My Science School

Mars rover’s microphone captures ten seconds of rumbling noise created by dust devil on the Red Planet. It's the same microphone that provided the first sounds of Martian wind in 2021.

What does a dust devil sound like on Mars? A NASA rover by chance had its microphone on when a whirling tower of red dust passed directly overhead, recording the racket.

It's about 10 seconds of not only rumbling gusts of up to 40 kph, but the pinging of hundreds of dust particles against the rover Perseverance. Scientists released the first-of-its-kind audio. It sounds strikingly similar to dust devils on Earth, although quieter since Mars' thin atmosphere makes for more muted sounds and less forceful wind, according to the researchers.

The dust devil came and went over Perseverance quickly last year, thus the short length of the audio, said the University of Toulouse's Naomi Murdoch, lead author of the study appearing in Nature Communications.

At the same time, the navigation camera on the parked rover captured images, while its weather-monitoring instrument collected data.

"It was fully caught red-handed by Persy," said co-author German Martinez of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Photographed for decades at Mars but never heard until now, dust devils are common at the red planet.

This one was in the average range: at least 400 feet (118 metres) tall and 80 feet (25 metres) across, travelling at 16 feet (5 metres) per second.

The microphone picked up 308 dust pings as the dust devil whipped by, said Murdoch, who helped build it.

Given that the rover's SuperCam microphone is turned on for less than three minutes every few days, Murdoch said it was "definitely luck" that the dust devil appeared when it did on Sept. 27, 2021. She estimates there was just a 1-in-200 chance of capturing dust-devil audio. Of the 84 minutes collected in its first year, there's "only one dust devil recording," she wrote in an email from France.

WHAT IS A DUST DEVIL?

• Common across Mars, dust devils are short-lived whirlwinds loaded with dust that form when there is a major difference between ground and air temperatures.
• They are a common feature in the Jezero crater, where the Perseverance rover has been operational since February 2021 - but it had never before managed to record audio of one of them.
• By chance on September 27, 2021, a dust devil 118 metres high and 25 metres wide passed directly over the rover.
• This time, the microphone on the rover's SuperCam managed to catch the muffled, whirring sounds.

Sounds...so far

• The same microphone on Perseverance's mast provided the first sounds from Mars namely the Martian wind soon after the rover landed in February 2021.
• It followed up with audio of the rover driving around and its companion helicopter, little Ingenuity, flying nearby, as well as the crackle of the rover's rock-zapping lasers, the main reason for the microphone.

ROCK SAMPLES

On the prowl for rocks that might contain signs of ancient microbial life, Perseverance has collected 18 samples so far at Jezero Crater, once the scene of a river delta. NASA plans to return these samples to Earth a decade from now. Its helicopter Ingenuity has logged 36 flights, the longest lasting almost three minutes.

CAN ACOUSTIC DATA SOLVE THE MARTIAN MYSTERY?

• These recordings allow scientists to study the Martian wind, atmospheric turbulence and now dust movement as never before.
• The impact of the dust-made "tac tac tac sounds will let researchers count the number of particles to study the whirlwind's structure and behaviour.
• It could also help solve a mystery that has puzzled scientists. On some parts of Mars, whirlwinds pass by sucking up dust, cleaning the solar panels of rovers along the way.
• Understanding why this happens could help scientists build a model to predict where the whirlwinds might strike next.
• It could even shed light on the great dust storms that sweep across the planet, famously depicted in the 2015 science-fiction film "The Martian".

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Also called the "third zone" of the solar system, this large volume of space outside Neptune's orbit is home to thousands of icy, cold objects. This is where Pluto is also present.

In the cold, outermost area of our solar system lies one of the largest structures in our solar system. Also called the "third zone" of the solar system, this "donut-shaped" volume of space is called the Kuiper belt. This is where Pluto is also present.

The region encompasses hundreds of thousands of icy, cold objects and is outside Neptune's orbit.

The region is named so after astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who published a paper speculating objects beyond Pluto. This was also suggested by Astronomer Kenneth Edgeworth in the papers he published and sometimes this belt is called the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. Some researchers also refers to it as the Trans-Neptunian Region.

The icy bodies are called Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOS) or trans-Neptunian objects (TNOS). They are highly diverse in terms of size, shape, and colour. A significant number of KBOS have moons.

So how did the icy objects form? According to scientists, these icy objects are leftovers after the formation of our solar system. The region must have formed after these objects came together to form a planet but Neptune's gravity played spoilsport. The gravity shook up this region and these icy objects couldn't join to form a planet.

The Kuiper Belt volume is being lost nowadays. The amount of material which it carries now is much less when compared to what it contained earlier.

