CM Rekha Gupta handing a power connection notice to a resident in the presence of North East Delhi MP Manoj Tiwari.
| Photo Credit: ANI

Polavaram irrigation project receives huge inflow of flood water in West Godavari district
| Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT

Comets may have been responsible for the presence of water on Earth, scientists have claimed, according to a new research published this week in Science Advances. The researchers focused on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and discovered that the molecular structure of water found on the celestial body closely resembled that of Earth’s oceans. While water existed in the gas and dust form when Earth formed around 4.6 billion years ago, questions regarding how it ultimately became rich in liquid water have puzzled scientists.

Researchers are of the view that a substantial portion of our oceans came from the ice and minerals on asteroids and possibly comets that crashed into Earth. To further their theory, the researchers led by Kathleen Mandt, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, decided to use an advanced statistical computation technique to find the molecular structure of water on 67P which belongs to the Jupiter family of comets, using data captured by European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta mission to the asteroid.

Also Read | Mysterious ‘Dark Comets’ May Pose Bigger Threat Than Previously Thought To Earth

Earth’s specific signature

The water on Earth has a unique molecular signature which has to do with specific rations of the hydrogen variant, or isotope, called deuterium. For the last few decades, deuterium levels in water found in the vapour trails of several Jupiter-family comets displayed similar levels to that of Earth’s water.

“So I was just curious if we could find evidence for that happening at 67P. And this is just one of those very rare cases where you propose a hypothesis and actually find it happening,” said Ms Mandt.

As it turned out, Ms Mandt’s team found a clear connection between deuterium measurements in the comet and the amount of dust around the Rosetta spacecraft.

“As a comet moves in its orbit closer to the Sun, its surface warms up, causing gas to release from the surface, including dust with bits of water ice on it. Water with deuterium sticks to dust grains more readily than regular water does,” the study highlighted.

“When the ice on these dust grains is released into the coma, this effect could make the comet appear to have more deuterium than it has,” it added.

The research has big implications not only for understanding comets’ role in delivering Earth’s water but also for understanding comet observations that provide insight into the formation of the early solar system.

Neat rows of vegetable and fruit plants in a portion of the 4.50-hectare agricultural land, a 3.3-KV solar power panel running pumps and other electrical appliances, slim polyethylene hoses for drip irrigation, and uniformly spaced trees form part of some innovative practices adopted by farmer Bhanwar Lal Meel at Lalasi village in Rajasthan’s Sikar district.

Mr. Meel, 41, who has studied till Class 12, has made innovations in traditional practices and adopted new techniques to turn farming on his ancestral land into a profitable venture amid the decline in the groundwater level and erratic rainfall. A pond constructed in his field last year, utilising the subsidy under the Prime Minister’s Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, provides an additional support to farming by storing rainwater.

Mr. Meel is among a bunch of farmers in Shekhawati region who have adopted new techniques for optimum utilisation of water and getting remunerative prices for agricultural produce. The expertise at the farmland has led to significant expansion in the sowing area for crops and vegetables, higher yield, and enhanced annual income per hectare of land.

A major concern

The decline in the groundwater level is a major issue for agriculturists in all four districts of Shekhawati — Sikar, Jhunjhunu, Churu, and Neem Ka Thana.

As the production of crops has declined, farmers have started cultivating vegetables, as they can get eight times the yield with just 25% labour compared with traditional farming. The sowing area of vegetables has almost doubled in the last 10 years.

Farmer Mahesh Pachar in Sikar tehsil’s Jheegar Bari village has adopted rainwater harvesting techniques on his seven-acre land and established a climate-controlled polyhouse in an area measuring 1,000 square metres for growing vegetables. “The polyhouse remains vacant only from April to June. The rest of the year, I grow a good quantity of fruits, vegetables, and flowers,” he said.

Sundaram Verma of Danta village has developed techniques to grow crops with less water and conserve water in the arid regions. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2020 for developing ‘dryland agroforestry’, a method to help tree plantation efforts.

Bhanwar Lal of Sarwari village in Sikar’s Dhod block has established a processing plant for gooseberries grown in his fields and started producing candy, powder, and murabba (sweet fruit preserve), which fetch him an annual profit of ₹15 lakh. Similarly, Dharampal Singh in Jhunjhunu district’s Bharu village has taken up organic farming with the help of vermicompost produced in his 19-acre field.

Increase in income

Agricultural expert Chiranji Lal Maharia, who owns a 10-hectare land in Sikar’s Kudan village, pointed out that the average income of farmers in the region, which was earlier about ₹1 lakh per hectare in a year, has touched about ₹8 lakh a year as a result of the innovative practices and hi-tech applications.

The sowing area of crops has also increased by one-and-a-half times. Besides, the separate agriculture budget started by the previous Congress regime in the State had introduced subsidies for horticulture and farm mechanisation through the purchase of agricultural equipment.

