My Science School

If we asked you what are the polar regions of Earth. You would instantly say North Pole and South Pole. But did you know there is a region North of India that glaciologists call the Third Pole?

The Tibetan plateau, home to the vast Hindu Kush-Himalaya ice sheet, is referred to as the Third Pole, because it contains the third largest amount of snow and ice after the Arctic and the Antarctic. It covers an area of about 1,00,000 sq km and has some 46,000 glaciers.

The Third Pole spans eight countries – from Afghanistan to Myanmar. The frozen glaciers are the source of 10 major rivers, including the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yellow, Mekong and the Indus. They support at least 1.6 billion people directly in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. (That’s nearly one fifth of the world’s population.) These rivers are the main source of water for drinking, agriculture and hydropower. The rivers indirectly support the livelihoods of millions of people in these countries.

The bad news

The sad news is that the Third Pole is melting quickly. Researchers suggest that it could lose more than a third of its volume by the end of the century, even if the internationally agreed target of limiting global warming by 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels is adhered to. And if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current levels, the region could lose as much as two-thirds of its ice. Research has also found that more than 500 small glaciers have disappeared altogether and the biggest ones are shrinking rapidly.

The continuous glacier melting will be catastrophic for the people who depend on its water. While initially more water is expected to pour into river basins, causing flooding, eventually that will dry up, resulting in drought and desertification.

Reasons for melting

The melting is due to global warming. Because it is high above sea level, the Third Pole is also sensitive to changes in temperatures. Its high elevation means it absorbs energy from rising, warm, moisture-laden air quickly.

Dust and pollution are the second main reasons. Black carbon or soot from car exhausts and coal burners is settling on the ice, causing it to absorb the rays of the Sun, rather than reflect them away.

 

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Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut has been granted Y+ security cover by the CRPF, following the row over her comments on Mumbai and the Maharashtra government. What is a security cover, why is it provided, and who takes a call on providing it to VIPs?

What is security cover?

You must have seen security personnel guarding VIPs wherever they go. They keep a close watch on the VIPs to ensure their safety against potential risks. The Central security cover is provided to an individual holding an important position in the government or in civil society. So, the President, the Vice-President, the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the SC and HC judges automatically get security cover from the government because of their position. A large number of individuals, believed to be facing a threat to their lives, are also provided security by the State police.

Who decides the level of security needed?

The Ministry of Home Affairs takes the decision on the level of security needed based on inputs from intelligence agencies, which include the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing. The list of personalities to receive specialised security cover is decided following a thorough review of the threat perception to an individual at a given time. VIP security has always been under scrutiny as it involves precious manpower.

What are the different categories of security cover provided?

There are six categories of security cover: SPG, Z+, Z, Y+, Y, and X. The SPG security is the country’s highest grade of protection and it is dedicated to protecting the Prime Minister. The SPG (Special Protection Group) is a highly trained unit equipped with some of the most modern weapons, gadgets and vehicles.

The other categories of security are accorded to anyone, depending on the Centre’s assessment of the perceived threat to them. The number of personnel guarding them varies from category to category. The Z+ is considered the second highest level of security cover, while the X category provides the basic level of protection.

 

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What are agencies entrusted with providing security?

With the Government withdrawing NSG commandos, originally meant for counter-terror duties, from VIP protection duties earlier this year, central paramilitary forces such as the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (TBP) and the Central Industrial Security Force(CISF), along with the State police, have been entrusted with the task of providing VIP security to the X, Y, Z categories. Different forces may be engaged for residence and mobile security of a VIP. The cover is reviewed periodically.

We’ve been satellites to space for a long time. Each satellite serves a different purpose. While some help us predict the weather, some let us watch television, and some help us find our way to different places. However, like all machines, satellites have an expiry date. They can’t go on forever. So what happens to these satellites when they are close to their end?

A cemetery on Earth

When a trusty satellite’s time has come, scientists have two choices depending on how high the satellite is. If it is closer to Earth, engineers will use the last bit of fuel remaining in the satellite to slow it down. This way, it will fall out of space. Towards Earth’s orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. This can be done for bigger satellites, spacecrafts and space stations in low orbit, the solution is for operators to plan for the final destination on Earth to make sure any debris that remains falls in a remote area.

