Newfound Alien Planet Is Best Place Yet to Search for Life

By Calla Cofield, Staff Writer | April 19, 2017 04:06pm ET

A newly discovered planet around a distant star may jump to the top of the list of places where scientists should go looking for alien life.

The alien world known as LHS 1140b is rocky, like Earth. It is only 40 light-years away from our solar system (essentially, down-the-street in cosmic terms), and sits in the so-called habitable zone of its parent star, which means liquid water could potentially exist on the planet's surface. Several other planets also meet those criteria, but few of them are as prime for study as LHC 1140b according to the scientists who discovered it, because the type of star the planet orbits and the planet's orientation to Earth make it ripe for investigations into whether it’s the kind of place where life could thrive.

"This is the most exciting exoplanet I've seen in the past decade," Jason Dittmann, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and lead author on the paper describing the discovery, said in a statement from CfA. "We could hardly hope for a better target to perform one of the biggest quests in science — searching for evidence of life beyond Earth." [10 Exoplanets That Might Be Perfect to Support Life 

Alien atmosphere

Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the sun in the last 20 years. Many of those planets meet some of the basic requirements for hosting life as we know it — they're rocky like Earth (rather than gaseous, like Saturn or Jupiter) and they sit in the habitable zone of their parent star.

LHS 1140b meets those initial requirements. Through multiple observations, Dittmann and colleagues determined that the planet receives about 0.46 times as much light from its parent star as Earth receives from the sun. The planet is about 1.4 times the diameter of Earth and 6.6 times its mass, which makes it a so-called super-Earth and suggests it is also rocky. [How Habitable Zones for Alien Planets and Stars Work (Infographic)]

The next step scientists are taking to find out if exoplanets like LHS 1140b are habitable (or even inhabited) is to examine their atmospheres. An atmosphere could provide life-forms with a necessary ingredient for life (such as oxygen or carbon dioxide on Earth), and could also bear signs that life exists there (most of the methane on Earth, for example, is produced by biological organisms). Scientists are working on understanding what the atmosphere of an exoplanet can reveal about the likelihood that it hosts life, or could.
Dittmann said he and his colleagues think LHS 1140b is a great candidate for follow-up atmospheric studies for multiple reasons.

This alien world was initially discovered using the transit method, in which scientists look at the light from a star and try to measure subtle dips in its brightness that could be caused by a planet passing in front of (transiting) the star. In some cases, telescopes can capture the sliver of sunlight that passes through the planet's atmosphere, and that sunlight reveals information about the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere. Many other potentially habitable Earth-like planets ― such as Proxima b, the closest exoplanet to our solar system that lies only 4.2 light-years away ― do not transit their parent star as seen from Earth and therefore their atmospheres can't be studied in this way.

The team's precise measurement of LHS 1140b's density will also be important to understanding its atmosphere, Dittmann told Space.com.

"What's great about having a density ahead of an atmospheric study is that this density tells you how tightly the planet holds on to its atmosphere (the atmospheric scale height)," Dittmann told Space.com in an email. Using the transit method, scientists are trying to collect starlight shining through a planet's atmosphere; a thicker atmosphere means more light passes through it, making it easier for scientists to detect the signals from various chemical elements present in that atmosphere. A planet with higher density also has stronger gravity, which further compresses the atmosphere and reduces the size of the signals scientists can detect.
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Amazing Discoveries that Changed the World Forever

There have been many momentous occasions when an individual, group or generations ended up discovering some hidden nuggets of wisdom floating in the lap of nature. Many such discoveries changed the world forever. While some of these discoveries are well-known to most people, several others are quite subtle that get easily overlooked usually because their applications or outcomes appear obvious to the modern world. Here is the list of top amazing discoveries that changed the world forever.

Gunpowder:

In the recorded history, there is no clear mention of the people who discovered gunpowder. It is believed that Chinese alchemists, during a series of experiments ended up discovering a powder that that could change the nature of warfare and hunting forever. While the discovery of gunpowder almost certainly resulted in the death of millions over the past few decades, it has also helped the mankind to enter Space. 

Anatomy:

It is the field of anatomy that today helps medical professionals all over the world to understand and treat the human body. Diagnosis or treatment of various conditions would have been nearly impossible if the mankind had no knowledge of the anatomy. Although ancient texts on some anatomy topics date back to 1600 BC in Egyptian history and 5000 BC in Vedic history, it was only in the year 1543 that Andreas Vesalius started discovering the human body in fresh light. He created the modern text that laid the foundation of thousands of treatment methods, accessible to billions of people on the planet today. 

Electricity generation:

It is impossible to imagine a life without electricity today. Everything – yes, everything in our day to day lives is depended on fundamental principles of ‘flow of electricity’ and ‘electricity generation.’ It was Michael Faraday who discovered the profound scientific relation in magnetism and electricity. The first electric generator could be created after the discovery that electricity could be generated by moving a metallic wire around a magnet. Rest, as we know, is history! 

Oxygen – the fine air:

Even an 8 year old knows about oxygen today. When it was first discovered in the year 1772, it was known by the name ‘fine air.’ It was known to be a gas that accelerates combustion. The discovery laid the foundation of high-end combustion engines that now power vehicles, motors and other devices. When the discoverer of Oxygen, Carl Wilhelm demonstrated the action of oxygen to a French scientist, he successfully went on to discover that oxygen was also responsible for supporting the respiration in all animals! 

Photosynthesis:

It was Joseph Priestley who first established ‘indirectly’ through a series of experiments that animals consumed the gas which is produced by plants. It was Jan I., an Austrian scientist, who later defined the process of photosynthesis. It was a discovery that made people all over the world aware of how plants were restoring the balance by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. We could have, otherwise, wiped out all forests by now!

Penicillin:

Penicillin was discovered accidently by a famous biologist Sir Alexander Fleming. The biologist was particularly famous for being absent-minded on most occasions as he paid great attention to small ‘changes’ taking place around him. It was the habit of close observation that helped this absent minded biologist to discover the principle that one set of micro-organisms could kill or restrict the growth of other microorganisms. Over the next several decades, the newly discovered drug, known as penicillin, saved millions of lives. 

Vaccination:

Vaccination is perhaps one of the greatest and most amazing discoveries that changed the world forever largely because it has helped saving the lives of millions ever since it was tried as an experiment in 1796. Had it not been for the sustained efforts of Edward Jenner, many would have lost their lives even in their infancy to diseases like small pox. Jenner inoculated a young boy using matter from the cowpox lesions of a dairymaid and then introduced the smallpox virus to the boy but he was not infected. The word vaccination traces its origin to the Latin word ‘vacca’ meaning cow.

Earth is not flat; its round:

While you know it to be so obvious today, you couldn’t have guessed it so easily few hundred years ago! There was a time (not a thousand years ago, really), when people believed their boats in the ocean would fall off the edge if they went too far! Many scientists had to lose their lives only because they said ‘earth was round,’ and some guys at authoritarian churches thought it was ‘outrageous and blasphemous’ to say so!

Wheel:

There is no record of how discovered the wheel. It was one of those discoveries that probably laid the foundation of human civilization! Without wheels, we could not have moved beyond few hundred kilometers. There would have been no exchange of knowledge, language, commodities etc. The discovery of the round object, which experienced the least amount of friction, was nothing short of a miracle or a boon for the mankind. 

Fire:

Nothing could have been possible if some unknown caveman hadn’t literally ‘played with fire’. The discovery of fire is one of the greatest ones done in the history of mankind. We have come a long way indeed from producing fire by rubbing two stones. The way fire is produced and the carriers of it have extended over thousands of years but fire, being an element of Earth, remains what it was since time immemorial. Of all things it has helped us in accomplishing, fire is the reason we love our food. We owe a lot to that caveman. Fire indeed deserves to top the list of most amazing discoveries.

