Category Science

What important events happened in space in 2022?

Space and Science: From the spectacular images dispatched by the James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’S ambitious missions to explore the moon to the breakthrough in malaria vaccine and the invention of the half-a-millimetre-wide remote controlled, walking robot, the year 2022 witnessed plenty of wow moments in Space and Science.

1. HD 1

In April 2022, we discovered the most distant galaxy to date. Christened HD 1, this galaxy is some 13.5 billion light-years away. To explain why the galaxy was unusually bright in ultraviolet light, the astronomers propose that either HD1 might be forming stars at a very high rate or may be home to a supermassive black hole. HD 1 could also be home to the Population III stars, the very first stars of the Universe. The discovery of HD 1 also breaks the record of the GN-Z11 galaxy that was discovered in 2017, lying some 13.4 billion light-years away.

The distant early galaxy HD1, object in red, is shown at the centre of this undated zoom-in handout image.

2. China’s space milestones

In 2022, China took a firm foothold in space with significant additions to its own space station called “Tiangong”. The space station will assist future Chinese missions and also help carry out scientific research and enable the stay of astronauts for longer periods in space. In July 2022, it launched its laboratory module called “Wentian”. The final piece “Mengtian”, also a laboratory module, was launched and docked, thereby completing the basic construction of its space station. It may be recalled that China began construction of its space station with the “Tianhe” module, the main living quarters for astronauts in 2021. Seen here is the Long March 5B rocket, carrying China’s Mengtian science module, the final module of Tiangong space station, lifting off.

3. James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful space telescope (launched in December 2021), has been dispatching stellar images of the universe since July 2022, propelling astronomical research in new directions. It has captured the farthest and oldest galaxies seen to date; offered a detailed image of the famous Pillars of Creation; presented the clearest view of Neptune’s rings, and captured the geographical phenomenon on Jupiter’s surface. It also gave us the first evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet – all this from its orbit around the second Lagrange point, a million miles away from Earth. Seen here is the detailed image of the Pillars of Creation shared by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

4. DART mission

In a first-of-its-kind mission, NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully in September 2022. The mission aimed at deflecting asteroids was a step towards preparing the world for a potential future asteroid strike like the one which killed the dinosaurs millions of years ago. The first test DART mission targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body about 160 metres in diameter. NASA confirmed the mission altered the asteroid’s motion in space. The one-way trip proved how a spacecraft could intentionally collide with an asteroid in order to deflect it – a planetary defence against near-Earth objects. The last image to contain a complete view of asteroid Didymos (top left) and its moonlet, Dimorphos, about 2.5 minutes before the impact of NASA’S DART spacecraft.

5. Women in space

The year 2022 was a milestone year for women astronauts. Nicole Mann became the first native American woman to go to space. She was the commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission that blasted off in the Dragon Endurance spacecraft built by SpaceX in October 2022. Jessica Watkins became the first Black woman on a long-duration ISS mission. Nora Al Matrooshi became the first woman astronaut from the UAE. She trained at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston. She is the Arab world’s first woman astronaut and has joined the second batch of the UAE Astronaut Program, training with NASA for future space missions.

6. Artemis

Half a century after astronauts walked on the moon, NASA is a few steps away from putting humankind back on the Moon. The Artemis 1 mission, launched on November 16, was an uncrewed mission designed to test the viability of the Space Launch System, NASA’s next-generation rocket ship, and the Orion Space Capsule scheduled to enter lunar orbit and return to Earth after about 25 days. Artemis 1 demonstrated the capabilities of both SLS and Orion. Its success has cleared the path for Artemis II and III in 2024 and 2025, when astronauts will embark on lunar-flyby-return-to-earth test missions. Seen here is the Orion Capsule, launched on the Artemis rocket, getting drawn into the well deck of the USS Portland during recovery operations.

