UPSC GK Questions 2026

The RER is studded with ribosomes, the actual sites where amino acids are joined into proteins. Ribosomes read the message carried by mRNA and link amino acids in the right order.

A medium more concentrated than the cell is hypertonic, so water leaves the cell by osmosis. In osmosis water moves across a selectively permeable membrane from the side with fewer dissolved particles to the side with more.

Aerenchyma is a kind of parenchyma whose cells enclose large air-filled spaces. These air cavities keep aquatic plants such as water hyacinth, lotus and Hydrilla afloat and let oxygen move down to roots and stems that sit in waterlogged soil or under water.

Together the two resins take out every dissolved ion, which leaves demineralised water. In the cation exchange resin (written RH), metal ions such as Ca2+, Mg2+ and Na+ are swapped for H+ ions.

Radiation carries heat as electromagnetic waves, and these waves travel even through empty space. Heat moves in three ways.

Lonar Lake in Buldhana district of Maharashtra fills a crater made by a meteorite impact. The Lonar crater was formed in prehistoric times when a meteorite struck the basalt rock of the Deccan Plateau.

Most Harappan seals were carved from steatite, a soft soapstone that hardens when fired. Steatite is easy to cut, so craftsmen could carve fine animal figures and signs of the Harappan script on it.

The Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, released in 2011, aimed at average GDP growth of 9% a year for 2012–17.

Heat, by definition, is energy that flows because of a temperature difference. Thermodynamics recognises two ways in which a system can exchange energy with its surroundings: heat and work.

The Act provided dyarchy at the Centre and autonomy in the provinces, two separate reforms. The Government of India Act, 1935 abolished dyarchy in the provinces, which the 1919 Act had begun, and replaced it with provincial autonomy: provinces got responsible governments with ministers answerable to elected legislatures.

New Zealand forms the south-western corner of the Polynesian Triangle in the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific islands are grouped into three regions.

A light year is a unit of distance, not of time or brightness. One light year is the distance light travels through a vacuum in one Julian year.

Among the four rocky inner planets, Earth is the largest, with a diameter of about 12,742 km. The inner or terrestrial planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, all made of rock and metal.

Harishena was the court poet and minister of the Gupta ruler Samudragupta and wrote this praise-poem in his honour. The Prayaga Prashasti, also called the Allahabad Pillar Inscription, is in elegant Sanskrit and is engraved on the same pillar that carries an edict of Ashoka.

A beam seen from the side is visible only because tiny particles send some of its light sideways. Light travelling in a straight line cannot enter our eyes unless something redirects it towards us.

The second industrial revolution, from about 1850 to 1914, was driven by steel, chemicals, electricity and oil. The first industrial revolution began in Britain around 1760 and rested on cotton textiles, coal, iron and the steam engine.

The New Development Bank was founded by the five BRICS countries, and Canada is not one of them. The founding members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Copper is less reactive than lead, so it cannot push lead out of its compound. In a displacement reaction, a more reactive metal takes the place of a less reactive metal in its salt solution.

When the jobs on offer need skills, or are in places, that do not match the workers available, people stay jobless even though vacancies exist.

Graphite has free electrons that can move through it, so it conducts electricity; diamond and fullerene do not conduct well.