Daily Prelims Notes 18 September 2024

September 18, 2024
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

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Daily Prelims Notes

18 September 2024

Table Of Contents

1. Azerbaijan says ‘God-given’ oil and gas will help it go green

Sub: IR

Sec: Places in news

Context:

Azerbaijan will host COP29 climate conference 2024.
Place: Absheron peninsula near Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

About Azerbaijan:

Landlocked country, bounded on the north by Russia, on the east by the Caspian Sea, on the south by Iran, on the west by Armenia, on the northwest by Georgia, and on the west by Turkey (via the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan).
Azerbaijan is known as “The Land of Fire” due to its natural gas deposits.
- The “burning mountain”– Yanardag in Azerbaijani– is fed by underground gas rising to the surface and ignited upon contact with oxygen.
The country has a rich history of oil and gas production, shaping its culture, politics, and economy.
Fueled by petrodollars, Azerbaijan bolstered its military capabilities against its long-standing rival, Armenia. Last year, Baku successfully reclaimed the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia.
Baku’s Transformation:
- The capital city, Baku, transformed from a small fishing village to a modern metropolis.
- Oil wealth funded infrastructure and international events (Eurovision, Euro 2020, Formula 1).

Oil and gas production in Azerbaijan:

Azerbaijan was one of the first places for commercial oil production in the mid-19th century.
It claims the world’s first industrial onshore and offshore oil wells.
Economic Impact:
- Since 1991, Azerbaijan has produced 1.05 billion tonnes of oil.
- Oil and gas revenues contribute to about 35% of GDP and nearly half of the state budget.
- Total oil revenues since 1991: up to $200 billion.
- Current Production and Exports
- Natural gas production expected to increase from 37 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 49 bcm in the next decade.
- 75% of energy exports go to European markets.
- Azerbaijan is becoming crucial for Europe’s energy security.
Challenges:
- Oil reserves expected to last 20 years, natural gas reserves 50 years.
- The government is working to diversify the economy (technology, agriculture, tourism).
Environmental Concerns:
- Planned expansion could lead to emissions of 781 million tonnes of CO2 annually.
- This has prompted criticism from environmental groups ahead of COP29.
Green Initiatives:
- Azerbaijan aims to increase renewable energy capacity to 30% by 2030.
- Goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2050.
- Plans to transform Nagorno-Karabakh into a “green energy zone”.

Source: TH

2. What is a telescope? How good are modern telescopes?

Sub: Sci

Sec: Space sector

Context:

The modern telescope allows us to explore the universe, acting like a powerful tool that reveals the wonders of space. It gives us a better understanding of our place in the cosmos.

Types of Telescopes

Celestial objects emit light in all directions, but only the light traveling towards Earth reaches us, and by the time it arrives, the rays are nearly parallel. To concentrate these rays and create an image, we can use one of two types of telescopes:

Reflecting Telescopes: These use a concave mirror to focus light onto a point. The image produced is real, inverted, and smaller. Most modern telescopes are reflecting telescopes. Larger ones use parabolic mirrors to avoid image blurring from multiple focal points. In these telescopes, the primary mirror reflects light onto a secondary mirror, which then directs the light to an eyepiece for viewing.
Refracting Telescopes: These use lenses to bend light and create an image directly. However, refracting telescopes need very large lenses to observe fainter objects, which can distort the image under their own weight. The largest practical refracting telescope, located at Yerkes Observatory in the U.S., has a 02-meter lens.

Main Purpose of Telescopes:

Contrary to popular belief, telescopes aren’t primarily used to make objects look larger.
Their main purpose is to enhance the brightness of celestial objects by collecting more light.
For example, the human eye’s pupil has an aperture of around 153.9 square millimeters, while even a small 0.07-meter reflecting telescope has 118.5 times more light-gathering area. This allows the telescope to detect much fainter objects than the human eye.
- The opening size that regulates how much light may pass through an optical device is called the aperture.
- In the below image: Various apertures for a Nikon AF Nikkor lens with focal length 50 mm. Changing the aperture by one stop changes the aperture area by a factor of two, i.e. the area at f/1.4 is twice as big as the area at f/2.0. Each step is specified by the diameter of the aperture as a fraction of the focal length. At f/1.4 the aperture has a diameter of 50 mm/1.4 = 35.7 mm.

Features of Telescopes:

Brightness and Apparent Magnitude: The brightness of an object is measured by its apparent magnitude on a logarithmic scale. The lower the magnitude, the brighter the object. For example, the Sun has a magnitude of -26.78, while Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, has a magnitude of -1.46. Telescopes allow us to see fainter objects with much higher magnitudes.
- The Andromeda Galaxy, which has trillions of stars and an apparent magnitude of +3.44, is the furthest object we can see with our eyes.
Resolution: A telescope’s resolution determines how much detail it can reveal. The human eye has a resolving power of 60 arcseconds, while even a basic toy telescope can have a resolution of around 1.47 arcseconds, revealing much more detail.

Why Are Telescopes Set Up on Mountains?

The Earth’s atmosphere can interfere with telescopes by causing stars to twinkle due to air turbulence. To reduce this effect, telescopes are often placed on mountains where the air is more stable.
Space telescopes, like the Hubble, avoid atmospheric interference entirely and have significantly better resolution.
New Technologies:
- In recent years, scientists have developed technologies to correct for atmospheric distortions using lasers to create artificial stars and mirrors that adjust to eliminate image distortions. This approach, called tomography, provides clearer images.
Limits of Telescopes:
- Larger mirrors are needed to observe deeper into the universe, but there is a practical limit to their size due to weight. To solve this, modern telescopes use segmented mirrors to maintain stability without sagging.
Advanced Telescopes:
- The largest current telescope is the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona, with two 8.4-meter-wide mirrors.
- Even larger telescopes, like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Chile, are under construction.
- The ELT will have a combined aperture of 39.3 meters and will be capable of resolving incredible details from vast distances.
- Telescopes also capture faint objects by increasing exposure time. For example, the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii recently captured an object 100 million times fainter than what the human eye can detect using 10 hours of exposure.

The five-mirror optical system of the under-construction Extremely Large Telescope

Source: TH

3. Rain harvesting work reveals megalithic burial site

Sub: History

Sec: Ancient History

Context:

A rainwater harvesting project in Koduvayur, Kerala unearthed a large number megalithic of urn burials.
The site is on the Kundlikkad hill, also known as Malampalla or Malappuram hills in the Kollengode range of the Nenmara forest division.

Key Findings:

The burials may go back to more than 2,500 years.
In most hill sites, we see cairn heaps with cists and cairn circles and stone circles containing cists and dolmens. But on this hill, an unusually large number of classic urn burials were found.
Archaeologists suggest that discovery could throw significant insight into links between Mesolithic and iron age periods in Kerala.

Megalithic culture:

The term “Megalith” is derived from the Greek words “mega” (large) and “lithos” (stone), meaning large stone structures, often associated with burials.
While megalith is often used to describe a single piece of stone, it also can be used to denote one or more rocks hewn in a definite shape for special purposes.
Megalithic culture refers to a period characterized by the use of large stones for monuments and burial practices.

Timeline:

Megaliths in India are dated before 3000 BC, with recent findings dated back to 5000 BC in southern India.
Coincides with the Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent.

Geographical Spread:

Found extensively in peninsular India, especially in states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh.
They are also found in the upper Indus valley and central India.

Types of Megaliths:

Menhirs: Single standing stones, often for commemorative or religious purposes.
Dolmens: A table-like structure formed by placing a large flat stone on top of upright stones, used as burial sites.
Cairns: Stone heaps or piles used to mark graves.
Stone Circles: Circular arrangements of stones around burial sites.
Capstone style: Single megaliths placed horizontally, often over burial chambers, without the use of support stones.
Cist: A small stone-built coffin-like box or ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead.

4. Climate fund chief targets vulnerable countries

Sub: Env

Sec: Int conventions

Context:

Green Climate Fund (GCF) chief Mafalda Duarte is on a mission to help vulnerable nations that have not yet received any assistance from the fund.

Green Climate Fund (GCF):

The Green Climate Fund is a fund established at COP 16 in 2010, within the framework of the UNFCCC dedicated to helping developing countries adapt to and mitigate climate change.
It is a United Nations’ flagship organisation for channelling climate funding for developing countries worst hit by climate impacts.
Money disbursed helps nations to draw down their greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to storms, droughts and heatwaves made worse by climate change, and deal with sea level rise.
GCF headquarters is located in Songdo, South Korea.
TheGreen Climate Fund’s (GCF) aim is to expand collective human action to respond to climate change. The Fund aims to mobilize funding at scale to invest in low-emission and climate-resilient development on our home planet.
It is designed as an operating entity of the Convention’s financial mechanism and is headquartered in the Republic of Korea. It is governed by a 24 Board member Board, representing countries, and receives guidance from the Conference of the Parties to the Convention (COP).
It allocates its resources to low-emission and climate-resilient projects and programmes in developing countries.
The Fund pays particular attention to the needs of societies that are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in particular Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and African States

Issues with the fund:

GCF has failed in effectively targeting its funds towards the most vulnerable countries.
Some of the countries that are worst affected by climate change have not received any funding till now.
The fund, which began giving out grants a decade ago, has identified 19 climate-vulnerable nations that have received no or very limited funding.

GCF’s Priority list:

The GCF’s priority target list includes Algeria, the Central African Republic, Chad, Iraq, Lebanon, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea and South Sudan.
Also on the list is war-torn Somalia, hit by major floods last year and still reeling from its worst drought in decades.
The GCF has pledged to invest more than $100 million over the next year to help Somalia unlock investments and develop climate projects.

5. Can India export weapons to Israel?

Sub: IR

Sec: Int org

Context: A Bench of the filed by former civil servants, academics, and activists. The petition, in Ashok Kumar Sharma and Others vs Union of India, had of existing licences and the withholding of further licences by the government to public sector and private companies, for exporting military equipment to Israel during the ongoing war.

Background of the petition:

The challenge was in view of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in January, ordering provisional measures against Israel, for violations in the Gaza strip, of obligations under the Genocide Convention.
The provisional measures included an immediate halt to all killings and destruction being perpetrated by Israel.
In light of this judgment, United Nations experts warned against the transfer of weapons to Israel which may “constitute serious violation of human rights…and risk State complicity in international crimes”.
In July, the ICJ rendered a detailed opinion declaring that the sustained abuse by Israel renders “Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful”. The ICJ observed that “all States are under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence”.

What is Genocide Convention?

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) is an instrument of international law that codified for the first time the crime of genocide.
The Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly of the UN on 9 December 1948.
It signified the international community’s commitment to ‘never again’ after the atrocities committed during the Second World War.
Its adoption marked a crucial step towards the development of international human rights and international criminal law as we know it today.
According to the Genocide Convention, genocide is a crime that can take place both in time of war as well as in time of peace.
The definition of the crime of genocide, as set out in the Convention, has been widely adopted at both national and international levels, including in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Relevant provisions of Genocide Convention pertaining to the case:

India is obligated under the Genocide Convention to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide. Article III of the Convention makes states’ complicity in genocide a punishable offence. The obligation not to supply weapons to states that are possibly guilty of war crimes is an obligation directly based on common Article 1 of the Geneva Convention. The principles in these Conventions are peremptory norms of international law. India, therefore, cannot export any military equipment or weapons to Israel, when there is a serious risk that these weapons might be used to commit war crimes.