The cloning of a man

Scientists in the West have been stunned by the claim two weeks ago that a human being had been duplicated by a process known as cloning. Although frogs have been cloned, babies made to order was a prospect thought to be a 1984 Orwellian dream.

Suresh Jain

May 15, 1978 | 

Scientists in the West have been stunned by the claim two weeks ago that a human being had been duplicated by a process known as cloning. Although frogs have been cloned, babies made to order was a prospect thought to be a 1984 Orwellian dream.

The great debate follows publicity over the forthcoming book In His Image: The Cloning Of A Man by science writer David Rorvik, who claims that a childless 68-year-old multimillionaire financed the cloning project because he wanted an heir and felt no woman was worthy enough. According to the author the baby is now 14-month-old and an exact duplicate of the millionaire, right down to brains, fingerprints and habits.
Volunteers: Two New York women have volunteered to carry and give birth to human clones, after Vermont obstetrician Dr Landrum B. Shettles announced that he was "ready to go" with the first official cloning of a man.

He, however, warned that there were still many unknowns about what the future held for children born by the revolutionary genetic engineering process. "When you consider that the health of a normal baby can be affected by what its mother eats during pregnancy, there must be many unknowns in the case of cloning," he said.

Nightmare: Whether Rorvik's claim to be an eye-witness of how unidentified scientists succeeded in cloning is a hoax or reality, to most scientists and laymen the prospects are too frightening to contemplate.

An alarmed medical world has called for an immediate investigation by the United States Government and the United Nations into cloning. "Cloning is a nightmare," declared Dr George Wald, a Harvard University biologist and winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize for physiology.

"What we call reproduction is an exciting process, because we are always creating a new individual and separate personality. Cloning is making copies of people just as we would manufacture record albums. We need a principle in law right away to protect human life," Dr Wald added.

Gene Pool: The first step has been taken when three scientists filed a suit to force the US Government to disclose details of studies it has funded on cloning and genetic engineering.

"These technological developments have come about without the consent or participation of the public, which is to suffer the consequences," says one of the three scientists, Dr Jonathan Beckwith, professor of genetics at Harvard. "It is time that scientific and medical advances which allow meddling in the human gene pool be explained to the US population."

Moral and Ethics: Another of the scientists, Dr Ethan Signer, professor of genetics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: "The cloning of humans has profound and extensive implications for society as a whole because of the questions it raises." He seeks answers to such questions as to "What are the rights of cloned individuals? What are the moral and ethical aspects of cloning humans? Who has the right to clone?"

The third scientist, Dr Liebe Cavalieri, a molecular biologist at a Cancer Research Institute, decries cloning as "the most appalling, dangerous medical experiment in history". He shudders at the prospects and exclaims: "It's worse than Hitler a million times over. It's horrible. It's something that should be prevented violently, if necessary."

Noted anthropologist, Dr Ashley Montague says: "The ethical and moral implications of human cloning would be debasing for society. Many people see cloning as a positive point because a genius like Einstein could be recreated. But by the ordinary process of random genetic selection we have a far better way in which to create a genius."

Biologists: But pitched against the opponents of cloning are many other eminent personalities from the world of science. For instance, Dr Robert Sinsheimer, chairman of the biology department of California Institute of Technology believes that "cloning would permit the perpetuation and preservation of the finest types of human species".

Some others see cloning not just as an experimental technology but as the future means of reproduction. Dr Joshua Lederberg, Nobel Laureate, says: "Leave sexual reproduction for experimental purposes. If a superior individual is identified, why not copy it directly rather than suffer all the risks, including those of sex determination?"

Other scientists have come up with a number of suggestions ranging from making a clone of a young person and keeping it, to supply the original with spare parts when needed; duplicating someone, maybe a child dying of a non-hereditary disease, so that the person can be replaced at death; bringing back well embalmed historical figures from the dead and try to clone cells scrapped from the mummy.

