GIANT METREWAVE RADIO TELESCOPE (GMRT)

• The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope observatory located in Pune has been provided with the prestigious IEEE milestone status.
• This is the 3rd IEEE milestone recognition being offered to India
• The previous two IEEE milestone recognition were awarded to JC Bose in 1895 and CV Raman in 1928.
• JC Bose is regarded as the Father of Wireless Communication.

Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope

• It is an array of 30 radio telescopes operated by National Centre for Radio Astrophysics.
• It is a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research located in Mumbai.
• One of the major objectives of the telescope was to search for highly red shift 21-line radiation.
• These radiations are emitted from the primordial neutral hydrogen clouds.
• The determination of these radiations will help determine the epoch of galaxy formation in the universe.
• In February 2020 the telescope helped in observing the biggest explosion in the history of the Universe called the Ophiuchus Supercluster Explosion.

Ophiuchus Supercluster Explosion

• The extremely powerful eruption occurred in the Ophiuchus supercluster about 390 million light years from the Earth.
• The eruption occurred due to a supermassive black hole.

Ophiuchus Supercluster

• It is one of the nearby Galaxy superclusters of the earth located in the Ophiuchus constellation.
• A supercluster is a group of galaxies. For instance, the milky way is a part of Local Group Galaxy group.

PARAM SIDDHI-AI :

• Param Siddhi is a high-performance computing-artificial intelligence supercomputer established at C-DAC under the National Supercomputing Mission.
• It has secured rank 63 in the TOP 500 most powerful non-distributed computer system list in the world.

Features :

• Param Siddhi was jointly developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Science and Technology.
• The supercomputer has a speed of 5.267 petaflops. It has now got the recognition of non-distributed super computer systems.

What are petaflops?

• It is a unit of computing speed.
• n simple words, FLOP is the number of arithmetic operations a machine can do in a second.

What are non-distributed computer systems?

• In a non-distributed computer system, all the components are in a single location.
• In case of Param Siddhi, all of its components are located in Pune.
• The technology will help in agriculture, healthcare, energy, education space, cybersecurity, weather and AI application.

National Supercomputing Mission

• India is currently implementing the third phase of the National Supercomputing Mission.
• The main aim of the mission is to install 70 supercomputers & the Government has allocated Rs 4,500 crores to the mission.
• The National Supercomputing Mission was announced in 2015.
  • It will support the “Digital India” and “Make in India” initiatives of GoI.
  • Under the mission, the first supercomputer of India was installed in IIT-BHU, Varanasi. It was named “PARAM SHIVAY”.

ISRO’S SHUKRAYAAN:

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has short-listed 20 space-based experiment proposals for its proposed Venus orbiter mission 'Shukrayaan'.

About Shukrayaan: It is a mission to study Venus for more than four years.

Scientific objectives:

• Investigation of the surface processes and shallow subsurface stratigraphy; and solar wind interaction with Venusian Ionosphere, and studying the structure, composition and dynamics of the atmosphere.
• The satellite is planned to be launched onboard the GSLV Mk II rocket.
• The proposed orbit is likely to be a lower apoapsis (farthest point).

Why study Venus?

• Venus is often described as the “twin sister” of the Earth because of the similarities in size, mass, density, bulk composition and gravity.
• It is believed that both planets share a common origin, forming at the same time out of a condensing nebulosity around 4.5 billion years ago.
• Venus is around 30 per cent closer to the Sun as compared to Earth resulting in much higher solar flux.