The Junior Age

Menu

Tag: Space News

India’s Snow Leopard Population Estimated at 718 in First-Ever Survey

Mitali k

According to a massive five year survey conducted between 2019 and 2023 and the first nationwide scientific count of snow leopards in India, there are 718 snow leopards in India. This survey was conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India along with snow leopard range states, the Nature Conservation Foundation, and World Wildlife Fund.

Subscribe To Children’s Newspaper Click here.

They monitored a vast and remote mountain habitat of 120,000 square kilometres across the trans- Himalayan region, using many cameras. The survey found two-thirds of the cats in Ladakh, with the rest in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

Watch full video on Leopard Facts For Kids

Image :assamtribune

Did You Know?

Snow leopards are listed as “vulnerable” species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

 

Get Know more about Mammal, Buy This Mammals Flashcards.

Japan: The Fifth Country to Land on The Moon

Mitali k

Japan has become the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon – and it may have been the most precise Moon landing ever. The robotic explorer called SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) landed near the Moon’s Shioli crater at the equator on January 20. SLIM successfully released two tiny robotic probes to investigate the Moon’s surface when it landed. The Moon lander has woken up after being shut down for a week because of a power issue. A change in lighting conditions meant that the lander has been able to catch some Sun rays and has recharged enough to make contact with the team on Earth.

Watch Full Video on #IndiaOnMoon : Over the Moon – Chandrayaan -3, India’s Successful Lunar Mission

SLIM sent back a lot of important data during landing. SLIM will search for the Moon’s mantle for a mineral called olivine. They want to compare Moon’s olivine with that found on Earth. The project manager of the mission said that “It may offer new evidence to support the theory that the moon was part of the Earth a long time ago”.

Subscribe To The Junior Age Click here.

Image : liveindia

Did You Know?

The SLIM mission is also called “Moon Sniper” for its use of precision-landing technologies!

Also Read India Scripts Lunar History

Its Official 2023 Was the Hottest Year on Record

Mitali k

According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization, and the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, 2023 was the hottest year on Earth since records began. Record keeping started in 1850 after the Industrial Revolution began. It is also reported that July 2023 was likely the hottest month in the last 120,000 years. The EU’s climate service has said that 2023 was around 1.48ºC warmer than pre-industrial times. Scientists say these record temperatures were driven by human-caused climate change and boosted by the natural El Niño weather event.

This basically means that the Earth is heating up. Throughout the Earth’s history, climate has changed due to natural causes. However, according to the UN’s climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the rapid warming of the Earth in the last hundred years cannot be attributed to natural causes.

Also read 2023 Summer Was The Hottest In 2,000 Years

Even though natural factors like El Niño can raise or reduce temperatures for individual years, they say, the temperatures experienced in 2023 go far beyond simply natural causes.

Watch Full Video On, Everything You Need To Know About Heat Waves

Image : texasmonthly

It is also predicted that 2024 could be even hotter!

What is El Niño?

El Niño is a weather pattern. It is a natural event where warmer surface waters in the East Pacific Ocean release additional heat into the atmosphere. Even though it occurs in the Pacific Ocean, it is so big that it impacts the weather all over the world.

Subscribe To The Junior Age Click here.

The ‘Mini Moon’ Has Disappeared

Mitali k

As previously reported, an asteroid nicknamed as the Earth’s ‘mini moon’ was flying close to the planet for several months. However, it has now disappeared into space. The small 10m wide asteroid, also known as 2024 PT5, was first spotted in August. This asteroid never fully entered the Earth’s orbit, but flew round the Earth in a horse shoe shape.

 

Get Know everything about Space, Buy This All About Space Flash Cards

 

Watch Full Video on #IndiaOnMoon : Over the Moon – Chandrayaan -3, India’s Successful Lunar Mission

usatoday.com

Subscribe To The Junior Age Click here.

Scientists think that this asteroid could even be a part of the Moon that broke off during a collision. According to scientists, it is moved away from the Earth due to the Sun’s strong gravitational pull. The mini moon is expected to make a brief and closer pass in January 2025, before it fully disappears again for a lap around the sun. It is expected to reappear in 2055!

Also Read India Scripts Lunar History

African Elephants Are Disappearing!

Mitali k

African elephants are the largest land animals on Earth. However, they are now facing a severe crisis, as highlighted in a recent comprehensive study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There are two species of African elephants – the Savanna Elephant and the Forest Elephant.

 

Also read, Two Brothers Find Bones Of Prehistoric Elephant

bbc.co.uk

Researchers analysed data from 475 sites across 37 countries, covering a period from 1964 to 2016, and found that:

Savanna Elephants: Populations have dropped by an average of 70% across surveyed sites.

iucn.org

Forest Elephants: Populations have decreased by around 90%, marking a sharper decline than their savanna counterparts.

origin-congo.wwf-sites.org

In total, the two species combined have seen a 77% population reduction across surveyed locations.

These losses are especially pronounced in northern and eastern Africa due to intense poaching and habitat loss. But, there is some good news as well. The study also found that even though some elephant groups have disappeared, some groups have increased in countries like Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia.

Also Watch full video Elephant: The Largest Land Mammal

  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 23
  6. 24
  7. 25
  8. 26
  9. 27
  10. 28
  11. 29