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GS Paper: GS3-17.Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nano-technology, Bio-technology and issues relating to Intellectual Property Rights.

  • Matosinhos Manifesto for accelerated use of space in Europe

    The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved a Matosinhos Manifesto to accelerate the use of space in Europe.

    Matosinhos Manifesto

    • At the Intermediate Ministerial Meeting that was held in Matosinhos, Portugal.
    • The Council of Ministers unanimously adopted this resolution that lays down a vision for the continent in terms of maintaining and expanding its activities in space.
    • The large-scale nature and fast pace of the climate crisis and other challenges means that no European nation will be able to effectively address them alone.

    The manifesto defines three “accelerators” to further advance Europe’s space ambitions:

    1. The first of these accelerators is for the ESA to start working towards the “Space for a Green Future”
    2. The second accelerator is called “Rapid and Resilient Crisis Response” to support governments to act decisively on crises facing Europe, from flooding and storms to wildfires
    3. The third accelerator mentioned in the resolution is “Protection of Space Assets”, whose objective is to safeguard ESA astronauts and assets from interference by space debris and space weather

    A brief history of the ESA

    • The ESA is an intergovernmental organization that was formed in 1975 with the aim of developing Europe’s space capabilities.
    • The organization has 22 member states — Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
    • Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania are Associate Members.

     

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  • Was it really a black hole that the EHT imaged in 2019?

    A new research says that M87* which was imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is not necessarily a black hole but could even be a naked singularity with a gravitomagnetic monopole.

    About M-87*

    • In 2019, astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured the first ever image of a supermassive black hole (M87*) which was located at the centre of a galaxy Messier 87.
    • This black hole was calculated to be 6.5 billion times the Sun’s mass and is 55 million light years away from the Earth.
    • The discovery set the world of astronomy on fire and also found a mention in the “popular information” section of the announcement of the Nobel Prize in physics for 2020.
    • Andrea Ghez and Rheinhard Genzel were awarded half the share of the prize for their study of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*.

    A black hole has two parts:

    1. Singularity at its core– a point that is infinitely dense, as all the remnant mass of the star is compressed into this point.
    2. Event horizon – an imaginary surface surrounding the singularity, and the gravity of the object is such that once anything enters this surface, it is trapped forever.
    • Not even light can escape the pull of the singularity once it crosses the event horizon.
    • That is why, we cannot see the singularity at the heart of a black hole but only see points outside the event horizon.
    • Hence, all the physics happening within the black hole’s event horizon is indeed blocked from the view of the observer.

    What is the recent explanation of M87*?

    Ans. Naked Singularity

    • When stars much more massive than the Sun reach the end of their lives, they collapse under their own gravity, and the product of this collapse is a black hole.
    • In many scenarios of stellar collapse, the event horizon does not form, and the singularity is exposed to the outside, without any event horizon shielding it.
    • This is called naked singularity.

    Monopoles and gravity

    • In the nineteenth century, James Clerk Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism as one combined phenomenon, showing that light is an electromagnetic wave.
    • But there is an asymmetry between electricity and magnetism.
    • While positive and negative electric charges can be found to exist independently, the poles of a magnet are always found in pairs, north and south bound together.
    • There is an analogy between gravitational force and electromagnetism to say that mass is like electric charge and can exist independently, thus it can be called a “gravito-electric charge”.

    But then, what is the gravito-magnetic charge?

    • In 1963, Newman, Tamburino and Unti (NUT) proposed a theoretical concept called a “gravito-magnetic charge” also called a gravitomagnetic monopole.
    • The new research has shown that M87* could be a black hole (with or without gravitomagnetic monopole) or a naked singularity (with or without gravitomagnetic monopole).

