Recently a non-nuclear hydrogen bomb has been detonated by china. 

Key Features of the Non-Nuclear Hydrogen Bomb

• Chemical Reaction: It deploys chemical reaction with Magnesium Hydride to create a powerful explosion without nuclear materials. 
  • Hydrogen bomb, on the other hand, is primarily based on the nuclear fusion process. 
• Uses Magnesium Hydride: Unlike Hydrogen bombs that uses radioactive hydrogen isotopes like deuterium or tritium as fuel. 
  • Magnesium Hydride is a silvery powder that acts as a solid-state hydrogen storage material.  
  • When ignited it releases hydrogen that rapidly mixes with air and on reaching explosive limits, the gas ignites creating a self-sustaining combustion cycle. 
• Scale of Damage: Generates only about 40% of Trinitrotoluene’s blast force, but demonstrates greater thermal damage radius with heat output enough to melt materials such as aluminium alloys.
  • It requires minimal ignition energy and has the ability to generate intense, sustained heat without producing radiations. 

Recently, Microsoft CEO highlighted Jevons Paradox in the backdrop of increased adoption of the AI systems globally.

About Jevons Paradox

• It is the idea that technological progress that makes a resource cheaper or more efficient to use often leads to an increase in demand for that resource.
• Background: William Stanley Jevons first described a paradox in 1865 where he maintained that more efficient steam engines would not decrease the use of coal in British factories but would actually increase it.
• In the case of AI, as systems become more powerful and accessible, it is likely that their use will grow significantly.

Google recently launched its 7th-generation TPU, called Ironwood, designed to enhance performance of AI models.

About TPU

• Specialised processor or Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) developed by Google in 2015, specifically optimized for machine learning and AI tasks.
• TPUs are designed to handle tensor operations (Core data structures used in ML models).
  • Tensors are multidimensional arrays that store a specific type of value.
• Advantages of TPUs:
  • Optimized for AI Workloads: Built specifically for machine learning, TPUs outperform CPUs and GPUs in AI tasks
  • Faster Training: TPUs can train complex neural networks in hours.

About Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

• CPU: General-purpose processor to handle various tasks.
  • CPUs can contain two to 16 cores. Ability to multitask is determined by number of cores in hardware.
• GPU: Specialized processor designed to perform multiple tasks concurrently/parallelly   rather than sequentially (like in a CPU).

Mission titled "Fram2" has been launched using Dragon spacecraft of SpaceX. 

• It will carry out a series of experiments, including the first X-ray in space and the cultivation of mushrooms in microgravity.
• It will be the first human spaceflight to cruise directly over Earth's Polar Regions.

About Earth’s Polar Orbit

• A polar orbit is when a satellite orbits Earth by passing over the North and South Poles. 
  • A deviation of 10 degrees over north and south poles is still classified as a polar orbit.
• Height: Polar orbits are a type of low Earth orbit, typically between 200 to 1000 km in altitude.
• Significance: A spacecraft orbiting over the poles can observe the entire planet as it spins underneath. 
  • The path is particularly useful for weather, mapping and spy satellites.
• Issue: Launching rocket into polar orbits requires greater fuel since rockets cannot harness Earth’s rotational speed.

India’s first satellite, Aryabhata, completed 50 years.

About Aryabhata Satellite

• Orbit: Low Earth Orbit.
• Built by ISRO to conduct experiments in X-ray astronomy, aeronomics, and solar physics.
• Named after the ancient Indian mathematician and astronomer.
• Launched in 1975, by Soviet Kosmos-3M rocket from Volgograd Launch Station (present Russia) 
• Made India the 11th country in the world to send a satellite into orbit.

IIT Bombay Scientists Developed a lotus leaf-like solar evaporators for salt-water treatment.

• Developed a new hydrophobic Graphene-based material that can facilitate water desalination, this could be a significant breakthrough to address the fresh water crisis in the world.  

Fresh water crisis

• While 71% of its surface is covered by water, the world population depends on only the 3% available fresh water.
  • Out of which only 0.06% can be easily accessed as the rest comprises the frozen polar ice cap or glaciers, groundwater, and swam.

Desalination Technologies and Processes

BatEchoMon, short for Bat Echolocation Monitoring, is India’s first automated bat monitoring system developed at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru.

About BatEchoMon

• It is an autonomous system capable of detecting and analysing bat calls in real-time.
• It acts as a Bat Detector, a specialised recording device that can convert the ultrasonic echolocation calls of insectivorous bats into audible sounds for humans.
  • It uses Raspberry Pi Microprocessor and convolutional neural network algorithms to detect and identify bat species via echolocation calls.