The objects in the belt collide and lead to fragmented, smaller objects. Sometimes the dust gets blown out of the solar system. We take a look at a few of the KBOS.

Haumea

This KBO is known for its strange shape and rotation style. According to NASA, the Haumea resembles a squashed American football. This was a result of the object's collision with another object half the size of it.

Eris

Smaller than Pluto, Eris takes 557 years to orbit the Sun. It has a moon called Dysnomia.

Arrokoth

Lying some billion miles past Pluto is the Arrokoth, a Kuiper Belt Object which means sky in the Native American language. This small snowman-shaped object is believed to hold clues about the origin of life on Earth and also about the planet's formation.

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A mission conceived as one for preventive maintenance turned out to be more urgent after four of the six gyroscopes on board the Hubble space telescope failed.

The Hubble space telescope has changed our understanding of the universe A telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, Hubble still remains operational and continues to be a vital research tool. Following NASA's most recent review of Hubble's operations, it has been announced that NASA would support the observatory through June 2026, with estimates suggesting that it might be able to continue operations until the mid-2030s and even beyond.

Designed to be visited

While the longevity of the telescope is testament to the vision of those who conceived the mission, there's another crucial factor that has made it possible. Hubble was the first telescope that was designed to be visited in space. This meant that astronauts could not only perform repairs and replace parts, but also upgrade its tech with newer instruments. There have been five such missions that have taken place from 1993 to 2009. One such servicing mission in December 1999 turned out to be a life saver for the telescope.

After the first servicing mission in 1993 and the second one in 1997, the third to carry out preventive repairs was scheduled for June 2000. Since Servicing Mission 2 in February 1997, however, three of the six gyroscopes aboard Hubble had failed. With at least three working gyroscopes necessary for Hubble's operation, it prompted the managers to split Servicing Mission 3 (SM3) into two parts, SM3A and SM3B, with the former scheduled for December 1999.

An unexpected failure

 On November 13, 1999, a fourth gyroscope failed unexpectedly. With SM3A planned for the following month, this triggered NASA to place Hubble into safe mode. The safe mode was a sort of protective hibernation that prevented the telescope from making any observation. Hubble was in this state for over a month, waiting for the crew of SM3A to make their way.

With servicing mission veterans Steven Smith and Michael Foale at the helm, the seven-member crew aboard the Discovery Space Shuttle (STS-103) left for space on December 19. Within a couple of days, they manoeuvred close enough to Hubble such that it could be grappled with Discovery's robotic arm.

All six gyroscopes replaced

 The first of the three scheduled spacewalks took place over 8 hours and 15 minutes spanning December 22-23 (Central European Time, CET). Smith, along with fellow crew member John Grunsfeld, managed to replace all six of Hubble's gyroscopes. The entire astronomical community heaved a collective sigh of relief on receiving this news. The duo also replaced kits to prevent Hubble's batteries from overcharging.

While Hubble's main computer was changed in the second spacewalk that spanned 8 hours 10 minutes through December 23-24 (CET), the final spacewalk spanning 8 hours 8 minutes through December 24-25 (CET) saw a faulty transmitter and data tape recorder being replaced. Preliminary tests were then conducted to ensure that all of Hubble's systems, be it old or new, were performing satisfactorily.

Backs away slowly

Minutes into December 26 (CET), the Hubble telescope was released. Discovery then backed away from Hubble slowly. Having successfully performed the major objectives of the mission, the astronauts on board used the time remaining to stow away equipment, apart from making preparations for landing.

After orbiting the Earth 119 times and travelling more than 5 million km, Discovery made its way back. It performed a smooth night-time landing, touching down on the runway at the Kennedy Space Center in the U.S. on December 27. Hubble was successfully back in operation, and has been for over two decades since then.

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Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee, a professor of Geology from IIT- Kharagpur features among the top 100 influential people of 2020 by Time magazine. He is famous worldwide for his research in the field of groundwater exploration.

His team introduced a prediction model based on Artificial Intelligence for detecting arsenic in groundwater in the Gangetic delta. This feat was noted by the Jal Jeevan Mission.

A groundwater-surface water interaction is yet another one of his specializations. This work supplied important data regarding drinking water and food security to the Indian government. Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee has done ample researches on groundwater quantity and scarcity by understanding groundwater storage changes over the Indian subcontinent. This was achieved with advanced computation and Artificial Intelligence techniques.

Another significant role of Dr. Mukherjee is as head of one of South Asia's first Urban Geo-science projects in Varanasi. He has won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2020 in the field of Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences.

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You might have read in the papers some time back that the Taj Mahal was losing its white marble sheen and turning yellowish due to pollution. Dr. Sachchida Nand Tripathi, who holds the Arjun Dev Joneja Faculty Chair of Civil Engineering at IIT-Kanpur, was in the news for this study. His study helped bring about policy changes in Agra city.

