Mains Ready By December. Smash Mains & Smash PYQ Admissions Open
Talk to Mentor

Civilsdaily

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

  • Can dark matter be composed, even partly, of black holes?

    A recent hypothesis says that dark matter comprises a large number of compact objects such as primordial black holes.

    What are Dark Matters ?

    • Astronomical observations suggest that a significant part of the universe is made up of dark matter which interacts with the rest of the universe only through the gravitational pull.
    • Many large lab experiments have tried to detect elementary particles that could be candidates for dark matter.
    • However, such dark matter particles have not been detected until now.
    • Several astronomical observations suggest that all galaxies are embedded in a “halo” of dark matter.
    • The “visible” galaxy is like a disc embedded in a dark matter halo that is much larger in size.

    What is the recent proposition?

    • When the universe was very young, hot and dense – soon after the Big Bang, it must have had quantum fluctuations of its density.
    • This, in turn, would have caused some regions to become extremely dense, and therefore, to collapse under their own gravity to form the primordial black holes.
    • While we have no conclusive evidence of spotting these objects, some of the binary black hole mergers detected by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors might be primordial black holes.
    • The question is open there is good reason to believe that primordial black holes did form in the young universe.

    Observing dark matter: Gravitational Lensing

    • The paper explores what happens when such objects get in the way of gravitational waves traveling towards the Earth from the distance.
    • It invokes a phenomenon called gravitational lensing that is used regularly in astronomy.
    • When light travels through space and passes near a massive or compact body – a star, a galaxy or a black hole, for example, the intense gravity of that body may attract the light towards it.
    • This causes bending it from its rectilinear (straight line) path.
    • This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing and was first observed by Arthur Eddington in 1919.

    How intense are they?

    • Massive objects like galaxies can bend light significantly, producing multiple images, this is called strong lensing.
    • Lighter objects like stars or black holes bend light less, and this is called micro-lensing.
    • A similar lensing can happen to gravitational waves travelling towards the Earth, and this would leave signatures in the detected gravitational waves.
    • This can be used to detect the presence, or the existence, of primordial black holes.

    Assessing dark matter

    • Until now, individual black holes have not marked out these signatures on gravitational waves detected by the LIGO-VIRGO detectors.
    • However, if all of the dark matter is made of primordial black holes, they should have produced detectable signatures on the gravitational wave signals.
    • The researchers use the non-observation of the lensing signatures to assess what fraction of the dark matter could be made of black holes.

    Way ahead

    • This provides a new way of constraining the nature of dark matter.
    • The study concludes that black holes in the mass range from a hundred to a million solar masses can contribute only up to 50-80% of the dark matter in the universe.
    • This is an upper limit and the actual fraction can be much smaller.
    • These upper limits will get better and better with more and more observations.

     

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • Lucy Mission to probe Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids

    NASA is set to send its first spacecraft to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids to glean new insights into the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago.

    Lucy Mission

    • Lucy will fly by eight Jupiter asteroids—seven Trojans and one main-belt asteroid — over the next 12 years.
    • It is NASA’s first single spacecraft mission in history to explore so many different asteroids.
    • Lucy will run on solar power out to 850 million km away from the Sun.
    • This makes it the farthest-flung solar-powered spacecraft ever, according to NASA.

    What is Jupiter Trojan Asteroids?

    • Simply known as Trojans, they are a large group of asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun.
    • Thousands of such asteroids exist in a gravitationally stable space.
    • The swarms lead and follow the planet Jupiter along its orbit around the Sun.

    What exactly are Trojans?

    • Lucy’s Trojan destinations are trapped near Jupiter’s Lagrange (L) points, which are gravitationally stable locations — it is where the gravity from the Sun and from Jupiter cancel each other out.
    • This means their orbits are stable and the Trojans are trapped in the space between.
    • This also means that asteroids are as far away from Jupiter as they are from the Sun.
    • Jupiter’s leading and trailing Lagrangian points (L4 and L5) have been stable over the age of the solar system.
    • This means that their orbits have accumulated many, many asteroids.
    • It makes sense to call a Trojan a co-orbital object, which moves around one of the two stable Lagrangian points.

    When and how were they discovered?

