💥Join UPSC 2027,2028 Mentorship (July Batch) + XFactor Notes & Microthemes PDF
Talk to Mentor

Civilsdaily

Login

GS Paper: GS3

  • What is the SolarWinds Hack?

    The ‘SolarWinds hack’, a cyberattack recently discovered in the US, has emerged as one of the biggest ever targeted against the US government, its agencies and several other private companies.

    Do you know about the ‘Five Eyes’ group of nations?

    Solar-Winds Hack

    • It was first discovered by US cybersecurity company FireEye, and since then more developments continue to come to light each day.
    • The US termed it as a highly sophisticated threat actor calling it a state-sponsored attack, although it did not name Russia.
    • It said the attack was carried out by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities and the attacker primarily sought information related to certain government customers.

    How dangerous is the attack?

    • This is being called a ‘Supply Chain’ attack.
    • Instead of directly attacking the federal government or a private organization’s network, the hackers target a third-party vendor, which supplies software to them.
    • Once installed, the malware gave a backdoor entry to the hackers to the systems and networks of SolarWinds’ customers.
    • More importantly, the malware was also able to thwart tools such as anti-virus that could detect it.

    The deadliest cyber-attack ever in the US

    • The US Energy department which is responsible for managing America’s nuclear weapons is the latest agency to confirm that it has been breached in the SolarWinds cyber attack.

  • Christmas-Star Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter

    After nearly 400 years, Saturn and Jupiter – the two largest planets in our solar system – will be brought closest in the night sky by an astronomical event called the “great conjunction” and popularly referred to as the “Christmas Star”.

    Try this PYQ:

    What is a coma, in the context 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

    What are the Conjunctions?

    • A conjunction is not unique to Saturn and Jupiter however, it is the name given to any event where planets or asteroids appear to be very close together in the sky when viewed from the Earth.
    • In June 2005 for instance, as a result of the “spectacular” conjunction, Mercury, Venus and Saturn appeared so close together in the sky that the patch of sky where the three planets were could be covered by a thumb.
    • Astronomers use the word “great” for the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn because of the planets’ sizes.

    The “Great Conjunction”

    • It happens once in about 20 years because of the time each of the planets takes to orbit around the Sun.
    • Jupiter takes roughly 12 years to complete one lap around the Sun and Saturn takes 30 years.
    • This is because Saturn has a larger orbit and moves more slowly because it is not as strongly influenced by the Sun’s gravitational force as planets that are closer to the Sun.
    • As the two planets move along their orbits, every two decades, Jupiter catches up with Saturn resulting in what astronomers call the great conjunction.

    A ‘rare alignment’

    • Jupiter and Saturn are bright planets and can be typically seen with the naked eye even from cities.
    • But during conjunction, they appear to be close to each other, which is what makes the event noteworthy.
    • The event will coincide with the winter solstice (shortest day of the year in terms of hours of sunlight received) in the Northern Hemisphere and summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
    • This year, however, the event is rare because the planets will come the closest to each other in nearly four centuries; in what astronomer Henry Throop described is a result of a “rare alignment” of the planets.

  • Gas Production in Krishna-Godavari Basin

    Reliance Industries Ltd and BP (British Petroleum) have announced the start of gas production from the R cluster of the KG Basin, the deepest off-shore gas field in Asia.

    Must read

    [Burning Issue] India’s push for a Gas-based Economy

    Krishna-Godavari Basin

    • The Krishna Godavari Basin is a proven petroliferous basin of continental margin located on the east coast of India.
    • Its onland part covers an area of 15000 sq. km and the offshore part covers an area of 25,000 sq. km up to 1000 m isobath.
    • The basin contains about 5 km thick sediments with several cycles of deposition, ranging in age from Late Carboniferous to Pleistocene.
    • The major geomorphologic units of the Krishna Godavari basin are Upland plains, Coastal plains, Recent Flood and Delta Plains.

    Minerals found

    • KG inland and offshore basins have good prospects of tight oil and tight gas reserves from the conducted field studies.
    • The first gas discovery in the basin was in 1983.
    • Most of the conventional wells drilled and operated have a shorter lifespan than envisaged life and with erratic production.
    • This may be due to drilling of conventional wells in tight oil and gas fields without horizontal drilling in the shale rock formations and hydraulic fracturing.

