💥UPSC 2026, 2027, 2028 UAP Mentorship (March Batch) + Access XFactor Notes & Microthemes PDF
Talk to mentor

Civilsdaily

Login

Type: Prelims Only

  • International Space Agencies – Missions and Discoveries

    Near-Earth Asteroid Scout Mission

    Prelims Only | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: Near-Earth Asteroid Scout

    Mains level: Study of asteroids

    Last week, NASA announced that its new spacecraft, named NEA Scout, has completed all required tests and has been safely tucked inside the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

    For landing on Moon

    • NEA Scout is one of several payloads that will hitch a ride on Artemis I, which is expected to be launched in November.
    • Artemis I will be an uncrewed test-flight of the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket.
    • Under the Artemis programme, NASA has aimed to land the first woman on the Moon in 2024 and also establish sustainable lunar exploration programs by 2030.

    What is NEA Scout?

    • Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, or NEA Scout, is a small spacecraft, about the size of a big shoebox. Its main mission is to fly by and collect data from a near-Earth asteroid.
    • It will also be America’s first interplanetary mission using special solar sail propulsion.
    • This type of propulsion is especially useful for small, lightweight spacecraft that cannot carry large amounts of conventional rocket propellant.
    • NEA Scout will use stainless steel alloy booms and deploy an aluminium-coated sail measuring 925 square feet.
    • The large-area sail will generate thrust by reflecting sunlight.
    • Energetic particles of sunlight bounce off the solar sail to give it a gentle, yet constant push.

    How will it study the asteroid?

    • NEA Scout is equipped with special cameras and can take pictures ranging from 50 cm/pixels to 10 cm/pixels.
    • It can also process the image and reduce the file sizes before sending them to the earth-based Deep Space Network via its medium-gain antenna.
    • The spacecraft will take about two years to cruise to the asteroid and will be about 93 million miles away from Earth during the asteroid encounter.

    Why should we study near-Earth asteroids?

    • Despite their size, some of these small asteroids could pose a threat to Earth.
    • Understanding their properties could help us develop strategies for reducing the potential damage caused in the event of an impact.
    • Scientists will use this data to determine what is required to reduce risk, increase effectiveness, and improve the design and operations of robotic and human space exploration.

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • International Space Agencies – Missions and Discoveries

    Why does Mercury have such a big iron core?

    Prelims Only | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: Our planetary system

    Mains level: Not Much

    Researchers have developed a model showing that the density, mass and iron content of a Mercury’s core is influenced by its distance from the Sun’s magnetic field.

    About Mercury

    • Mercury is the first and the smallest planet in our solar system.
    • It is also the closest planet to Earth.
    • Like the other three terrestrial planets, Mercury contains a core surrounded by a mantle and a crust.
    • But unlike any other planet, Mercury’s core makes up a larger portion of the planet.
    • MESSENGER was a NASA robotic space probe that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, studying Mercury’s chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field.
    • It was the analysis from the MESSENGER mission that tells: Mercury’s core is solid.

    Mystery over the core

    • It has long been known that Mercury’s core composition is made of liquid metal.
    • The core itself is about 3,600 km across. Surrounding that is a 600 km thick mantle.
    • And around that is the crust, which is believed to be 100-200 km thick.
    • The crust is known to have narrow ridges that extend for hundreds of kilometres.
    • This large core has long been one of the most intriguing mysteries about Mercury.

    Why does Mercury have a large core?

    • A new study reveals that the sun’s magnetism is the reason.
    • The sun’s magnetic field influences the density, mass, and iron content of Mercury’s core.
    • The four inner planets of our solar system—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are made up of different proportions of metal and rock.
    • A gradient in which the metal content in the core drops off as the planets get farther from the sun.
    • The researchers explain how this happened by showing that the sun’s magnetic field controlled the distribution of raw materials in the early forming solar system.

    What are the key propositions?

    • During the early formation of the solar system, when a swirling dust storm and gas encircled the sun, iron’s grain was drawn toward the centre by the sun’s magnetic field.
    • At the time of planet formation from clumps of that dust and gas, planets nearer to the sun consolidated more iron into their centres than those farther away.
    • Scientists also found that the density and proportion of iron in the planet’s core correlate with the strength of the magnetic field around the sun during planetary formation.
    • Existing models on planetary formation were used to determine the speed at which gas and dust were pulled into the centre of our solar system during its formation.
    • The magnetic field that the sun would have generated as it burst into being and calculated how that magnetic field would draw iron through the dust and gas cloud.

    Cooling led solidification

    • As the early solar system began to cool, dust and gas that were not drawn into the sun started to clump together.
    • The clumps closer to the sun would have been exposed to a stronger magnetic field and thus would contain more iron than those farther away from the sun.
    • As the clumps coalesced and cooled into spinning planets, gravitational forces drew the iron into their core.

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Global Geological And Climatic Events

    How the Moon ‘Wobble’ affects rising tides

    Prelims Only | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 1: Geographical Features & Their Location

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: Moon wobble

    Mains level: Moon wobble and climate change

    US coastlines will face increasing flooding in the mid-2030s due to a regular lunar cycle called the wobble effect that will magnify rising sea levels caused by climate change.

    What is the Moon Wobble?

    • The moon wobble is nothing but a regular swaying in the moon’s orbit.
    • It was first documented way back in 1728.
    • This wobble takes over an 18.6-year period to complete and continues in a cyclic fashion.

    How does this wobble occur?

    • High tides on this planet are caused mostly by the pull of the moon’s gravity on a spinning Earth. On most beaches, you would see two high tides every 24 hours.
    • The moon also revolves around the Earth about once a month, and that orbit is a little bit tilted.
    • moon’s orbital plane around the Earth is at an approximate 5-degree incline to the Earth’s orbital plane around the sun.
    • Because of that, the path of the moon’s orbit seems to fluctuate over time, completing a full cycle — sometimes referred to as a nodal cycle — every 18.6 years.
    • At certain points along the cycle, the moon’s gravitational pull comes from such an angle that it yanks one of the day’s two high tides a little bit higher, at the expense of the other.
    • This does not mean that the moon itself is wobbling, nor that its gravity is necessarily pulling at our oceans any more or less than usual.

    What impact does this wobble have on Earth?

    • Influences the ebb and flow of tides: The moon wobbles impacts the gravitational pull of the moon, and therefore, indirectly influences the ebb and flow of tides here on the Earth.
    • One half of the 18.6-year cycle suppresses the tides, which means that the high tides get lower, while the low tides get higher than normal.
    • Once this cycle completes, the situation flips—in the subsequent cycle, the tides are amplified, with high tides getting higher and low tides, lower.
    • The lunar cycle is expected to shift again by mid-2030, and in the coming phase, the tides will amplify once again.

    Moon wobble and climate change

    • The upcoming changes in the lunar cycle will pose a serious threat, as the amplified high tides coupled with the rising sea levels will make the risk of flooding far greater across all coastal regions of the globe.
    • The study predicts that the high tide-associated floods—also known as nuisance floods or sunny day floods—may occur in clusters that could last for months or even for longer periods!
    • This surge will be closely associated with the position of the Moon, Earth and the Sun.
    • When the Moon and Earth line up in specific ways with each other and the Sun, the resulting gravitational pull and the ocean’s corresponding response may leave city-dwellers coping with floods every day or two.

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Cyber Security – CERTs, Policy, etc

    Back in news: Pegasus Spyware

    Prelims Only | Security Issues | Mains Paper 3: Cyber Security

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: Pegasus

    Mains level: Whatsapp snooping

    Telephone numbers of some noted Indian journalists were successfully snooped upon by an unidentified agency using Pegasus software.

    Pegasus Spyware

    • All spyware do what the name suggests — they spy on people through their phones.
    • Pegasus works by sending an exploit link, and if the target user clicks on the link, the malware or the code that allows the surveillance is installed on the user’s phone.
    • A presumably newer version of the malware does not even require a target user to click a link.
    • Once Pegasus is installed, the attacker has complete access to the target user’s phone.
    • The first reports on Pegasus’s spyware operations emerged in 2016, when Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the UAE, was targeted with an SMS link on his iPhone 6.

    What is the new threat?

    • Pegasus has evolved from its earlier spear-phishing methods using text links or messages to ‘zero-click’ attacks which do not require any action from the phone’s user.
    • This had made what was without a doubt the most powerful spyware out there, more potent and almost impossible to detect or stop.

    How do zero-click attacks work?

    • A zero-click attack helps spyware like Pegasus gain control over a device without human interaction or human error.
    • Zero-click attacks are hard to detect given their nature and hence even harder to prevent.
    • Detection becomes even harder in encrypted environments where there is no visibility on the data packets being sent or received.
    • Most of these attacks exploit software that receive data even before it can determine whether what is coming in is trustworthy or not, like an email client.

    Answer this PYQ from CSP 2018:

    Q.The terms ‘WannaCry, Petya, Eternal Blue’ sometimes mentioned news recently are related to

    (a) Exoplanets

    (b) Crypto currency

    (c) Cyber attacks

    (d) Mini satellites

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Modern Indian History-Events and Personalities

    When were Tilak and Gandhi tried under the Sedition Law?

    Prelims Only | | Mains Paper 1: Modern Indian History

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: Sedition in colonial times

    Mains level: Not Much

    Recently, Chief Justice of India N V Ramana observed that the “colonial law” was used by the British to silence Mahatma Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

    Must read:

    Sedition Law and its discontents

    Use of sedition law through history

    • According to the LOC blog, the first known instance of the application of the law was the trial of newspaper editor Jogendra Chandra Bose in 1891.
    • Other prominent examples of the application of the law include the trials of Tilak and Gandhi.
    • Apart from this, Jawaharlal Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar were also charged with sedition.

    When was sedition law used against Gandhi and Tilak?

    • In 1922, Gandhi was arrested on charges of sedition in Bombay for taking part in protests against the colonial government.
    • He was sentenced to six years in prison but was released after two years because of medical reasons.
    • Before Gandhi, Tilak faced three trials in cases related to sedition and was imprisoned twice.
    • He was charged with sedition in 1897 for writing an article in his weekly publication called Kesari and was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.
    • He has tried again in 1908 and was represented by MA Jinnah. But his application for bail was rejected and he was sentenced to six years.
    • The second time he was tried was also because of his writings, one of which referred to the murder of European women in Muzzafarpur when bombs were thrown by Bengali revolutionaries.
    • Interestingly, the judge who announced Tilak’s sentence in the second trial, Justice DD Davar, had represented him in his first trial in 1897.

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Climate Change Impact on India and World – International Reports, Key Observations, etc.

    Why the Amazon forests are no longer acting as a carbon sink

    Prelims Only | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 1: Important Geophysical Phenomena

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: Amazon forests

    Mains level: Climate Change

    The Amazon forests in South America, which are the largest tropical forests in the world, have started emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of absorbing carbon emissions.

    Note the countries bordered by the Amazon forests.

    Amazon forests

    • The Amazon rainforest is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America.
    • This basin encompasses 7,000,000 sq km of which 5,500,000 sq km are covered by the rainforest.
    • The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru with 13%, Colombia with 10%, and with minor amounts in Bolivia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela.
    • It represents over half of the planet’s remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world.

    Why in news?

    • A significant amount of deforestation in eastern and southeastern Brazil has turned the forest into a source of CO2 that has the ability to warm the planet.
    • Not only the Amazon rainforests, some forests in Southeast Asia have also turned into carbon sources in the last few years as a result of the formation of plantations and fires.

    What have the researchers found?

