One of Earth's Largest 'Waterfalls' Is in the Ocean-study
Victoria
Falls is said to be the largest waterfall on Earth, and Angel Falls the
highest, but no matter how impressive they might look to us, both these natural
wonders fall far short of the true victors.
The
largest and most powerful waterfalls we know of are actually surrounded by
water, deep beneath the lapping waves. Tucked between Iceland and Scotland, the
Faroe Bank Channel Overflow is one the mightiest of its kind.
This
narrow, super-deep passage connects the Norwegian Sea to the North Atlantic
Ocean via a continuous flow of water so cold and dense, it sinks right to the
bottom.
As
this heavy river crosses one of the deepest parts of the Greenland-Scotland
Ridge, it creates a massive undersea cascade, with water plummeting roughly 840
metres (2,756 feet), right into the Atlantic.
It's
one of the most researched spots in our ocean, monitored closely since 1995,
and yet we've only just discovered the most powerful current that feeds it.
Up
until now, the Faroe Bank Channel overflow was thought to come mainly from a
stream of cold water running along the western side of the channel. And for a
while, at least, that may have been true.
Today,
however, new research suggests most of the Faroe waterfall is actually driven
by a silent, eastern stream, which shoots cold water into the channel via a
deep, jet-like ocean current.
The
neighbouring Denmark strait, tucked between Iceland and Greenland and parallel
to the Faroe channel, is home to the world's largest known waterfall, three
times the height of Angel Falls.
As
its cold waters meet up with the Faroe overflow on the other side of Iceland,
these fast-moving waters create a powerful flow that spills into the deep north
Atlantic.
Together,
these two key arteries play a crucial role in ocean circulation, specifically
contributing to the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).
The
AMOC has two pathways, one that runs deep, carrying cold water from higher
latitudes to the Atlantic, and the other that runs shallow, transporting warm
and saline Atlantic waters to the north.
This
circulation is a major regulator of the global climate system, and yet we still
don't know enough about it.
Gathering
new measurements from moorings and vessels, as well as data from current
monitoring systems, researchers created a high-resolution ocean circulation
model to figure out where most of the water at the Faroe overflow is actually
coming from.
Instead
of turning directly into the Faroe-Shetland Channel, which is the quickest way
to the Faroe overflow, researchers found it appears to trace another more
circuitous path.
GOI claims Successful
implementation of Pradhan MantriGareebKalyan Ann Yojana.
About
81 crore beneficiaries covered under National Food Security Act (NFSA) and
Antyodaya Ann Yojana (AAY) are being provided 5 Kgs of Rice or wheat free of
cost under the PradhanMantri GareebKalyan Ann Yojana scheme.
The
total allocation for the second phase of PMGKAY from July to November 2020 is
over 200 Lakh Metric Tonnes of food grains. The scheme was rolled out on 8th of
this month and till this Monday, over 33 Lakh Metric Tonnes of food grains have
already been handed over to state governments across the country.
The
current allocation in just around 20 days is about 83 per cent of the total
allocation for the month of July.
After
successful implementation of PMGKAY scheme from April to June 2020, the
Government of India extended this scheme for another 5 months from July to
November 2020.
Extensive
and detailed logistical planning has already been done by Food Corporation of
India (FCI) to ensure that food grain stocks reach every part of the country as
per the allocation over these 5 months.
FDI
in defence sector limit raised to 74%; FM announces major ‘Make in India’ push
for defence.
GOI
going to come out with a decision on 74% Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in
defence and a notification is likely in the next few days, according to V.L.
KanthaRao, Additional Secretary, Department of Defence Production.
Separately,
the Defence Ministry said the second draft of the Defence Procurement Procedure
(DPP) 2020, now renamed as the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020, was
put out in public domain on Tuesday for comments from stakeholders and public.
On
the target to indigenise spares and sub-assemblies of imported military
hardware, Mr.Rao said, “We will try and do at least 900 items this year and we
have a target of 5,000 items in five years.” He was speaking at the Lockheed
Martin - Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers suppliers conference.
In
May, the government announced a series of measures to promote domestic defence manufacturing.
These include a negative import list, separate budgetary allocation for
domestic procurements, indigenisation of spares and components and raising the
FDI cap through automatic route from 49% to 74%.
EU
restricts exports to Hongkong post China’s passage of new security law.
The
European Union will restrict exports to Hong Kong of equipment that could be
used for surveillance and repression after Beijing imposed a controversial new
security law, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.
The bloc has expressed deep concerned over the new law, which critics say will severely curb Hong Kong’s longstanding autonomy and relative freedom.
But
the EU has struggled to agree a united response to China, with member states
deeply divided over whether to stand up to Beijing, a hugely important trading
partner or to try to cooperate with it.
France
and Germany proposed the restriction on so-called “dual use” technology at a
meeting of Foreign Ministers earlier this month and it will be formally signed
off on Tuesday.
Along
with the export restriction, the EU will also bring in measures to support the
population of the former British colony by making it easier for them to travel
to Europe through the granting of visas, scholarships and academic exchanges, diplomats
said.
Iran launches military drill at Strait
of Hormuz
Iran’s
paramilitary Revolutionary Guard fired a missile from a helicopter targeting a
replica aircraft carrier in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, state television
reported on Tuesday, an exercise aimed at “threatening” the U.S. amid tensions
between Tehran and Washington.
The
drill, in a waterway through which 20% of all traded oil passes, underlines the
lingering threat of military conflict between Iran and the U.S. after last
summer saw a series of incidents targeting oil tankers in the region. In
January, a U.S. drone strike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad and Tehran
responded by firing ballistic missiles targeting American forces in Iraq.
Iranian
commandos fast-roped down from a helicopter onto the replica in the footage
aired on Tuesday from the exercise called “Great Prophet 14.”
Iranian
troops also fired anti-aircraft batteries at a drone target in the exercise
from a location that state television described as being near the port city of
Bandar Abbas.Troops also fired missiles from trucks on land and fast boats at
sea.
The Guard will use “long-range ballistic missiles with the ability to hit far-reaching aggressor floating targets” during the drill, said Abbas Nilforoushan, the Guard’s deputy commander for operations, according to Guard website sepahnews.com.
Asteroid
2020 ND.
The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently issued a
warning that a huge “Asteroid 2020 ND”
will move past Earth on 24th July.
About Asteroid
2020 ND:
•
It is about 170 metres-long, will be as close as 0.034 Astronomical Unit (AU-
Astronomical Unit is the distance
between the Earth and the Sun and is roughly 150 million km) to the Earth, and is travelling at a speed of 48,000
kilometres per hour.
•
It is a Near-Earth Objects (NEO) and its distance from Earth has placed it in
the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
(PHA) category.
•
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids means that an asteroid has the potential to
make threatening close approaches to the
Earth.
•
All asteroids with a Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID) of 0.05 AU
(which is about 7,480,000 Km) or less and an Absolute Magnitude (H) of 22.0
(about 150 mt in diameter) or less are
considered PHAs.
•
The MOID is a method for calculating the minimum distance between two almost
overlapping elliptical orbits.
•
The absolute magnitude is a measure of the star's luminosity i.e. the total
amount of energy radiated by the star every second.
•
The Blowing up the asteroid before it reaches Earth, or deflecting it off its
Earth-bound course by hitting it with a spacecraft may ward off the threat.
• The measure undertaken so far is the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA), which includes NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera.
•
In 2018, NASA announced that it had started the construction of DART, which is
scheduled to launch in 2021 with an aim to slam into the smaller asteroid of
the Didymos system at around 6 km per second in 2022. Didymos, is a binary
near-Earth asteroid, that could pose the most likely significant threat to
Earth.
•
Hera is scheduled to launch in 2024, and will arrive at the Didymos system in
2027 to measure the impact crater produced by the DART collision and study the
change in the asteroid’s orbital trajectory.
Monitoring
of PHAs is not necessary that Asteroids classified as PHAs will impact the
Earth. It only means there is a possibility of a threat.
•
By monitoring these PHAs and updating their orbits as new observations, it is
possible to predict the close-approach
statistics and thus their Earth-impact threat.
Significance:
•
The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is largely due to their status
as relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process
over 4.6 billion years ago. Therefore, they offer clues about the chemical
mixture from the planets formed.
•
Significantly, among all the reasons that will eventually cause the extinction
of life on Earth, an asteroid hit is widely acknowledged as one of the
likeliest.
Asteroids:
•
It orbits the Sun and are small bodies in the solar system. They are made up of
metals and rocks.
•
They tend to have shorter and elliptical orbits. They do not produce a coma or
tail atmosphere.
• The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars.
Comet:
•
It also orbits the Sun and are relatively small bodies of the solar system.
•
They are made up of ice and hydrocarbons. It have an eccentric orbit.
•
When comets approach the sun, some part of their ice melts and the other
materials vapourise due to the heat of the sun. This results in a glowing halo
that extends outwards through space.
• Therefore, a thin atmospheric tail is formed when close to the Sun.
Hurricane
Hanna
•
The Hurricane Hanna has made landfall the point at which a hurricane reaches
land in Texas with life- threatening storm surge and strong winds. Tropical
cyclones are called hurricanes in the
West Indian islands in the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.
Highlights:
•
It has reached wind speeds of up to 90 mph and is expected to produce heavy
rains across portions of southern Texas and north-eastern Mexico, which will
result in flash flooding and isolated minor to Moderate River flooding.
It
has been categorized as a Category 1 storm on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind
scale (SSHWS). This year, an “above-normal” hurricane season is expected in the
USA.
•
One reason for this is the warmer -than-average sea surface temperatures in the
tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, along with weaker tropical
Atlantic trade winds and an enhanced
west African monsoon.
Hurricane
•
It is a tropical cyclone that occurs in the Atlantic Ocean and the northeastern
Pacific
Ocean.
•
These are formed over the warm ocean waters near the equator. Hurricanes
typically form between 5 to 15 degrees latitude north and south of the equator.
•
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based on a hurricane's
sustained wind speed. This scale estimates potential property damage.
WWF
claims 3 bn animals affected by Australian bushfires.
Nearly 3 billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Tuesday, triple the group’s earlier estimates.
Some
143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million
frogs were impacted by the country’s worst bushfires in decades, the WWF said.
➡When the fires were
still blazing, the WWF estimated the number of affected animals at 1.25
billion. The fires destroyed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres)
across the Australian southeast, equal to about half the area of the United
Kingdom.
“➡This ranks as one of
the worst wildlife disasters in modern history,” said WWF-Australia Chief
Executive Officer Dermot O’Gorman in a statement.
➡The project leader Lily
Van Eeden, from the University of Sydney, said the research was the first
continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires, and “other
nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire
impacts everywhere”.
➡The total number
included animals which were displaced because of destroyed habitats and now
faced lack of food and shelter.
US,
UK accused Russia of testing Anti-Satellite Weapon.
The
test consisted of Russia’s satellite called Cosmos 2543 injecting an object
into orbit operated in abnormally close proximity to a USA government satellite
in low-earth orbit (LEO) before it maneuvered away and over to another Russian
satellite.
•
The test is inconsistent with the intended purpose of the satellite as an
inspector system. It is evidence of Russia’s continuing efforts to develop and
test space-based systems to put
USA’s weapons
and allied space assets at risk.
•
The Russian defence ministry said that Cosmos-2543 is an inspector satellite,
meant to monitor the condition of Russian satellites.
•
The Cosmos-2543 was deployed by another satellite, Cosmos-2542, which was
launched on 25th November 2019 by the Russian military.
•
The Russia held that it is fully committed to obligations on the non-
discriminatory use and study of space with peaceful aims.
•
It has asked the USA and the UK to be professional and refrain from
propagandistic information attacks.
•
Anti-Satellite Capability is the only four countries which are Russia, the USA,
China and India, have demonstrated an anti-satellite capability over the past
decades.
•
India under the Mission Shakti, successfully tested the Anti-Satellite System
(A-SAT) System making it the fourth country to acquire the capability of space
warfare.
•
The A-SAT System is a missile-based system to attack moving satellites and
successfully destroyed a live satellite in the LEO.
•
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has developed the
system completely indigenously.
International
Treaties Regarding Outer Space:
•
UN Outer Space Treaty 1967 prohibits weapons of mass destruction in outer space
and not the ordinary weapons. India ratified it in 1982.
•
UN Transparency and Confidence Building Measures (TCBMs) includes registering
space objects with the UN register, pre-launch notifications etc. India shares
these details with the UN.
•
Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) is an international
governmental forum for the worldwide coordination of activities related to the
issues of man-made and natural debris in space.
•
India has supported the UN resolution on No First Placement of Weapons in Outer
Space.
High
level pollution in Maharashtra's Nag River.
•
The Bombay High Court said that the Nag river has recently become extremely polluted
due to industrialization and urbanization.
•
The Nagpur city derives its name from the Nag river which passes through the
city.
•
The Nag river originates from the Ambazari Lake in west Nagpur.
•
The major tributary is Pili river. The end point is confluence with Kanhan
River.
Union
govt.unable to pay State’s GST dues.
Finance
Secretary told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, at a meeting on
Tuesday that the government is in no position to pay the GST share of States as
per the current revenue sharing formula, sources said.
According
to at least two members who attended the meeting, Finance secretary's comments
were in response to a question on the revenue shortfall due to the pandemic.
The
members then questioned him on how the government could renege on the
commitment to the States. At this, “he pointed out that the GST Act has
provisions to rework the formula for paying compensation to the State
governments if the revenue collection drops below a certain threshold,” one of the
members said on condition of anonymity.
According to Finance Ministry, the Centre had released the final instalment of ₹13,806 crore of GST compensation for the financial year 2019-20.
The
GST Council was scheduled to meet in July to try and work out the formula to
rework the compensation to the States. However, the meeting has not been
convened so far.
The
opposition members meanwhile were up in arms, as the committee which was
meeting for the first time since the nationwide lockdown instead of discussing
the State of Indian economy, took up the topic “Financing the innovation
ecosystem and India’s growth companies”.
CII finds
economic recovery amongst the rural sectors.
There
are early signs of a V-shaped recovery in the economy in the immediate aftermath
of the lockdown, driven mostly by agriculture and rural lending, as well as
positive trends in FMCG, pharma and even construction, says the Confederation
of Indian Industries.
However,
the uncertainty of mini lockdowns and unnecessarily wide containment zones
continue to affect business operations, the industry group said.
Its
dashboard of positive indicators include GST collections, railway freight
traffic, petrol consumption, peak power demand and electronic toll collections,
as well as expectations of a bumper harvest in the wake of a normal monsoon.
Terming
the agriculture sector a “beacon of hope”, CII noted that rural lending by
non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) is at about 80% of the usual levels.
Stressed sectors include aviation, hotels and commercial vehicles, which show
no signs of recovery yet. However, the information technology and health
sectors are likely to hold steady even if they do not show much growth.
Financial
Management Index for Rural Development Programmes.
India's
Minister of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, Agriculture &
Farmers’
Welfare, inaugurated a video conference on “Strengthening of the Risk-Based
Internal Audit of Rural Development Programmes.
➡ During the event, the
Financial Management Index for Rural Development Programmes
was also launched.
➡ The Financial
Management Index for Rural Development Programmes seeks to rank states on
efficient management of financial resources allocated for implementing half a
dozen Rural Development Schemes.
Parameters:
•
Preparation of annual plan, projecting the requirement of funds for the
financial year, the expeditious release of State’s share, timely utilization of
the funds and submission of the Utilization
Certificates etc.
•
Optimum implementation of Public Financial Management System (PFMS) &
Direct Benefit Transfer.
•
Internal Audit.
•
Social Audit.