Most likely, this remote area is a place in the Pacific Ocean farthest away from human civilization. It also has a nickname – the Spacecraft Cemetery.

A graveyard in space

The second option that scientists and engineers have is to send satellites in higher orbits even farther away from Earth. This is because it takes a lot of fuel to slow down a satellite enough to fall back into the atmosphere, fuel that these satellites do not have. Hence, with whatever little fuel remains, the satellite is blasted farther into space, never making its way back to Earth.

These satellites are sent into an orbit almost 300km away from the farthest active satellites in space. This place is called the ‘Graveyard orbit’ and is located about 36,000km above Earth.

Some of these satellites will remain in orbit for a long, long time, eventually becoming a part of space debris.

 

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News about the wildfires in San Francisco, U.S. dominated headlines in the first weeks of September 2020. The fires were raging, and the damage that went along with it was huge. And then, one morning, residents of the famed San Francisco Bay Area woke up to skies that were orange and red.

Not apocalypse

While those on social media quickly snapped pictures and captioned them in many ways, U.S.’ National Weather Service (NWS) and NASA tried to reassure people that apocalypse hadn’t arrived. And how did they do this? By explaining the science behind the phenomenon of course.

It was pretty clear to almost everyone that the skies’ strange hues were the result of the wildfire. What wasn’t well-known, however, was how exactly this was happening.

NWS went about their explanation by tweeting a picture of a satellite image that showed a thick layer of smoke above California. This smoke was filtering the energy coming from the sun. as a result, the temperatures were much cooler and the dark and dreary skies were the product of the skies shifting towards the red end of the spectrum.

Smoke blocks shorter wavelengths

NASA helped by going into more detail. They added that smoke particles block sunlight’s shorter wavelength colours – yellow, blue and green. They do, however, allow the longer wavelengths to pass through. As red and orange have longer wavelengths, they pass through the smoke and the skies therefore appear in these colours.

 

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Launched on September 27, 2003, the lunar probe named SMART-1 was the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first mission to the moon. Apart from investigating the moon and studying its surface composition, the spacecraft was used to demonstrate techniques pertaining to navigation and mission control. A.S. Ganesh takes a look at the mission and its success

We might have over 200 natural satellites in the solar system, but our own moon is rather special to us. And it has to be, for it is the only one our Earth has. Naturally then, it has been studied extensively – probably only next to the Earth itself among celestial bodies.

While the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the second half of the 20th Century probably saw the most funds being spent in a single window towards moon missions, it wasn’t the be all and end all. There have been several missions since then, and there will be many more as well, that will have our moon as its target. Its position – both in terms of importance and in terms of space – make it an ideal destination for testing out new technologies as well.

Missions of all scales

The ESA prides itself in having a science programme that encompasses missions of all scales and sizes. The SMART – short for Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology – programme was envisioned to cater to small relatively low-cast missions. One such mission that looked to test solar-electric propulsion and other deep space technologies was launched on September 27, 2003. Its destination, as you might have rightly guessed, was the moon.

With a French-built Hall effect thruster derived from a Russian ion propulsion system, SMART-1 was European in almost every sense, even before it became the first European spacecraft to enter orbit around the moon. The thruster, which used a xenon propellant, generated just enough thrust – comparable to the weight of a postcard. Solar arrays powered the engine which generated the power needed for the ion engines.

Slowly expanding orbit

Following its launch, it was put in a geostationary transfer orbit. From here, SMART-1 used its electric propulsion system for a hugely efficient mission profile. Spinning slowly, the spacecraft moved onto higher and higher elliptical orbits. With mission controllers in Darmstadt, Germany forcing calculated, repeated burns of the ion engine, the spacecraft’s spiral orbit expanded step by step.

When SMART-1 was around 2,00,000 km out from Earth, the influence of the moon's gravity started increasing. By November 2004, the spacecraft had reached a point where the moon’s gravitational force was dominant.

Closer views, better data

The ion engines were still fired gradually, even after SMART-1 attained a polar orbit around the moon. This allowed the spacecraft to now decrease the orbit and hence achieve significantly better and closer views of the lunar surface.

During its time orbiting the moon, SMART-1 improved on data returned from various previous missions to the moon. It studied lunar topography, learnt more about the moon’s surface texture and also mapped the minerals’ surface distribution.

Mission extended

Even though the mission was designed to end in August 2005, it was extended further with new plans for a lunar impact in 2006. Having exhausted the propellant, the spacecraft’s ion engine was fired one last time in September 2005, after which it was in a natural orbit based on the gravitational effects of the moon, Earth and sun, with occasional altitude control. SMART-1’s ion engine had fired for over 4,900 hours, a record at that time for an engine of this type.

As per the revised plan, the spacecraft crashed onto the moon’s surface on September 3, 2006. Earth-based telescopes observed the impact, which produced a dust cloud. The near three-year existence of SMART-1 not only confirmed technical competence, but also provided valuable scientific insights about our moon.

 

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In 2002, civil society organisation across the world came together and decided to observe September 28 as International Right to Know Day as a way of increasing public awareness of their fundamental human right to information. In 2019, the day was recognised at the 74th UN General Assembly. The Asembly proclaimed that September 28 be observed as the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI).

Today, more than 115 countries, including India, have the Right to Information Law.

The RTI Act 2005 is among the most successful laws in India. It empowers ordinary citizens of the democracy to secure access to information that are under the control of public authority and helps keep a check on the elected government.

What is the Right to Information Act, 2005?

The Right to Information Act was passed in 2005 to empower citizens to demand information from a public authority regarding the government and its functioning. The objective of the historic legislation was to ensure transparency and accountability in the governance of the country.

What can citizens do with this right?

Any citizen can approach any public information officer to provide him or her with certain details of a government department or its operations. For instance, you may seek information about how many government schools are there in your town and how many teachers are working there. You may also ask about how many COVID patients are currently being treated in hospitals in India or which company is manufacturing and installing ventilation in government hospitals. The Act mandates the officer in charge to give you these details.

Why is the Act hailed as people-empowering?

The Act enables citizens to hold the government responsible for its shortcomings, if any. Many RTI activists use information collected to expose the government. Did you know the RTI Act helped expose a number of scams including the Adarsh Housing Society Scam and the Commonwealth Games Scam? Every day, about 5000 RTI applications are filed. The RTI Act has been hailed as an iconic, people-empowering legislation because it has been used persistently to ask questions across the spectrum – from the village ration shop to the Rafale fighter aircraft deal.

The RTI is a constant challenge to the misuse of power. Our Constitution makes the freedom of speech and expression a fundamental right of every citizen. This includes the right to acquire information and to disseminate it. Hence, the RTI Act is a vehicle to facilitate the implementation of the fundamental right.

How should one file an RTI application?

The first step to filing an RTI application would be to identify the department from which information has to be obtained. The next step is to write your RTI application in the prescribed format. But this format isn’t mandatory and you can submit your application on a plain paper as well. The application can be in English or any of the Indian languages. Online applications are also accepted. The application form costs just 10, but other charges may be applicable (in case one needs a photocopy of a document, etc). One should send the RTI application via speed post/registered post to the public information officer and wait for the response. Besides, one need not cite the reason for seeking information. If one doesn’t get a reply from the department concerned within 30 days of sending the application, he or she can approach the Central Information Commission (CIC) to lodge a complaint.

What is CIC?

The CIC, short for the Central Information Commission, is responsible for the implementation of the provisions of the Act. It consists of one Chief Information Commissioner, who heads the Commission and not more than 10 Information Commissioners. The CIC is empowered to receive and inquire into complaints from any person regarding access to information under the control of public authorities.

What are the departments that do not come under the ambit of the RTI?

Certain intelligence and security organisations are exempted from disclosing information. They include the Intelligence Bureau, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Central Economic Intelligence Bureau, Directorate of Enforcement, Ministry of Finance, Aviation Research Centre, Special Frontier Force and the Border Security Force, among other departments.