    • Over the years as fossil-fuel emissions across the world have increased, the Amazon forests have absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere, helping to moderate the global climate.
    • But researchers are not saying that because of significant levels of deforestation (over the course of 40 years) there has been a long-term decrease in rainfall and increase in temperatures during the dry season.
    • Because of these reasons the eastern Amazon forests are no longer carbon sinks, whereas the more intact and wetter forests in the central and western parts are neither carbon sinks nor are they emitters.
    • Another reason for the eastern region not being able to absorb as much CO2 as it did previously is the conversion of forests into agricultural land.

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Innovations in Sciences, IT, Computers, Robotics and Nanotechnology

    What are Doppler Radars?

    Prelims Only | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: Doppler Radar

    Mains level: Not Much

    The India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) Doppler Radar in Mumbai, which surveys weather patterns and forecasts, stopped working after heavy rainfalls.

    How does a Doppler radar work?

    • In radars, a beam of energy– called radio waves– is emitted from an antenna.
    • When this beam strikes an object in the atmosphere, the energy scatters in all directions, with some reflecting directly back to the radar.
    • The larger the object deflecting the beam, the greater is the amount of energy that the radar receives in return.
    • Observing the time required for the beam to be transmitted and returned to the radar allows weather forecasting departments to “see” raindrops in the atmosphere, and measure their distance from the radar.

    What makes a Doppler radar special?

    • It can provide information on both the position of targets as well as their movement.
    • It does this by tracking the ‘phase’ of transmitted radio wave pulses; phase meaning the shape, position, and form of those pulses.
    • As computers measure the shift in phase between the original pulse and the received echo, the movement of raindrops can be calculated.
    • Thus it is possible to tell whether the precipitation is moving toward or away from the radar.

    Types of Doppler radar

    • In India, Doppler radars of varying frequencies — S-band, C-band and X-band — are commonly used.
    • They help track the movement of weather systems and cloud bands and gauge rainfall over its coverage area of about 500 km.
    • The radars guide meteorologists, particularly in times of extreme weather events like cyclones and associated heavy rainfall.
    • An X-band radar is used to detect thunderstorms and lightning whereas C-band guides in cyclone tracking.

    Why are they called ‘Doppler’ radars?

    • The phase shift in these radars works on the same lines as the “Doppler effect” observed in sound waves.
    • It tells that the sound pitch of an object approaching the observer is higher due to the compression of sound waves (a change in their phase).
    • As this object moves away from the observer, the sound waves stretch, resulting in lower frequency.
    • This effect explains why an approaching train’s whistle sounds louder than the whistle when the train moves away.
    • The discovery of the phenomenon is attributed to Christian Doppler, a 19th-century Austrian physicist.

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Civil Services Reforms

    Dismissal of govt employees: What the Constitution says

    Prelims Only | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Civil Service

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: Article 311

    Mains level: Civil services reforms

    Lt Governor has dismissed 11 Jammu and Kashmir government employees for alleged terror links under provisions of Article 311(2)(c) of the Constitution.

    What is Article 311?

    • Article 311 of the Constitution deals with ‘Dismissal, removal or reduction in rank of persons employed in civil capacities under the Union or a State’.
    • Under Article 311(2), no civil servant can be “dismissed or removed or reduced in rank except after an inquiry in which he has been informed of the charges and given a reasonable opportunity of being heard in respect of those charges’’.
    • Subsection (c) of the provision, however, says this clause shall not apply “where the President or the Governor, as the case may be, is satisfied that in the interest of the security of the State it is not expedient to hold such inquiry”.

    Remedy available

    • The only available remedy to a terminated employee is to challenge the government’s decision in the High Court.

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Digital India Initiatives

    Bhutan becomes first neighbor to use BHIM UPI

    Prelims Only | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Indigenization Of Technology

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: BHIM, UPI, IMPS

    Mains level: Mobile banking facilities in India

    Bhutan becomes the first country, in India’s immediate neighbourhood, to use the BHIM app for mobile-based payments and “to adopt UPI standards for its QR deployment”.

    Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM)

    • BHIM is an Indian mobile payment App developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
    • Named after B. R. Ambedkar and launched on 30 December 2016 it is intended to facilitate e-payments directly through banks and encourage cashless transactions.
    • The application supports all Indian banks which use UPI, which is built over the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) infrastructure and allows the user to instantly transfer money between bank accounts of any two parties.
    • It can be used on all mobile devices.

    Note: Bhutan has become the first country to adopt India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) standards for its quick response (QR) code. It is also the second country after Singapore to have BHIM-UPI acceptance at merchant locations, NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL).

    What is UPI?

    • Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant real-time payment system developed by NPCI facilitating inter-bank transactions.
    • The interface is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India and works by instantly transferring funds between two bank accounts on a mobile platform.

    Answer this PYQ in the comment box:

    Q. With reference to digital payments, consider the following statements:

    1. BHIM app allows the user to transfer money to anyone with a UPI-enabled bank account.
    2. While a chip-pin debit card has four factors of authentication, BHIM app has only two factors of authentication.

    Which of the statements given above is/ are correct? (CSP 2018)

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) Both 1 and 2

    (d) Neither 1 nor 2

    You can use our popular TIKDAM Technique to solve such tricky questions:

    Tikdam Technique – How our Prime Test Series 2020 gives you an edge

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Zoonotic Diseases: Medical Sciences Involved & Preventive Measures

    What is UV-C technology?

    Prelims Only | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    Note4Students

    From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

    Prelims level: UV technology for disinfection

    Mains level: Not Much

    The Union Ministry for Science and Technology has informed that Ultraviolet-C or UV-C Disinfection Technology will soon be installed in Parliament for the mitigation of airborne transmission of SARS-COV-2.

    UV-C air duct disinfection system

    • The UV-C air duct disinfection system was developed by CSIR-CSIO (Central Scientific Instruments Organisation).
    • The system is designed to fit into any existing air-ducts and the virucidal dosages using UV-C intensity and residence time can be optimized according to the existing space.
    • The release adds that the virus is deactivated in any aerosol particles by the calibrated levels of UV-C light. It can be used in auditoriums, malls, educational Institutions, AC buses, and railways.

    What is Ultraviolet (UV)?

    • Ultraviolet (UV) is a type of light or radiation naturally emitted by the Sun. It covers a wavelength range of 100-400 nm. The human visible light ranges from 380–700 nm.
    • UV is divided into three bands: UV-C (100-280 nm), UV-B (280-315 nm) and UV-A (315-400 nm).
    • UV-A and UV-B rays from the Sun are transmitted through our atmosphere and all UV-C is filtered by the ozone layer.
    • UV-B rays can only reach the outer layer of our skin or epidermis and can cause sunburns and are also associated with skin cancer.
    • UV-A rays can penetrate the middle layer of your skin or the dermis and can cause ageing of skin cells and indirect damage to cells’ DNA.
    • UV-C radiation from man-made sources has been known to cause skin burns and eye injuries.

    So, can UV-C kill coronavirus?

    • UV-C radiation (wavelength around 254 nm) has been used for decades to disinfect the air in hospitals, laboratories, and also in water treatment.
    • But these conventional germicidal treatments are done in unoccupied rooms as they can cause health problems.
    • It can destroy the outer protein coating of the SARS-Coronavirus.

    Is it safe for humans?

    • The device is specifically developed to disinfect non-living things.
    • UV-C radiation used in this device could be harmful to the skin and eyes of living beings.

    Answer this PYQ in the comment box:

    Q.What is the role of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the water purification systems?

    1. It inactivates/kills the harmful microorganisms in water.
    2. It removes all the undesirable odours from the water.
    3. It quickens the sedimentation of solid particles, removes turbidity and improves the clarity of water.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct? (CSP 2010)

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 1 and 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor