UPSC Prelims Facts – 19 July 2024

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84,119 children were rescued by the Railway Protection Force under ‘Operation Nanhe Farishtey’ in the last 7 years.

  • A mission dedicated to rescuing children in need of care and protection across various Indian Railway Zones.

Jerdon’s Courser has not been visually spotted in over a decade.

  • Nocturnal bird found only in the Eastern Ghats.
  • Exclusively endemic to – Andhra Pradesh, within the Sri Lankamalleswara Wildlife Sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh.
  • Protected under – Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats’ (IDWH) scheme.
    • Schedule-I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
    • IUCN Status – Critically Endangered

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations were used to map the weather on a pair of brown dwarf stars.

  • Objects which have a size between that of a giant planet like Jupiter and that of a small star.
  • Do not have enough mass to fuse normal hydrogen like a regular star and thus are not able to sustain nuclear fusion.
  • Often called – ‘Failed Stars’.

Scientists suggest LUCA could have formed just 300 million years after Earth’s formation.

  • A single microbe from which all the 3 branches of life (bacteria, archaea, and eukarya) have originated
  • However, there is no fossil evidence to support the existence of LUCA.
  • Suggested Characteristics –
    • Anaerobic – Grew in an environment devoid of oxygen.
    • Thermophile – Heat loving microbe.
    • Metabolism – Depended upon hydrogen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, turning them into compounds such as ammonia

Researchers have found evidence of an underground cave on the moon that is accessible from the surface.

  • Believed to be the underground passageways formed through volcanic processes that are connected to the pits covering the moon’s surface.
  • Significance of the discovery – New insight into the evolution of the moon and lunar volcanism.
  • Caves could provide shelter for future astronauts from radiation, micrometeorites, and temperature extremes.

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