CTC BLOG

FP TrendingOct 30, 2020 14:08:30 IST

Earth is part of a solar system where several planets revolve around a star. It is the pull of the Sun that is keeping the worlds in their set orbits in a uniform manner. While such solar systems are in abundance in the Milky Way galaxy, there exist millions of rogue planets in the galaxy who do not have a central star to revolve around and instead they just go about their own way in deep space.

Scientists have found about 4,000 exoplanets and a few rogue planets but a recent finding has left them surprised. Researchers have found a world, which is similar in size to Earth, travelling alone without any family. This could be the smallest rogue world ever detected.

An artist’s impression of a gravitational microlensing event by a free-floating planet. Image Credit: Jan Skowron / Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw

Of the many rogue planets found till now, most are massive in size, often ranging from two to 40 times the mass of Jupiter (it is important to remember here that Jupiter is equivalent to about 300 Earths). So with the discovery of the recent free world, scientists are looking at the possibility of the wide existence of small rogue planets.

Lead study author Przemek Mroz, a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, told Live Science in an email that the odds of “detecting such a low-mass object are extremely low”. So this means that either they “were very lucky, or such objects are very common in the Milky Way”. he goes on to say that they might be “as common as stars.”

Experts use light coming from a star to detect the various exoplanets. So it is very difficult to spot a world without a star. Moreover, for a planet which is in between Earth and Mars in terms of mass, detecting it is way harder. To hunt the world, scientists used “gravitational microlensing,” which involves watching foreground objects pass in front of distant background stars. As part of the project, the team was using a 1.3-meter telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to monitor millions of stars near the Milky Way’s centre on every clear night.

The new study was published online on 29 October in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Instead of addressing genetic mutations, the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year, appeared to wreak genetic havoc in about half the specimens that the researchers examined

Representational image. National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

FP TrendingOct 30, 2020 16:23:48 IST

Now Twitter users in India will be able to use the Topics feature that lets people follow specific subjects of their liking. This way the tweets made on these select topics will appear more on their timeline.

The official Twitter account of the Indian division of the microblogging site has explained how the feature will work in a series of tweets. The post said that when a user chooses to follow a certain Topic, which could be anything under the sky like a boy band or a city, they will be able to see tweets from several accounts on Twitter on their timeline. These accounts can be from fellow fans or experts on the topic.

https://twitter.com/TwitterIndia/status/1321657890105520130?s=20

Users will be allowed to share their interests via Topics. According to the firm, “From a Topic’s page, tapping the new share icon lets you send a link to the Topic in a Tweet, DM, or outside of Twitter”.

https://twitter.com/TwitterIndia/status/1321659461270872065?s=20

As per the tweets, Topics for India are going to be available in English and Hindi. What is more, in the Hindi Topics, users will be able to see tweets in Devanagari script as well as Hindi speech typed in the Roman alphabets.

If anyone chose Books and Poetry as their preferred topic, Twitter is acting as the stage for exclusive poems. Poets who are a part of the group Kavishala on Twitter will be sharing poems on a certain topic on Twitter. Poetry enthusiasts can use the hashtag #ChooseYourFeed co-create exclusive poetry on the platform.

https://twitter.com/TwitterIndia/status/1321750876332019712?s=20

Twitter also organised a live book reading session with Tahira Kashyap Khurrana for those who have followed the Topic Books on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/TwitterIndia/status/1321679727719952384?s=20

Manish Maheshwari, the Managing Director of Twitter India, said (https://www.techradar.com/in/news/twitter-rolls-out-topics-feature-in-india), “Topics will allow people to engage with content they love and find people with like-minded interests, empowering them to choose their feed. The addition of Hindi Topics demonstrates our commitment to diversity of conversations across languages.”

The pandemic is putting America’s air pollution standards to the test as the COVID-19 death toll rises.

The U.S. government sets limits on hazardous air pollutants to try to protect public health, but it can be difficult to determine where to draw the line for what is considered “acceptable risk.” Power plants, factories and other pollution sources release hundreds of million pounds of hazardous pollutants into the air every year.

As the coronavirus spreads, the pattern of deaths suggests there are serious weaknesses in the current public safeguards.

Several studies have explored connections between air pollution and severe cases of the respiratory illnesses. The latest, published on Oct. 26, estimates that about 15% of people who died from COVID-19 worldwide had had long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution.

My research as an environmental health scientist looks closer at individual hazardous air pollutants and shows how higher rates of COVID-19 deaths across the U.S. – particularly in the South – have been associated with higher levels of pollutants, particularly diesel exhaust and acetaldehyde, a compound widely used in industry.

Many of these chemicals are all around us

The delivery boxes piled up in my living room offer a snapshot of how pervasive hazardous air pollutants can be. Toxic gases like acetaldehyde are exhaled by the paper mill that manufactured the boxes in Louisiana, the diesel trucks that delivered them, and even the gas furnace that keeps me warm as I open them. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates acetaldehyde, in part because in 1986 Dutch scientists found that it damages the respiratory system of rodents.

Acetaldehyde is quite common. In addition to being used in industry, it’s found in decaying vegetation, alcohol and cigarette smoke.

I generally don’t think about the toxic emissions resulting from my consumer behavior, but I can’t help but think about health risks now, and how to reduce them.

In the early days of the pandemic, I isolated myself. I dusted off my bicycle. I identified the contaminants in my water system and installed a reverse osmosis filter. To put it bluntly, I was afraid. Overweight men were not faring well against the virus, according to an early study, so I tried to modify my risk.

But what can I do about the air I breathe? I cannot stop the trucks from driving past my house, or the steel mill down the street from releasing emissions from its smokestack.

Studies reveal the health risks

Harvard University and Emory University have investigated the role of particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen oxides in COVID-19 deaths by comparing county death rates to pollution levels and other potential factors. Similar studies have been done in Italy, England and China.

All of these studies found an association between higher death rates from COVID-19 and long-term pollution exposure.

While the causal factors are still unclear, the association may be related to air pollution exposure weakening the respiratory, immune and cardiovascular systems. Exposed populations have greater vulnerability and less resistance to the virus.

My colleagues and I investigated specific hazardous air pollutants, including acetaldehyde, that are elevated in Southern rural areas that have been hit hard by the virus.

In states such as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana, high COVID-19 death rates have been attributed in part to an older population that’s more likely to have chronic illnesses and live in poverty. We controlled for these factors, as well as population health and preventive behaviors, and found that long-term hazardous air pollutant exposure is putting pressure on COVID-19 patients in these areas.

While federal standards suggest that the pollution levels in these areas aren’t harmful, our findings suggest officials need to reevaluate some of those standards.

The problem with thresholds

In 1991, the EPA extrapolated from rodents to humans to set the safety limit for acetaldehyde at 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air – similar in volume to a cup of water in an Olympic-size swimming pool. This standard assumes contaminated air below this level will not lead to any harm, excluding cancer.