 

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The nearest exoplanet discovered so far orbits the star Proxima Centauri, located 4.2 light-years from our planet.

Proxima Centauri is only 4.2 light-years away. This is still tens of thousands of years by rocket travel, but only a hop, skip and a jump away in cosmic terms. If there were a star closer than Proxima, we would have found it by now. Without any closer stars, astronomers don’t expect to find any closer planets.

There is always the chance of a rogue planet existing closer than Proxima. Rogue planets are those that escaped their star systems and now travel the galaxy solo. But while astronomers think rogue planets are reasonably common, it’s unlikely one would lurk quite that close.

The research team studied Proxima b using the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations, or ESPRESSO for short.  ESPRESSO is a Swiss spectrograph that is currently mounted on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile. Spectrographs observe objects and split the light coming from those objects into the wavelengths that make it up so that researchers can study the object in closer detail. 

 

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The Kepler space telescope is a retired space telescope launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched on March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. 

Kepler discovered 2,682 exoplanets during its tenure and there are more than 2,900 candidate planets awaiting confirmation — history suggests most of those are the real deal. The mission continued well beyond its scheduled end date, although problems with pointing in 2013 forced mission managers to create a K2 mission in which Kepler swings its view to different spots of the sky.

In the early years of exoplanet hunting, astronomers were best able to find huge gas giants — Jupiter's size and larger — that were lurking close to their parent star. The addition of Kepler (as well as more sophisticated planet-hunting from the ground) means that more "super-Earths" have been found, or planets that are just slightly larger than Earth but have a rocky surface. Kepler's finds also allow astronomers to begin grouping exoplanets into types, which helps with understanding their origins.

Kepler's major achievement was discovering the sheer variety of planetary systems that are out there. Planet systems can exist in compact arrangements within the confines of the equivalent of Mercury's orbit. They can even orbit around two stars, much like Tatooine in the Star Wars universe. And in an exciting find for those seeking life beyond Earth, the telescope revealed that small, rocky planets similar to Earth are more common than larger gas giants such as Jupiter.

 

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On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930- ) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.

At the time, the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments, and Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedy's bold proposal. In 1966, after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission, testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination. 

Then, on January 27, 1967, tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. Three astronauts were killed in the fire.

 

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April 12 was already a huge day in space history twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. On that day in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.

In 1955, Gagarin was accepted to the First Chkalovsky Higher Air Force Pilots School in Orenburg. He initially began training on the Yak-18 already familiar to him and later graduated to training on the MiG-15 in February 1956. Gagarin twice struggled to land the two-seater trainer aircraft, and risked dismissal from pilot training. However, the commander of the regiment decided to give him another chance at landing. Gagarin's flight instructor gave him a cushion to sit on, which improved his view from the cockpit, and he landed successfully. Having completed his evaluation in a trainer aircraft, Gagarin began flying solo in 1957.

On 5 November 1957, Gagarin was commissioned a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces having accumulated 166 hours and 47 minutes of flight time. He graduated from flight school the next day and was posted to the Luostari Air Base close to the Norwegian border in Murmansk Oblast for a two-year assignment with the Northern Fleet. On 7 July 1959, he was rated Military Pilot 3rd Class. After expressing interest in space exploration following the launch of Luna 3 on 6 October 1959, his recommendation to the Soviet space programme was endorsed and forward by Lieutenant Colonel Babushkin. By this point, he had accumulated 265 hours of flight time. Gagarin was promoted to the rank of senior lieutenant on 6 November 1959, three weeks after he was interviewed by a medical commission for qualification to the space programme.

 

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In astrophysics, spaghettification (sometimes referred to as the noodle effect) is the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong non-homogeneous gravitational field; it is caused by extreme tidal forces. In the most extreme cases, near black holes, the stretching is so powerful that no object can withstand it, no matter how strong its components. Within a small region the horizontal compression balances the vertical stretching so that small objects being spaghettified experience no net change in volume.

The way it works has to do with how gravity behaves over distance. Right now, your feet are closer to the centre of Earth and are therefore more strongly attracted than your head. Under extreme gravity, say, near a black hole, that difference in attraction will actually start working against you.