This study specified that black carbon and brown carbon from the burning of trash and fuels was the main cause for discolouration. Using a novel method, the team discovered how the specks of dust on the surface reflect light and affect the colour. This study is crucial to develop strategies that address yellowing of the Taj Mahal and improves air quality.

His work in the field of Atmospheric Sciences has addressed the issues of air pollution and climate change. He has also novel approaches for low-cost sensor-based network technology which can monitor air quality in cities and Real Time Source Apportionment (RTSA). RTSA involves finding out the sources of pollution and how much they affect the environment.

Dr. Tripathi is the Coordinator of the National Knowledge Network devised under the National Clean Air Program, and is a member of its Steering Committee and Monitoring Committee. Further, he is a member of the Executive Council, Climate Change Program, Department of Science and Technology.

The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award and the J C Bose National Fellowship are both feathers in his cap. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and National Academy of Sciences of India (NASI). He also worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre as a senior fellow.

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Soumen Basak is an immunologist and virologist at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi. He heads the Systems Immunology laboratory there.

He is known for his studies on NF- kappaB, a molecule that controls the activity of a gene.

Dr. Basak did his M.Sc. and PhD in Biochemistry from Calcutta University. He went on to the University of California, San Diego for post-doctoral studies.

He was awarded the National Bioscience Award for Career Development in 2018 and won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in biological sciences the next year.

Dr. Basak is a fellow of all three Indian Science Academies, namely the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

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Have you ever noticed that all electric appliances generate heat energy? Do we need to waste electrical energy as heat? Kanishka Biswas, who is an associate professor in the New Chemistry Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, and his team have come up with a novel compound called silver copper telluride(Ag Cu te) which converts waste heat into electricity. Usually, 65 per cent of electrical energy is wasted as heat energy. Silver copper telluride can be used in automobile industry and power plants where much of the energy is wasted as heat.

Kanishka Biswas is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), U.K. He has bagged many prestigious awards and prominent among them is the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, which he won for Chemical Sciences in 2021.

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We meet another theoretical physicist who works on string theory. Prof. Ashoke Sen is a distinguished professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. He is also interested in black hole entropy. We have already seen black holes. Now, entropy is the measure of disorder in a system. Dr. Sen applied string theory to black hole entropy. He studied at IIT-Kanpur and got a doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, U.S.A.

He has authored and co-authored many important papers on string field theory. Prof. Sen holds the position of Honorary Fellow in the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar. He is also a Morning- star visiting professor at MIT and a distinguished professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.

Prof. Sen was one of the nine winners of the first Fundamental Physics prize started by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner - each of the winners getting $ 3 million. This is twice the amount of the Nobel prize. He was nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Society, won the Padma Shri and was a recipient of the Bhatnagar Award in 1994.

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Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju is a professor of Chemistry at the University of Hyderabad. He is regarded as one of the founders of Crystal Engineering.

Have you heard of Crystal Engineering? It is designing molecular solids with specific properties. This is done by making use of the interactions between molecules.

Crystal Engineering has developed greatly and Desiraju played a crucial role in this. Now 200 independent research groups in Crystal Engineering exist worldwide.

He has also researched into the non-conventional hydrogen bond, also known as the weak hydrogen bond. These bonds have distinct roles and guide molecular associations. Earlier they were dismissed to be of no significance. Now these bonds are used to understand biomolecules and to create drugs.

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Dr. Anil Bhardwaj has made significant contributions as an astrophysicist. He serves as the Director of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, which is a unit of the Department of Space, of the Government of India.

Dr. Anil Bhardwaj received his M.Sc from Lucknow University and PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi. He joined ISRO as a scientist at the Space Physics Laboratory (SPL) of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Trivandrum. He rose to become the Director of SPL.

SPL's research in planetary science was initiated by Dr. Bhardwaj, and he contributed greatly in developing planetary science programs in ISRO. He acted as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the SARA (Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer) experiment on Chandrayaan-1, India's first Lunar mission. The new findings changed our understanding on the interaction of solar wind with the Moon.

He has played a key role in many space missions of ISRO. He got the ISRO Team Achievement Award for Chandrayaan-1. He has also won the most coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (2007) and the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences (2016).

Dr. Bhardwaj was the editor- in-chief of Advances in Geosciences for seven years, and was among the editors of the European journal Planetary and Space Science, the Bulletin of Astronomical Society of India and Current Science, a journal published by Current Science Association and Indian Academy of Sciences.

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Yes. Saket Saurabh did win the said prize in Mathematical Sciences in 2021. He is the Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai and an adjunct faculty at University of Bergen, Norway. He specializes in parameterized complexity, exponential algorithm, graph theory and algorithmic game theory which are different fields of computation.