    • It took many a scientist to understand Trojans, and subsequently, name them so.
    • A German astrophotographer in 1906 made an important discovery: An asteroid with a particularly unusual orbit. As Jupiter moved, this asteroid remained ahead of Jupiter.
    • It was observed that the asteroid was nearly 60 degrees in front of Jupiter.

    Students with engineering background would better understand who Lagrange was. Rest need not care.

    Lagrange’s propositions

    • This specific position of a particular behavior was predicted by the Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange over 100 years earlier.
    • Lagrange had argued that if a small celestial body is placed at one of two stable points in a planet’s orbit around the Sun (the L4 and L5), the asteroid would remain stationary from the planet’s perspective.
    • This is due to the combined gravitational forces of the planet and the Sun.
    • Thus, Lagrange’s prediction acquired credibility. More such asteroids were discovered over subsequent months in Jupiter’s Lagrange point L5.

    Behind the name: Lucy

    • It is the fossil of a hominin that lived 3.2 million years ago.
    • She is known to be one of the most famous pre-human fossils in history.
    • Nearly 40 percent of the fossilized skeleton of this hominin was discovered in 1974 by a team of paleoanthropologists led by Donald Johanson.
    • The name was inspired from the famous Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” which Johanson’s team listened to at camp the night of their discovery.

    Back2Basics: Lagrange Points

    • Lagrange points are positions in space where objects sent there tend to stay put.
    • They are named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange.
    • At Lagrange points, the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them.
    • These points in space can be used by spacecraft to reduce the fuel consumption needed to remain in position.
    • There are five special points where a small mass can orbit in a constant pattern with two larger masses.

     

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • India’s geospatial sector

    Context

    Last year new guidelines took effect to completely de-regulate the geospatial sector for Indians.

    Potential of India’s geospatial sector

    • India has a robust ecosystem in geospatial, with the Survey of India (SoI), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), remote sensing application centres (RSAC)s, and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in particular, and all ministries and departments, in general, using geospatial technology.
    • However, the full benefits have yet to percolate to the public; neither is there much contribution to the nation’s GDP.
    • The Prime Minister’s speech during Independence Day and mention of geospatial in the Union Budget have created the necessary buzz.
    • The last year has also witnessed some activity on the ground.
    • The most noticeable was the over subscription of the initial public offering of MapmyIndia.
    • The other noticeable activity was the launching of a city mapping programme by Genesys International in India.
    • Such an aggressive stance by investors for geospatial was not seen in the earlier regime; it is certain that the new guidelines have played a role.

    Challenges

    • Lack of demand: There is no demand for geospatial services and products on a scale linked to India’s potential and size.
    • This is mainly due to the lack of awareness among potential users in government and private.
    • Lack of skilled manpower: The other hurdle has been the lack of skilled manpower across the entire pyramid.
    • Unavailability of foundation data: The unavailability of foundation data, especially at high-resolution, is also a constraint.
    • Lack of clarity on data sharing: The lack of clarity on data sharing and collaboration prevents co-creation and asset maximisation.
    • Lastly, barring a few cases, there are still no ready-to-use solutions especially built to solve the problems of India.

    Suggestions

    •  Despite one year since the new guidelines came into effect, users are still not fully aware of things.
    • Publish policy document: First and foremost is the need to publish the entire policy document and make government and private users aware of things.
    • Data sharing protocol: The data available with government departments should be unlocked, and data sharing should be encouraged and facilitated.
    • Standards: The Government needs to invest in developing standards and must mandate the adoption of standards
    • Foundation data: While different types of data will be produced on a project-to-project basis, there is a need to generate foundation data across India.
    • This should include the Indian national digital elevation model (InDEM), data layers for cities, and data of natural resources.
    • Local technology and solutions should be promoted, and competition should be encouraged for quality output.
    • As the new guidelines prevent high-accuracy data being stored in overseas clouds, there is a need to develop a geospatial data cloud locally and facilitate a solution as service.
    • Professionals: Unlike the West, India lacks a strata of core professionals who understand geospatial end-to-end. India should start a bachelor’s programme in geospatial also in the Indian Institutes of Technology and the National Institutes of Technology.
    • Besides these, there should be a dedicated geospatial university.

    Conclusion

    The geospatial sector in the country is rightly positioned for investment. However, clarity on the issues discussed and the creation of an enabling ecosystem are essential.

