Deepak kumar Blogs

  Zealandia was discovered in 2017, but the actual discovery started in 1642 by a Dutch sailor, Abel Tasman. © Provided by Deepak kumar blogs T he planet Earth has more hidden gems than we know, as we see another continent in the list, Zealandia. As per reports, scientists took 375 years to discover this eighth continent called Zealandia because of its location. However, it’s a matter of debate among the geologists as to whether Zealandia is a continent or another lost island. As per the official data, we have seven continents: Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and  Antarctica . These land masses have passed the criteria for being a continent. These are – firstly, continents should have defined boundaries; the area must be more than 1 million sq km; there must be a clear distinction between land and ocean; and lastly, continental thrust is greater than oceanic thrust. Let’s learn some facts about the newly-discovered continent Zealandia: Zeala...

  New way to identify liquid water on exoplanets could help search for habitable ones © Provided by Deepak kumar blogs S cientists have developed a new method to identify habitable planets and potentially inhabited planets by comparing the amount of carbon dioxide in their atmosphere to neighbouring planets. The study shows that if a planet has reduced amounts of carbon dioxide in atmosphere when compared to neighbouring planets, that planet could have liquid water on its surface. That is because this drop in carbon dioxide implies that some of it is being dissolved into an ocean or maybe even captured by a planet-scakle biomass. Finding out water on exoplanets is an important step towards discovering potentially habitable distant worlds, which is crucial in the search for extraterrestrial life. When scientists say a planet or other celestial body is habitable, they mean that it is capable of hosting and retaining liquid water on its surface. Some planets like Venus are too cl...

  Representational image. AP File B y 2050, humanity must durably remove four times as much CO2 from the air as today to cap global warming below the crucial target of two degrees Celsius, researchers said Tuesday. But massively expanding CO2-absorbing forests -– 99 percent of current carbon removal -– could claim land needed to grow food and biofuels, while it remains highly uncertain whether new technologies for sucking CO2 from the atmosphere can be scaled quickly enough, they warned in a major report. Looking at varying emissions-reduction scenarios, between seven and nine billion tonnes of CO2 must be captured from the atmosphere by 2050, according to the second edition of the University of Oxford's report on the subject. The first edition of The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal had reported that two billion tonnes were being removed mainly through reforestation, compared with the 40 billion tonnes emitted worldwide in 2023. "Alongside rapidly reducing emissions", whi...

The world energy order is being reshaped. The target is to reduce the share of fossil fuels in global consumption from around 80 per cent to just above 60 per cent by 2050. The discovery of fire by Prometheus was an unleashing of power, even if not literally. The cigar goes to Thomas Edison for inventing the light bulb, but it was Humphry Davy who invented the first electric light in 1802. He wired up an electric battery to piece of carbon, and hey presto! it glowed with light. Electricity has travelled far since then, and is one of the big enchiladas of the energy world, powering global technology, alongside coal, ethanol, geothermal hydropower, municipal solid waste, petroleum, solar thermal, wind and wood. The world energy order is being reshaped. The World Nuclear Association report Net Zero by 2050, released in May 2021 envisages a global energy blueprint with zero emissions by mid-century. The output of nuclear energy is to nearly double between 2020 and 2050. The energy target i...