Latest news with #Euclid
Indian Express
12 hours ago
- Science
- Indian Express
Daily subject-wise quiz : Science and Technology MCQs on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, impacts of solar flares and more (Week 113)
UPSC Essentials brings to you its initiative of subject-wise quizzes. These quizzes are designed to help you revise some of the most important topics from the static part of the syllabus. Attempt today's subject quiz on Science and Technology to check your progress. 🚨 Click Here to read the UPSC Essentials magazine for May 2025. Share your views and suggestions in the comment box or at With reference to the Quasars, consider the following statements: 1. They are the extremely active and bright cores of some distant galaxies. 2. Quasars are powered by a supermassive black hole. 3. All quasars are not active galactic nucleus (AGNs), but all AGNs are quasars. How many of the statements given above are correct? (a) Only one (b) Only two (c) All three (d) None Explanation — The European Southern Observatory has announced the discovery of an incredibly brilliant quasar, which is not only the brightest of its type but also the most luminous object ever observed in space. — Quasars are the extraordinarily active and brilliant nuclei of some distant galaxies, fuelled by supermassive black holes. Supermassive black holes evolve by consuming materials drawn in by their extremely intense gravity. Hence, statements 1 and 2 are correct. — A quasar is a very active and bright form of active galactic nucleus (AGN). While all quasars are AGNs, not all AGNs are quasars. Hence, statement 3 is not correct. — Quasars are a subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), which are exceptionally bright galactic centres where gas and dust collide with a supermassive black hole to generate electromagnetic radiation across the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Therefore, option (b) is the correct answer. The impact of solar flares can be seen over: 1. Radio communications 2. Electric power grids 3. Navigation signals Select the correct answer using the codes given below: (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 only (c) 2 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 Explanation — A solar flare is a massive explosion on the Sun caused by the rapid release of energy trapped in 'twisted' magnetic fields (often found above sunspots). — In just a few minutes, they heat material to millions of degrees and emit a blast of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to X-rays and gamma rays. — Solar flares are tremendous bursts of energy that can disrupt radio communications, power grids, navigation signals, and even endanger humans in space, satellites, and spacecraft. Therefore, option (d) is the correct answer. Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) and Visible Imager (VIS) are the payloads of: (a) Euclid space telescope (b) Chandrayaan 3 (c) Hubble Space Telescope (d) James Webb Space Telescope Explanation — Astronomers at the European Space Agency (ESA) have hit the jackpot after their telescope, Euclid, obtained high-resolution photos of 26 million galaxies, revealing a vast treasure trove for researching the dark cosmos. — The Euclid Mission is led by ESA, with assistance from scientists from NASA, Japan, and Canada. Euclid is a 1.2-metre telescope designed to map massive spatial structures in our universe, such as galaxies, in order to help reconstruct how the universe expanded and how galaxy formations evolved to look the way they do now. It carries two scientific payloads: a near-infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP) and a visible imager. Therefore, option (a) is the correct answer. Malapert is a: (a) Deep craters near Mercury's poles (b) Impact crater on Mars (c) Shield volcano on Mars (d) A crater in the South Pole region of the Moon Explanation — Texas-based Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander attempted to become the first privately-led mission to soft-land on the Moon. The lunar lander will attempt to land near Malapert (A crater in the South Pole region of the Moon), not far from ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 lander. Therefore, option (d) is the correct answer. Which of the following nuclear power plants has developed the country's first Indigenous Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR)? (a) Kalpakkam Atomic Power Plant (b) Kudankulam Atomic Power Plant (c) Rawatbhata Atomic Power Plant (d) Tarapur Atomic Power Plant Explanation — The crucial second stage of India's three-stage nuclear programme received a boost with the start of 'core loading' at the country's first indigenous Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu. — Core loading is the process of inserting nuclear fuel assemblies into the core of a nuclear reactor. — The completion of core loading will effectively signal the first step towards 'criticality' — the start of a self-sustaining nuclear fission reaction that will eventually lead to power generation by the 500 megawatt electric (MWe) FBR. — India will become the second country, after Russia, to have a commercial working FBR. China has a minor rapid breeder program, but programs in Japan, France, and the United States have been halted because of safety concerns. Therefore, option (a) is the correct answer. Consider the following areas related to Science and Technology: 1. Astrophysics 2. Nanoscience 3. Neuroscience In which of the above mentioned fields are 'The Kavli Prizes' awarded? (a) 1 only (b) 1 and 2 only (c) 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 Explanation — The Kavli Prize is awarded in honour of Norwegian-American businessman and philanthropist Fred Kavli (1927-2013). — 'The Kavli Prizes are awarded in three areas: astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience — the largest, the smallest, and the most complex. I believe these prizes are in the most exciting fields for the twenty-first century and beyond,' Kavli said, while describing the prizes. Therefore, option (d) is the correct answer. With reference to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, consider the following statements: 1. It states certain pairs of physical properties—like position and momentum—cannot both be precisely known at the same time. 2. It is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. Which of the above statements is/are correct: (a) 1 only (b) 2 only (c) Both 1 and 2 (d) Neither 1 nor 2 Explanation — The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, part of the bedrock of quantum mechanics, tells us that certain pairs of properties — such as position and momentum — cannot both be known exactly at the same time. Therefore, option (c) is the correct answer. What is India's first dedicated polarimetry mission launched to study the dynamics of bright astronomical X-ray sources under extreme conditions? (a) XSPECT (b) XPoSat (c) POLIX (d) XPRIZE Explanation — According to ISRO, — 'XPoSat (X-ray Polarimeter Satellite) is India's first dedicated polarimetry mission to study various dynamics of bright astronomical X-ray sources in extreme conditions. The spacecraft will carry two scientific payloads in a low earth orbit.' — The primary payload POLIX (Polarimeter Instrument in X-rays): It will measure the polarimetry parameters (degree and angle of polarization) in medium X-ray energy range of 8-30 keV photons of astronomical origin. — The XSPECT (X-ray Spectroscopy and Timing) payload: It will give spectroscopic information in the energy range of 0.8-15 keV. Therefore, option (c) is the correct answer. Daily Subject-wise quiz — History, Culture, and Social Issues (Week 113) Daily subject-wise quiz — Polity and Governance (Week 113) Daily subject-wise quiz — Science and Technology (Week 112) Daily subject-wise quiz — Economy (Week 112) Daily subject-wise quiz — Environment and Geography (Week 112) Daily subject-wise quiz – International Relations (Week 112) Subscribe to our UPSC newsletter and stay updated with the news cues from the past week. 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Daily Mail
16 hours ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Scientists claim the Big Bang theory is WRONG - as they reveal how the universe really began
For decades, almost every scientist has agreed that the universe began in an enormous explosion known as the Big Bang. But one group of researchers now controversially claims that everything we think about the birth of the cosmos might be wrong. In a radical new research paper, Professor Enrique Gaztanaga, of the University of Portsmouth and his co-authors have proposed a new theory they call the 'Black Hole Universe'. They claim that the universe was formed by a gravitational crunch, forming a massive black hole that then 'bounced' outwards. Professor Gaztanaga claims this theory can explain everything we know about the structure of the universe without the need for any exotic elements such as dark energy. Importantly, the theory also predicts that space should be slightly curved rather than completely flat as the Big Bang model suggests. This is something that current NASA missions such as Euclid may soon be able to confirm, possibly offering a strong hint that the Black Hole Universe theory is correct. However, the Black Hole Universe theory may also have some staggeringly strange consequences for humanity's place in the universe. According to the Big Bang theory, before the universe as we know it came to be, all the matter that currently exists was packed into an infinitely dense point called a 'singularity'. From this point, around 13.8 billion years ago, the universe exploded outwards in an extraordinarily rapid phase of expansion known as cosmic inflation. The shape etched into matter as that initial explosion cooled laid out the patterns that would become stars, galaxies, and even larger structures like galactic superclusters. Since then, as observations from space telescopes like Hubble have shown, the universe has been expanding outwards at a steadily accelerating rate. This so-called 'standard model of cosmology' works well for explaining many big questions such as why galaxies are where they are, but Professor Gaztanaga wasn't satisfied. The problem was that the standard model only works well when scientists make some big assumptions about how the world might work. For example, to explain why the universe is still accelerating scientists have been forced to add mysterious 'dark energy' to the picture - a force that is pushing against gravity but has never been directly observed. So, instead of looking at the expanding universe and trying to work out where it comes from, the researchers looked at what happens when matter collapses in on itself. The Black Hole Universe Theory The Black Hole Universe theory claims that the cosmos did not begin with the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory says the universe exploded outwards from a single, infinitely dense point. The Black Hole Universe suggests that the universe we now see started after a cloud of matter collapsed into a black hole. At a certain point that black hole couldn't compress any more and started to bounce outwards. Our entire universe is inside this black hole, which is nested inside a larger host universe. When large stars collapse in on themselves, they form black holes - objects so dense that not even light can escape their gravitational pull. According to the standard view proposed by Stephen Hawking and British physicist Roger Penrose, when this happens gravity squishes matter down into an infinitely dense point. This would mean that singularities, like the one in the Big Bang theory, are a natural and inevitable part of the universe. However, some scientists now think that the rules of quantum physics mean you can't keep squishing matter together forever. According to quantum physics, you can't pin down a quantum particle to a single point and two particles can't occupy the exact same location. This means that black holes must stop collapsing before gravity squishes matter into a single infinitely dense point. Professor Gaztanaga told MailOnline: 'Infinities may appear in mathematics, but they have no physical meaning. Nature doesn't work with infinite masses or infinite precision.' Therefore, when a cloud of matter like the universe collapses under gravity it will squeeze on itself until it forms a black hole before hitting this limit and bouncing back. What forms out of that bounce is a universe which looks remarkably like our own, suggesting this could be a possible way our universe began. Professor Gaztanaga says this Black Hole Universe Theory is better than the Big Bang because it solves some 'major questions the Big Bang model leaves unanswered'. Most importantly, this theory gives a natural explanation for the two phases of the universe's expansion: the rapid phase of cosmic expansion and the later acceleration we are now observing. According to the researchers' mathematical solutions, both of these phases emerge from the physics of the bounce itself rather than from other factors like dark energy. Professor Gaztanaga says: 'Inflation is simply part of the same dynamical process - the collapse and bounce - so it doesn't need to be added as a separate mechanism.' However, this theory has some fairly wild consequences for our understanding of the universe as a whole. According to the Black Hole Universe, the entire observable universe is inside a black hole nested inside a large parent universe which could, itself, be inside another black hole. Professor Gaztanaga says: 'We don't know for sure, but the theory allows for black holes within black holes - a nested, possibly endless structure. 'The key insight is that our universe may not be the beginning of everything. We are not unique, just part of a larger system. 'It's a continuation of the Copernican principle: Earth is not the centre of the cosmos, our galaxy is not the only one, and our universe may not be either.' Critically, the Black Hole Universe theory makes predictions about the shape of the universe that we should soon be able to test. The researchers say that the 'smoking gun' would be that the structure of the universe should be ever so slightly curved. That would mean the angles in a giant cosmic triangle would add up to slightly less than the 180 degrees that they would make on a flat surface. Soon, with space telescopes such as Euclid or the European Space Agency's upcoming Arrakhis mission scientists will be able to see whether this is true, potentially re-writing our understanding of the universe. The Big Bang Theory is a cosmological model, a theory used to describe the beginning and the evolution of our universe. It says that the universe was in a very hot and dense state before it started to expand 13,7 billion years ago. This theory is based on fundamental observations. In 1920, Hubble observed that the distance between galaxies was increasing everywhere in the universe. This means that galaxies had to be closer to each other in the past. In 1964, Wilson and Penzias discovered the cosmic background radiation, which is a like a fossil of radiation emitted during the beginning of the universe, when it was hot and dense. The cosmic background radiation is observable everywhere in the universe. The composition of the universe - that is, the the number of atoms of different elements - is consistent with the Big Bang Theory. So far, this theory is the only one that can explain why we observe an abundance of primordial elements in the universe.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
SpaceX set for Wednesday morning rocket launch from Florida
SpaceX crews on Florida's Space Coast are preparing for a rocket launch Wednesday morning. SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket at 9:30 a.m. from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The launch will be in support of SpaceX's Starlink satellite system. Wednesday's launch comes after SpaceX's 9th test launch Tuesday night of its Starship mega rocket. SpaceX said this launch will be the 19th flight for the rocket's first-stage booster, which previously launched Ax-2, Euclid, Ax-3, CRS-30, SES ASTRA 1P, NG-21, and 12 Starlink missions. After the launch, SpaceX plans to land the first-stage booster again on its 'Just Read the Instructions' drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Channel 9 will monitor the planned rocket launch and provide updates on Eyewitness News. Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
Wall Street Journal
19-05-2025
- Science
- Wall Street Journal
How to Stop Students From Cheating With AI
When I call on college freshmen to demonstrate one of Euclid's geometrical propositions on the classroom blackboard, I'm never sure what to expect. They could excel or fail, but this much is certain: No one is cheating. That's more than can typically be expected in academia these days. Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, the world of higher education has been turned upside down. Most of the pedagogical and assessment tools that have dominated college classrooms since at least the 19th century—and especially those that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic—are no longer effective.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists calculate when the universe will end — it's sooner than expected
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. As the story of our cosmos moves forward, stars will slowly burn out, planets will freeze over, and black holes will devour light itself. Eventually, on timescales so long humanity will never witness them, the universe will fade into darkness. But if you've ever wondered exactly when it all might end, you may find it oddly comforting, or perhaps a bit unsettling, to know that someone has actually done the math. As it turns out, this cosmic finale might arrive sooner than scientists previously thought. Don't worry, though — "sooner" still means a mind-bending 10 to the power of 78 years from now. That is a 1 followed by 78 zeros, which is unimaginably far into the future. However, in cosmic terms, this estimate is a dramatic advancement from the previous prediction of 10 to the power of 1,100 years, made by Falcke and his team in 2023. "The ultimate end of the universe comes much sooner than expected, but fortunately it still takes a very long time," Heino Falcke, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Radboud University in the Netherlands, who led the new study, said in a statement. The team's new calculations focus on predicting when the universe's most enduring celestial objects — the glowing remnants of dead stars such as white dwarfs and neutron stars — will ultimately fade away. This gradual decay is driven by Hawking radiation, a concept proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking in the 1970s. The theory suggests a peculiar process occurs near the event horizon — the point of no return — around black holes. Normally, virtual pairs of particles are constantly created by what are known as quantum fluctuations. These particle pairs pop in and out of existence, rapidly annihilating each other. Near a black hole's event horizon, however, the intense gravitational field prevents such annihilation. Instead, the pair is separated: one particle, one carrying negative energy, falls into the black hole, reducing its mass, while the other escapes into space. Over incredibly long timescales, Hawking's theory suggests this process causes the black hole to slowly evaporate, eventually vanishing. Falcke and his team extended this idea beyond black holes to other compact objects with strong gravitational fields. They found that the "evaporation time" of other objects emitting Hawking radiation depends solely on their densities. This is because unlike black hole evaporation, which is driven by the presence of an event horizon, this more general form of decay is driven by the curvature of spacetime itself. Related Stories: — Is our universe trapped inside a black hole? This James Webb Space Telescope discovery might blow your mind — Euclid 'dark universe' telescope discovers stunning Einstein ring in warped space-time (image) — Astronomers discover dark matter 'bridge' linking colliding galaxies: 'This is the missing piece we've been looking for' The team's new findings, described in a paper published Monday (May 12) in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics on Monday (May 12), offer a new estimate for how long it takes white dwarf stars to dissolve into nothingness. Surprisingly, the team found that neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes decay over the same timescale: about 10 to the power of 67 years. This was unexpected, as black holes have stronger gravitational fields and were thought to evaporate faster. "But black holes have no surface," Michael Wondrak, a postdoctoral researcher of astrophysics at Radboud University and a co-author of the study, said in the statement. "They reabsorb some of their own radiation, which inhibits the process." If even white dwarf stars and black holes eventually dissolve into nothing, what does that say about us? Perhaps it suggests meaning isn't found in permanence, but in the fleeting brilliance of asking questions like these — while the stars are still shining.
