TNPSC Current Affairs September 01, 2020

Topic: Historical Diary of Events

Inscription from Renati Chola Era

A rare inscription dating back to the Renati Chola era has been unearthed in a remote village of Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh.

Key facts:

The inscription was found engraved on a dolomite slab and shale, which are part of a fragmentary pillar excavated from a farmer’s field. Dolomite is a sedimentary carbonate rock composed mostly of calcium magnesium carbonate.

Shale or mudstone is a fine-grained sedimentary rock that forms from the compaction of silt and clay-size mineral particles.

The inscription was written in archaic Telugu. It was assigned to the 8th Century AD, when the region was under the rule of Chola Maharaja of Renadu.

Text: The inscription seems to throw light on the record of a gift of six Marttus (a measuring unit) of land to a Brahmin Priest. Some lines are indicative of the priority given to morality in those days.

In July 2020, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) had found the exact location of Renati Cholas’ capital in Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh.

ASI deciphered two inscriptions of Renati Cholas belonging to the 7th century. The first inscription speaks of their capital Erikal in Kamalapuram region in Kadapa, while the other speaks about the battle of Renati Cholas and Banas.

Renati Cholas:

The Telugu Cholas of Renadu (also called as Renati Cholas) ruled over Renadu region, the present day Kadapa district.

The earliest of this family was Nandivarman (500 AD). Renandu Cholas were the feudatories of the Chola dynasty.

These kings claimed that they belonged to Karikala Chola’s dynasty.

They are said to be the first kingdom to use Telugu in administration and inscriptions, instead of Sanskrit.

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Topic: Latest inventions on Science and Technology

African Baobab Tree

A recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports has found that the tree ‘African Baobab’ has 168 chromosomes. Previous studies estimated that the tree has between 96 and 166 chromosomes. The study will be useful in genetic conservation efforts.

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Topic: Profile of States

Onam Festival

Recently, the festival Onam was celebrated across Kerala.

Key facts:

Onam is a major harvest festival in Kerala and is celebrated to honour the home coming of Asura king Mahabali who brought about peace and prosperity in Kerala.

It is one of the three major festivals of Kerala, celebrated during the month of Chingam, the first month in the Malayalam calendar, Kollavarsham. The other two major festivals of the state are Vishu and Thiruvathira.

The 10-day harvest festival begins on Atham (first day of Onam) and concludes on Thiruvonam (last day).

Celebration:

Onam is celebrated by making Pookkalam (the flower rangolis). Other rituals are also performed which includes-Vallam Kali (the boat races), Pulikali (the tiger dances), Kummattikali (mask dances), Onathallu (martial arts), among others. The main attraction is the traditional Onam sadhya (grand feast).

Asur Tribe: Asur is among the 9 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups found in Jharkhand and are Austro-Asiatic in origin.

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Topic: International Events, Records and honours

World’s Largest Solar Tree

CSIR-CMERI has developed the World’s Largest Solar Tree, which is installed at CSIR-CMERI Residential Colony, Durgapur in West Bengal.

Key facts:

The installed capacity of the Solar Tree is above 11.5 kWp. It has the annual capacity to generate 12,000-14,000 units of Clean and Green Power. The Tree has been designed in a manner to ensure maximum exposure of each Solar PV Panel to Sunlight and also creation of the least amount of shadow area beneath.

Significance and potential of solar trees:

These Solar Trees can be aligned with Agriculture for substituting price-volatile fossil fuels. Each Solar Tree has the potential to save 10-12 tons of CO2 emissions being released into the atmosphere as Greenhouse Gases when compared with fossil fuel fired energy generation. Besides, the surplus generated power can be fed into an Energy Grid.

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Topic: International Events

Baltic Nations

It is a geopolitical term, typically used to group the three sovereign states in Northern Europe on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The most important areas of cooperation between the three countries are foreign and security policy, defence, energy and transportation.

All three countries are members of the European Union, NATO, the eurozone and the OECD. All three are classified as high-income economies by the World Bank and maintain a very high Human Development Index.

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Topic: New inventions on Science and Technology

What is a ‘Halo’ that was detected by NASA’s Hubble Telescope?

Recently NASA’s Hubble Telescope for the first time ever signalled the presence of a giant halo of gas found surrounding the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbour – the Andromeda galaxy.

Halo is nothing but a huge scattering of gas which is usually found surrounding the celestial bodies. Also known as M31, the Andromeda galaxy is a majestic spiral of around 1 trillion stars and comparable in size to our Milky Way galaxy.

In 2015, Lehner’s team explored Andromeda’s halo to which they found massive but the recent probe has detailed its fine complexity. Its mass and size have been far more accurately explored this time than before.

A group of astronomers from Yale University in their study found that the scale of Halo stretches 1.3 million light-years away from Andromeda bumping into the gas halo that surrounds our own Milky Way galaxy.

Though, 2.5 million light-years away from our galaxy the Andromeda galaxy is predicted to collide with our Milky Way galaxy in about 4.5 billion years. And the resulting galaxy from the collision has been nicknamed either Milkomeda or Milkdromeda.

This exploration may give us a glimpse of the future, answering questions of its inception. However, currently, such level of exploration can be only done with the Andromeda galaxy and not with other galaxies.