But even acceptable exposures to these chemicals may be contributing to COVID-19 mortality rates. There is still a lot that scientists don’t know about the impact of hazardous air pollutants on humans.

There are some reasons we might observe effects below the threshold. First, animal reactions to toxins do not always predict human reactions. Second, hazardous air pollutants do not act alone, and exposure to multiple toxins can have cascading impacts. Third, methods of monitoring and estimating exposures to air toxins are not adequate for characterizing risks to human health, especially for vulnerable populations.

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The Toxics Substance Control Act is responsible for addressing risks from chemicals and limiting use of such substances as PCBs and asbestos. A 2016 amendment increased the government’s authority to review risks for communities living near high-emissions sources. But these risks have yet to take a major role in the assessment process. The government in recent years has also cut funding for the Integrated Risk Information Service, which identifies health hazards.

What to do about it

More research is needed into effective pollution limits to address multiple chemical exposures and their effect on vulnerable populations.

Limits, along with funding for pollution prevention and control technology, could provide incentives for cleaner production practices and cleaner vehicles. These can be important strategies for strengthening the nation’s defenses against this and future respiratory disease pandemics.

An expansive city flourished almost a thousand years ago in the bottomlands of the Mississippi River across the water from where St. Louis, Missouri stands today. It was one of the greatest pre-Columbian cities constructed north of the Aztec city of Tenochititlan, at present-day Mexico City.

The people who lived in this now largely forgotten city were part of a monument-building, corn-farming culture. No one knows what its inhabitants named this place, but today archaeologists call the city Cahokia.

Excavations show it was home to thousands of families. The city held hundreds of earthen mounds that supported council houses, homes for social elites, tombs for powerful leaders and reminders of lunar alignments. In addition, archaeologists have discovered a Woodhenge at Cahokia – a circular celestial observatory made of large wooden posts.

Archaeologists call the pre-Columbian societies that lived in the Mississippi River Valley region “Mississippian cultures.” These people stretched as far west as Oklahoma, north to Wisconsin, south to Mississippi and Louisiana, and east to Florida and North Carolina. Though broadly similar, it’s unlikely these people thought of themselves as a unified political body.

A complex question in American archaeology hinges on how these cultures arose and the ways in which they shared ideas, goods and people.

Did the Cahokians create Mississippian culture as they moved outward from their homeland, bringing their artifacts and ideas with them? Or did Cahokians spread across the Midwest and Southeast, meeting new communities and sharing ideas along the way, eventually helping form Mississippian culture through a kind of melting-pot process? Recently, my colleagues Sarah Baires, Melissa Baltus and Elizabeth Watts Malouchos and I have contributed to new research investigating what it meant to be a Cahokian and Mississippian.

Striking out from Cahokia

Like cities today, Cahokia was a diverse place inhabited by groups of people with different histories, diverging values and varying ideas. So when people left the city, they likely had a variety of reasons.

Early in Cahokia’s history, movements into and out of the city may have been tied to religious gatherings while later migrations out of the city may have been related to political change. While there is some evidence for conflict and potential for drought in the region, archaeologists have no conclusive evidence that those were the ultimate causes for people leaving the city. After all, some people continued to live there.

Whatever their motives, as Cahokian citizens spread out from St. Louis and migrated throughout the woodlands east of the Mississippi River, they carried their culture with them. Sometimes these were unique artifacts, like particular ceramics typical of their region. But they also brought with them specific cultural constructs, like their beliefs in the ordering of the cosmos and relationships between the upper and lower worlds.

Recreating parts of home

During the early days of Cahokia, around 1050, emissaries from the city traveled north to sites in what is now Wisconsin, spurring the local creation of platform mounds and sculpted landscapes similar to those in the Cahokian heartland. These places were religious shrines or outposts that likely inspired the construction of more Cahokian style earthen mounds in the north.

At sites like these, Cahokian citizens embraced new places and new environments, often developing unique relationships with the communities into which they immigrated. We know this through archaeological excavations that found Cahokian-style households, site layouts, pottery and more integrated into these new communities.

It looks like they were remembering their homeland, adopting local practices while keeping their own traditions alive. In modern settings, this phenomenon is often called a diaspora – an enclave of immigrants living among local populations with their own practices and beliefs that hearken back to where they came from.

For instance, at the Carson site in north Mississippi, far downriver from the Cahokian homeland, Cahokian migrants recreated familiar built environments. They constructed long, rectangular and semi-subterrenean houses at Carson that looked like home.

Decades of excavations in north Mississippi suggest that the Cahokians likely observed other people and their above-ground square houses as they migrated southward, but chose to build in ways that evoked homeland – much as how a Hindu temple in Texas still maintains the spires, domes and craftwork of India. It took another one or two hundred years for the square house style to be built at Carson.

Blending lifestyles with those they met

In northeast Florida, Cahokians encountered local communities of St. Johns people, mound builders of sites like Grant, Shields and Mt. Royal. Archaeologists call the tools and architecture of the two groups’ shared history the Mill Cove Complex.

For instance, Cahokians may have sought unique local knowledge about the emergence of the Sun and Moon from the ocean – celestial alignments were important for Cahokians, and this would have been an unobserved phenomenon in the Mississippi River Valley. In exchange, Cahokian emissaries brought with them a kind of rock known as Burlington chert, a familiar resource for making their unique tri-lobed projectile points.

Excavations in the area revealed long-nosed god maskettes made of copper; these artifacts are found at only 20 or so sites across the Southeast and Midwest, all of which have a Cahokian presence. These masks may have been part of a hero narrative that was also depicted in rock art and narrated by Siouxan speaking groups whose traditional lands encompassed much of the Upper Midwest.

Farther north, Cahokians created other new, hybridized styles with local populations.

For example, during Cahokia’s emergence around 1050, nearby villages in the uplands of southern Illinois went through their own social transformation; they adopted some aspects of early Cahokian culture while retaining cultural and architectural features of their own.

This can be seen in artifacts found at the Halliday site, located in southern Illinois approximately 30 kilometers southeast of Cahokia; excavations have found nonlocal pottery types from Indiana and northern Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas, alongside pottery typical of Cahokia. People at Halliday were also eating slightly different foods than at other nearby sites, suggesting they maintained culinary traditions of their remote homelands.

Archaeologists have also found evidence that these upland villages eventually adopted a Cahokian building method that placed a prefabricated wall directly into a trench. But it didn’t happen immediately. They stuck with placing single posts into the ground to create building walls for houses from 1050 to 1350, emphasizing villagers’ choice to maintain some of their pre-Cahokian traditional practices in the face of social change.

Similarities to today

In each place where Cahokians remade themselves, they contended with local communities, as well as their individual memories of their homeland.

