QUIZ – 2020: INSIGHTS STATIC , 29 April 2021 – Science and Technology

Solution: b)

On the moon there is almost no air and hence no air pressure.

If they did not wear these space suits, the counter pressure exerted by the body of the astronauts would make the blood vessels burst. The astronauts would bleed.

Astronauts must wear spacesuits whenever they leave a spacecraft and are exposed to the environment of space. In space, there is no air to breath and no air pressure. Space is extremely cold and filled with dangerous radiation. Without protection, an astronaut would quickly die in space. Spacesuits are specially designed to protect astronauts from the cold, radiation and low pressure in space. They also provide air to breathe. Wearing a spacesuit allows an astronaut to survive and work in space.

Solution: d)

Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment (AIDA) is a joint research mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) teams.

• It aims to study the viability of diverting an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into its surface.
• The project aims to deflect the orbit of one of the two Didymos asteroids between Earth and Mars, with an observer craft gauging the effect of the impact more effectively than ground-based observers could manage.

Solution: c)

Most of the communication satellites today are placed in a geostationary orbit.

Geostationary satellites in orbits circle the Earth at the same rate as the Earth spins.

• The satellites are located near the equator since at this latitude there is a constant force of gravity from all directions. At other latitudes, the bulge at the centre of the Earth would pull the satellite down.

Solution: a)

While light from distant stars may be blocked out by interstellar dust, gravitational waves will pass through essentially unimpeded. This feature allows G-Waves to carry information about astronomical phenomena never before observed by humans. With this detection we will be able to turn the Universe into our own laboratory.

Not all movements lead to massive or noticeable Gravitational waves.

• Two objects orbiting each other in a planar orbit such as a planet orbiting the Sun or a binary star system or the merging of two black holes will radiate Gravitational waves! But, if the objects are really small and their gravitational pull and the way they bend space-time curve is not significant, they won’t create noticeable gravitational waves. It is extremely hard to track the G-waves of even big events like black hole formation.

Solution: d)

Neutrinos are the information bearers of the universe — which are almost never lost in their path. India’s effort in studying neutrinos at INO may help us unravel the deepest mystery of the universe — why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

• Neutrinos are the least harmful of all elementary particles, as they almost never react with solid bodies.
• Also, people tend to confuse the “neutrino” for the “neutron”. This has also led to the confusion that neutrinos can be weaponised, which is far from the truth. They are not used to trigger fission reactions, but are instead produced as a result of the reactions.
• Neutrinos have mass and as shown recently, they change their masses too.
  • The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral.