General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - October 2018

Oct 2018

Feb 18, 2022

Largest Galaxy Ever Discovered Baffles Scientists

Astronomers just found the largest galaxy ever discovered, and they have no idea how it got so big.
At 16.3 million light-years wide, the Alcyoneus Galaxy has a diameter 160 times wider than the Milky Way and four times that of the previous title holder, IC 1101, which spans 3.9 million light-years, researchers reported in a new study. Named after one of the mythical giants who fought Hercules and whose name means "mighty ass" in Greek, Alcyoneus is roughly 3 billion light-years from Earth.
The galactic monster is an especially large example of a radio galaxy, or a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at the center which gobbles up enormous amounts of matter before spitting it out — sending gigantic two jets of plasma moving at close to the speed of light. After traveling millions of light-years, the plasma beams slow, spreading out into plumes that emit light in the form of radio waves. In the case of Alcyoneus, its lobes are the largest ever discovered.

Feb 17, 2022

First-Ever Quadruple Asteroid

Astronomers discovered a third moon orbiting the main-belt asteroid (130) Elektra. This is the first quadruple asteroid ever found.
Elektra is a large main-belt asteroid. It was first discovered by Litchfield Observatory astronomer Christian Peters on February 17, 1873.
Elektra has an effective diameter of 199 km.
The first moon of Elektra was discovered in 2003 by Dr. William Merline and his team. It was discovered using "Keck II telescope" at the Mauna Kea Observatory.
First moon of Elektra is designated as S/2003 (130) 1 or S1.
It has a diameter of 6 km. It orbits 1,300 km away from the parent asteroid, with a period of 5.3 days.
The second moon of Elektra is designated as S/2014 (130) 1 or S2.
It was discovered on December 6, 2014 by Dr. Bin Yang and his team, using SPHERE facility on ESO's Very Large Telescope.
It has a diameter of around 2 km.
It orbits 500 km away from Elektra, once every 1.2 days.
Astronomers have now discovered the third moon, orbiting Elekta and is designated as S/2014 (130) 2 or S3. It has the diameter of 1.6 km and an orbital period of 0.679 days. It revolves inside S2 orbit, with a semi-major axis of 344 km. It has an orbital period of 0.679 days.

LOFAR Telescope Spots Biggest Radio Galaxy Ever

The newly-discovered radio galaxy, dubbed Alcyoneus, has a projected length of 16.3 million light-years (4.99 Mpc).
The giant radio galaxy definition accommodates our limited ability to infer a radio galaxy's true proper length from observations.
A radio galaxy is called a giant radio galaxy if and only if its proper length projected onto the plane of the sky exceeds some threshold, usually chosen to be 2.3 or 3.3 million light-years.
Currently, there are about a thousand giant radio galaxies known, the majority of which have been found in the northern sky.

NITI Aayog Partners with PhonePe to Host First-ever Open-to-all Hackathon Event

NITI Aayog partnered with PhonePe to host the first-ever open-to-all hackathon event for ideating and coming up with creative solutions for the FinTech space.
The hackathon will provide an opportunity for innovators, digital creators and developers from all over India to think, ideate and code.
Participants at the hackathon need to use any open-data APIs like PhonePe Pulse along with frameworks such as account aggregator as a foundation to power some the use cases.

Feb 16, 2022

IXPE Space Observatory Collects Its First Imaging Data

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), an international collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), captured an image of Cassiopeia A, the youngest known supernova remnant in our Milky Way Galaxy.
IXPE is NASA's first mission dedicated to measuring the polarization of X-rays from the most extreme and mysterious objects in the Universe: supernova remnants, supermassive black holes, and dozens of other high-energy objects.
The observatory launched December 9, 2021 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It now orbits 600 km (370 miles) above Earth's equator.
IXPE builds on and complements the scientific discoveries of other telescopes, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Feb 15, 2022

In a first, Taiwan Researchers Become Part of Satellite Launch Mission by ISRO

In a first, India's space research organization or ISRO launched a satellite jointly developed by a team of international researchers including from Taiwan. INSPIRESat-1 satellite wasa developed by scientists from universities of the US, Taiwan, India, and Singapore.
The universities are--University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Taiwan's National Central University (NCU), and Singapore' Nanyang Technological University. INSPIRESat-1 stands for International Research and Teaching Satellite Project satellite one.
The satellite will provide information on Sun's corona and its impact on Earth's ionosphere.

India's Tech Spending to Grow 8.7% in 2022, Highest in Asia-Pacific

According to a new report, the tech spending in India is likely to grow 8.7 per cent in 2022, one of the highest growth rates in the Asia Pacific region.
Although the second wave of Covid-19 dampened the pace of India's recovery in early 2021, economic activity picked up in the second half of the year thanks to a sharp drop in case numbers and progress made on vaccination.

Feb 14, 2022

NASA's New Space Telescope Sees 1st Starlight

NASA's new space telescope captured its first starlight and even took a selfie of its giant, gold mirror.
All 18 segments of the primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope seem to be working properly one and half months into the mission.
The telescope's first target was a bright star 258 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.
Over the next few months, the hexagonal mirror segments — each the size of a coffee table — will be aligned and focused as one, allowing science observations to begin by the end of June.

ISRO Successfully Launches Earth Observation Satellite, Two other Co-passengers on PSLV-C52

The Indian Space & Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched the Earth Observation Satellite (EOS-04) onboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The launch carried two other rideshare satellites into orbit.
The launch was conducted from SAR in Sriharikota to deploy EOS-04 in the Sun-Synchronous Orbit nearly 529 kilometers above the planet. The four-stage rocket lifted off with a student satellite INSPIRESat and a spacecraft dubbed INSAT-2DT that is a precursor of a joint India-Bhutan mission in the future.
The Earth Observation Satellite-04 is also called Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT) that has been designed to provide high-quality images under all weather conditions for applications such as agriculture, forestry, and plantations, flood mapping, soil moisture & hydrology.

NASA Captures Stunning, First of a Kind Images of Venus' Surface

Stunning images snapped by NASA's Parker Solar Probe have given the very first visible light glimpse of Venus' red-hot surface, revealing continents, plains and plateaus on the inhospitable volcanic world.
Peering beneath the thick and toxic Venusian clouds with the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) instrument, NASA scientists spotted a bevy of geological features lit up in the faint glow of Venus' nightside surface, alongside a luminescent halo of oxygen in the planet's atmosphere.
The groundbreaking images, taken during the Parker Solar Probe's fourth flyby of Venus on the way to the sun, will give scientists valuable insights into the scorching planet's geology and minerals, and they could reveal more about how Venus became so inhospitable while life on Earth flourished.

Share on

TCY Analytics (View Subscription Plans)

Subscribe to GK Updates

I want to receive

GK Tags

August GK, July GK, June GK, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ENVIRONMENT, BUSINESS AND ECONOMY, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, SPORTS, NATIONAL AFFAIRS, DEFENCE, PERSONS IN NEWS, DAYS AND EVENTS, AWARDS AND HONOURS, GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND SCHEMES, GENDER/ HEALTH/ EDUCATION, ART AND CULTURE, BOOKS AND AUTHORS, TOURISM AND HOTEL INDUSTRY AWARENESS, ART AND CULTURE, LAW AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS

Start Discussion

On any topic

Take Tests

Compiled from GK updates

Login

Sign Up

Forgot Password

Download TCY App

Unlock All Services And Enjoy The Premium Benefits

US$ 10

US$ 13

US$ 15

US$ 17

US$ 19

US$ 20

US$ 21

US$ 22

US$ 23

US$ 24

US$ 25

US$ 26