There are, however, a large number of people who believe that cloning may be a good idea, the misuse of the technique could raise frightening possibilities. They contend that military leaders would create an army of strong, fearless and ruthless monsters. Dictators would try to create legions of docile, obedient and subservient workers.

Blending: According to a professor at the New York University, in theory cloning can also combine the characteristics of two people to create a person with the qualities of both. Thus a beautiful woman, like Hema Malini, could arrange to have a daughter with her looks and the brains of Henry Kissinger.

This could be done by blending the cells of both "parent-donors" in a laboratory and then implanting it in a womb. The problem, however, seems to be that the clone might have the looks of the father and talents of the mother. "Already the existing sperm banks - used for artificial insemination - are a step in that direction," he said.

Patent: Cloning is only one of the many fields in which geneticists are trying to improve on nature's method of procreation. They are even trying to create life itself and in the United States the doctors have reached advanced stages in programming human embryos.

The artificial creation of life is being taken so seriously that one corporation has already secured legal ruling on patenting such life. The new ruling, by the court of customs and patent appeals, has been proclaimed as a victory for the genetic engineers.

While no-one undermines the fact that more complex moral, legal and philosophical questions lie ahead for the genetic engineers, Dr Kimball Atwood, chairman of the Microbiology Department of Illinois University, views the production of an organism "that will combine the happy qualities of animals and plants, such as one with a large brain so that it can indulge in philosophy and also have a photosynthetic area on its back so that it would not have to eat".

UFOs: Mirage or Martians?

The recent sightings of a 'flying saucer' in parts of Western India has revived the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) debate. Hard-headed scientists who used to regard ufology - and ufologists - with undisguised disdain are now taking a hard new look at the phenomenon.

Minhaz Merchant

August 15, 1978 |

The recent sightings of a 'flying saucer' in parts of Western India has revived the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) debate. Hard-headed scientists who used to regard ufology - and ufologists - with undisguised disdain are now taking a hard new look at the phenomenon.

Prof D. Lal, director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, took a personal interest in the controversy, following widely reported eye-witness accounts by people in Bombay, Udaipur and Ahmednagar, of a 25-km-long, 2-km-wide flying object on April 3. The PRL has now finished examining the pictures taken by an amateur Bombay photographer and the other evidence in a full-scale study - the first of its kind undertaken in India.

Dr J.N. Desai, chief of the investigative team, has made some preliminary calculations: The object's brightness is estimated at one-tenth that of the moon and its velocity at roughly 4 km per second; it was observed for three minutes over a stretch of 1,200 km in Western India at an altitude of 60 km.

Alien Spacecraft: Prof Lal said he would not rule out the possibility of the object being an alien spacecraft. However, he stressed that it could not be a satellite or a rocket because of the time factor involved.
That such largely unsubstantiated hypothesis can gain scientific currency (and capture the public imagination) is an indication that ufologists are back in business.

Dr Jayant V. Narlikar, the world-renowned astrophysicist, who is professor of astronomy at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, said: "Generally speaking, I do not subscribe to a belief in UFOs. Every investigation on the subject in the West has reached a dead-end. There is as yet not a shred of evidence that flying saucers exist. When people claim to have seen such mysterious objects, they are probably just being deceived by common optical illusions."

Illusions: Temperature inversion, for instance, is one natural phenomenon that can bring about optical illusions. The effect gives rise to a sandwich of cold and warm layers of air which cause both visual and radar mirages. Virtually all UFOs recorded on radar screens have now been determined to be mirage effects arising from temperature inversion. Thousands of eye witness accounts of strange moving objects, glowing brightly in the sky can be similarly explained by known scientific effects.

In certain atmospheric conditions, with ice-crystals present in nearby cirrus clouds, a halo forms around the sun making it appear like a glowing, slowly moving flying object. Dr V.S. Venkatavardan, a fellow in the TIFR's Cosmic Ray division, said: "At night, most so-called UFOs are in reality exceptionally bright meteorites or fireballs." The rarely seen Aurora Borealis effect (commonly known as the Northern Lights) is also sometimes mistaken for a flying saucer.

