QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 12 September 2018

Solution: b.

The basis for the detection of signs (of what scientists call “biosignatures” in the atmospheres of exoplanets) may lie in James Webb Space Telescope being so sensitive to light that it could pick up so-called “atmospheric chemical disequilibrium”. It may not be a catchy term, but it is an idea with a long heritage, promoted by celebrated scientists James Lovelock and Carl Sagan.

The reasoning is that if all life on Earth disappeared tomorrow, the many gases which make up our atmosphere would undergo natural chemical reactions, and the atmosphere would slowly revert to a different chemical mixture. It is continually held away from this state by organisms on our planet expelling waste gases as they live.

Because of this, searching for signs of oxygen (or its chemical cousin ozone) has long been thought to be a good way of finding life. But this does rest on the assumption that extraterrestrial life runs by the same biological rules as our own. It might not. Therefore, assessing atmospheric chemical disequilibrium – looking for other gases and figuring out how far out of kilter from “normal’ a planet’s atmosphere sits – could be key to finding alien life of any kind.

BBC;

Washington.edu;

Solution: a.

The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST or Webb) will be a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror (about 6 times larger in area than the Hubble Space Telescope). JWST is led by Nasa but is a joint venture with the European and Canadian space agencies.

JWST will be the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

BBC;

NASA: JWST;

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Solution: d.

Kourou is a coastal town in north-central French Guiana. Kourou town assumed some importance after 1970 with the completion nearby of the European Launcher Development Organization’s Equatorial Space Range (subsequently the Guiana Space Centre of the European Space Agency). Available for use by all friendly nations for satellite launchings, it is used for research programs (such as weather studies) and for telecommunications.

Improvisation: BBC;

Britannica;

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Solution: d.

At the moment, wind data comes from multiple but patchy sources, such as weather balloons.

Aeolus will be the first system to gather wind information all across the globe, from the ground up to 30km in altitude. It will do this by firing a powerful ultraviolet laser down into the atmosphere. With the aid of a telescope and a sensitive detector, it will then look for the way the pulsed beam’s light is scattered back off air molecules, water droplets and dust particles.

This should reveal basic details about air movement and numerical weather models will be adjusted to take account of it. Its maps are expected to bring significant improvements in the accuracy of medium-range forecasts – those that look a few days ahead.

BBC;

Solution: b.

A proposal to create a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic Ocean has been defeated at an International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Brazil. Japan and several other pro-whaling countries voted against the proposal, causing it to fall short of the two-thirds majority it needed to pass. The IWC already recognises two whaling sanctuaries – one in the Indian Ocean and the other in the waters of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

BBC;

About IWC;