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The science, space, and technology stories worth knowing — minus the shouting.

Indian Babies Are Born Thin and Fat at the Same Time

Indians get type 2 diabetes younger, thinner and in greater numbers than almost anyone else. The trail runs back to the womb, though not nearly as far back as the internet version claims.

India Sold a $10,000 AIDS Drug for $350. A 1970 Law Made It Legal.

In 2001 the standard HIV drug combination cost $10,000 to $15,000 a year. An Indian company offered it for $350. That was not charity or luck. It was the result of a law passed in 1970 that said India would not patent medicines.

India Runs the World's Busiest Payment System. No Company Owns It.

A vegetable seller takes nine rupees by QR code. It clears in two seconds and costs her nothing. Around 22 billion of those happen every month in India, on a system nobody is allowed to own.

India Built a Railway Bridge Taller Than the Eiffel Tower. It's Not Even the Boldest Thing It Finished This Decade.

A train now crosses a Himalayan gorge 359 metres up, higher than any railway bridge on Earth. And it's just one of a half-dozen record-breaking spans and tunnels India quietly finished this decade.

India Builds the Fighter Jet. It Still Has to Import the Engine.

Two decades ago India bought almost all its weapons abroad. Now it exports missiles to the Philippines and builds its own aircraft carrier. So why is a finished Indian fighter jet sitting on the runway waiting for an engine from Ohio?

India Reached Mars for Less Than a Hollywood Movie

India got to Mars on its first attempt for about $74 million, less than the Hollywood film Gravity cost to make. The story of how ISRO does world-class space science on a shoestring.

We Can Now Hear Black Holes Collide, and We've Caught Hundreds

When two black holes collide, they shake spacetime itself. A decade ago we felt that shudder for the first time. Now catching them has become almost routine.

India Let Private Companies Into Space. Look What They Built.

For fifty years, 'space' in India meant ISRO and nothing else. Then the government opened the door to private companies, and startups started 3D-printing rocket engines and flying hyperspectral satellites.

Humans Just Flew to the Moon for the First Time in Over 50 Years

In April 2026, four astronauts left Earth orbit, looped around the far side of the Moon, and came home. It was the first crewed trip beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.