7. ISRO’s major milestones

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the country’s space agency, hit many milestones in 2022. The agency launched India’s first privately developed rocket “Vikram-suborbital (VKS)” in November 2022. It also test-fired the Astronaut Safety System for India’s ambitious Gaganyaan mission- the country’s manned mission to space. The year 2022’s last PSLV mission blasted off with one ocean research satellite and eight nanosatellites by Indian start-ups and Bhutan. The 200th consecutive launch of the multipurpose sounding rocket RH200 was also held. The agency successfully launched 36 Gen-1 satellites via the LVM3 launch vehicle as part of its commercial mission for the U.K.-based communications company OneWeb. Seen here is ISRO’s first privately developed Indian rocket Vikram-S being launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

8. Human Cell Atlas

In May 2022, about 2.300 researchers from 83 countries came up with a compilation called the Human Cell Atlas. The task involved mapping the positions of over a million cells across 33 different organs in the healthy human body. The aim of this international collaborative consortium is to help understand biology and diseases better. Cutting-edge single cell and spatial genomics and computational techniques were used. The compilation is seen as a major step towards analysing how illnesses can be diagnosed and treated. It is expected to eventually transform our understanding of the 37.2 trillion cells in the human body.

9. Monkeypox

In May 2022, another global health concern arose, when the viral disease Monkeypox was detected in the U.K Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease that has symptoms similar to those in smallpox patients. Come July and 90 percent of the cases were centered mainly around Europe. The World Health Organisation declared the monkeypox outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Over the months, with testing, surveillance, and vaccination, cases declined. JYNNEOS, a two-dose vaccine that was developed to protect against both mpox and smallpox was used during the outbreak. Monkeypox was renamed Mpox by the WHO. Seen here is a magnifying glass focusing on a vesicle rash created by monkeypox disease.

10. World’s smallest remote-controlled, walking robot

In May 2022, a team of engineers at the Northwestern University in the U.S. demonstrated the world’s smallest walking robots. They measured just half-a-millimeter wide. The crab-shaped remote-controlled invention is a milestone in the field of robotics because they are capable of performing practical tasks in tight spaces. The micro robot, scientists say, could repair small machines and even offer help in performing surgical tasks such as clearing clogged arteries or eliminating cancerous tumours. They are still in developmental stage and were primarily created for academic purpose. Nevertheless, the technology used to create them has potential for scaling.

11. Earth’s shortest day on record

On June 29 2022, we had the shortest day ever to be recorded since the 1960s. The Earth completed its rotation in 1.59 milliseconds less than its routine 24  hours. Scientists recorded this using atomic clocks. In recent years, Earth has been spinning faster and taking less time to complete its rotation. A study in 2016 found that in the previous 2,740 years, Earth’s rotation slowed by about six hours. This truncation of day length is attributed to climate effects. The speed depends on factors such as gravity, changes in winds, ancient ice sheets, dynamics of the planet’s core, and so on.

12.  Paper coating that behaves like plastic

Plastic is problematic. So, a team of researchers from the University of Japan developed a coating for the paper that makes it behave like plastic in July 2022. The coating, “Choetsu”, is claimed to be a cheap and safe mixture of chemicals. It makes the paper rigid, waterproof, bacteria-repelling, and durable. The initial target is to test its efficacy in food packaging. With the technology, paper is given some of the properties of plastic and is touted to degrade safely. The process involves dipping the paper structure into the coating mixture and drying it. The coating is low-cost and biodegradable.

13. Malaria vaccine breakthrough

In a major boost to the global fight against Malaria, one of the leading causes of child mortality, a new vaccine against the disease has been found to be highly effective. The scientists at the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute who created the vaccine R21/ Matrix M published their trial results in September 2022. It is also the first malaria vaccine to meet and exceed the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) vaccine target of 75% efficacy against the deadly disease. The vaccine has been found to be 77% effective in early-stage trials. Malaria kills more than 4,00,000 people each year. Seen here is a feeding female Anopheles funestus mosquito, a known vector for malaria.

