(Current Affairs) Science & Technology, Defence, Environment | August: 2014

Science & Technology, Defense, Environment

Sun-observing IRIS

  • Nasa’s sun-observing IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) spacecraft has captured its first stunning close-up of a colossal coronal mass ejection(CME) erupting from the sun.
  • The field of view for this imagery is about five times the width of earth and about seven-and-half times its length, a tremendous sheet of solar material can be seen erupting in a latest video released by Nasa.
  • The view is unprecedented for IRIS which was launched in June last year to observe the lowest levels of the sun’s atmosphere with better resolution than ever before.
  • IRIS must commit to pointing at certain areas of the sun at least a day in advance, so catching a CME in the act involves some educated guesses and a little bit of luck.

Kepler-10c

  • Astronomers have discovered the “Godzilla” of all Earths – a new type of rocky planet that weighs 17 times as much as our planet and is more than twice as large in size, a surprising find that could change scientists’ understanding of the origins of the universe.

  • The newly found mega-Earth, Kepler-10c, circles a Sun-like star once every 45 days. It is located about 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco. Theorists believed such a world could not form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant. This planet, though, is all solid and much bigger than previously discovered “super-Earths,” making it a “mega-Earth.”

  • Kepler-10c was originally spotted by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. Kepler-10c was known to have a diameter of about 18,000 miles, 2.3 times as large as Earth. This suggested it fell into a category of planets known as mini-Neptunes, which have thick, gaseous envelopes. The team used the HARPS-North instrument on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) in the Canary Islands to measure the mass of Kepler-10c. They found that it weighed 17 times as much as Earth – far more than expected. This showed that Kepler-10c must have a dense composition of rocks and other solids.

New supercomputer unveiled by IIT-Kanpur

  • One of India’s top educational institutes, the Indian Institute Of Technology at Kanpur (IIT-K) has unveiled a new supercomputer recently.
  • It is the second supercomputer that has been developed by the prestigious institute. The computer has been ranked fifth in the country in terms of performance and 130th in the list of world top 500 supercomputers.
  • According to Srivastava , the machine operate at a peak performance of 307.2 Terra Flops (TF) and a realised performance of about 249 TF.
  • They said the new machine would be used for regular education, research and training purposes.
  • The machine has been launched after extensive research by a seasoned team and the engineers behind the project felt that this is one of the best supercomputers.
  • The project cost Rs 48 crore to the institute.

Renewable power in Germany

  • May 11, 2014 was a red letter day for renewable power in Germany. The biggest clean energy market reached an enviable record of almost 75 per cent renewable market share for several hours that day. Germany faces its own travails over its chosen path.

  • Germany is indeed avoiding blackouts-by opening new coal and gas fired plants. Renewable electricity is proving so unreliable and chaotic that it is starting to undermine the stability of the European grid and provoke international incidents.

  • The spiraling cost of the renewables surge has sparked a backlash, including government proposals to slash subsidies and deployment rates.

  • For all modes of power generation, capacity factor — CF (the amount of electricity, a generator produces in a year divided by the amount it will produce if it ran at full capacity for all 8,760 hrs a year) — is important. Typically during 2012, CFs (per cent) in Germany were, for solar: 11; wind: 17; fossil fuel: 80 and for nuclear: 94.

  • Since India has in place an ambitious renewable energy programme, we must learn from the experiences of other countries particularly Germany; Germany’s tryst with renewable power is often taken as a model.

  • India must promote all modes of power generation including solar and wind. Copious sunshine and abundant wind may lead to over production in the grid. Balancing the grid may be a challenge. Central Government must organise a systematic review of the challenges to arrive at India- centric solutions.

Scientists develop water-based organic battery

  • Scientists have developed a water-based organic battery that is long lasting and built from cheap, eco-friendly components.The new battery - which uses no metals or toxic materials - is intended for use in power plants, where it can make the energy grid more resilient and efficient by creating a large-scale means to store energy for use as needed.

  • “The batteries last for about 5,000 recharge cycles, giving them an estimated 15 year lifespan,” said Sri Narayan, professor of chemistry at the University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the corresponding author of the study.”Lithium ion batteries degrade after around 1,000 cycles, and cost 10 times more to manufacture,” Narayan said.

  • Narayan collaborated with Surya Prakash, professor of chemistry and director of the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, as well as USC’s Bo Yang, Lena Hoober—Burkhardt, and Fang Wang.”Such organic flow batteries will be game-changers for grid electrical energy storage in terms of simplicity, cost, reliability and sustainability,” said Prakash.

  • Solar panels and wind turbines are inherently unreliable which makes it difficult for power companies to rely on them to meet customer demand.With batteries to store surplus energy and then dole it out as needed, that sporadic unreliability could cease to be such an issue, researchers said.

  • “Mega-scale energy storage is a critical problem in the future of the renewable energy, requiring inexpensive and eco—friendly solutions,” Narayan said.The new battery is based on a redox flow design — similar in design to a fuel cell, with two tanks of electroactive materials dissolved in water.

  • The solutions are pumped into a cell containing a membrane between the two fluids with electrodes on either side, releasing energy.The design has the advantage of decoupling power from energy.The tanks of electroactive materials can be made as large as needed — increasing total amount of energy the system can store — or the central cell can be tweaked to release that energy faster or slower, altering the amount of power (energy released over time) that the system can generate.

  • While previous battery designs have used metals or toxic chemicals, Narayan and Prakash wanted to find an organic compound that could be dissolved in water.Such a system would create a minimal impact on the environment, and would likely be cheap, they figured.

  • They found that certain naturally occurring quinones — oxidised organic compounds — fit the bill. Quinones are found in plants, fungi, bacteria, and some animals, and are involved in photosynthesis and cellular respiration.The research was published in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society.

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