26 October 2026 Current Affairs: Immersive Tech Push

Cooking soda, also called baking soda, is sodium hydrogen carbonate, also known as sodium bicarbonate. It is a mild base made from one sodium, one hydrogen, one carbon and three oxygen atoms.

Shipki La is the pass through which the Satluj river enters India from Tibet. It lies in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh, on the border with the Tibet region of China.

An avalanche is a mass of snow and ice sliding suddenly down a mountain slope. It is driven by gravity acting on the snowpack, so it is grouped with landslides as a terrestrial or mass-movement disaster, not an atmospheric one.

A cumulonimbus cloud is the final stage of a growing cumulus cloud. On a hot day, rising warm air forms small fair-weather cumulus.

The Suresh Tendulkar expert group, which reported to the Planning Commission in 2009, deliberately moved away from the old calorie-based poverty line.

The United Nations Security Council has fifteen members: five permanent members and ten non-permanent members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.

Zonal Councils are statutory bodies set up under the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, to promote cooperation among neighbouring states. There are five: Northern, Central, Eastern, Western and Southern.

This is the incorrect statement, because the Rajya Sabha does discuss a Money Bill. Under Article 109, a Money Bill is introduced only in the Lok Sabha and, after it is passed, it is sent to the Rajya Sabha.

This statement is incorrect because the Speaker resigns by writing to the Deputy Speaker, not to the President.

The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha was founded in Pune in 1870 to act as a bridge between the government and the people and to put the grievances of the public, especially peasants, before the British authorities.

Some Fundamental Rights are given only to citizens of India, while others are available to every person on Indian soil, including foreigners.

The Karachi Session of March 1931, presided over by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, passed the resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy.

Archaeologists divide the Stone Age into the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods mainly by the kind of stone tools found and the way they were made.

When a magnet moves inside a coil, the magnetic flux linked with the coil changes, and this change produces an electromotive force and a current.

Colostrum is the thick, yellowish first milk a mother produces in the first few days after childbirth.

The India Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project was launched by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2010 with World Bank support.

The winter solstice of the Northern Hemisphere falls on about 22 December. On that day the Sun's rays fall vertically on the Tropic of Capricorn, and the North Pole is tilted away from the Sun.

The National Institute of Disaster Management grew out of the National Centre for Disaster Management, set up in 1995 at the Indian Institute of Public Administration in New Delhi, which was renamed NIDM in 2003.

Point Calimere, also called Kodiakkarai, lies in the Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu, a state, where the Coromandel Coast turns west towards Palk Strait.

The Union excise levied on petrol and diesel has three parts. Basic Excise Duty is an ordinary Union tax, so it goes into the divisible pool and a share of it reaches the states as recommended by the Finance Commission under Article 270.

Mercury is small and very close to the Sun, so its weak gravity and the intense solar heat and wind have stripped away almost all gas; it has only a trace exosphere, which is why it is described as having no atmosphere.

The Kushanas, who ruled a vast empire from Central Asia to the Ganga valley in the first centuries CE, presented their kings as god-like figures, and the clearest evidence of this comes from their coins and statues.

A bicameral state legislature has two Houses: the Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha) and the Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad). Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh all have a Legislative Council, along with Maharashtra and Karnataka.

This statement is incorrect because a Constitution Amendment Bill must be passed by each House of Parliament separately by the special majority, and Article 108 joint sittings do not apply to it.

Korkai, near the mouth of the Tamraparni river in the present Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu, was the chief port of the early Pandyas.

This statement is incorrect because the Constitution places no bar on re-electing a Vice-President; he may be elected any number of times.

Ayodhya is not counted among the centres of the Revolt of 1857; in Awadh the rising was centred on Lucknow, the capital.

The limestone hills around Sukkur and Rohri in Sindh contain rich beds of fine chert, a hard, flint-like stone. Excavations there have found hundreds of Harappan quarry and workshop sites, where long, sharp chert blades were struck in large numbers and sent to towns across Sindh, including Mohenjodaro.

The Caucasus Mountains run for about 1,100 kilometres from the eastern shore of the Black Sea to the western shore of the Caspian Sea, forming a wall across the isthmus between the two seas.

Statements III and IV describe the ionosphere and the mesosphere correctly, while I and II mix up facts about the troposphere and the ozone layer.

Vitamin B1 is the chemical called thiamin (also spelt thiamine), the first of the B-complex vitamins to be identified. Thiamin is a water-soluble vitamin that helps the body turn carbohydrates into energy and keeps nerves and the heart working properly.

Antibodies are made by B-lymphocytes, a kind of white blood cell, after they meet a foreign antigen. When a germ or other foreign substance enters the body, B-lymphocytes that recognise its antigen multiply and turn into plasma cells.

In uniform circular motion the speed stays the same, but the direction changes at every point, so the velocity keeps changing.

The 0° latitude is the Equator, the largest circle that can be drawn on the globe, so it is the longest parallel.

All three projects, Baglihar, Dulhasti and Salal, stand on the Chenab river in Jammu and Kashmir. The Chenab is formed by the Chandra and Bhaga rivers, which meet at Tandi in Himachal Pradesh, and it flows through Jammu and Kashmir into Pakistan.

Article 46 asks the State to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections, in particular the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

A black hole forms when a very massive star collapses under its own gravity, and its pull becomes so strong that not even light can escape.

A plane mirror always forms an image that stands upright, cannot be caught on a screen, and has its left and right sides swapped.

The Purga is a cold, snow-laden local wind of Siberia and the tundra of northern Russia. In winter, a strong high-pressure area builds over Siberia, which becomes one of the coldest places on Earth.

The Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro proposed in 1811 that equal volumes of all gases, at the same temperature and pressure, hold the same number of molecules.

Oyashio, Kuroshio, Alaska and Humboldt are currents of the Pacific Ocean, while Canaries, Labrador and Benguela flow in the Atlantic.

The four terrestrial planets do lie between the Sun and the asteroid belt, but they are dense, not light, and their weak gravity could not hold on to escaping gases.

These six ceremonial gates belong to the new Parliament House of India in New Delhi. The new Parliament building, part of the Central Vista project, was inaugurated in May 2023.

The rulers of Vijayanagara claimed to rule on behalf of the god Virupaksha, a form of Shiva and the guardian deity of Hampi.

Fuji. Mount Fuji in Japan is a volcanic mountain, built up by layers of lava and ash, not by the folding of rock layers.

The force needed equals the rate at which the belt must give horizontal momentum to the falling sand: F = v × (dm/dt) = 2 × 0.1 = 0.2 N. Newton's second law, in its general form, says force equals the rate of change of momentum.

The brothers Harihara I and Bukka Raya I founded the Vijayanagara Empire in 1336, with its capital on the banks of the Tungabhadra at Hampi.

For three equal resistors R in parallel, 1/Rp = 1/R + 1/R + 1/R = 3/R, so Rp = R/3.

Indian Standard Time is based on 82.5° E, and a place 5 hours behind lies 75° to the west of it, at 82.5° − 75° = 7.5° E. The Earth turns 360° in 24 hours, so local time changes by one hour for every 15° of longitude, or four minutes…

Maulana Azad was India's first Education Minister, serving in Jawaharlal Nehru's Cabinet from 1947 until his death in 1958. Azad was a scholar, journalist and Congress leader who had been the youngest president of the Indian National Congress in 1923 and its president again from 1940 to 1946.