    Try this PYQ:

    Q. “Event Horizon” is related to:

    (a) Telescope

    (b) Black hole

    (c) Solar glares

    (d) None of the above

     

    [wpdiscuz-feedback id=”gr9bztx2ug” question=”Please leave a feedback on this” opened=”1″]Post your answers here.[/wpdiscuz-feedback]

    Back2Basics: Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)

    • The EHT project is an international partnership formed in 2012.
    • It is a network of 10 radio telescopes on four continents that collectively operate like a single instrument nearly the size of the Earth.
    • Its main objective is to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole.

     

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  • NASA’s DART mission to hit and deflect an Asteroid

    NASA will launch the agency’s first planetary defense test mission named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

    What is DART Mission?

    • The main aim of the mission is to test the newly developed technology that would allow a spacecraft to crash into an asteroid and change its course.
    • It is a suicide mission and the spacecraft will be completely destroyed.
    • The target of the spacecraft is a small moonlet called Dimorphos (Greek for “two forms”).
    • It is about 160-metre in diameter and the spacecraft is expected to collide when it is 11 million kilometres away from Earth.
    • Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos (Greek for “twin”) which has a diameter of 780 metres.

    Is there any threat from this asteroid?

    • The asteroid and the moonlet do not pose any threat to Earth and the mission is to test the new technology to be prepared in case an asteroid head towards Earth in the future.
    • The spacecraft will navigate to the moonlet and intentionally collide with it at a speed of about 6.6 kilometres per second or 24,000 kilometres per hour.

    Why Dimorphos?

    • Didymos is a perfect system for the test mission because it is an eclipsing binary which means it has a moonlet that regularly orbits the asteroid.
    • It is observable when it passes in front of the main asteroid.
    • Earth-based telescopes can study this variation in brightness to understand how long it takes Dimorphos to orbit Didymos.

    How big is the spacecraft?

    • NASA states that DART is a low-cost spacecraft, weighing around 610 kg at launch and 550 kg during impact.
    • The main structure is a box (1.2 × 1.3 × 1.3 metres). It has two solar arrays and uses hydrazine propellant for manoeuvring the spacecraft.

     

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  • What is Leonid’s Meteor Shower?

    The annual Leonid’s Meteor Shower has begun.

    Try this question from CSP 2014:

    Q.What is a coma, in the content of astronomy?

    (a) Bright half of material on the comet

    (b) Long tail of dust

    (c) Two asteroids orbiting each other

    (d) Two planets orbiting each other

     

    [wpdiscuz-feedback id=”8v5gmesm0l” question=”Please leave a feedback on this” opened=”1″]Post your answers here.[/wpdiscuz-feedback]

    What is Leonid Meteor Shower?

    • Meteor showers are named after the constellation they appear to be coming from.
    • The Leonids originate from the constellation Leo the Lion– the groups of stars that form a lion’s mane.
    • They emerge from the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which requires 33 years to revolve once around the Sun.
    • These meteors are bright and among the fastest moving– travelling at speeds of 71 km per second.
    • During this year’s showers, peaks of around 10 to 15 meteors are expected to be seen every hour.
    • The Leonid showers include fireballs– bright and large meteors than can last longer than average meteors, and “earthgazers”– meteors which appear close to the horizon with colourful and long tails.

    What is a meteor shower?

    • On its journey around the Sun, the Earth passes through large swathes of cosmic debris.
    • The debris is essentially the remnants of comets — great frigid chunks of matter that leave behind dirty trails of rocks and ice that linger long after the comets themselves have passed.
    • As the Earth wades through this cloud of comet waste, the bits of debris create what appears from the ground to be a fireworks display in the sky — known as a meteor shower.
    • Several meteor showers can be seen around the year. According to NASA, over 30 meteor showers occur annually and are observable from the Earth.

    Back2Basics:

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  • Iran has enriched over 210 kg of Uranium to 20%

    Iran’s atomic agency has said that its stockpile of 20% enriched uranium has reached over 210 kilograms, the latest defiant move ahead of upcoming nuclear talks with the West.

    What is Uranium Enrichment?

