General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - December 2018

Dec 2018

Mar 29, 2022

IIT-Mandi, Researchers Find Method to Convert Plastic into Hydrogen, Useful Chemicals

The researchers of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, produced new photocatalyst that converts plastic to hydrogen and other useful products. The researchers developed a method that can transform plastic into hydrogen when exposed to light. The researchers said that the generation of hydrogen from plastics is particularly useful because the gas is considered the most practical non-polluting fuel of the future.
Plastics, most of which are derived from petroleum, are not bio-degradable, which cannot be easily broken down into harmless products.

Mahatma Gandhi's Granddaughter Launches a Website 'Modi Story'

The granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi Sumitra Gandhi Kulkarni inaugurated the Modi Story website which is a collection of stories from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's life. Modi story is a volunteer-driven initiative to bring together inspiring moments from Narendra Modi's life, as narrated by his co-travellers.
The people who are associated with him closely recollected their memories about the works of Mr Modi. Several prominent personalities, including Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra, classical dancer Sonal Mansingh, actor-cum-politician Manoj Tiwari, former Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia and spiritual leader Swami Avdheshanand Giri, have contributed to the anecdotal compilation.

ESA-NASA's Solar Probe Snaps Closest-ever Photo of Sun

European Space Agency's (ESA) and NASA's Solar Orbiter snapped images of the Sun in unprecedented detail.
One of the images, taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) shows the Sun's full disc and outer atmosphere, the corona in the highest resolution image ever taken. Another image, taken by the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument, represents the first image of a full Sun—the first-of-its kind in 50 years. It was taken at the Lyman-beta wavelength of ultraviolet light that is emitted by hydrogen gas.
The high-resolution telescope of EUI takes pictures at such high spatial resolution that, at that close distance, a mosaic of 25 individual images is needed to cover the entire Sun. Taken one after the other, the full image was captured over a period of more than four hours because each tile takes about 10 minutes, including the time for the spacecraft to point from one segment to the next.

Mar 26, 2022

More than 1,200 Doordarshan Analogue Terrestrial TV (ATT) Transmitters Shut Down

In March 2022, more than 1,200 Doordarshan Analogue Terrestrial TV (ATT) transmitters have been shut down in a phased manner as they had become obsolete, said Anurag Singh Thakur, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting . This, in view of emerging trends in the broadcasting and availability of "DD Free Dish", a free-to-air Direct to Home service of Prasar Bharati, under which over 150 TV channels including 51 educational ones were being provided free of cost, without any monthly subscription.

Mar 25, 2022

Milky Way Evolved in Few Different Phases, New Research Suggests

The formation of our Milky Way Galaxy can be split up qualitatively into different assembly phases that resulted in its structurally different stellar populations: the halo and the disk components. Revealing a quantitative overall picture of Milky Way's assembly requires a large sample of stars with very precise ages. In new research, astronomers at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy analyzed such a sample using subgiant stars.
Subgiant stars, which are stars sustained by hydrogen shell fusion, can be unique tracers for such purposes, as they exist in the brief stellar evolutionary phase that permits the most precise and direct age determination, because their luminosity is a direct measure of their age.
Moreover, the chemical element compositions determined from the spectra of their photosphere surfaces accurately reflect their birth material composition billions of years ago.
"This makes subgiants the best practical tracers of Galactic archaeology, even compared to main-sequence turn-off stars, whose surface abundances may be altered by atomic diffusion effects.

Mar 24, 2022

There are 5,000 Worlds Outside Our Solar System, Some Like Earth

When humans began looking into the sky, the first thought that popped the scientific curiosity was 'are we alone in the universe?' In time, we discovered planets around the Sun, separated by billions of kilometers, forming our solar system. NASA went a step beyond that cosmic boundary and confirmed there are more than 5,000 worlds waiting to be explored in deep space.
With the discovery of 65 new planets, NASA confirmed the presence of over 5000 such planetary bodies around stars beyond our solar system, marking a new milestone in space exploration. The NASA exoplanet archive got 65 new candidates to be studied that could harbour compositions that might support the presence of water, microbes, gases on the surface or even life.

Mar 23, 2022

Newly Proposed Experiment Could Confirm that Information is Fifth State of Matter

Dr. Melvin Vopson, a physicist with the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Portsmouth, has already published research suggesting that information has physical mass and that all elementary particles store information about themselves. Now, the researcher designed an experiment, which if proved correct, means he will have discovered that information is the fifth form of matter, alongside solid, liquid, gas and plasma.

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