    Note: Tight gas and tight oil are produced from reservoir rocks with such low permeability that considerable hydraulic fracturing is required to harvest the well at economic rates.

    The KGD6 block

    • Krishna Godavari Dhirubhai 6 (KG-D6) was Reliance’s first offshore gas field development and its first underwater discovery.
    • It was also India’s largest deposit of natural gas and the largest such discovery in the world in 2002.
    • The project takes its name from India’s Krishna-Godavari Basin, which covers more than 19,000 square miles (50,000 square kilometres) in Andhra Pradesh and production block D6 in the Bay of Bengal.

    Why is this important?

    • The R cluster, along with the Satellite Cluster and MJ gas fields in the KG Basin is expected to produce around 30 MMSCMD (million standard cubic metres per day) of natural gas.
    • This is about 15% of India’s projected demand for natural gas by 2023.

    Do they impact India’s energy security efforts?

    • The three projects are a key part of the plan to boost domestic production of natural gas to increase the share of natural gas in India’s energy basket from 6.2% now to 15% by 2030.
    • Increased domestic production of natural gas is an important aspect of reducing India’s dependence on imports and improves energy security.

  • In agri-reforms, go back to the drawing board

    The intended beneficiaries often understand the realities of the systems better; policymakers need to build trust.

    Practice Question: The farmers protest against the new farm laws rises the serious concerns about the policymaking and involvement of citizen in the process by experts. What can be done to improve the trust of the public and how the challenge of agricultural income be solved?

    Reassessment is needed

    • The purpose of agriculture reforms is to increase farmers’ incomes. Farmers want the laws repealed.
    • The Supreme Court of India has called for discussions between the government and farmers around the country.
    • It is time to go back to the drawing board about the purpose and the process of agriculture reforms.
    • According to economists, fewer people must work on farms for farm productivity and incomes to be improved. Which begs the question of how the millions displaced from farms will earn incomes.
    • Indian industry is not growing much. There too, according to economists, humans should be replaced by technology for improving productivity.

    Flipside of productivity

    • Landholdings are too small for mechanization to improve farm productivity. Their solution is to ‘scale-up’ farms.
    • Mechanization requires standardization of work, hence mechanized farming on scale requires monocropping.
    • Large-scale specialization upsets the ecological balance. Reduced diversity of flora enables pests to spread more easily; soil quality is reduced; water resources get depleted.
    • Solutions to these new problems require more industrial inputs, with more costs for farmers.
    • The harmful side-effects of this approach to improve agriculture productivity are very visible in Punjab nowhere farm incomes have grown at the cost of water resources.

    Nature’s self-adaptive system

    • The ecological imbalance out of monocropping made the trees more vulnerable to pests.
    • Nature is a complex ‘self-adaptive’ system. It knows how to take care of itself.
    • When Man tries to overpower Nature with his science and industry, without understanding how Nature functions, he harms Nature — and ultimately himself.
    • Challenges of environmental degradation and increasing inequalities require that the economic calculus shifts from ‘economies of scale with standardization’ to ‘economies of scope for sustainability’.
    • This will make large-scale mechanization more difficult. It will require the use of more ‘flexible’ human labour.
    • In the long run, not only will this be good for the ecology, but it will also increase employment and incomes for people in the lower half of the economic pyramid.

    Market access

    • Farm incomes can increase with access to wider markets for farm produce, which is an objective of the agricultural reforms.
    • Indian farmers fear that they will not have adequate pricing power when pushed into large supply systems and less regulated markets.
    • Connections into global supply chains can increase volumes of sales which always favour the larger players in the supply chains who have easier access to capital.
    • Studies show that farmers in developed countries formed collectives which enable their voice to be heard by politicians and they could set the rules of global trade.

