UPSC Quiz – 2020: IAS Daily Current Affairs Quiz Day 106

Solution (b)

The 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP25, is to be the 25th United Nations Climate Change conference. It is planned to be held in Madrid, Spain, from 2 to 13 December 2019 under the presidency of the Chilean government.

Solution (a)

Kut festival or Chavang Kut is one of the most celebrated festivals of Manipur. Celebrated by the tribes of Kuki-Chin-Mizo groups of Manipur, Chavang Kut is a festival which is observed with so much zeal and joyousness. However, during the festival, the people of all communities of Manipur come together to commemorate this amazing fiesta.

Solution (a)

Sukinda Valley has 90% of India’s chromite reserves.

Solution (c)

The multi-unit spectroscopic explorer (MUSE) is an integral field spectrograph installed at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). It operates in the visible wavelength range, and combines a wide field of view with a fine spatial sampling and a large simultaneous spectral range. It is designed to take advantage of the improved spatial resolution provided by adaptive optics.

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a telescope facility operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.

Solution (c)

The Younger Dryas (around 12,900 to 11,700 years BP) was a return to glacial conditions after the Late Glacial Interstadial, which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum started receding around 20,000 BP. It is named after an indicator genus, the alpine-tundra wildflower Dryas octopetala, as its leaves are occasionally abundant in the late glacial, often minerogenic-rich, like the lake sediments of Scandinavian lakes.

This climate event, called the Younger Dryas by scientists, marked the beginning of a decline in ice-age megafauna, such as mammoth and mastodon, eventually leading to extinction of more than 35 genera of animals across North America. Although disputed, some research suggests that Younger Dryas environmental changes led to a population decline among the Native Americans known for their distinctive Clovis spear points.

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis or Clovis comet hypothesis posits that fragments of a large (more than 4 kilometers in diameter), disintegrating asteroid or comet struck North America, South America, Europe, and western Asia about 12,800 years ago. Multiple airbursts/impacts produced the Younger Dryas (YD) boundary layer (YDB), depositing peak concentrations of platinum, high-temperature spherules, meltglass, and nanodiamonds, forming an isochronous datum at more than 50 sites across about 50 million km² of Earth’s surface. Some scientists have proposed that this event triggered extensive biomass burning, a brief impact winter, the Younger Dryas abrupt climate change, contributed to extinctions of late Pleistocene megafauna, and resulted in the end of the Clovis culture.