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • What are Earth Observation Satellites (EOS)?

    After a disappointing 2021 which saw just one successful launch, ISRO is getting back to business with the EOS-04, an earth observation satellite.

    What are EOS?

    • An EOS or Earth remote sensing satellite is a satellite used or designed for Earth observation (EO) from orbit.
    • It includes spy satellites and similar ones intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitoring, meteorology, cartography, and others.
    • The most common type is Earth-imaging satellites that take satellite images, analogous to aerial photographs.
    • Some EOS may perform remote sensing without forming pictures, such as in GNSS radio occultation.

    What is EOS-04 all about?

    • The EOS-04 is fourth in a series of earth observation satellites that are being launched under a new generic name.
    • It is designed to provide high-quality images for applications such as agriculture, forestry, and plantations, flood mapping, soil moisture, and hydrology.
    • It will complement the data from Resourcesat, Cartosat and RISAT-2B series of satellites that are already in orbit.

    Why such different nomenclature?

    • Two years ago, ISRO had moved to a new naming system for its earth observation satellites which till then had been named thematically, according to the purpose they were meant for.
    • The Cartosat series of satellites were meant to provide data for land topography and mapping, while the Oceansat satellites were meant for observations overseas.
    • Some INSAT-series, Resourcesat series, GISAT, Scatsat, and a few other earth observation satellites were named differently for the specific jobs they were assigned to do, or the different instruments that they.
    • All these would now become part of the new EOS series of satellites.

    What other satellites are being launched?

    • Besides EOS-04, two other small satellites —INSPIREsat-1 and INS-2TD — will ride on the heaviest version of the PSLV rocket in the early hours from the Sriharikota launch range.
    • The other co-passenger, INS-2TD, is a technology demonstrator for the first India-Bhutan joint satellite that is scheduled to be launched next month.
    • The two countries had signed a space agreement last year, and its first outcome would be the launch of Bhutan-Sat, or INS-2B, on a PSLV rocket.

    How many satellites does India have in space?

    • India currently has 53 operational satellites, of which 21 are earth observation ones and another 21 are communication-based.
    • EOS-4 launch would be the 54th flight of the PSLV rocket, and the 23rd of its most powerful XL-version that has six strap-on boosters.

     

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • What is a Solar Storm?

    Spacex’s newest fleet of satellites is tumbling out of orbit after being struck by a solar storm.

    Solar Storm

    • A solar storm or a Coronal Mass Ejection as astronomers call it is an ejection of highly magnetized particles from the sun.
    • These particles can travel several million km per hour and can take about 13 hours to five days to reach Earth.
    • Earth’s atmosphere protects us, humans, from these particles.
    • But the particles can interact with our Earth’s magnetic field, induce strong electric currents on the surface and affect man-made structures.

    How did they impact SpaceX satellites?

    • The issue came up due to increased drag created by the solar storm in the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere.
    • These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase.
    • In fact onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches.

    History of solar storms

    • The first recorded solar storm occurred in 1859 and it reached Earth in about 17 hours.
    • It affected the telegraph network and many operators experienced electric shocks.
    • A solar storm that occurred in 1921 impacted New York telegraph and railroad systems and another small-scale storm collapsed the power grid in Quebec, Canada in 1989.
    • A 2013 report noted that if a solar storm similar to the 1859 one hit the US today, about 20-40 million people could be without power for 1-2 years, and the total economic cost will be $0.6-2.6 trillion.

    Why are they a cause of concern?

    • The Sun goes through an 11-year cycle – cycles of high and low activity.
    • It also has a longer 100-year cycle.
    • During the last three decades, when the internet infrastructure was booming, it was a low period.
    • And very soon, either in this cycle or the next cycle, we are going towards the peaks of the 100-year cycle.
    • So it is highly likely that we might see one powerful solar storm during our lifetime.

     

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)

    Scientists in the United Kingdom have achieved a new milestone in producing nuclear fusion energy or imitating the way energy is produced in the Sun. The record and scientific data from these crucial experiments are a major boost for ITER.

    ITER Project

    • ITER is international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment.
    • The goal of ITER is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful use.

    Project details

    • The project is funded and run by seven member entities—the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
    • The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing about 45 per cent of the cost, with the other six parties contributing approximately 9 per cent each.
    • Construction of the ITER Tokamak (doughnut-shaped apparatus) complex started in 2013 and the building costs were over US$14 billion by June 2015.