Cahokian migrants made houses that mimicked those at home; they built according to celestial alignments from home; and in diasporic settings, they made iconographic designs honoring mythic heroes from their homeland.

Because Cahokians never ceased making their homeland wherever they spread – albeit in unique ways in new environments – we believe it makes sense to think of Cahokian and Mississippian culture not as one monolithic entity with just one perspective, but instead, a multitude of voices that together signified something greater.

The broader anthropological implication of our Cahokian research is the reminder it provides across the centuries that migration and identity are an ongoing process by which individuals and communities make and remake themselves, all while remembering their homeland and adapting to a new one. This process describes the complexities of living in the diaspora, and it is as relevant today as it was a thousand years ago.

[The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories. Weekly on Wednesdays.]

FP StudioOct 31, 2020 10:14:48 IST

Selecting the best PC to match your requirement can be intimidating. Let’s help you select the right computer that will suit your needs. So, let’s first build your profile and check what you’re looking for.

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This is a partnered content.

Ameya DalviOct 31, 2020 00:33:11 IST

Realme has been serious about making inroads in the wireless audio products category over the past year or so. Their first wireless neckband was quite popular, and so were their Buds Air TWS earbuds, for what they offered at that price point. The company recently launched the Pro versions of both those products with active noise cancellation (ANC) under Rs 5,000. Time to take both for a spin (or a jog) and see how they fare.

Realme Buds Wireless Pro Review

Realme Buds Wireless Pro. Image: Tech2/Ameya Dalvi

The sporty-looking wireless neckband from Realme borrows its aesthetic from its predecessor. And that’s no bad thing; the black and yellow combination works well. The build quality is solid with a combination of good quality plastic and metal, and yet it weighs under 35 grams. The buttons are tactile and the earphones are IPX4-rated sweat resistant. The earbuds feel a bit chunky, given the large 13.6 mm drivers inside, but they fit reasonably well inside the ear thanks to the silicone eartips. The magnetic earbuds double up as a power switch — off when stuck together and on when separated.

Image: Tech2/Ameya Dalvi

Barring the volume up and down keys, the other two buttons are programmable using the Realme Link app. You can choose from a list of functions to assign when you single, double and triple click them. The app also lets you boost the loudness and bass or cycle through the three listening modes — ‘Normal’, ‘Transparency’ and ‘ANC’. You can even switch off one of the modes. I wish there was an equaliser too.

If you are wondering what those listening modes do, ‘Transparency’ mode lets outside noise through so that you can stay alert to announcements or your surroundings when outdoors, or have a conversation without removing the earphones from the ear. ‘ANC’ cuts out some of the outside noise (mainly low and midrange frequency ambient sounds) when switched on, but distorts the sound quality considerably and makes it unpleasant. So the USP of the Realme Buds Wireless Pro (ANC) is also its greatest drawback. I will get to that in a moment.

The battery life here is quite good, with the neckband clocking close to 16 hours of playback at 70-75 percent volume level with LDAC on all the time, and with ANC on for a couple of hours for testing purposes. You should be able to squeeze out a bit more with ANC completely off, which I would advise you to do. The company does advertise a figure of 22 hours of battery backup, but that’s on AAC codecs at 50% loudness with ANC off. If your phone or tablet supports LDAC, just use that. These Bluetooth 5.0 earphones sound noticeably better on LDAC than on AAC. One shouldn’t trade sound quality for battery life. The neckband takes about an hour and a half to charge fully through its USB type-C port, but a mere 5 minutes of charging gives you an hour and a half of playback time, which is very useful.

The wireless range is not so great here. As long as you are in the same room as the source device, the going is smooth. The moment you step out of the room and there’s a concrete wall between the earphones and the source device, they start to stutter. Most other bluetooth earphones do noticeably better than that. The call quality on this Realme neckband was inconsistent, ranging between perfectly fine to patchy. A fair amount of ambient noise seeps through too, when outdoors. The earphones also offer a 119 ms low latency mode, which is handy for gaming.

The overall sound signature of the Realme Buds Wireless Pro is warm and generally pleasant across various genres of music, barring instrument-heavy tracks. The lows are boosted, resulting in quite a pronounced bass; it’s fairly tight though. The highs are sharp enough too, without sounding harsh. The mids feel recessed, as is the case with earphones with this typical V-shaped sound signature. The vocals are mostly clear, but the instrument separation is average at best. The soundstage is surprisingly broad, and you get this nice sense of space in certain tracks.

The sound is enjoyable for the most part, as long as you listen to the phones in ‘Normal’ or ‘Transparency’ mode. The moment you switch on ANC, the sound feels distorted and imbalanced. The lows are impacted the most, and the mids sound muffled too. Long story short, the audio quality becomes unacceptable with ANC on. Ironically, the audio output of the Buds Wireless Pro without ANC is quite good for a wireless neckband priced in the sub-3K price band. It is the very piece of circuitry that takes its price up that causes the sound quality to drop several notches.

Realme should seriously consider launching another wireless neckband around Rs 2,000 with this exact hardware, but without ANC, and call it Buds Wireless 2, maybe. It can easily give the OnePlus Bullets Wireless Z a run for its money. The official pricing of the Realme Buds Wireless Pro is Rs 3,999 but they are available for an introductory price of Rs 2,999 in this festive season. As long as the price stays under 3K, it is still a decent buy for its sound quality (without ANC) and the battery life. If you were thinking of buying this product for ANC, look elsewhere. If pure sound quality is what you crave for, and can make do with half the battery backup, the Oppo Enco M31 is a great option for a good thousand Rupees less.

Pros:

• Warm and enjoyable sound.
• Good soundstage
• Good build quality with IPX4 splash resistance
• Long battery life; over 16 hours of playback
• Support for LDAC codec
• Programmable buttons

Cons:

• Erratic implementation of ANC
• Average midrange reproduction
• Sub-par wireless range
• Inconsistent call quality

Rating: 3.5/5 (at Rs 2,999)

Price: Rs 2,999 to 3999

Realme Buds Air Pro Review

Realme Buds Air Pro retains most of the features offered by the Buds Wireless Pro in a true wireless (TWS) earbuds form factor. These too have ANC along with ‘Normal’ and ‘Transparency’ listening modes, Google fast pair support and programmable buttons (touch controls, actually). Again, you can use the Realme Link app to configure the buds. But you cannot assign volume up or down functions to the touch buttons. You have to go back to the source device to adjust the volume, something I am not too fond of when I choose to go wireless with my audio.