    • It is a process that is necessary to create an effective nuclear fuel out of mined uranium.
    • It involves increasing the percentage of uranium-235 which undergoes fission with thermal neutrons.
    • Nuclear fuel is mined from naturally occurring uranium ore deposits and then isolated through chemical reactions and separation processes.
    • These chemical processes used to separate the uranium from the ore are not to be confused with the physical and chemical processes used to enrich the uranium.

    Why is enrichment carried out?

    • Uranium found in nature consists largely of two isotopes, U-235 and U-238.
    • Natural uranium contains 0.7% of the U-235 isotope.
    • The remaining 99.3% is mostly the U-238 isotope which does not contribute directly to the fission process (though it does so indirectly by the formation of fissile isotopes of plutonium).
    • The production of energy in nuclear reactors is from the ‘fission’ or splitting of the U-235 atoms since it is the main fissile isotope of uranium.
    • Naturally occurring uranium does not have a high enough concentration of Uranium-235 at only about 0.72% with the remainder being Uranium-238.

     

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  • Nationwide Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) drive launched

    Union Health Minister has launched a nationwide expansion of Pneumococcal 13-valent Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) under the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP).

    Why such drive?

    • Pneumonia was a leading cause of death among children under five, globally and in India.
    • Pneumonia caused by pneumococcus is the most common cause of severe pneumonia in children.
    • Around 16% of deaths in children occur due to pneumonia in India.
    • The nationwide roll-out of PCV will reduce child mortality by around 60%.

    Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV)

    • The PCV is a mix of several bacteria of the pneumococci family, which are known to cause pneumonia—hence ‘conjugate’ is included in the name of the vaccine.
    • PCV prevents pneumococcal disease. It can protect both children and adults from pneumococcal disease.
    • Such conjugate vaccines are made using a combination of two different components.

    Pneumonia vs Pneumococcal pneumonia

    • Pneumonia is a lung disease.
    • Pneumococcal pneumonia, a kind of pneumonia, can infect the upper respiratory tract and can spread to the blood, lungs, middle ear, or nervous system.
    • Pneumococcal disease is a name for any infection caused by bacteria called Streptococcus pneumonia or pneumococcus.
    • Most people carry pneumococcus in their nose and throat, where the bacteria do not cause any symptoms.

    Take this yorker from CSP 2020:

    Q.What is the importance of using Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines in India?

    1. These vaccines are effective against pneumonia as well as meningitis and sepsis.
    2. Dependence on antibiotics that are not effective against drug-resistant bacteria can be reduced.
    3. These vaccines have no side effects and cause no allergic reactions.

    Select the correct answer using the code given below:

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 1 and 2 only

    (c) 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

     

    [wpdiscuz-feedback id=”txjic5odbw” question=”Please leave a feedback on this” opened=”1″]Post your answers here.[/wpdiscuz-feedback]

     

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  • Mission Samudrayan: India’s First and Unique Manned Ocean

    Union Minister of Earth Sciences has launched India’s First Manned Ocean Mission Samudrayan at Chennai.

    Mission Samudrayan

    • The Samudrayan project has been undertaken by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT).
    • It will be a part of the Rs 6,000 crore Deep Ocean Mission.
    • It is designed to carry 3 persons in 2.1meter diameter Titanium Alloy Personnel Sphere with an operational endurance of 12hrs and systems to support emergency endurance up to 96hrs.
    • It could work at a depth between 1000 and 5500 meters.

    Objectives

    • Samudrayan shall facilitate carrying out deep ocean exploration of the non-living resources such as polymetallic manganese nodules, gas hydrates, hydro-thermal sulphides and cobalt crusts.
    • The mission would carry out subsea activities such as high-resolution bathymetry, biodiversity assessment, geo-scientific observation, search activities, salvage operation and engineering support.