Faced with paucity of water, Mr. Maharia had to take up animal husbandry as an avocation. He also encouraged other villagers to rear sheep and goats.

“I am getting the services of a veterinarian to ensure proper growth of my animals, whose number has crossed 60,” he added. The ‘bakra mandi’ (goat market) in Sikar is one of the biggest in the State, where the annual turnover is estimated at ₹600 crore.

For this year, the Agriculture Department has announced a subsidy of up to ₹1.35 lakh for construction of farm ponds, which may be used for collecting rainwater for irrigation.

Mr. Maharia has led a group of farmers to raise the demand for bringing canal waters for irrigation in the parched fields. He said if a provision of 5,000 cusecs of canal water is made for the 50-lakh acre irrigable land in the region, it will solve the problem of water scarcity and also provide enough drinking water to the 85-lakh population in Sikar division.

The Chaudhary Kumbharam Lift Canal, built under the Indira Gandhi Canal Project, supplies 1,500 cusecs of water to some areas. If the Indira Gandhi Canal is repaired on a war footing, the inflow of water may increase to 15,000 cusecs and a portion of the additional quantity may be allocated to Sikar.

If one cusec of water is allotted per 1,000 acres, the drinking water requirement may be met and fruit and vegetable production can be taken up in 50 lakh acres through drip irrigation. The rearing of sheep and goat will provide additional support, Mr. Maharia pointed out, while calling for the appointment of a panel of experts and framing of water allocation rules. These rules may be made on the lines of allocation coming to Sanchore in southwestern Rajasthan from Sardar Sarovar Dam in neighbouring Gujarat.

The Sikar Sambhag Nahar Lao Sangharsh Samiti has also pointed out some anomalies in a memorandum of understanding signed between the Haryana and the Rajasthan governments last month for ensuring the supply of the latter’s entire share of water as per the 1994 Yamuna Water Agreement.

Sangharsh Samiti chief Bhola Ram said the Rajasthan government should make an attempt to get its full share of water from Tajewala Head and arrange for its supply to Sikar division through pipelines.

In the midst of the demands for bringing water to Shekhawati, Sikar Collector Qummer-ul-Zaman Choudhary said he is encouraging farmers to adopt new cropping patterns. “The establishment of farmer-producer organisations, linkages with cooperatives, and ensuring market accessibility will enhance their income,” Mr. Choudhary said.

New Delhi:

Scientists analysing the remote sensing data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission have found that high energy electrons from the Earth may be forming water on the Moon.

The team led by researchers from the University of Hawai’i (UH) at Manoa in the US discovered that these electrons in Earth’s plasma sheet are contributing to weathering processes — breaking down or dissolving of rocks and minerals — on the Moon’s surface.

The research, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, found that the electrons may have aided the formation of water on the lunar body.

Knowing the concentrations and distributions of water on the Moon is critical to understanding its formation and evolution, and to providing water resources for future human exploration, the researchers said.

The new finding may also help explain the origin of the water ice previously discovered in the permanently shaded regions of the Moon, they said.

Chandrayaan-1 played a crucial role in the discovery of water molecules on the Moon. The mission, launched in 2008, was the first Indian lunar probe under the Chandrayaan programme.

Solar wind, which is composed of high energy particles such as protons, bombards the lunar surface and is thought to be one of the primary ways in which water has been formed on the Moon.

The team investigated the changes in surface weathering as the Moon passes through Earth’s magnetotail, an area that almost completely shields the lunar body from solar wind but not the Sun’s light photons.

“This provides a natural laboratory for studying the formation processes of lunar surface water,” said Shuai Li, an assistant researcher at the UH Manoa School of Ocean.

“When the Moon is outside of the magnetotail, the lunar surface is bombarded with solar wind. Inside the magnetotail, there are almost no solar wind protons and water formation was expected to drop to nearly zero,” Li said.

Li and co-authors analysed the remote sensing data that were collected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument, an imaging spectrometer, onboard India’s Chandrayaan 1 mission between 2008 and 2009.

They, specifically, assessed the changes in water formation as the Moon traversed through Earth’s magnetotail, which includes the plasma sheet.

“To my surprise, the remote sensing observations showed that the water formation in Earth’s magnetotail is almost identical to the time when the Moon was outside of the Earth’s magnetotail,” said Li.

“This indicates that, in the magnetotail, there may be additional formation processes or new sources of water not directly associated with the implantation of solar wind protons. In particular, radiation by high energy electrons exhibits similar effects as the solar wind protons,” he explaned.

This finding and the team’s previous study of rusty lunar poles indicate that the Earth is strongly tied with its Moon in many unrecognised aspects, the researchers added.

Chandrayaan 1 was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in October 2008, and operated until August 2009. The mission included an orbiter and an impactor.

India successfully landed Chandrayaan-3 mission, with a rover and a lander, near the Moon’s enigmatic south pole last month, becoming the first country to do so.