Realme Buds Air Pro. Image: Tech2/Ameya Dalvi

The Buds Air Pro design clearly draws inspiration from the Apple AirPods Pro, with hard plastic shells and silicone tips. Though they weigh just 5 grams each, and are more comfortable to wear than the Realme Buds Air Neo (your opinion may vary, if you prefer hard shells to silicone tips), the fit isn’t the greatest. They are IPX4-rated splash resistant, but aren’t ideal workout companions. The shells are quite large, and don’t fit snugly. The eartips enter the ear canals just enough to hold them in place, and I found myself adjusting them every few minutes when I took them for a jog.

The passive noise isolation is average at best. Thankfully, the active noise cancellation doesn’t alter the sound profile here. Though not perfect, the feed-forward and feedback microphones do cut down on some of the ambient noise when ANC is turned on. It is nowhere in the league of Sony’s WF-1000XM3, but neither is its price. For less than a third of Sony’s selling price, the ANC on the Realme Buds Air Pro can definitely be considered acceptable.

The call quality here is average, with the person on the line struggling to hear you clearly in noisy environments, and a lot of ambient noise getting in the way. It was a lot better indoors, but still, the voice clarity wasn’t the best. There was no issue with wireless range though, with the buds retaining a strong connection up to 6 metres, even with a concrete wall in between. The low-latency mode is even better here, with the company flaunting a 94 ms number.

Image: Tech2/Ameya Dalvi

The battery backup on the Realme Buds Air Pro is quite good, with the buds clocking close to 5 hours with ANC on half the time, and loudness close to 70 percent. Expect another 30 minutes with ANC off. The pebble (or cobble) shaped charging case can charge the buds thrice more, taking the overall battery backup to a shade over 20 hours, which is pretty good. The case supports fast charging via a USB type-C port, and 10 minutes of charge gives you close to three hours of play time, which is very neat. The battery level of each of the buds, as well as the charging case can be seen in its Bluetooth profile, even without the Realme Link app.

The sound quality of these TWS buds is more than decent for the segment, even though they only support AAC and SBC codecs. There is a good balance between the three major frequency ranges, with lows not getting extra preferential treatment. The bass produced by the 10 mm drivers is adequate and fairly tight. The mids have a distinct presence, with very good clarity in vocals, but I would have preferred a bit more detail . There’s ample sparkle in the highs, without being sibilant on most occasions. Some tracks do sound a little brighter than ideal, but not bright enough for fatigue to set in early. The soundstage is not as broad as in case of their wireless neckband, but it’s decent.

Image: Tech2/Ameya Dalvi

If you look at Realme Buds Air Pro’s sound quality in isolation, it is fair to expect a little better in TWS earbuds priced at Rs 4,999. But when you factor in functional ANC, wear detection (the audio pauses automatically when you remove the buds from the ear), and responsive and programmable touch controls, the overall package is good enough, with little competition. If you seek much better sound quality, without the extra frills like ANC or touch controls, you should strongly consider the Creative Outlier Air or Lypertek Tevi that sell for Rs 2,000 more. They provide better battery backup too, and support Qualcomm’s aptX codecs.

Pros:

• Good sound and features for the price
• Functional ANC
• Good build quality with IPX4 splash resistance
• Wear detection support
• Good battery life; over 20 hours with charging case
• Programmable touch controls

Cons:

• In-ear fit could have been better
• Average call quality
• No support for aptX or LDAC codecs
• No volume control option

Rating: 4/5

Price: Rs 4,499 to 4,999

FP TrendingOct 30, 2020 16:57:10 IST

Google Play Store is experimenting with a feature that will enable users to compare similar apps so that they can decide and choose the best one that meets their requirements. Google, through this feature on its Play Store app market, will provide more convenience to Android users.

The Google Play Store consists of a wide array of different categories of apps and already offers users features to select an app based on reviews and ratings.

According to a report by Android Police, the “Compare apps” section on Google Play Store appears on individual app listings near the bottom of the app page. It is right below the “Similar apps” section on the page.

Google Play Store. Image: tech2

The app comparison section shows a list of popular apps similar to the current listing. The comparison is based on things including ease of use, if the app supports features such as offline playback and casting.

As per the report, the comparison app is presently limited to a few popular media players.

The comparison app feature is available on version 22.4.28 of the Google Play Store.

A report by Android Authority said that the feature appears to be convenient for users as they will no longer have to read through the long app description, browse through reviews by other app users, or download the app and gauge if it meets their requirements.

Recently, Google removed three Android apps for children from its Play Store after a report highlighted that they violated data collection policies of the tech giant.

The apps – Princess Salon, Number Coloring and Cats & Cosplay – had more than 20 million downloads jointly on the Google Play Store. They are, however, available for download as APK files.

Halloween is a time to be haunted by ghosts, goblins and ghouls, but nothing in the universe is scarier than a black hole.

Black holes – regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape – are a hot topic in the news these days. Half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Roger Penrose for his mathematical work showing that black holes are an inescapable consequence of Einstein’s theory of gravity. Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel shared the other half for showing that a massive black hole sits at the center of our galaxy.

Black holes are scary for three reasons. If you fell into a black hole left over when a star died, you would be shredded. Also, the massive black holes seen at the center of all galaxies have insatiable appetites. And black holes are places where the laws of physics are obliterated.

I’ve been studying black holes for over 30 years. In particular, I’ve focused on the supermassive black holes that lurk at the center of galaxies. Most of the time they are inactive, but when they are active and eat stars and gas, the region close to the black hole can outshine the entire galaxy that hosts them. Galaxies where the black holes are active are called quasars. With all we’ve learned about black holes over the past few decades, there are still many mysteries to solve.

Death by black hole

Black holes are expected to form when a massive star dies. After the star’s nuclear fuel is exhausted, its core collapses to the densest state of matter imaginable, a hundred times denser than an atomic nucleus. That’s so dense that protons, neutrons and electrons are no longer discrete particles. Since black holes are dark, they are found when they orbit a normal star. The properties of the normal star allow astronomers to infer the properties of its dark companion, a black hole.

The first black hole to be confirmed was Cygnus X-1, the brightest X-ray source in the Cygnus constellation. Since then, about 50 black holes have been discovered in systems where a normal star orbits a black hole. They are the nearest examples of about 10 million that are expected to be scattered through the Milky Way.

Black holes are tombs of matter; nothing can escape them, not even light. The fate of anyone falling into a black hole would be a painful “spaghettification,” an idea popularized by Stephen Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time.” In spaghettification, the intense gravity of the black hole would pull you apart, separating your bones, muscles, sinews and even molecules. As the poet Dante described the words over the gates of hell in his poem Divine Comedy: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

A hungry beast in every galaxy

Over the past 30 years, observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have shown that all galaxies have black holes at their centers. Bigger galaxies have bigger black holes.

Nature knows how to make black holes over a staggering range of masses, from star corpses a few times the mass of the Sun to monsters tens of billions of times more massive. That’s like the difference between an apple and the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Just last year, astronomers published the first-ever picture of a black hole and its event horizon, a 7-billion-solar-mass beast at the center of the M87 elliptical galaxy.