    Strengthen cooperatives

    • Institutions for cooperative ownership and collective bargaining must be strengthened to give power to small farmers before opening markets to large corporations.
    • A very good example is the Indian dairy sector. It’s ‘per person productivity is much lower than in New Zealand and Australian dairy producers’.
    • Still, it provides millions of tiny producers with reasonable incomes which large-scale industrial dairy producers do not.
    • Moreover, with its cooperative aggregation, the Indian dairy sector has also acquired political clout.
    • It has compelled the Indian government not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to connect the Indian economy with larger supply chains.

    Low agriculture income

    • The problem of low incomes in India’s agriculture sector is a complex systems problem which cannot be solved by agriculture experts alone.
    • Experts from many disciplines must collaborate to find systemic solutions.
    • The intended beneficiaries of the new policies must be included in the designing of the new policies right at the beginning as they understand the realities of systems better than experts.
    • When policymakers say ‘the people don’t get it’ after the policy is announced and the intended beneficiaries protest, it is an indication that the experts didn’t get it.

    The reforms of the 1990s

    • The stand-off in agriculture reforms has caused a flurry of discussions about democracy, consultation, and processes for economic reforms.
    • The immediate beneficiaries of the 1991 reforms were all Indian consumers, rich and poor, who would benefit from access to better quality products from around the world.
    • The principal opponents of the reforms were a few large industrialists whose products citizens were not satisfied with.
    • Governments have more power over a few industrialists than they have over the masses.
    • The 1991 reforms changed industrial licensing and trade policies — both subjects of the Union government.
    • ‘Factor market’ reforms, inland, agriculture, and labour regulations, which are necessary to realize the full benefits of the 1991 reforms are State subjects.
    • They affect the lives of people on the ground, and differently, around the country. Therefore, the central government, no matter how strong it is, must not force these reforms onto the States.

    Conclusion:

    Silo experts cannot help

    • India’s policymakers must improve their expertise in solving complex, multi-disciplinary problems.
    • They must apply the discipline of systems thinking, and not rely on siloed domain experts.
    • Citizens around the country must be involved in the policymaking throughout the evolution of policies.
    • The policies of the government should create public value and it satisfies the desire of citizens for a well-ordered society, in which fair, efficient, and accountable public institutions exist.
    • Trust is essential for a well-governed society. The lesson for India’s leaders is- good processes for making public policies build trust between citizens and their governments.

  • CMS-01 Satellite launched by ISRO

    The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully placed into a transfer orbit India’s 42nd communications satellite, CMS-01, carried onboard the PSLV-C50.

    CMS-01

    • It is a communications satellite envisaged for providing services in extended C Band of the frequency spectrum and its coverage will include the Indian mainland and the Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands, the ISRO.
    • The satellite is expected to have a life of over seven years.
    • It was injected precisely into its pre-defined sub- geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).
    • CMS-01 is considered to be a replacement of the aged satellite GSAT-12. It provides services like tele-education, tele-medicine, disaster management support and Satellite Internet access.

    What is GTO?

    • A geosynchronous transfer orbit or geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is a type of geocentric orbit.
    • Satellites which are destined for geosynchronous (GSO) or geostationary orbit (GEO) are (almost) always put into a GTO as an intermediate step for reaching their final orbit.
    • A GTO is highly elliptic.
    • Its perigee (closest point to Earth) is typically as high as low Earth orbit (LEO), while its apogee (furthest point from Earth) is as high as geostationary (or equally, a geosynchronous) orbit.

  • [pib] Metal CO2 Battery

    India’s planetary missions like Mars Mission may soon be able to reduce payload mass and launch costs with the help of an indigenously developed Metal- CO2 battery with CO2 as an Energy Carrier.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q.Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles produce one of the following as “exhaust”:

    (a) NH3

    (b) CH4

    (c) H2O

    (d) H2O2

    Metal CO2 Battery

    • An IIT professor recently demonstrated the technical feasibility of Lithium- CO2 battery in simulated Mars atmosphere for the first time.
    • The development of Metal-CO2 batteries will provide highly specific energy density with the reduction in mass and volume, which will reduce payload mass and launch cost of planetary missions.
    • Metal-CO2 batteries have a great potential to offer significantly high energy density than the currently used Li-ion batteries.
    • They provide a useful solution to fix CO2 emissions, which is better than energy-intensive traditional CO2 fixation methods.