As your feet begin to get stretched by gravity's pull, they will become increasingly more attracted as they inch closer to the centre of the black hole. The closer they get, the faster they move. But the top half of your body is farther away and so is not moving toward the centre as fast. The result: spaghettification!

 

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The ‘event horizon’ is the boundary defining the region of space around a black hole from which nothing (not even light) can escape. In other words, the escape velocity for an object within the event horizon exceeds the speed of light. The name arises since it is impossible to observe any event taking place inside it – it is a horizon beyond which we cannot see. 

When an item gets near an event horizon, a witness would see the item's image redden and dim as gravity distorted light coming from that item. At the event horizon, this image would effectively fade to invisibility.

Within the event horizon, one would find the black hole's singularity, where previous research suggests all of the object's mass has collapsed to an infinitely dense extent. This means the fabric of space and time around the singularity has also curved to an infinite degree, so the laws of physics as we currently know them break down. 

The strength of a black hole's gravitational pull depends on the distance from it — the closer you are, the more powerful the tug. But the effects of this gravity on a visitor would differ depending on the black hole's mass. If you fell toward a relatively small black hole a few times the mass of the sun, for example, you would get pulled apart and stretched out in a process known as spaghettification, dying well before you reached the event horizon. 

 

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Astronomers have defined a new class of celestial objects called "ploonets," which are orphaned moons that have escaped the bonds of their planetary parents.

Although there has yet to be a definitive detection of a ploonet orbiting a star, there are at least a few examples that might fit the bill. The evidence for these potential ploonets comes from perplexing exoplanetary observations that have yet to be adequately explained.

For instance, the researchers of the new paper describe how "moon-star collisions could explain the anomalous spectroscopic features of the stars Kronos and Krios (HD 240430 and HD 240429), which show deep traces of heavy elements." This is because ploonets are likely made up of largely volatile material — which are light elements and compounds like hydrogen and water that rapidly evaporate — and because ploonets are located so close to their host stars, which exposes them to very strong stellar radiation.

According to the authors, this means that over millions of years, a ploonet will lose a significant chunk of its lighter elements, leaving behind a rather heavy-metal ploonet. If these metal-rich ploonets are then absorbed into their host star, they can produce observational signals that suggest the star instead devoured rocky planets, as may be the case with Kronos.

 

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A subsatellite is a natural or artificial satellite that orbits a natural satellite, i.e. a "moon of a moon".

It is inferred from the empirical study of natural satellites in the Solar System that subsatellites may be elements of planetary systems. In the Solar System, the giant planets have large collections of natural satellites. The majority of detected exoplanets are giant planets; at least one, Kepler-1625b, may have a very large exomoon, named Kepler-1625b I. Nonetheless, no "moon of a moon" or subsatellite is known in the Solar System or beyond. In most cases, the tidal effects of the planet would make such a system unstable.

Terms used in scientific literature for moons of moons include "submoons" and "moon-moons". Other terms that have been suggested include moonitos, moonettes, and moooons.

 

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Hayabusa 2 is a Japanese mission launched in December 2014 on a six-year mission to study the asteroid Ryugu and to collect samples to bring to Earth for analysis.

Hayabusa 2 was launched in December 3, 2014. The mission includes a main spacecraft, small rovers, a lander, and an impactor that will be launched into the asteroid’s surface to create an artificial crater. The spacecraft is expected to touch down on Ryugu multiple times starting in early 2019 to collect samples to bring to Earth in late 2020.

After launch, the spacecraft completed an initial checkout period by March 2, 2015 and then moved into its “cruising phase” toward asteroid Ryugu.

Less than a year later, on December 3, 2015, Hayabusa 2 carried out an Earth flyby at a range of 1,920 miles (3,090 kilometers) over Hawaii to increase the spacecraft’s velocity.

The spacecraft performed the first major firing of its ion engines between March 22 and May 5, 2016. It conducted a shorter (3.5 hour) firing on May 20, 2016 to adjust its trajectory.

Hayabusa 2 arrived at asteroid Ryugu in June 2018.

 

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