It’s over a thousand times bigger than the black hole in our galaxy, whose discoverers snagged this year’s Nobel Prize. These black holes are dark most of the time, but when their gravity pulls in nearby stars and gas, they flare into intense activity and pump out a huge amount of radiation. Massive black holes are dangerous in two ways. If you get too close, the enormous gravity will suck you in. And if they are in their active quasar phase, you’ll be blasted by high-energy radiation.

How bright is a quasar? Imagine hovering over a large city like Los Angeles at night. The roughly 100 million lights from cars, houses and streets in the city correspond to the stars in a galaxy. In this analogy, the black hole in its active state is like a light source 1 inch in diameter in downtown LA that outshines the city by a factor of hundreds or thousands. Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe.

Supermassive black holes are strange

The biggest black hole discovered so far weighs in at 40 billion times the mass of the Sun, or 20 times the size of the solar system. Whereas the outer planets in our solar system orbit once in 250 years, this much more massive object spins once every three months. Its outer edge moves at half the speed of light. Like all black holes, the huge ones are shielded from view by an event horizon. At their centers is a singularity, a point in space where the density is infinite. We can’t understand the interior of a black hole because the laws of physics break down. Time freezes at the event horizon and gravity becomes infinite at the singularity.

The good news about massive black holes is that you could survive falling into one. Although their gravity is stronger, the stretching force is weaker than it would be with a small black hole and it would not kill you. The bad news is that the event horizon marks the edge of the abyss. Nothing can escape from inside the event horizon, so you could not escape or report on your experience.

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According to Stephen Hawking, black holes are slowly evaporating. In the far future of the universe, long after all stars have died and galaxies have been wrenched from view by the accelerating cosmic expansion, black holes will be the last surviving objects.

The most massive black holes will take an unimaginable number of years to evaporate, estimated at 10 to the 100th power, or 10 with 100 zeroes after it. The scariest objects in the universe are almost eternal.

FP TrendingOct 29, 2020 16:56:42 IST

OnePlus has started rolling out its October security patch with the latest software update for the Nord smartphones. The OxygenOS 10.5.9 is currently coming out in batches for users of the firm’s mid-range model. In a recent forum post, OnePlus announced the latest improvements that are going to come with the 10.5.9 patch. The incremental roll out has begun for India and Global variants and as is the norm, it is soon going to see a rollout in the European market. In the EU, the phone is receiving v10.5.9.AC01BA, while globally the phone is receiving v10.5.9.AC01AA. India comes with the version  10.5.9.AC01DA.

OnePlus Nord

Along with improved system stability and other bug fixes, the update brings the Android security patch to 2020.10. OnePlus has added a new gaming tools box to enable convenient switches of Fnatic mode. While in the game space, users will be able to choose any of the three ways of receiving notifications. They can either go for a “text-only heads up and block” option for an immersive gaming experience or give a quick reply back using a small window which is applicable for WhatsApp and INS (users can enable it by swiping down from upper right/ left corners of their mobile screen while in gaming mode). The third option is the newly added “mis-touch prevention feature”. Once you have enabled it, you will be able to swipe down from the top of the screen, click on it and the notification bar will pop out for you to take the required action.

Other improvements of the update include better Bluetooth connection stability and enhanced network stability. As always, users can write back their feedback regarding any bug that needs to be fixed at https://forums.oneplus.com/feedback/.

The roll out has begun from 28 October and if you still have not received it, the update is likely to reach you in a couple of days.

FP TrendingOct 29, 2020 17:01:21 IST

Micromax India has started to tease its upcoming Micromax ‘In’ series ahead of its launch on 3 November. The 10-second clip gives a glimpse of the upcoming smartphone. “India’s style makes heads turn. We’ve designed our new smartphones to do just that,” Micromax India tweet read. The clip shows the rear panel of the smartphone which has a prominent X design. The phone will have a gradient finish. The bottom portion of the phone will sport the ‘In’ logo.

India’s style makes heads turn. We’ve designed our new smartphones to do just that. #INMobiles unveiling on 3rd Nov, 12 noon. Are you #INForIndia? #MicromaxIsBack pic.twitter.com/LkMt3FGzjF

— Micromax India (@Micromax__India) October 28, 2020

With the Micromax ‘In’ series, the smartphone manufacturer is making a comeback in the Indian mobile phone market.

On Tuesday (27 October), Micromax shared a clip on Twitter that highlighted the presence of MediaTek Helio G35 and Helio G85 on the upcoming smartphone series.

On 16 October, Microsoft India announced its plan to launch a new smartphone in the country. Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma in a short video on Twitter spoke about the company’s journey till now, including the time when the Chinese smartphone makers overtook the competition resulting to a drop in the sale of Micromax smartphones.

The Micromax ‘In’ series will have multiple devices that will be priced between Rs 7,000 and Rs 15,000. The smartphones will be expected to be stock Android phones.

As per a report by GSMArena, the G35 model will run stock Android and will be powered by a 5,000 mAh battery. It will come in two configurations — 2 GB/32 GB and 3 GB/32 GB.

Both variants will have different camera combinations. The 2 GB RAM model will have three cameras – an 8 MP selfie camera along with a 13 MP primary and a 2 MP lens in the back.

The 3 GB variant will have four cameras – a 13 MP selfie camera along with 13 MP, 5 MP and 2 MP lenses in the rear

LogMeIn is well-known software that allows you to access your computer from remote locations using either mobile devices or another computer. The company’s Hamachi offering is slightly less well-known, because it is tailored toward business users, but if you have the need to network multiple computers together securely as a personal user, it might be worth a look. 

LogMeIn Hamachi allows you to create a VPN – virtual private network. While you might be familiar with VPNs as a way to tunnel into the internet from a remote location to guard your privacy, in this case, the VPN is used to create a network accessible by a particular group of users.

Upon launching the very bare-bones software, you simply navigate to Network/Create A New Network, enter a password, and click Create. Once the network is formed, clicking on Manage/Manage Networks will take you to a web-based portal where you can control the network. 

One of the key elements that can be set here is the type of network you’d like to create. A mesh network allows every computer to see the information on every other computer that’s part of the network. The hub-and-spoke option provides a central hub to which all users can connect. This is a slightly more restrictive network because each user does not have access to the other users. Finally, a gateway network can be established, which allows all users to log in through a single computer that acts as a portal to the entire physical network. 

In all cases, users receive the benefit of a LAN (local area network) that typically is connected via cables, wirelessly and offsite through the internet.

The web portal also allows you to add other users to the network either by sending invites allowing other users to download the software to their computers, or sending downloadable configuration files to mobile users. The mobile configurations are a bit complicated, so unless you have a knack for this sort of thing, you’ll do best with the computer-to-computer networks.