    It’s working

    • A primary Li-CO2 battery uses pure carbon dioxide as a cathode.
    • According to chemical knowledge, Lithium metal can react with CO2 to form lithium oxalate at room temperature.
    • While at high temperatures, lithium oxalate decomposes to form lithium carbonate and carbon monoxide gas.

  • Why Are Most Assam Farmers Not Protesting Against the Farm Laws?

    With most farming land held by only 20% of its cultivators in Assam, there is a perception that agriculture is unimportant. However, the new farm laws are equally detrimental to small and marginal farmers in the state.

    Muted response from the state’s farming community

    • With more than 70% of Assam’s population directly or indirectly dependent for their livelihood on the agricultural sector, it is surprising that the state has only seen sporadic protests against the farm laws passed by the Central government.
    • Reformists would like to read this muted response from the state’s farming community as the voice of the silent majority who expect to benefit from the new farm laws.
    • The real answer lies in the political economy of the state’s rural sector, which has its origins in the colonial handling of its agrarian possibilities.

    Q. Farmers agitations in India are often region-specific. Discuss

    Ungrounded and uncultivated

    • The pre-Independence British administration had invested substantially in the agriculture in what today constitutes Punjab and Haryana, building dams and irrigation facilities and creating conditions that allowed farmers to benefit from the post-independence Green Revolution.
    • This gave rise to the capitalist class among them.
    • However, at the same time, peasants in Assam were arbitrarily taxed by the British Raj to make them voluntarily give up farming in favour of joining the labour forces of the tea industry in the region.
    • Its policies did result in the transfer of land from the peasantry to mid-level revenue officials, leading to a highly unequal land distribution that has persisted since that time.
    • Since the landed class tended to support the Indian National Congress-led freedom struggle, no land reform programme has ever been pursued seriously in the post-independence period.

    Unequal land distribution

    • Seven decades after independence, Assam’s agrarian setting is still characterized by a very high level of unequal land distribution.
    • The evidence documented in the Assam Human Development Report, 2014 shows that 20% of farmers hold as much as 70% of the state’s farmland and shows tenancy at a much higher level of 26%.
    • The lack of legal recognition of tenants means most of them have never been beneficiaries of public policies in agriculture in the state.
    • The state’s agriculture is characterized by mono-cropping, with rice accounting for 90% of the land cultivated, but public procurement at the minimum support price (MSP) is conspicuously absent.
    • The latest information from the public information bureau (PIB) shows that the state produces 4.2% of the country’s rice, but only 0.2% of its farmers availed public procurement by the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
    • Most farmers had to bear with the low prices of rice in the open markets, even as the state was flooded with rice sourced from elsewhere through the public distribution system.
    • Frequent floods often ravage the region, reducing farming operations to just one season in most flood-affected districts. Assam’s cropping intensity of 146% is one of the lowest among all major rice-producing states.
    • In such a setting, the landed class takes little interest in farming, even as small and marginal farmers have increasingly been migrating, many even outside the state, to earn their livelihoods.
    • It’s not surprising that the state’s agriculture is still stuck at the subsistence level. The Assam Economic Survey 2017-18 shows only 38% of the state’s land under high yielding variety seeds and 26% of its land under irrigation.

    APMC must be strengthened

    • The farmers of Assam might benefit from the breaking down of MSP procurement elsewhere through higher prices in the open market.
    • The new farm laws are more or less meaningless, which are more about APMC markets than about MSP.
    • With just 24 regulated APMC markets, Assam does not have enough marketing infrastructure to justify the argument made by the advocates of the new farm laws that the new Acts will liberate the farmers from the APMC markets’ monopoly and boost private investment in the sector.
    • With the state’s agricultural marketing largely revolving around 700-odd unregulated haats (village markets), the 24 APMC markets are hardly enough to curtail the farmers’ ‘freedom’ to dispose of their produce.
    • The credit deposit ratio (CDR) reported by major national banks in the state in 2017 is still below 40% compared to 72% at the national level, showing that the state is losing much of its savings to better-endowed states instead of receiving investment from outside the state.
    • The APMC market as a public institution still has a large role to play in reviving the state’s agricultural sector. Additionally, it can stop growing inter-state migration that has come to light in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill (2020).

