Science and Tech Current Affairs (2013- Till date )

• Japan on 12 March 2013 announced that it became the first country to extract the natural gas from frozen methane hydrate successfully off the central coast.

• Researchers discovered that the distance to our nearest neighbouring galaxy, Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was 163000 light years away or 49.97 kiloparsecs.

• India ranked third on list of countries which distribute spam all over the world, after US and China, as per the new report of SophosLabs.

• Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, which is the state-owned centre of India, announced that it was developing the largest magnet of the world weighing 50000 tons.

• The Surrey Space Centre (SSC) of the University of Surrey on 26 February 2013 announced that STRaND-1 was launched successfully into space from India.

• Six foreign micro and mini spacecrafts and SARAL were launched successfully by PSLV-C20 rocket on 25 February 2013 from Sriharikota.

• UK scientists discovered a set of hydrothermal vents, the deepest anywhere in the world while exploring the ocean floor in the Caribbean islands.

• Researchers in the third week of February 2013 detected water traces within one of the oldest lunar rocks which were obtained through Apollo missions on Moon.

• Astronomers discovered that the cosmic rays originates as the aftermath of the Star Explosion, about a hundred years after Victor Hess discovered these rays.

• NASA scientists discovered the youngest black hole in Milky Way in Feb 2013. This youngest black hole is 1000 years old and 26000 light years away from Earth.

• Astronomers in the third week of February 2013 discovered six speeding stars which were racing through the space at a speed of 3.2 million kilometres per hour.

• A new NASA study found on 12 February 2013 that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater during the Past Decade

• NASA on 9 February 2013 announced that its Mars rover Curiosity drilled into Mars’ surface. The drilling took place first time on 8 February 2013.

• First bionic man of the world called Rex was unveiled on 7 February 2013 at London's Science Museum.

• The Japanese scientists from the Saitama University in the first week of February 2013 filmed for the first time, the thoughts of a fish.

• Scientists at the Berkeley Lab in first week of Feb 2013 created the first of its kind genome-wide digital atlas of gene enhancers that are found in the brain.

• Scientists from NASA in the last week of January 2013 discovered an old star called TW Hydrae, which they believe could create new planets even now.

• NASA on 1 February 2013 marks 10th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia that perished into the atmosphere of the Earth upon its re-entry.

• Iran on 28 January 2013 announced that it had successfully sent into space a monkey. The first country to launch the primate into space was US in 1948.

• The space telescope of NASA called High-Resolution Coronal Imager discovered astonishing magnetic braids of super-hot matter in outer atmosphere of the Sun.

• Scientists brought into use genetic storage device to download 154 sonnets of Shakespeare on the strands of synthetic DNA.

• A team at Intel created a device which is said to allow Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist of the world to communicate faster than before.

• The scientists in the fourth week of January 2013 discovered that just a simple blood test could be used for predicting the risk of arthritis.

• The European Space Agency released surprising pictures of the remains of huge river which ran across the Red Planet, Mars, on 17 January 2013.

• Swinburne University of Technology astronomers revealed that black holes, which sit in between various galaxies were growing at much faster pace than expected.

• Scientists at the JNU’s School of Biotechnology claimed in the third week of January 2013 that they found the SCO2 gene which can restrict tumours.

• Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security firm on 14 January 2013 revealed that India is among various nations which are hit by the cyber spying campaign.

• Researchers from the University of Georgia revealed in the 3rd week of Jan 2013 that they were creating technology which helps identify the plants in pain.

• Researchers at the University of California, in the third week of Jan 2013 developed a fresh technique that enables surgeons to find out the reach of tumours.

• Astronomers from University of Central Lancashire have discovered largest known structure in the Universe called as a Large Quasar Group (LQG) in January 2013