Super Beings: Assuming that there is intelligent life in outer space (an assumption that is, mathematically at least, perfectly valid) which can indulge in inter-planetary travel and is, therefore, technologically far more advanced than human beings, obviously, such 'super-beings' would establish prior radio contact with earth (or, if they were so inclined, jam the world's entire radio communication system) and having disdainfully noted our backwardness, would do either of the two things: conquer us or ignore us. Since the former hasn't occurred and the latter, if it had, would make little difference, it seems likely that the only visitors from outer space, in the near future at least, will be meteorites, comets and shooting stars.

Space: Down to Earth

Anytime now, Rs 2,000 crore will go up in flames when Skylab, the largest artificial earth satellite launched so far, plunges back to earth. The objectives for which it was sent into space have been achieved during the nine months of its operation (from May 14, 1973 to February 8, 1974).

V.S. Venkatavardan

September 30, 1978 |

Anytime now, Rs 2,000 crore will go up in flames when Skylab, the largest artificial earth satellite launched so far, plunges back to earth. The objectives for which it was sent into space have been achieved during the nine months of its operation (from May 14, 1973 to February 8, 1974).

It was abandoned in space with its systems completely "turned off". Scientists had, however, hoped to revisit the space station in the next two years to recover material left in the spacecraft and discover the effect on it of long duration exposure to outer space conditions.

But the space station is in a critical condition today and may plunge down to earth anytime and at any place. It has started wobbling and is losing altitude every minute. The downward spiral is caused by the residual atmospheric drag on the satellite. Even though the atmosphere at the satellite orbit height is quite thin, it is sufficient to bring the satellite down to the lower atmosphere over a number of years where it will burn and eventually fall.

A satellite at low altitude thus has a lower lifetime in space compared to one at a higher altitude (spy satellites orbiting at very low altitudes have lifetimes of only a few days or weeks). If the satellite is small, it may be completely burnt out in the atmosphere owing to friction. If sufficiently heavy (like Skylab) a portion of it may fall on earth with a high impact speed.

Object in Space: On January 1, 1977, the number of man-made objects in near earth space was 4,141. On an average about five objects are placed into space during the launching of a single satellite. These include the discarded rockets and other hardware used in launching the satellite. Skylab revolutionized space station technology and set innumerable records in space science.

A total of 172 days were spent in the space station by three successive crews of astronauts. The missions conclusively proved that man can live for a prolonged period in space without any ill effects. Investigations were carried out in the physical sciences, bio-medical sciences and earth and space applications.

Among others, a detailed study of the sun was carried out which gave over 3,00,000 solar photographs during various phases of its activity. Further, thousands of photographs of the famous Comet Kohoutek were taken. Over 10,000 photographs of the earth and 70 km of magnetic tapes of information related to earth observations were made during the mission.

The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, in collaboration with scientists from the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, exposed a stack of cosmic ray detectors for 73 days outside Skylab during the third manned mission and retrieved it for analysis of cosmic rays. These studies have given valuable information about cosmic rays - their origin and propogation in space. A new component of cosmic rays has been discovered by Indian scientists from Skylab studies.

The Fall: It was initially thought that Skylab would spiral down sometime during 1980. Its earlier anticipated fall is curiously due to the sun which controls the upper atmospheric pressure of the earth. The pressure is not a constant and varies by orders of magnitude, depending on the state of the sun. There are what are called sun spots - dark regions seen in the solar disc whose number varies periodically. From a near absence of sun spots during a "solar minimum", the number grows into a maximum and falls to a minimum again within a period of about 11 years which is called the "solar cycle".

The upper atmospheric pressure, and hence the air drag for the satellite, will be high during maximum solar activity. The sun is reaching the peak of its activity which is expected to be the maximum around 1979-80. That would be still 'safe' for Skylab if the solar activity during the present maximum is normal. But it appears that the present solar maximum will be extremely intense with the sun spot number exceeding 100 or so. If that is so, the drag on the satellite will be considerable, causing it to plunge downwards earlier than predicted.

Skylab can still be saved if a Space Shuttle is sent up and a booster rocket attached to the space station enabling it to be sent in a higher orbit. But this appears to be difficult because of a delay in the Space Shuttle project. Corrections have been carried out from the ground station at Houston, Texas, which has stabilized the spacecraft's wobble to some extent. But if the orbit is not sufficiently raised, it will quickly lose its altitude and will ultimately head towards the earth. A sudden increase in solar activity will quicken the process.

Food: The saving of Skylab is important because a number of materials were kept outside the spacecraft to discover the effects of prolonged exposure in space. Among the objects inside the space station are rehydratable thermostabilized bread pudding and beverages. A study of the retrieved material will be useful for future space programmes involving long duration flights.

Skylab left alone in space also poses a danger to the earth in that it may fall on some heavily inhabitated region. In principle its orbit could be changed so that it falls in an uninhabited area, such as the deep ocean or a desert. Thus there are two courses of action left open. Either it can be placed in an higher orbit so as to prolong its lifetime, or it can be destroyed in a pre-determined orbit with a minimum of danger to people and property on earth.

Biogas: Fuel of the Future

Once considered an intermediate technology fit only for the underprivileged "Third World", biogas is now generating interest in the West as a cheap, renewable source for energy.

Prabha K. Singh

October 31, 1978 |

The inhabitants of Mukimpur village in Bulandshahr district pledge not to marry their daughters in villages which have no biogas plants.
                                                                                                                         - The Times of India

Gimmicky as it may sound, That pledge betrays a genuine anxiety, based ironically enough, on the very success of the biogas experiment. Though still in its infancy, the 50,000 plants installed under the Khadi and Village Industries Commission's (KVIC) biogas programme are already producing 99.82 million cubic metre of gas, equivalent to 62 million litre of kerosene valued at Rs 62.49 million, and 11.20 lakh tonne of high quality organic manure worth Rs 50.86 million.

Not surprisingly, a number of the farmers, suddenly catapulted into unaccustomed wealth, reacted as if their families were under seige. A typical complaint was the one made by an Uttar Pradesh villager who said: "The women in my house no longer work. They don't make dung cakes, collect firewood,... every woman is becoming a queen by herself. The added income from the farm causes jealousy and when we white-washed the house last month and installed a gas light, we found we were isolated from the entire village. The only way out now is to dig up my plant or make sure my neighbours get one."

Fortunately for the old man, his plea was answered by Jashbhai J. Patel, then technical advisor to the KVIC. "That man eventually helped us install 450 plants in the area," recalls Patel, whose pioneering work earned him international recognition as the undisputed "father of biogas technology".

Cheap Source: The case for biogas is undeniable. Once considered an intermediate technology fit only for the underprivileged "Third World", biogas is now generating interest in the West as a cheap, renewable source for energy.

Germany which built the first plants in 1947 and abandoned research after some initial failure, recently sent a four member delegation headed by Dr Gunther Hilliges, of the Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association, to aid and study the successful Indian experiment.

"Although discovered in 1870, biogas would have remained an obsolete technology in the West," Dr Hilliges told India Today, "if it wasn't for the oil price hike of 1974. Suddenly farmers all over Germany are sending us letters regarding the possible installation of plants."

The team, which studied a number of villages in India, is planning to publish a handbook in several African, Asian and South American languages "promoting the enormous developmental advantages of these plants."

Fuel: An average family of five requires 50 cubic feet of gas per day for cooking and providing four hours of light between sunset and early morning. To feed a plant this size, however, the family needs at least five heads of cattle, each producing approximately 13 cubic feet of gas per day.

Predictably, 60 per cent of the plants belonged to rich farmers owning more than four hectares of irrigated land and of the rest, only 11 per cent were owned by farmers having less than five cattle. The poorest, landless farmers were suddenly denied access to the now precious dung cakes.

A village housewife - city comforts

"One way out of the problem," said Patel, "was to build a community plant." The Council for Industrial and Scientific Research (CISR) built the first one in Kodumunju village in the Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh. Constructed at a cost of Rs 85,000, the plant produces about 4,480 cubic feet of gas per day to meet the requirements of 12 to 15 families.

Other Benefits: An unexpected bonus was the dramatic improvement in health and hygiene. Says Patel: "There was a time when we could tell we were approaching the village from the characteristic, overpowering stench of festering faeces. Now that we have built community toilets to feed the plant along with other night-soil and agricultural refuse, flies and mosquitoes have almost disappeared - as have most stomach and intestinal disorders, trachoma and malaria."

Since then, several villages have put up community plants, most notably in the Kaira (Amul dairy) region of Gujarat where landless, caste shepherds own milch cattle. So successful was the venture that a businessman, M.V. Patel, has decided to operate a commercial plant. Half his dung requirements are purchased from local shepherds and the by-products - fuel and fertilizer - are sold at a substantial profit.

Of the estimated 980 million tonne of cattle dung available in the country, 30 per cent is burnt in the form of cakes, most of it in the Gangetic plain. How wasteful this method of cooking is, was revealed in an experiment which showed that only 11 per cent of the heat potential of the dung was utilized, the rest being turned to ashes. If on the other hand, the entire amount of dung was fed into gas plants, it would produce 36,260 million cubic metre of gas, enough for the fuel requirements of 87.45 families.

Saving: Further, of the 0.25 tonne of coal equivalent used as domestic fuel in India, at least 34.4 per cent consists of wood, dry leaves and agricultural wastes. The introduction of biogas would directly affect this 34 per cent of the rural population thus saving, at a conservative estimate, Rs 400 crore of valuable wood annually.

"This is one way of halting deforestation and enjoying the ecological benefits accruing from it - increased rainfall, less soil erosion and the preservation of rapidly disappearing wildlife," said Professor R. Guldager who has worked with bio-gas plants in Somalia and Ethiopia and now heads a department for development and settlement at the Technical University, Braunschweig. Indeed, so promising are the fuel possibilities that "the proper recycling of waste can produce as much energy as the nation's entire consumption of oil," said a former managing director of Indian Oil.

Added to this is the attraction of free, high quality organic manure. So rich is the humus and nitrogen content of the manure that unsuspecting farmers reaped double the yield in root crops such as potatoes, carrots and turnips. Studies undertaken by the Humus Institute revealed a number of instances where the introduction of nitrogenous manure doubled the vegetable yield per acre. "Organic manure is free from weeds, white ants, soil grubs and is the only way of improving the basic structure of the soil," said Patel, "whereas, chemical fertilizer works in a lopsided fashion."

Fertility: A study undertaken by Professor A.K.N. Reddy of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, demonstrated the tremendous economic and developmental advantages of biogas manure as against chemical fertilizers. To produce 2,30,000 tonne of nitrogen annually, a nation could either build one coal-based plant or 26,150 small, village level biogas plants.
The former would cost $140 million (Rs 136 crore) to build, half of it in foreign exchange, and would consume coal equivalent to the energy requirements of 550 villages. The latter would cost $15 million (Rs 13.5 crore) less, would require no foreign exchange, be able to use renewable energy resources and would be environmentally sounder, as it is non-polluting. Further, it could be brought to production within a matter of months, given the right organization as against the couple of years required to build a big plant.Moreover, the benefits of development, would be spread more evenly in 26,150 centres rather than being concentrated in one area. The biogas plants, for instance, would generate 130 times as much employment in the most backward areas.
Undoubtedly, biogas can become a major energy source for rural India and give much needed impetus to rural development. It remains to be seen whether the much-vaunted rural programmes of the Janata Government would exploit its full potentials.

The Sea: Hidden Wealth

The Government is to commission a research vessel to undertake off-shore mineral exploration in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and the Indian Ocean by 1981.

G.V. Joshi

October 31, 1978,

The Government is to commission a research vessel to undertake off-shore mineral exploration in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and the Indian Ocean by 1981. Negotiations have been started with a West German ship building firm for developing and fabricating this research vessel.

The vessel will be used by Geological Survey of India (GSI), but the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) will also use this vessel for their research work.

Geologists from GSI and NIO have been carrying out studies and samplings of sea bottoms in the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean by hiring small mechanized boats. They also participate in Indian Navy cruises. Studies carried out so far have shown very encouraging results.

The sea floor is scattered with a variety of minerals waiting to be explored. Geologists have located nearly 288 million tonne of very high grade calcareous sand up lo a depth of one metre below the lagoon floors of some Lakshadweep islands. Calcareous sand is an excellent raw material for the manufacture of high grade cement.

The continental shelf covers an area of about one million square kilometre. This is nearly one third of the total land area of India. The Government has full rights over the mineral wealth on the continental shelf. Besides oil and gas explored and exploited by the Oil and Natural Gas Commission and Oil India Ltd, the minerals found on the continental shelf and the deep sea can be classified into three groups.

Terrigenous Minerals: Recent work done by GSI and NIO has resulted in the discovery of huge deposits of ilmenite, monazite and calcareous sands along the cost of Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

While ilmenite is used in the manufacture of Titanium - an important metal used in the manufacture of supersonic aircraft - and Titanium Dioxide (Ti02) - a starting material for the manufacture of paints - monazite sands are used to recover thorium, an important radioactive metal.

Other deposits of lesser value are gravel and sand used in the building industry. Due to shortage of dredgers and the problems of obtainings suitable ships, even these cheap raw materials could not be exploited until recently. While there is an acute shortage of these two items in cities like Bombay and Calcutta, they are lying in abundance and only waiting to be exploited a few kilometres off-shore. The same material can be used for preventing erosion.

Biogenous Deposits: Biogenous deposits along the ocean floor consist of shell pieces and skeletal debris of marine organism. The deposits in Kerala's Vembanad Lake and in the Gulf of Kutch are well known, and they are being mined at present.

Similar deposits have been discovered in the Gulf of Mannar, the Palk Straits, and along the coasts of some of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Exploitable reserves of about 1,400 million tonne of coral sand have been found in the lagoons of the Lakshadweep islands. These deposits of almost pure calcium carbonate are used in a variety of industries.

Chemogenous Deposits: The most important chemogenous deposit is manganese nodules. Manganese nodules in the shape of potatoes contain manganese (19 per cent), and iron (12 per cent). They also contain nickel, cobalt and copper in recoverable quantities.

They are known to occupy very large areas of the sea floor in the deeper parts of the Indian Ocean (10 million square kilometre). The estimated reserves of manganese ore on land are about 68 million tonne, and India is annually mining nearly two million tonne.

At this rapid rate, it is likely that India will run out of manganese ore very soon. Thus the exploitation of sea floor manganese nodules is of great importance not only for the manganese, but also for nickel, copper and cobalt, which are also in short supply.

At present there is mining of monazite and ilmenite sands in addition to shells and calcareous sand from the sea floor. About one million tonne of calcareous sand was dredged from the seas off Jamnagar and 93,000 tonne of shells were dredged from the Vembanad Lake. The entire production was used for the manufacture of cement.

A titanium dioxide plant is being built at Chavera, about 15 kilometre from Quilon in Kerala. The plant will produce 22,000 tonne of Ti02 pigments annually. It will use ilmenite from the Chavera coast of Kerala. The Chavera plant should have no problems in getting raw material for the next 60-70 years from these deposits.
Non-Stop: The new vessel will pave the way for the study of marine geology and exploitation of sea floor.

Then the exploration will go on day and night, year after year, in fair weather or foul to know more about the wealth of the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and the Bay of Bengal, which have been washing the shores of India for millions of years.