    How does it work?

    • Hydrogen plasma will be heated to 150 million degrees Celsius, ten times hotter than the core of the Sun, to enable the fusion reaction.
    • The process happens in a doughnut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak, which is surrounded by giant magnets that confine and circulate the superheated, ionized plasma, away from the metal walls.
    • The superconducting magnets must be cooled to -269°C (-398°F), as cold as interstellar space.
    • Scientists have long sought to mimic the process of nuclear fusion that occurs inside the sun, arguing that it could provide an almost limitless source of cheap, safe and clean electricity.
    • Unlike in existing fission reactors, which split plutonium or uranium atoms, there’s no risk of an uncontrolled chain reaction with fusion and it doesn’t produce long-lived radioactive waste.

    Back2Basics: Nuclear Fusion

    Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy - BBC News

    • Nuclear fusion is the process of making a single heavy nucleus (part of an atom) from two lighter nuclei. This process is called a nuclear reaction.
    • The nucleus made by fusion is heavier than either of the starting nuclei. It releases a large amount of energy.
    • Fusion is what powers the sun. Atoms of Tritium and Deuterium (isotopes of hydrogen, Hydrogen-3 and Hydrogen-2, respectively) unite under extreme pressure and temperature to produce a neutron and a helium isotope.
    • Along with this, an enormous amount of energy is released, which is several times the amount produced by fission.
    • Scientists continue to work on controlling nuclear fusion in an effort to make a fusion reactor to produce electricity.

    How it is different from nuclear fission?

    • Simply put, fission is the division of one atom into two (by neutron bombardment), and fusion is the combination of two lighter atoms into a larger one (at a very high temperature).
    • Nuclear fission takes place when a large, somewhat unstable isotope (atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons) is bombarded by high-speed particles, usually neutrons.

     

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • India’s first indigenous Bio-Sample Collection Kit: mWRAPR

    The Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) led start-up has launched mWRAPR, a biological transport and storage medium for genomic sequencing labs, biobanks, and research labs handling biological samples for molecular analysis.

    mWRAPR

    • It is India’s first indigenous bio-sample kit, a biological transport and storage medium.
    • It would help in preserving genetic content in all types of biological samples, including microbiomes, saliva, cells, tissues, blood, body fluids, and fecal tubes.
    • It is the only Molecular Transport Medium to be manufactured in India that competes with sample stabilisation and transporting media of notable foreign brands.

    Significance

    • The disruptions in global supply chain limits accessibility to materials for molecular diagnostics.
    • India required to move to molecular tests (PCR/ RT-PCR test), but sample collection kits currently used were very cheap and not of molecular grade.
    • RNA WRAPR is the kind of molecular grade sample collection medium that India needs right now.

     

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • What are Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)?

    This newscard is an excerpt from the original article published in TH.

    What are ANN?

    • The concept behind an ANN is to define inputs and outputs, feed pieces of inputs to computer programs that function like neurons and make inferences or calculations.
    • It then forwards those results to another layer of computer programs and so on, until a result is obtained.
    • As part of this neural network, a difference between intended output and input is computed at each layer and this difference is used to tune the parameters to each program.
    • This method is called back-propagation and is an essential component to the Neural Network.

    Setting up of ANNs

    • Instead of CPUs, Graphic Processing Units (GPU) which are good at performing massive parallel tasks can be used for setting up ANNs.
    • A few free ANN frameworks are TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch and Theano.
    • These can be used for both normal Machine Learning tasks like classification or clustering and for Deep Learning/ANN tasks.

    Why called Neural Network?

    • Neuron is the building block of the brain and it inspired computer scientists from the 1950s to make a computer perform tasks like a brain does.
    • It is not a simple problem and the clue to its complexity is in the brain structure.

    Why ANN?

    Ans. Making an artificial brain

    • We need billions of artificial neurons if we were to build an artificial brain.
    • With the increase in computing power, mimicking billions of neurons is now possible.