    The recent law passed by the Karnataka State Assembly on bovine slaughter is a topic of contention.

    Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill (2020)

    • The Karnataka state assembly passed the Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill (2020).
    • It has banned the slaughter of all cows, bulls, bullocks and calves as well as it also outlaws the slaughter of buffaloes below the age of 13.
    • Smuggling and transporting animals for slaughter is also an offence.
    • The bill prescribes punishments of between three to seven years – which is more than the punishment prescribed in Indian law for causing the death of a human being by negligence.
    • It also gives the police powers to conduct searches based on suspicion.
    • Though the bill has yet to be passed by the state’s Legislative Council, the government has said it will pass an ordinance to implement its provisions.

    Practice Question: The recent law passed by Karnataka State Assembly on bovine slaughter is a topic of contention. Analyze.

    Muslims and farmers

    • The legislation, based on Hinduism’s reverence for the cow, undermines the food practices of many Indians, for whom beef is a cheap source of protein.
    • Already, Indians are some of the most malnourished people on the planet and, remarkably, nutrition standards are worsening.
    • The bill also penalizes people working in the meat and leather industries that depend on cattle slaughter, many of whom are Muslim.

    Dairy economics

    • The sector that will take the largest hit from the legislation is the dairy industry. India’s dairy industry is massive with an annual turnover of Rs 6.5 lakh crore – making it by far India’s largest agricultural product.
    • India’s farmers earn more from dairy than wheat and rice put together. India has almost as many bovines as people in the United States with one for every four Indians.
    • The problem with the bill is that that slaughter is integral to the dairy industry’s economic functioning. Dairy farming in India functions on small margins. As a result, the upkeep of unproductive animals would throw their bottom lines out of alignment.
    • When a male calf is born or a milch animal stops giving milk (or yield falls), farmers need to be able to get rid of the animal. In normal times, this sale is also a source of capital for the farmer.
    • In 2014, the size of the used cattle market just in Maharashtra was valued at as much as Rs 1,180 crore per year.
    • Verghese Kurien, founder of Amul and the architect of India’s White Revolution, that supercharged India’s milk production from 1970, opposed any ban on cow slaughter. Kurein was clear that the economics of dairy demanded slaughter.

    Cowed down

    • The statistics produced by the 2019 Livestock Census are clear: cow slaughter laws have actually ended up harming cows.
    • Between 2012 and 2019, states with cow slaughter laws such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh saw their cattle numbers fall (by 10.07%, 4.42% and 3.93%, respectively).
    • On the other hand, West Bengal – one of India’s rare states where cattle slaughter has no restrictions – saw a massive increase of 15.18%. As a result, Bengal now has the Indian Union’s largest cattle population.
    • Farmers simply let unproductive cattle loose, giving rise to the problem of large herds of feral cows which have caused economic havoc and pose a danger of citizens – a problem unique to India.
    • In the countryside of many states, famished cattle herds now pose a danger to crops and cause accidents.

    Buffalo nation

    • Naturally, stray cattle numbers are directly linked to cow slaughter laws. States such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat have seen substantial rises in their stray cow population between 2012 and 2019 while West Bengal has seen a sharp fall.
    • Between 2012 and 2019, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh saw their buffalo numbers rise.
    • Since the buffalo – not seen as sacred in Hinduism – could be slaughtered legally, dairy farmers were clearly preferring it over the holy cow.
    • But the Karnataka bill very alarming even compared to the devastation caused by the earlier cow slaughter laws is because it even targets buffalos.

    Making it worse

    • Karnataka’s stringent laws against cow slaughter is part of a policy pattern that – rather than make India’s already precarious economic situation better – makes Indians worse off.
    • Recent examples include demonetization, the new Goods and Services Tax as well as putting in place the world’s harshest Covid-19 lockdown, making sure India’s was the worst affected country economically during the pandemic.
    • India is going through a rural crisis. With poor yields due to unscientific farming methods and lack of support structures like irrigation, the average monthly income of the Indian farmer stands at only Rs 6,427 per month.
    • To make matters worse, for small farmers (defined as owning less than a hectare of land), their farming income is too low to cover their expenses and they are in debt and this describes the situation of 83% of Indian farmers.

