the search for an intelligent civilisation somewhere out in the void of space. Experts at the SETI Institute, an organisation dedicated to tracking extraterrestrial intelligence, are developing state-of-the-art techniques to detect signatures from space that indicate the possibility of extraterrestrial existence.
Plan for Scotland’s first medical cannabis clinic in Aberdeen

Medical cannabis was legalised in the UK in November 2018, allowing doctors to prescribe it in certain situations. Sapphire Medical Clinic plans to be the first clinic to “prescribe medical cannabis for all conditions acknowledged to benefit”.