    Popularity of ANNs

    • Data Science, used interchangeably with Machine Learning, is the computer technology that uses data to detect patterns.
    • Hand-written digit recognition is a good example of machine learning.
    • However, in order for the computer to do this task, large amounts of sample data need to be manually labelled as examples of images of digits.
    • The ANN mentioned above with its backpropagation does exactly this.
    • This is why ANNs have become hugely popular in the past decade. This approach of using neural networks of many layers to automatically detect patterns and parameters is called Deep Learning.

     

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • Chandrayaan-3 set for launch in August

    ISRO plans to execute the Chandrayaan-3 mission in August this year.

    What is Chandrayaan-3 Mission?

    • The Chandrayaan-3 mission is a follow-up of Chandrayaan-2 of July 2019, which aimed to land a rover on the lunar South Pole.

    Chandrayaan-2: A quick recap

    • Chandrayaan-2 consisted of an Orbiter, Lander and Rover, all equipped with scientific instruments to study the moon.
    • The Orbiter would watch the moon from a 100-km orbit, while the Lander and Rover modules were to be separated to make a soft landing on the moon’s surface.
    • ISRO had named the Lander module as Vikram, after Vikram Sarabhai, the pioneer of India’s space programme, and the Rover module as Pragyaan, meaning wisdom.

    Utility of the Orbiter

    • The Orbiter part of the mission has been functioning normally. It is carrying eight instruments.
    • Each of these instruments has produced a handsome amount of data that sheds new light on the moon and offers insights that could be used in further exploration.

    Inception of Chandrayaan 3

    • The subsequent failure of the Vikram lander led to the pursuit of another mission to demonstrate the landing capabilities needed for the Lunar Polar Exploration Mission proposed in partnership with Japan for 2024.

    Its design

    • The lander for Chandrayaan-3 will have only four throttle-able engines.
    • Unlike Vikram on Chandrayaan-2 which had five 800N engines with a fifth one being centrally mounted with a fixed thrust.
    • Additionally, the Chandrayaan-3 lander will be equipped with a Laser Doppler Velocimeter (LDV).

    Back2Basics: Chandrayaan-1 Mission

    • The Chandrayaan-1 mission was launched in October 2008 was ISRO’s first exploratory mission to the moon, in fact to any heavenly body in space.
    • The mission was designed to just orbit around the moon and make observations with the help of the instruments onboard.
    • The closest that Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft came to the moon was in an orbit 100 km from its surface.

     

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • Artificial intelligence technologies have a climate cost

    Context

    While there is an allure to national dreams of economic prosperity and global competitiveness, underwritten by AI, there is an environmental cost.

    Issues with AI

    • Unfair race for dominance in AI:  A few developed economies possess certain material advantages right from the start, they also set the rules.
    • They have an advantage in research and development, and possess a skilled workforce as well as wealth to invest in AI.
    • Inequality in terms of governance: We can also look at the state of inequity in AI in terms of governance: How “tech fluent” are policymakers in developing and underdeveloped countries?
    • What barriers do they face in crafting regulations and industrial policy?
    • At the same time, there is an emerging challenge at the nexus of AI and climate change that could deepen this inequity.

    Climate impact of AI

    • The climate impact of AI comes in a few forms: The energy use of training and operating large AI models is one.
    •  In 2020, digital technologies accounted for between 1.8 per cent and 6.3 per cent of global emissions.
    •  In November 2021, UNESCO adopted the  In November 2021, UNESCO adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, calling on actors to “reduce the environmental impact of AI systems, including but not limited to its carbon footprint.” , calling on actors to “reduce the environmental impact of AI systems, including but not limited to its carbon footprint.”

    Inequitable access to resources

    • Both global AI governance and climate change policy (historically) are contentious, being rooted in inequitable access to resources.
    • Developing and underdeveloped countries face a challenge on two fronts:
    • 1] AI’s social and economic benefits are accruing to a few countries.
    • 2] Most of the current efforts and narratives on the relationship between AI and climate impact are being driven by the developed West.

    Way forward

    • Assess technology-led priorities: Governments of developing countries, India included, should also assess their technology-led growth priorities in the context of AI’s climate costs.
    •  It is argued that as developing nations are not plagued by legacy infrastructure it would be easier for them to “build up better”.

    Consider the question “How Artificial Intelligence technologies could transform the world as we know it? What are the concerns with it?

    Conclusion

    It may be worth thinking through what “solutions” would truly work for the unique social and economic contexts of the communities in our global village.

    UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)