SOHRA

• Vaid's ICS, Lucknow
• 26, Jul 2021

Why in News?

The Union Home Minister has recently  launched the Green Sohra Afforestation Campaign at Sohra (Cherrapunji).

He also inaugurated the Greater Sohra Water Supply Scheme.

Key Facts:

• The entire area of ​​Cherrapunji is going to be adopted by Assam Rifles for the purpose of plantation.
• Cherrapunji, also known as Sohra is a subdivisional town in the East Khasi Hills district in the Indian state of Meghalaya.
• It is the traditional capital of ka hima Sohra (Khasi tribal kingdom).
• Sohra has often been credited as being the wettest place on Earth, but for now nearby Mawsynram currently holds that distinction.
• It still holds the all-time record for the most rainfall in a calendar month and in a year.
• Sohra receives rains from the Bay of Bengal arm of the Indian summer monsoon.

Facts for Prelims:

PDS 70:

Scientists for the first time have spotted a moon-forming region around a planet beyond our solar system – a Jupiter-like world surrounded by a disc of gas and dust massive enough that it could spawn three moons the size of the one orbiting Earth.

• The researchers used the ALMA observatory in Chile’s Atacama desert to detect the disc of swirling material accumulating around one of two newborn planets seen orbiting a young star called PDS 70, located 370 light years from Earth.
• A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 5 trillion km.
• More than 4,400 planets have been discovered outside our solar system, called
• No circumplanetary discs had been found until now because all the known exoplanets resided in “mature” – fully developed – solar systems, except the two infant gas planets orbiting PDS 70.
• The orange-coloured star PDS 70, roughly the same mass as our Sun, is about 5 million years old.
• The two planets are even younger. Both planets are similar (although larger) to Jupiter, a gas giant. It was around one of the two planets, called PDS 70c, that a moon-forming disc was observed.