    Focus areas of the Project

    • Ocean climate change advisory services
    • Underwater vehicles
    • Underwater robotics-related technologies
    • Deep-sea mining: Exploitation of polymetallic nodules

    Components of the mission

    Some of the critical subsystems of the manned submersibles are:

    • Development of Titanium Alloy Personnel Sphere, Human support and safety system in enclosed space, low density buoyancy modules, Ballast and Trim System
    • Pressure compensated batteries and propulsion system, control and communication systems and Launching and Recovery System.

    Progress till date

    • The preliminary design of the manned submersible MATSYA 6000 is completed.
    • Sea trials of 500 metre rated shallow water version of the manned submersible are expected to take place in the last quarter of 2022 and the MATSYA 6000.
    • The deep-water manned submersible will be ready for trials by the second quarter of 2024.

    Why need such mission?

    • This manned submersible mission provides a feel of direct physical presence for researchers and has better intervention capability.
    • With the advancing subsea technologies, the recent Fendouzhe manned submersible developed by China in 2020 has touched ~11000m water depths.
    • With Samudrayan, India joins the elite club of nations such as USA, Russia, Japan, France and China to have such underwater vehicles for carrying out subsea activities.

    Back2Basics: India and International Seabed Authority (ISA)

    • The ISA, an autonomous international organization established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, allots the ‘area’ for deep-sea mining.
    • India was the first country to receive the status of a ‘Pioneer Investor’ in 1987 and was given an area of about 1.5 lakh sqkm in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) for nodule exploration.
    • In 2002, India signed a contract with the ISA, and after a complete resource analysis of the seabed, India surrendered 50%, and the country retained an area of 75,000 sqkm.
    • Further studies have helped narrow the mining area to 18,000 sqkm, the ‘First Generation Mine-site’.

     

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  • What is White Dwarf?

    Using the Hubble Space telescope and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have identified several white dwarfs over the years.

    Where is this white dwarf?

    • A white dwarf is what stars like the Sun become after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel.
    • Near the end of its nuclear burning stage, this type of star expels most of its outer material, creating a planetary nebula.
    • Only the hot core of the star remains. This core becomes a very hot white dwarf, with a temperature exceeding 100,000 Kelvin.
    • Unless it is accreting matter from a nearby star, the white dwarf cools down over the next billion years or so.

    Limits for white dwarf

    • White Dwarf is half the size of our Sun and has a surface gravity 100,000 times that of Earth.
    • There is a limit on the amount of mass a white dwarf can have.
    • Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar discovered this limit to be 4 times the mass of the Sun. This is appropriately known as the “Chandrasekhar Limit.”

    Observing white dwarf

    • Many nearby, young white dwarfs have been detected as sources of soft, or lower-energy, X-rays.
    • Recently, soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet observations have become a powerful tool in the study the composition and structure of the thin atmosphere of these stars.

    What is TESS?

    • The researchers observed this phenomenon using Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
    • TESS is a space telescope in NASA’s Explorer program, designed to search for extrasolar planets using the transit method.
    • The primary mission objective for TESS is to survey the brightest stars near the Earth for transiting exoplanets over a two-year period.
    • The TESS project will use an array of wide-field cameras to perform an all-sky survey. It will scan nearby stars for exoplanets.

    How does white dwarf ‘switch on and off’?

    • In these types of systems, the donor star orbit around the white dwarf keeps feeding the accretion disk.
    • As the accretion disk material slowly sinks closer towards the white dwarf it generally becomes brighter.
    • It is known that in some systems the donor stars stop feeding the disk.

     

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  • What is Hybrid Immunity?

    A study has shown that a combination of natural infection with a single dose of vaccine provides greater immunity than either natural infection without vaccination or full vaccination in individuals.

    What is the new study?

    • People without prior infection but fully vaccinated with the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine showed a decline in neutralising antibodies over a period of three to seven months.
    • But the decline was much less in vaccinated people with prior infection.
    • People with hybrid immunity had a higher and more durable neutralising antibody response.
    • The hybrid immunity offers stronger protection than just infection or full vaccination alone.