Hamachi works on up to five computers absolutely free, so getting this type of big office functionality at no cost is clearly a major benefit. Beyond that, the software also protects communications using industry standard AES 256-bit encryption, so every user on a network gets the automatic privacy protection that this conveys. 

Beyond the free version of the software, Hamachi also comes in a Standard package ($49/year) that allows up to 32 computers to access a network; a Premium package ($199/year) that grants access for up to 256 computers; and a Multi-Network plan ($299/year) that allows unlimited access.

You can download the free version of LogMeIn Hamachi here.

tech2 News StaffOct 29, 2020 10:36:49 IST

Powered by MediaTek Helio G35 chipset, Realme launched the Realme C15 in India a few months back at a starting price of Rs 9,999. Now the company has launched a Qualcomm Edition of the smartphone in India. The new model is powered by a Snapdragon 460 processor and offers up to 4 GB RAM and up to 64 GB of internal storage. The Mediatek models also come in the same storage variants.

Realme C15

Realme C15 Qualcomm Edition pricing, availability

The smartphone comes in two storage variants. The 3 GB RAM + 32 GB storage variant is priced at Rs 9,999 and the 4 GB RAM + 64 GB storage variant will cost you Rs 10,999.

In terms of colours, you will get Power Blue and Power Silver colour variants.

The smartphone will be available for purchase today (29 October) at 12 pm on Flipkart and Realme.com.

As a part of the launch offer, you can buy the 3 GB RAM variant for Rs 9,499 and the 4 GB RAM variant a Rs 10,499.

Realme C15 Qualcomm Edition specifications

The new Qualcomm Edition comes with the same specifications as the MediaTek variant except for the processors. The smartphone comes with a 6.5-inch display that has a resolution of 720 x 1,600 pixels. Realme C15 is also powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 chipset and offers up to 4 GB RAM and up to 128 GB internal storage.

Realme C15 comes with a 13 MP AI quad-camera setup at the back. This camera setup placed in a square-shaped camera module includes a 13 MP primary lens, a 2 MP portrait lens, an 8 MP ultra-wide-angle lens and a 2 MP lens that company calls a “retro lens”.

The smartphone houses a 6,000 mAh battery that supports 18W fast charging.

FP TrendingOct 28, 2020 16:47:24 IST

South Korean multinational electronics company LG has launched the LG Wing smartphone in India. The device comes with a Swivel mode that rotates the main screen by 90 degrees, revealing a second screen. The company had tweeted about the launch of the new device in India on 27 October. Sharing a short clip, they wrote, “#ExploreTheNew Form Factor Mobiles from #LG launching on 28th October, 2020. Change the way you experience your smartphone.”

LG Wing

The Wing 5G is priced at Rs 69,990 and sales for the device will start on 9 November.

According to LG’s official website, the LG Wing sports a main screen of 6.8 inches and a second screen at 3.9 inches. Users can watch shows horizontally on the main screen while using the second screen to send texts or surf the web using another app.

The device also has the Gimbal Motion Camera that has four different shooting modes (Lock Mode, Pan Follow Mode, Follow Mode, First Person View Mode).

The LG Wing has a triple-camera setup in the rear. It has a 64 MP primary camera, coupled with a 13 MP ultrawide lens and another 12MP ultrawide lens. It also has a 32 MP Pop-Up Camera for selfies. The device is powered by a 4,000 mAh battery and has a Snapdragon 765G (5G) processor.

The company has also launched LG Velvet at Rs 36,990 and LG Velvet Dual Screen combo at Rs 49,990.

FP TrendingOct 28, 2020 16:52:31 IST

Micromax is all geared up to unveil the In series phones in India on 3 November. Now the company took to Twitter to share the same with a short clip that highlighted two more features of the device. The clip was posted alongside the caption, “India is gearing up to game on with the ultimate performance. And we have the perfect processor for that. Share the screenshot to tell us which one you think it is. #INMobiles unveiling on 3rd Nov, 12 noon.” The clip highlights the presence of MediaTek Helio G35 and Helio G85 on the Micromax In series phones.

Image: Reuters

India is gearing up to game on with the ultimate performance. And we have the perfect processor for that. Share the screenshot to tell us which one you think it is. #INMobiles unveiling on 3rd Nov, 12 noon.#MicromaxIsBack #INForIndia pic.twitter.com/g4EoKHN7Pr

— Micromax India (@Micromax__India) October 27, 2020

Microsoft had on 16 October announced that it is planning to launch a new smartphone in India soon. Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma had in a short video on Twitter talked about the company’s journey till now, including the time when the Chinese smartphone makers overtook the competition leading to a drop in the sale of Micromax smartphones.

According to a previous report, the upcoming Micromax series in India will have multiple devices between the price range of Rs 7,000 and Rs 15,000 and are expected to be stock Android phones.

According to a report in GSMArena, while not much is known about the G85 model, the G35 will run stock Android and be powered by a 5,000 mAh battery. It will be available in two configurations — 2 GB/32 GB and 3GB/32 GB.

Both devices will have different camera combinations. While the 2 GB RAM model will have a total of three cameras, the 3 GB variant will have four. The 2 GB variant will have an 8 MP selfie camera along with a 13 MP primary and a 2 MP lense in the back. The 3 GB RAM variant will have a 13 MP selfie camera along with 13 MP, 5 MP and 2 MP lenses in the rear.

The same funds could be used to provide food, medical care or support businesses as India looks to revive its economy.

Representational image of vaccines in mass production. Getty/File Image

COVID-19 has assaulted the health of people and economies. The impact on the economy has led to further stress on people’s livelihoods. This unprecedented threat to public health has not been constrained by measures taken by national and state governments. All humankind is waiting with bated breath for a COVID-19 vaccine that can set us on a course to normalcy. The human and economic cost of COVID-19 has been immense and governments are stepping up to expedite vaccine availability.

Given the vaccine’s huge impact on public health, it is reasonable to expect that the government makes it available free for all. The cost of undertaking this exercise would depend on a variety of factors – cost of manufacturing, cost of supply chain and cost of administration of the vaccine. For example, nucleic acid-based vaccines have to be stored at sub-zero temperatures and are costly to make and transport. The estimated cost for the Moderna vaccine is $15/dose, and sourcing all necessary doses from Moderna would cost over INR 2,50,000 crore. On the other hand, Serum Institute of India has promised a certain quantity of the Oxford vaccine at $3/dose. If India were to buy all vaccines at this cost, we will have to spend roughly INR 50,000 crore. Both costs include a distribution cost assumed at 20 percent of the vaccine price. However, these estimates do not include the cost of ramping up vaccine supply, a step essential if India aims to vaccinate its population in a reasonable amount of time.