14. Zombie virus

A 48,500-year-old zombie virus that was trapped under a frozen lake in Russia emerged in November 2022. The zombie virus, which was revived by scientists, emerged as a result of global warming. According to the French scientists who published the study, the thawing of the permafrost a permanently frozen layer on or under – Earth’s surface-led to the release of the virus which was trapped and frozen for up to a million years. Scientists maintained that the zombie viruses are a health threat and that further studies need to be undertaken on the risk posed by ancient viral particles.

15. Nobel Prize for Science and Medicine 2022

Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger were awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics in December 2022. Their work established the quantum property of entanglement. The trio worked independently and were awarded for their experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell’s inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”. Meanwhile, geneticist Svante Paabo was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The award was “for his research in the field of genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”. Instituted by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prize is presented to honour those from around the world for their remarkable achievements.

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What is Sci-fi?

A member of the Reading Club casually remarked about sci-fi and elaborated, “Science fiction is abbreviated as sci-fi or at times, SF, and this genre yokes the two contradictory disciplines together. As we know, fiction is fictitious and science stands for rationality. But some novelists have succeeded in bringing them together. This popular genre transports readers to a future hinging on the concepts such as time travel, space exploration, aliens, parallel universes, and so on, and, to our amazement, some of them are turning out to be real now.” His explanation aroused our interest in reading and discussing H.G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ in the following meeting.

Four of us participated in a group sharing. Each one focussed on an aspect, and the following are some of our key ideas.

Popularity of sci-fi

Although the origin of science fiction can be traced back to the previous centuries, its golden age is the 1940s and 1950s. These were the decades of significant scientific discoveries, namely space exploration and nuclear energy, which the novelists subsumed in their imagination. As is the case with all genres of fiction, sci-fi too has all the elements such as setting, characters. plot development, theme, climax, and point of view. What makes it unique is all these elements are heavily dependent on scientific facts, theories, and principles hinged on an imaginative story.

Sci-fi movies

Sci-fi movies also have become very popular in the last few decades. It is rare to come across anyone who has not watched or heard of films such as ‘Avatar’, ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘Star Wars’, ‘Alien’, ‘The Matrix’, and so on. They also share the same features as the novels, and, in fact, most of them are based on them.

As many as 23 novels and stories of H.G. Wells alone have been made into films, including The Time Machine. These are immensely popular with moviegoers as they are full of action, adventure, and twists and turns, gripping them.

H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells, the “Father of Science Fiction”, was born in Kent, England, in 1866 and died in 1946. He was the son of domestic helpers, and because of his inexhaustible love for reading, he rose to become one of the most influential British authors. He was a prolific writer, equally known for fiction and non-fiction works, which not many have managed to achieve. He wrote more than 50 novels, dozens of short stories, and many non-fiction, including in the areas of politics, history, and social commentary. But he is more known for his sci-fi novels.

The Time Machine

The novel is about a time traveller who builds a machine and travels to a distant future – the year 8,02,700 A.D., and narrates his experiences at ‘the world of the remote future’ to a group of his friends. It is worth sharing the traveller’s initial encounter with the people/creatures living there:

“He (Eloi) was a slight creature-perhaps four feet high… they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozens of them about like nine-pins… one of them asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children…”

“A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain.”

The time traveller elaborately describes the two races of humanity occupying the landscape-child-like Eloi and monstrous Morlocks. Eloi are small, unintelligent, weak but kind and happy people but Morlocks are the labourers forced to live underground working for the overlanders. The traveller has varied experiences with them and finally manages to locate his stolen machine and escapes from the dark world. What initially appears like a utopia turns out to be a dystopia to him.

 The story ends with an unnamed narrator informing us about another trip of the time traveller to reach the end of Earth’s existence and bring back proof of his adventure. But three years have elapsed, and the narrator If wonders whether the traveller is still wandering in time or has perished.

‘The Time Machine’, Wells’ first novel, brought him immediate fame, and till today, has been regarded as a masterpiece of science fiction.

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The Sunni Dam and the promise of green energy

The hydro electric project in Himachal Pradesh is expected to generate 1,382 million units of green energy annually and help reduce CO2 emissions significantly.

The government has approved Rs 2,614.51 crore for the Sunni Dam Hydro Electric Project in Himachal Pradesh. Where is the dam coming up and what is its significance? Let’s find out…

Over River Sutlej

The 382 MW Sunni Dam Hydro Electric Project will come up over the river Sutlej, covering both Shimla and Mandi districts. It is constructed by state-owned SJVN Limited at an estimated cost of Rs. 2614.51 crore. The project is expected to be completed in five years.

The proposal to build the dam is expected to provide various benefits to local suppliers/enterprises/ MSMEs and encourage entrepreneurship opportunities within the country besides contributing to socio-economic development of the region. The implementation of the project is also expected to generate employment for about 4,000 persons during its peak construction.

Run-of-the-river project

According to the Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVN), a public sector undertaking involved in hydroelectric power generation and transmission, the run-of-the-river project will have a 71-metre-high gravity dam (one constructed from concrete), and six generating units in its surface powerhouse. Typically, a run-of-the-river hydroelectric generation plant will have no water storage or a limited storage. In other words, it’s a facility that channels flowing water from a river through a canal to spin a turbine to enable power generation.

Green energy

The Sunni dam project will generate 1,382 million units of green energy annually and help reduce CO2 emissions equal to 1.1 million tonnes per year. Why is hydropower considered eco-friendly? Amidst intensification of human-induced climate warming, the fact that no fuels are burnt to generate hydropower and no emissions are released into the atmosphere in the process makes it a clean form of energy. The Sunni dam project is scheduled to be commissioned within 63 months of the commencement of construction.

Free power to HP government

On commissioning, 13% of the power generated will be provided free of cost to the Himachal Pradesh government, including 1% for the local area development fund. Usually, large dam constructions involve displacement of people in the respective regions. According to SJVN MD Nand Lal Sharma, each family affected by the project will get 100 units of free electricity per month for 10 years.

The aim of the hydroelectric power project is to fulfil a steady rise in electricity demand in the Northern Region by producing as much energy as possible, with minimum cost and fewer negative impacts on the environment. It is said that this hydro project will play a crucial role in balancing the grid over the intermittent nature of solar and wind power, and will significantly contribute towards the Government’s vision of providing uninterrupted electricity supply to people.

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Why is ice melting rapidly in Greenland?

Climate change experts have been speaking about the dangers posed by melting ice for some time now. A new study has now helped uncover a previously unseen way in which the ice and ocean interact. And the bad news? Based on their findings, the glaciologists suggest that even the climate change community has been vastly underestimating the extent of future sea-level rise that polar ice deterioration would cause.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory conducted a study of Petermann Glacier in north-west Greenland to come up with these findings.

Their results form the subject of a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May.

What is a grounding line?

A glacier’s grounding line corresponds to the place where ice detaches from the land bed and begins floating in the ocean. Based on satellite radar data from three European missions, the team of researchers learned that Petermann Glacier’s grounding line shifts considerably during tidal cycles. This, in effect, allows warm seawater to intrude and melt ice at an accelerated rate.

For ocean-reaching glaciers, the traditional view of grounding lines was that they did not migrate during tidal cycles and did not experience ice melt. This new study replaces that thinking with the newly gained knowledge. Warm ocean water intrudes beneath the ice and the melting rate is highest at the grounding zone.

Between 2016 and 2022, the Petermann Glaciers grounding line has retreated nearly 4 km. A 670-foot-tall cavity in the underside of the glacier was carved out by warm water.

More sensitive to warming The researchers’ paper stresses that the Greenland ice sheet has lost billions of tonnes of ice to the ocean in the last few decades. Most of the loss of ice is caused by warming of subsurface ocean waters, which is a result of our planet’s changing climate.

According to the researchers, the ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming and these dynamics have so far not been included in predictive models. If we were to include them, projections of sea level rise would increase by up to 200% for all glaciers ending in the ocean, which includes most of northern Greenland and all of Antarctica.

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What tool is used for accurate measurement?

Accurate measurements are made with the help of various measuring tools. Let’s look at a few of them today

  • Glucometer

A glucometer or glucose meter is a medical device that is used to determine the concentration of glucose in the blood. The device is available in user-friendly forms like small hand-held devices or paper strips. People with diabetes often keep this device with them at home to regularly monitor their blood glucose/sugar levels.

  • Depth finder

Also called the echo sounder, this device is used on ships to determine the depth of water. The device uses reflected sound from the bottom of the water body to calculate the depth. It sends sound waves from the water surface and detects the reflected wave from the bottom (the echo). From the knowledge of the speed of sound in water and the time taken by the sound for the round trip, the distance travelled can be calculated and thus the depth.

The same device is used to detect underwater objects. Fishermen use it to detect the presence of big fish in the water.

  • Speedometer

A speedometer measures the speed of a moving vehicle and displays the speed for easy reference while the vehicle is in movement. The device displays the current speed in kilometres per hour on the vehicle’s instrument dashboard. These days all cars are factory fitted with common device, but in the early 1900s, it was an expensive option.

  • Sound level meter

This device measures the intensity of noise/sound. The instrument is basically a microphone that picks up sound and converts it into an electrical signal which can be measured by a meter that is calibrated to read the sound level in decibels (a unit to measure sound intensity). If the decibel level of zero is the average threshold of hearing, then 120 decibels represents extremely loud sound that is painful to the human ear. Sound level meters are used frequently in some work places to provide sound information relating to prevention of deafness from excessive noise.

  • Light meter (photography)

This device is used to measure the amount of light that is ideal for use in photography. It is an excellent tool for photographers because it can accurately determine how much exposure is required for a photograph. This information can help the photographer to decide the correct camera shutter speed for the best exposure in certain lighting situations.

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Our connection to other mammals

What makes us humans different from our ape cousins? Well, our brain power. And, that came about through tweaks in the genes, according to an ambitious project, whose results were published recently. Come, let’s find out more about this, and also how we are similar to and different from other mammals.

The Zoonomia Project compared the genomes (the genetic material that makes up a living organism) of 240 mammal species, including humans, to trace evolutionary changes over 100 million years. It studied a wide variety of mammals-from the huge North Pacific right whale (59 feet long) to the tiny bumblebee bat, just 3 cm long. It also included our closest evolutionary relatives – chimpanzees and bonobos. Do you know what startling result the study threw up? “The researchers identified genomic elements- 4,552 in all – that were pretty much the same across all mammals and were identical in at least 235 of the 240 species, including people.” It means that certain parts of genomes have remained unchanged across all mammal species, humans included, over millions of years of evolution.

As for how humans are different from other mammals, the study points to areas “associated with developmental and neurological genes”. It suggests that when Homo sapiens evolved, it involved changes in how the nervous system genes were “regulated”. And these were just tweaks rather than any dramatic and major changes to the genes themselves. This explains why we still share a large part of our genetic makeup with our ape cousins.

And, genes are also responsible for traits unique to some mammals. For instance, hibernation and the sense of smell. While some mammals have a keen sense of smell, others have almost none. Humans are “somewhat average”. The study also saw changes in genetic sequences in some species “in relatively short periods of time”, indicating how they are adapting to their environments.

While the findings are fascinating by themselves. scientists believe they “could inform human therapeutics, critical care and long-distance space flight”, and “also can help identify genetic mutations that lead to disease”.

In a study, researchers identified genomic elements – 4,552 in all-that were pretty much the same across all mammals and were identical in at least 235 of the 240 species, including people. It means that certain parts of genomes have remained unchanged across all mammal species, humans included, over millions of years of evolution.

Picture Credit : Google