We've seen what algorithms are. Hard algorithmic problems are dealt with in parameterized complexity. Exponential algorithm is used to sort infinite range. Graph theory deals with the study of graphs. Algorithmic game theory combines algorithmic thinking with theoretical ideas.

Saurabh got BSc (Honours) in Mathematics and MSc in Computer Science from Chennai Mathematical Institute. He did his PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from Indian Institute of Mathematical Science (IMSc) and became a faculty member later.

He had worked as a research assistant at the University of Bergen and also did post-doctoral studies there. He received a European Research Council Grant twice, and is a recipient of the 2020 ACM India Early Career Researcher Award. He was elected as a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2020. He has also co-authored two books- Parameterized Algorithms and Kernelization: Theory of Parameterized Preprocessing.

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Have you heard of India's first super computer, Param 8000? It was developed under the leadership of Vijay P. Bhatkar. This happened in the 80s when the U.S denied us a supercomputer. Param 8000 was the second fastest computer at that time.

Bhatkar has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri and Maharashtra Bhushan. He is the initiator of the electronics revolution in our country, and has authored several books and research papers.

He is the founder executive director of Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and is now developing exascale supercomputing for India. These computers can analyze massive amount of data at unimaginable speed.

Bhatkar has played a key role in forming the Electronics Research and Development Centre (ER&DC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K), the ETH Research Laboratory and International Institute of Information Technology in Pune, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation, and the India International Multiversity.

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Here is a scientist concerned about our body at the molecular level. Prof. M.R.S. Rao is the first scientist in India to initiate research on Chromatin Biology. Chromatin, if you don't already know, is a genetic molecule made up of DNA, RNA and associated proteins. He has also made valuable contributions in studies on cancer, and in research on RNA.

He has over 100 publications and has guided 30 PhD students and many post-doctoral Fellows.

 

He completed BSc and MSC from Bangalore University and PhD from IISc, Bangalore. He did post-doctoral studies at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, U.S., where he also served as an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology. Later he joined IISc, Bangalore and worked as its Chairman.

He was the President of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (UNCASR) for ten years. He is on the editorial board of many learned journals and has recently joined as senior member on the editorial board of The American Journal of Cancer Research.

Professor Rao has been a member/chairman of several national and international committees. The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1988) and the Padma Shri (2010) are among the many prestigious awards won by him.

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T Govindaraju has made significant contributions in the medical field. He is a professor in the Bioorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCAR), Bengaluru. Bioorganic Chemistry uses chemical methods in the study of biological processes.

Prof. Govindaraju is from a remote village in Karnataka. As a school boy, he saw that mentally ill patients were treated cruelly. This image guided him to choose his area of research. He completed his PhD from CSIR-NCL. He then did post-doctoral research in the U.S and Germany. His research was on neuro degenerative diseases and cancer. Neuro degenerative diseases occur when cells in the central nervous system stop working.

You must have also heard about Alzheimer's disease. This occurs when the brain becomes small and the brain cells die. Prof. Govindaraju and his team discovered a new molecule -TGR63 which could be the future drug to treat Alzheimer's. A Delhi based pharma company has obtained the rights to do its trial runs.

Prof. Govindaraju found the similarities between Alzheimer's disease and cancer and this led to the discovery of TGP 18, another molecule-based drug. This could be used to treat lung cancer.

He was a Humboldt research fellow in Germany and a visiting faculty at the University of Paris, France. He is also keen on raising the standards of rural schools and has been a part of outreach initiatives. He is also into bringing awareness about mental illness among school children in Karnataka and other states.

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Dr. Jagadish Shukla was born in a small village, Mirdha, in Uttar Pradesh. The village had no electricity, not even proper roads. The primary school did not have a building, and Jagadish Shukla had his early classes under a large banyan tree! He could not study science in high school because the schools did not include it.

He went to Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and graduated in Physics, Mathematics and Geology. He did MS in Geophysics and then finished his PhD too. Later he got a ScD (Doctor of Science) in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He chose a career in the atmospheric sciences and became a professor at George Mason University in the U.S.

Dr. Shukla’s study areas include the Asian monsoon dynamics, deforestation and desertification. Do you know what is desertification? It is when the soil loses its quality due to weather or human activity.

Dr. Shukla helped establish weather and climate research centres in India. He also established research institutions in Brazil and the U.S. He has been with the World Climate Research Programme since its start and founded the Centre for Ocean- Land-Atmosphere Studies, Virginia, U.S.

He has also established the Gandhi College in his village for educating rural students, especially women, and was awarded Padma Shri in 2012.

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