    What is Hybrid Immunity?

    • It is natural immunity from an infection combined with the immunity provided by the vaccine.
    • The immunological advantage from hybrid immunity arises mostly from memory B cells.

    What are memory B cells?

    • In immunology, a memory B cell (MBC) is a type of B lymphocyte that forms part of the adaptive immune system.
    • B lymphocytes are the cells of the immune system that make antibodies to invade pathogens like viruses.
    • They form memory cells that remember the same pathogen for faster antibody production in future infections.

    How do they assist hybrid immunity?

    • While the bulk of antibodies after infection or vaccination decline after a short while, the memory B cells get triggered on subsequent infection or vaccination.
    • The memory B cells triggered by infection and those triggered by vaccination have different responses to viruses.
    • Infection and vaccination expose the spike protein to the immune system in vastly different ways.
    • After full vaccination, antibodies produced by natural infection continued to grow in potency and their breadth against variants for a year after infection.
    • Unlike after vaccination, the memory B cells formed after natural infection are more likely to make antibodies that block immune-evading variants.

     

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  • What are Non-Transgenic Gene Editing techniques?

    The Centre is yet to decide on a research proposal from scientists which would allow plants to be genetically modified without the need for conventional transgenic technology.

    What is Genome Editing?

    • Genome editing (also called gene editing) is a group of technologies that give scientists the ability to change an organism’s DNA.
    • These technologies allow genetic material to be added, removed, or altered at particular locations in the genome.
    • Several approaches to genome editing have been developed.

    Techs for Genome Editing

    The core technologies now most commonly used to facilitate genome editing are

    1. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)- associated protein 9 (Cas9)
    2. Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs)
    3. Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs)
    4. Homing endonucleases or meganucleases

    Newer technologies

    • The Institute has now moved to newer technologies such as Site-Directed Nuclease (SDN) 1 and 2.
    • They aim to bring precision and efficiency into the breeding process using gene-editing tools such as CRISPR, whose developers won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2020.

    About CRISPR

    • CRISPR-Cas9 was adapted from a naturally occurring genome editing system in bacteria.
    • The bacteria capture snippets of DNA from invading viruses and use them to create DNA segments known as CRISPR arrays.
    • The CRISPR arrays allow the bacteria to “remember” the viruses (or closely related ones).
    • If the viruses attack again, the bacteria produce RNA segments from the CRISPR arrays to target the viruses’ DNA.
    • The bacteria then use Cas9 or a similar enzyme to cut the virus DNA apart, which disables the virus.
    • This method is faster, cheaper, more accurate, and more efficient than other existing genome editing methods.

    What is Non-Transgenic Gene Editing?

    • Unlike the older GM technology which involves the introduction of foreign DNA, the new proposal involves the use of gene editing tools to directly tweak the plant’s own genes instead.
    • It does not involve inserting any foreign DNA.

    Use in India

    • Scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) are in the process of developing resilient and high-yield rice varieties using such gene editing techniques.
    • However, this proposal has been pending with the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) for almost two years.

    Why need such technique?

    • Similar to natural mutation: But in this case, this protein is right there in the plant, and is being changed a little bit, just as nature does through mutation.
    • Faster and cheaper: It is much faster and far more precise than natural mutation or conventional breeding methods which involve trial and error and multiple breeding cycles.
    • Safe for consumption: When a protein comes from an outside organism, then you need to test for safety.
    • Pathbreaking: It is potentially a new Green Revolution.

    No approval issues

    • The SDN 1 and SDN 2 categories of genome-edited plants do not contain any foreign DNA when they are taken to the open field trials.
    • The US, Canada, Australia and Japan are among the countries which have already approved the SDN 1 and 2 technologies as not akin to GM.
    • So, such varieties of rice can be exported without any problem.
    • The European Food Safety Authority has also submitted its opinion that these technologies do not need the same level of safety assessment as conventional GM.

     

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