Q5 · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2017 · GS I · 10 marks · 2 min read

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How does the Juno Mission of NASA help to understand the origin and evolution of the Earth?

Topic: Indian Heritage and Culture. Syllabus: Indian culture will cover the salient aspects of Art Forms, literature and Architecture from ancient to modern times. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2017 and Indian Heritage and Culture.

Revision summary

Jupiter stored early nebular gas that Earth did not keep, so it is a formation archive. Juno measures deep water, gravity, and the magnetic field from polar orbit. Water and core structure constrain how wet and how mixed the disc was. That disc story controls Earth’s water, metals, and bombardment history. Juno feeds models; it does not replace Earth and Moon samples.

Model answer

Flow diagram

flowchart TD
  J[Juno at Jupiter] --> W[Water ammonia]
  J --> C[Gravity core]
  J --> M[Dynamo magnetosphere]
  W --> N[Solar nebula]
  C --> N
  N --> E[Earth origin models]

Conclusion

  • State clearly that Juno does not photograph early Earth; it supplies boundary conditions for solar-system formation models.
  • Pair Juno with meteorites, lunar samples, and Earth geology rather than treating one orbiter as a full history of our planet.

Juno helps us understand Earth’s origin by measuring the first giant’s water, core, and magnetic engine, which are leftovers of the nebula that also built the terrestrial planets. Earth’s later evolution still needs its own rocks; Juno sets the family story in which those rocks make sense.

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More from this paper

Q1 · UPSC Mains 2017 · GS I · 10 marks

How do you justify the view that the level of excellence of the Gupta numismatic art is not at all noticeable in later times?

Indian Heritage and Culture

Gupta gold showed the king as archer, lyrist, or horseman with Lakshmi or ritual reverses and Brahmi verse. Metal was relatively pure and the die work was sculptural. Post-Gupta and early medieval coins often debased metal and used stiff stock types. Sultanate and Mughal art followed another visual language. The claim holds for Gupta-style numismatic art, not for all later mint skill.

Q2 · UPSC Mains 2017 · GS I · 10 marks

Clarify how mid-eighteenth century India was beset with the spectre of a fragmented polity.

World's Physical Geography

After 1707 the Mughal emperor lost the capacity to rule provinces in fact. Nadir Shah and Abdali exposed Delhi’s military hollowness. Bengal, Awadh, Hyderabad, Marathas, Sikhs, and Mysore became separate armed powers. Panipat 1761 showed even the Marathas were not a single state. Company victories in the Carnatic and Bengal fitted into this broken order.

Q3 · UPSC Mains 2017 · GS I · 10 marks

Why did the 'Moderates' failed to carry conviction with the nation about their proclaimed ideology and political goals by the end of the nineteenth century?

The Freedom Struggle

Moderate goals were council seats, ICS, and drain critique, not immediate independence. Methods were petitions and annual sessions that missed peasant and mill-hand life. The social base was presidency professionals speaking English public language. 1892 reforms were too small to prove the method worked. By the century’s end a hotter nationalist mood found them unconvincing.

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