Week in tech: the cost of internet shutdowns in India
A recent report said that internet shutdowns cost $1.9 billion to the Indian economy in the first half of 2023
A weekly recap of what made news in the world of science and technology.
Internet shutdowns cost $1.9 billion to India in Jan-Jun 2023
A report released on 29 June said that Internet shutdowns by law enforcement agencies like the one in states of Manipur and Punjab cost $1.9 billion to the Indian economy in the first half of 2023. According to the report by the Internet Society, a global non-profit, the shutdowns also resulted in losses of nearly $118 million in foreign investment and triggered over 21,000 job losses. A Press Trust of India report noted that the Internet Society arrived at the financial impact of the shutdown going beyond the loss of output and included factors like change in the unemployment rate, Foreign Direct Investment lost, risks of future shutdowns, population in the working age, and so on.
Lithium battery inventor John Goodenough dies at 100
On Monday, 26 June, the University of Texas announced that American materials scientist John Goodenough, who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the lithium-ion battery, had died. He was 100. Goodenough died on 25 June, said the university, where he worked as an engineering professor, an AFP report said. Goodenough became the oldest person to win a Nobel Prize when at the age of 97 he shared the 2019 chemistry award with Britain's Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino of Japan for the invention of the lithium-ion battery, the report adds. As the Nobel Prize website noted, the rechargeable battery laid the foundation of wireless electronics such as mobile phones and laptops. It also makes a fossil fuel-free world possible, as it is used for everything from powering electric cars to storing energy from renewable sources.
This space mission will explore dark matter
On 1 July, Europe’s Euclid mission successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Euclid is the first-ever mission that will study dark energy and dark matter. According to the European Space Agency, the space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. Euclid will also explore how the universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter. You can read more about the mission in this detailed explainer.
(Compiled with inputs from agencies)
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First Published:2 Jul 2023, 01:30 PM IST
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