Rapid Fire
Rapid Fire Current Affairs
- 31 Aug 2023
- 2 min read
US and Palau Enhance Maritime Enforcement
- Recently, the United States and the Republic of Palau, a country in the western Pacific Ocean, signed an expanded bilateral law enforcement agreement to enhance maritime governance.
- The agreement enables the U.S. Coast Guard to enforce regulations at sea in Palau's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) on behalf of Palau even without the presence of a Palauan officer.
- The agreement will help increase maritime domain awareness and prevent Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing within Palau's EEZ.
Read more: Rising Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing, Palau Joins ISA
Mahendragiri
- Mahendragiri, the last Project 17A Frigate, will be launched on 1st September 2023.
- The ship is named after a mountain peak in Eastern Ghats located in the state of Orissa.
- Project 17A Frigates are follow-ons of the Project 17 Class Frigates (Shivalik Class), with improved stealth features, advanced weapons and sensors, and platform management systems.
- Mahendragiri is a technologically advanced warship and stands as a symbol of India's determination to embrace its rich naval heritage.
- Project 17A ships have been designed in-house by the Indian Navy’s Warship Design Bureau.
Read more: Project 17A and INS Taragiri
Contribution of Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908. He hypothesised that helium gas could be formed from radioactive substances.
- He discovered that there are at least two types of radiation, alpha (α) and beta (β) particles, coming from uranium.
- His most famous experiment is the gold foil experiment:
- A beam of alpha particles was aimed at a piece of gold foil. Most alpha particles passed through the foil, but a few were scattered backward.
- This showed that most of the atom is empty space surrounding a tiny nucleus (positively charged and surrounded at a great distance by the negatively charged electrons).