India currently makes one billion vaccine doses for use in the country. However, this capacity also caters to other vaccines and cannot be completely diverted to manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, we should expect vaccine prices to reduce as more scientific advances are made in the field. Let’s assume given all the variables, the cost for vaccinating India is about INR 1,50,000 crore. This is higher than the cost estimated by Serum Institute’s Adar Poonawalla and accounts for additional manufacturing setups being put in at government’s cost.

On the face of it, this looks like a huge amount. But really, it’s around 1 percent of India’s economy and is equivalent to the amount being spent on the recently-announced food security welfare scheme Gareeb Kalyan Anna Yojana in FY21. On paper, the government footing the entire vaccination bill is entirely doable. If the vaccines do offer a path to normalcy, then this one-time cost is an essential investment with increasing returns. It definitely fits with the aspirations of the political economy, since promising an eagerly awaited elixir at free of cost is an attractive strategy to gain votes. It is therefore not surprising that various state governments and even the Union government has announced that the vaccine will be made available free of cost to Indian citizens.

Vaccination drives have been the mainstay of epidemic prevention in the past few decades. AFP

While a free vaccine sounds appealing and should indeed be a government’s prerogative in a pandemic, there are other responsibilities that also need to be taken care of. India is staring at a zero or even negative growth rate through 2020. Lockdowns and slew of social distancing measures have also accelerated job losses, with CMIE reporting a loss of over 6 million jobs. Another fiscal stimulus is warranted and even recommended by IMF, with a focus on support for vulnerable groups, and support for businesses. Further, India also needs to invest in capacity-building for long-term healthcare measures, improving public health coverage. The fight against COVID-19 cannot stop with the vaccination, but has to be bolstered by extensive disease surveillance capacity and preparation for the next potential outbreak. Hence, while it makes sense that the government offers the vaccine free to all, there is also an opportunity cost attached to that funding. That funding could be utilized effectively to provide food, medical care or support businesses as India looks to revive its economy. In fact, if even half of India’s population pays for the vaccine, the roughly INR 75,000 crore saved would be more than India’s current overall healthcare allocation of INR 67,000 crore. This infusion of funds could double India’s health budget for a year, and could be used for capacity building, resulting in improved healthcare and saving lives.

Hence, it may be prudent to keep the vaccine at market price and put in a subsidy for those who are unable to afford the vaccine. The vaccine subsidy can operate on lines similar to the LPG subsidy. This approach would make the vaccine accessible to all, with the government and richer households splitting the vaccine cost. Keeping the vaccine at market price will also incentivize more vaccine researchers into innovating and manufacturing newer vaccines. The resulting competition will also reduce vaccine cost over time. On the other hand, a free vaccine – with the government as the bulk buyer – may lead to compromising on vaccine quality.

Finally, while the option of doling out a free vaccine remains with the government, this promise cannot be made in a silo. Enough doses of any vaccine will not be immediately available and vaccination would require prioritization of recipients. Last mile delivery of vaccines has to be assured and will require investment. Post-market monitoring of vaccine performance has to be designed to quickly respond to any adverse events. Vaccine manufacturers have to be incentivized to ramp up vaccine supply to stay apace with vaccine demand. A free vaccine promise by itself is futile, unless accompanied by a transparent and evidence-based vaccine deployment plan. Therefore, instead of playing on people’s fears, we need a transparent vaccination strategy, continued insistence on social distancing measures and monetary support for those vulnerable.

The author is a research fellow with Takshashila’s Technology and Policy programme. She tweets at @TheNaikMic.

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Picture Antarctica today and what comes to mind? Large ice floes bobbing in the Southern Ocean? Maybe a remote outpost populated with scientists from around the world? Or perhaps colonies of penguins puttering amid vast open tracts of snow?

Fossils from Seymour Island, just off the Antarctic Peninsula, are painting a very different picture of what Antarctica looked like 40 to 50 million years ago – a time when the ecosystem was lusher and more diverse. Fossils of frogs and plants such as ferns and conifers indicate Seymour Island was much warmer and less icy, while fossil remains from marsupials and distant relatives of armadillos and anteaters hint at the previous connections between Antarctica and other continents in the Southern Hemisphere.

There were also birds. Penguins were present then, as they are now, but fossil relatives of ducks, falcons and albatrosses have also been found in Antarctica. My colleagues and I have recently published an article revealing new information about the fossil group that would have dwarfed all the other birds on Seymour Island: the pelagornithids, or “bony-toothed” birds.

Giants of the sky

As their name suggests, these ancient birds had sharp, bony spikes protruding from sawlike jaws. Resembling teeth, these spikes would have helped them catch squid or fish. We also studied another remarkable feature of the pelagornithids – their imposing size.

The largest flying bird alive today is the wandering albatross, which has a wingspan that reaches 11 ½ feet. The Antarctic pelagornithids fossils we studied have a wingspan nearly double that – about 21 feet across. If you tipped a two-story building on its side, that’s about 20 feet.

Across Earth’s history, very few groups of vertebrates have achieved powered flight – and only two reached truly giant sizes: birds and a group of reptiles called pterosaurs.

Pterosaurs ruled the skies during the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago), the same period that dinosaurs roamed the planet, and they reached hard-to-believe dimensions. Quetzalcoatlus stood 16 feet tall and had a colossal 33-foot wingspan.

Birds get their opportunity

Birds originated while dinosaurs and pterosaurs were still roaming the planet. But when an asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, dinosaurs and pterosaurs both perished. Some select birds survived, though. These survivors diversified into the thousands of bird species alive today. Pelagornithids evolved in the period right after dinosaur and pterosaur extinction, when competition for food was lessened.

The earliest pelagornithid remains, recovered from 62-million-year-old sediments in New Zealand, were about the size of modern gulls. The first giant pelagornithids, the ones in our study, took flight over Antarctica about 10 million years later, in a period called the Eocene Epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago). In addition to these specimens, fossilized remains from other pelagornithids have been found on every continent.

Pelagornithids lasted for about 60 million years before going extinct just before the Pleistocene Epoch (2.5 million to 11,700 years ago). No one knows exactly why, though, because few fossil records have been recovered from the period at the end of their reign. Some paleontologists cite climate change as a possible factor.

Piecing it together

The fossils we studied are fragments of whole bones collected by paleontologists from the University of California at Riverside in the 1980s. In 2003, the specimens were transferred to Berkeley, where they now reside in the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

There isn’t enough material from Antarctica to rebuild an entire skeleton, but by comparing the fossil fragments with similar elements from more complete individuals, we were able to assess their size.

We estimate the pelagornithid’s skull would have been about 2 feet long. A fragment of one bird’s lower jaw preserves some of the “pseudoteeth” that would have each measured up to an inch tall. The spacing of those “teeth” and other measurements of the jaw show this fragment came from an individual as big as, if not bigger than, the largest known pelagornithids.