  • U.S. puts India on ‘currency manipulators’ monitoring list

    The U.S. Treasury has labelled Switzerland and Vietnam as currency manipulators and added three new names, including India, to a watch list of countries. Earlier it had removed India from the list in March 2019.

    What is Currency Manipulation?

    • Currency manipulation refers to actions taken by governments to change the value of their currencies relative to other currencies in order to bring about some desirable objective.
    • The typical claim – often doubtful – is that countries manipulate their currencies in order to make their exports effectively cheaper on the world market and in turn make imports more expensive.

    Why do countries manipulate their currencies?

    • In general, countries prefer their currency to be weak because it makes them more competitive on the international trade front.
    • A lower currency makes a country’s exports more attractive because they are cheaper on the international market.
    • For example, a weak Rupee makes Indian exports less expensive for offshore buyers.
    • Secondly, by boosting exports, a country can use a lower currency to shrink its trade deficit.
    • Finally, a weaker currency alleviates pressure on a country’s sovereign debt obligations.
    • After issuing offshore debt, a country will make payments, and as these payments are denominated in the offshore currency, a weak local currency effectively decreases these debt payments.

    US treasury’s criteria

    To be labelled a manipulator by the U.S. Treasury:

    • Countries must at least have a $20 billion-plus bilateral trade surplus with the US
    • foreign currency intervention exceeding 2% of GDP and a global current account surplus exceeding 2% of GDP

    Implications for India

    • India has traditionally tried to balance between preventing excess currency appreciation on the one hand and protecting domestic financial stability on the other.
    • India being on the watch list could restrict the RBI in the foreign exchange operations it needs to pursue to protect financial stability.
    • This comes when global capital flows threaten to overwhelm domestic monetary policy.
    • The two most obvious consequences could be an appreciating rupee as well as excess liquidity that messes with the interest rate policy of the RBI.
    • Indian policymakers have to be sensitive for the unpredictable nature of policy-making in the US under Trump, especially concerning global trade.

  • Chang’e 5 returns to Earth carrying moon rocks

    A Chinese lunar capsule has returned to Earth with the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q.What do you understand by the term Aitken basin:

    (a) It is a desert in the southern Chile which is known to be the only location on earth where no rainfall takes place

    (b) It is an impact crater on the far side of the Moon

    (c) It is a Pacific coast basin, which is known to house large amounts of oil and gas

    (d) It is a deep hyper saline anoxic basin where no aquatic animals are found

    Chang’e-5 Probe

    • The Chang’e-5 probe, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, aims to shovel up lunar rocks and soil to help scientists learn about the moon’s origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface.
    • The goal of the mission is to land in the Mons Rumker region of the moon, where it will operate for one lunar day, which is two weeks long.
    • It will collect 2 kg of surface material from a previously unexplored area known as Oceanus Procellarum — or “Ocean of Storms” — which consist of vast lava plain.
    • The original mission, planned for 2017, was delayed due to an engine failure in China’s Long March 5 launch rocket.

    A big achievement

    • The successful mission was the latest breakthrough for China’s increasingly ambitious space programme that includes a robotic mission to Mars and plans for a permanent orbiting space station.
    • This return marked China’s third successful lunar landing but the only one to lift off again from the moon.
    • It also marked the first time scientists have obtained fresh samples of lunar rocks since the former Soviet Union’s Luna 24 robot probe in 1976.

    Significance of the mission

    • Rocks found on the Moon are older than any that have been found on Earth and therefore they are valuable in providing information about the Earth and the Moon’s shared history.
    • Lunar samples can help to unravel some important questions in lunar science and astronomy, including the Moon’s age, its formation, the similarities and differences between the Earth and the Moon’s geologic features.
    • For instance, the shape, size, arrangement and composition of individual grains and crystals in a rock can tell scientists about its history, while the radioactive clock can tell them the rock’s age.
    • Further, tiny cracks in rocks can tell them about the radiation history of the Sun in the last 100,000 years.