1. Fabien Cousteau will spend 31 days underwater starting June 1, 2014, in an underwater lab called Aquarius to break his grandfather’s record of 30 days underwater. Name the grandfather, a famous underwater explorer.
2. On May 30, the American private space company SpaceX unveiled the latest iteration of its Dragon capsules: the Dragon V2, its first manned space capsule designed to carry up to seven astronauts at a time. SpaceX has been launching Dragon 1 capsules to and from the International Space Station using its Falcon 9 rockets. Name the company’s charismatic CEO.
3. On May 30, astronomers from USA and France announced that humans’ search for aliens on other planets could be deterred by dust and haze on them. They came to this conclusion after studying _____, one of Saturn’s moons. _____ has so much methane that it clouds out the haze itself, but when astronomers tried to study the planet’s surface, the haze clouded out everything else. Fill in the blank.
4. Around 15,000 years ago, sea levels around the world lose a whopping 6.5 feet (about 2 metres) because of the melting of Antarctica’s glaciers due to natural warming. According to predictions made by a group of American astronomers, when is such an event likely to happen again?
5. The Kavli Prize has been awarded biennially since 2008 to scientists who have made important contributions to the advancement of their field. This year, the winners include Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Alexei Starobinsky, Brenda Milner, John O’Keefe, Marcus Raichle, Thomas Ebbesen, Stefan Hell and John Pendry. Name the Norwegian philanthropist the award is named for.
6. This computer consists of some 100 billion information processing centres supported by 1 million billion electrochemical connections. In the complex where it is housed, it requires fully 20 per cent of all the energy consumed. Name this computer.
7. The agency named SETI, based out of California, was founded in 1984 and had the support of legendary science communicator Carl Sagan. In the week of May 26, one of its senior astronomers, Seth Shostak, proclaimed that the agency will be able to find alien life “within [this] lifetime”. Expand SETI.
8. According to a report published by the American Geophysical Union on May 27, the surface of ____ is better understood than the seafloor under the area where Flight MH370 could have crashed. Fill in the blank.
9. On May 27, a team of scientists from China and Germany announced that an ___ ______ is “more efficient than Google in processing information about their surroundings”. They are talking about a complex system of a social insect — which work in groups of thousands — underground. Fill in the blanks. 10. On a graph paper, you can plot three axes: x (horizontal), y (vertical) and z (projection of depth). This system of representing points on a plane is called the _________ coordinate system. It was popularised by a Dutch mathematician named Frans van Schooten in the middle 17th century. van Schooten’s 354th death anniversary was on May 29, 2014. Fill in the blank with the name of a system named for the French philosopher Rene Descartes.
Answers
1. Your turn to answer!
2. Your turn to answer!
3. Titan
4. In the next century, this time to due humans-driven global warming
5. Fred Kavli
6. The human brain
7. Your turn to answer!
8. Mars
9. Ant colony
10. Cartesian