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Further evidence of the size of these Antarctic birds comes from a second pelagornithid fossil, from a different location on Seymour Island. A section of a foot bone, called a tarsometatarsus, is the largest specimen known for the entire extinct group.

These pelagornithid fossil findings emphasize the importance of natural history collections. Successful field expeditions result in a wealth of material brought back to a museum or repository – but the time required to prepare, study and publish on fossils means these institutions typically hold many more specimens than they can display. Important discoveries can be made by collecting specimens on expeditions in remote locations, no doubt. But equally important discoveries can be made by simply processing the backlog of specimens already on hand.

FP TrendingOct 27, 2020 19:15:30 IST

Realme C17 is expected to be launched in India in late November or earlier December. The launch time frame is revealed by tipster Mukul Sharma who said that the smartphone will be unveiled in the country provided there are no last-minute changes. Replying to a query on Twitter, he also revealed that the device may be launched with the X7 series. According to a report in Gizbot, following its release in Bangladesh, the phone was recently spotted on Realme India’s support page along with some Realme IoT products, suggesting an imminent launch.

Realme C15

Provided there are no last moment changes, the Realme C17 is set for launch late November or early December in India.#Realme #RealmeC17

— Mukul Sharma (@stufflistings) October 26, 2020

The IoT products included Realme 10,000 mAh Power Bank 2i, Realme 20,000 mAh Power Bank 2, Realme Smart Bulb, Realme Smart Plus, Realme Smart Camera 360, Realme Watch S, and the Realme Selfie Tripod.

possible

— Mukul Sharma (@stufflistings) October 26, 2020

The Realme C17 features a 6.5-inch HD+ display (1,600 x 720 pixels) with a 90 Hz refresh rate and a 90 percent screen to body ratio. The device comes with Corning Gorilla Glass protection and dual-SIM.

The smartphone runs on Realme UI on top of Android 10. It is powered by the octa-core Snapdragon 460 processor and has 6 GB of LPDDR4X RAM. It sports an LCD multi-touch display has 128 GB UFS 2.1 ROM.

The Realme C17 has a 13 MP primary camera, an 8 MP ultra-wide-angle lens, a 2 MP Macro lens and a 2 MP B&W lens. For selfie, the smartphone comes with an 8 MP In-display front camera.

The device supports 1,080P/ 30 fps video recording and 720p/ 30fps video recording. It has eight different types of selfie photography function including portrait mode, timelapse, panoramic view etc.

The phone has a massive 5,000 mAh battery and supports reverse charging as well.

Two wildfires erupted on the outskirts of cities near Los Angeles, forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate their homes Monday as powerful Santa Ana winds swept the flames through dry grasses and brush. With strong winds and extremely low humidity, large parts of California were under red flag warnings.

High fire risk days have been common this year as the 2020 wildfire season shatters records across the West.

More than 4 million acres have burned in California – 4% of the state’s land area and more than double the previous annual record. Five of the state’s six largest historical fires happened in 2020. In Colorado, the Pine Gulch fire that started in June broke the record for size, only to be topped in October by the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires. Oregon saw one of the most destructive fire seasons in its recorded history.

What caused the 2020 fire season to become so extreme?

Fires thrive on three elements: heat, dryness and wind. The 2020 season was dry, but the Western U.S. has seen worse droughts in the recent decade. It had several record-breaking heat waves, but the fires did not necessarily follow the locations with the highest temperatures.

What 2020 did have was heat and dryness hitting simultaneously. When even a moderate drought and heat wave hit a region at the same time, along with wind to fan the flames, it becomes a powerful force that can fuel megafires.

That’s what we’ve been seeing in California, Colorado and Oregon this year. Research shows it’s happening more often with higher intensity, and affecting ever-increasing areas.

Climate change intensified dry-hot extremes

We are scientists and engineers who study climate extremes, including wildfires. Our research shows that the probability of a drought and heat wave occurring at the same time in the U.S. has increased significantly over the past century.

The kind of dry and hot conditions that would have been expected to occur only once every 25 years on average have occurred five to 10 times in several regions of the U.S. over the past quarter-century. Even more alarming, we found that extreme dry-hot conditions that would have been expected only once every 75 years have occurred three to six times in many areas over the same period.

We also found that what triggers these simultaneous extremes appears to be changing.

During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the lack of rainfall allowed the air to become hotter, and that process fueled simultaneous dry and hot conditions. Today, excess heat is a larger driver of dry-hot conditions than lack of rain.

This has important implications for the future of dry-hot extremes.

Warmer air can hold more moisture, so as global temperatures rise, evaporation can suck more water from plants and soil, leading to drier conditions. Higher temperatures and drier conditions mean vegetation is more combustible. A study in 2016 calculated that the excess heat from human-caused climate change was responsible for nearly doubling the amount of Western U.S. forest that burned between 1979 and 2015.

Worryingly, we have also found that these dry-hot wildfire-fueling conditions can feed on one another and spread downwind.

When soil moisture is low, more solar radiation will turn into sensible heat – heat you can feel. That heat evaporates more water and further dries the environment. This cycle continues until a large-scale weather pattern breaks it. The heat can also trigger the same feedback loop in a neighboring region, extending the dry-hot conditions and raising the probability of dry-hot extremes across broad stretches of the country.

All of this translates into higher wildfire risk for the Western U.S.

In Southern California, for example, we found that the number of dry-hot-windy days has increased at a greater rate than dry, hot or windy days individually over the past four decades, tripling the number of megafire danger days in the region.

2020 wasn’t normal, but what is normal?

If 2020 has proved anything, it is to expect the unexpected.

Before this year, Colorado had not recorded a fire of over 10,000 acres starting in October. This year, the East Troublesome fire grew from about 20,000 acres to over 100,000 acres in less than 24 hours on Oct. 21, and it was nearly 200,000 acres by the time a snowstorm stopped its advance. Instead of going skiing, hundreds of Coloradans evacuated their homes and nervously watched whether that fire would merge with another giant blaze.

This is not “the new normal” – it’s the new abnormal. In a warming climate, looking at what happened in the past no longer offers a sense of what to expect in the future.

“The growth that you see on this fire is unheard of,” Grand County Sheriff Brett Schroetlin said of the East Troublesome fire on Oct. 22. “We plan for the worst. This is the worst of the worst of the worst.”

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There are other drivers of the rise in fire damage. More people moving into wildland areas means there are more cars and power lines and other potential ignition sources. Historical efforts to control fires have also meant more undergrowth in areas that would have naturally burned periodically in smaller fires.

The question now is how to manage this “new abnormal” in the face of a warming climate.

In the U.S., one in three houses are built in the wildland-urban interface. Development plans, construction techniques and building codes can do more to account for wildfire risks, including avoiding flammable materials and potential sources of sparks. Importantly, citizens and policymakers need to tackle the problem at its root: That includes cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet.