UPSC Quiz – 2020: IAS Daily Current Affairs Quiz Day 154

Solution (c)

A habitable zone, also called the “Goldilocks zone”, is the area around a star where it is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of surrounding planets.

Obviously, our Earth is in the Sun’s Goldilocks zone. If Earth were where the dwarf planet Pluto is, all its water would freeze; on the other hand, if Earth were where Mercury is, all its water would boil off.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/this-word-means-goldilocks-zone-6206998/

 Solution (c)

NASA reported the discovery of an Earth-size planet, named TOI 700 d, orbiting its star in the “habitable zone”.

TOI-700 d is an exoplanet, likely rocky, orbiting TOI-700, a red dwarf star 101.4 light-years away in the Dorado constellation. The exoplanet is the first Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

TOI 700 d measures 20% larger than Earth. It orbits its star once every 37 days and receives an amount of energy that is equivalent to 86% of the energy that the Sun provides to Earth. The star, TOI 700, is an “M dwarf” located just over 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado, is roughly 40% of our Sun’s mass and size, and has about half its surface temperature.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/this-word-means-goldilocks-zone-6206998/

Solution (a)

As per The Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016, in case of a voting, every decision of the GST Council has to be taken by a majority of not less than three-fourths of the weighted votes of the members present.

The vote of the central government has a weightage of one-third of the total votes cast, and the votes of all the state governments taken together have a weightage of two-thirds of the total votes cast in that meeting.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-voting-at-the-gst-council-6206947/

Solution (d)

Researchers who have developed this new Li-S battery claim it has an “ultra-high capacity” and has better performance and less environmental impact. This means that they may be able to outperform the Li-ion batteries by more than four times.

With Li-ion batteries, some disadvantages include their susceptibility to overheating and their being prone to damage at high voltages. Such batteries also start losing their capacity over time — for instance, a laptop battery in use for a few years does not function as well as a new one.

While the materials used in the Li-S batteries are not different from those in Li-ion batteries, the researchers have reconfigured the design of the sulfur cathodes (a type of electrical conductor through which electrons move) to accommodate higher stress without a drop in overall capacity.

Furthermore, Li-S batteries are generally considered to be the successors of the Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries because of their lower cost of production, energy efficiency and improved safety. Their cost of production is lower because sulfur is abundantly available.

 Solution (c)

Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) was a revolutionary organisation, also known as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, established in 1928 at Feroz Shah Kotla in New Delhi by Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Ramprasad Bismil Yogesh Chatarjee. Previously it was known as the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), whose written constitution and published manifesto titled The Revolutionary were produced as evidence in the Kakori conspiracy case of 1925.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-who-was-ashfaqullah-khan-the-27-year-old-freedom-fighter-hanged-by-the-british-6206893/