Current Affairs 01 September 2026

Aranmula Uthrattathi Vallamkali – Kerala’s Traditional Boat Festival

Aranmula Uthrattathi Vallamkali is a famous traditional boat festival held annually at Aranmula in Pathanamthitta district, Kerala, on the Pampa River. It is celebrated during the Onam season, on the Uthrattathi day in the Malayalam month of Chingam.

The event is closely associated with the Sree Parthasarathy Temple at Aranmula, dedicated to Lord Krishna as Parthasarathy. Unlike many competitive boat races in Kerala, the Aranmula event has a strong religious and ceremonial character.

The festival features traditional snake boats known as Palliyodams, each propelled by a large team of oarsmen. The Palliyodams are regarded as sacred vessels associated with the Parthasarathy Temple.

Aranmula is also famous for the GI-tagged Aranmula Kannadi, a unique handmade metal mirror produced using a traditional alloy-based technique.

Poola Subbaiah Veligonda Irrigation Project – Phase I Inaugurated

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu inaugurated Phase I of the Poola Subbaiah Veligonda Irrigation Project on 31 August 2026, nearly three decades after laying its foundation stone on 5 March 1996. The project is intended to provide irrigation and drinking water to drought-prone areas of Markapuram, Prakasam, Nellore and Kadapa districts.

The Veligonda Project diverts Krishna River water from the Srisailam Reservoir through gravity and stores it in the Nallamala Sagar Reservoir, from where water is distributed through a network of canals. Phase I has been completed at a cost of about ₹7,983 crore, against the total estimated project cost of around ₹10,200 crore.

Under Phase I, 10.70 TMC ft of Krishna water will be stored in Nallamala Sagar. It is expected to provide irrigation to approximately 1.19 lakh acres and drinking water to about 4 lakh people. The first phase includes twin tunnels extending about 18.8 km and around 21.8 km of feeder canal works.

Once fully operational, the project is expected to serve 30 mandals, provide irrigation to about 4.47 lakh acres and supply drinking water to nearly 23 lakh people. The Andhra Pradesh Government has stated that Phase II is targeted for completion by 2028.

Vacuum birefringence

An international team of astronomers has reported strong observational evidence for vacuum birefringence, a long-standing prediction of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). The findings, based on observations of the magnetar 1E 1547.0−5408, were published in Nature on 5 August 2026.

Vacuum birefringence is the predicted phenomenon in which an extremely strong magnetic field changes the optical properties of space, causing light with different polarisation orientations to propagate differently. The effect was predicted in 1936 by Werner Heisenberg and Hans Heinrich Euler. In QED, a vacuum is not empty but is influenced by quantum fluctuations and virtual particle-antiparticle pairs.

A magnetar is a type of neutron star possessing an exceptionally powerful magnetic field.

NASA Launches Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

NASA successfully launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on 30 August 2026 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The approximately $4-billion space observatory is designed to study major cosmic mysteries including dark energy, dark matter and exoplanets.

The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first Chief Astronomer, often called the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope”. Roman complements the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope, but has a much wider field of view. NASA says it can survey the universe around 1,000 times faster than Hubble.

Roman began a roughly three-month journey to the Sun–Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), located about 1.6 million km from Earth.

Q1. Aranmula Uthrattathi Vallamkali, a famous traditional boat festival, is celebrated in which State?
A. Karnataka
B. Kerala
C. Tamil Nadu
D. Andhra Pradesh

Q2. The Poola Subbaiah Veligonda Irrigation Project diverts Krishna River water from which reservoir?
A. Nagarjuna Sagar Reservoir
B. Srisailam Reservoir
C. Pulichintala Reservoir
D. Somasila Reservoir

Q3. Vacuum birefringence refers to which of the following phenomena?
A. Bending of light due to the gravitational field of a massive object
B. Change in the propagation and polarisation of light through vacuum in the presence of an extremely strong magnetic field
C. Emission of radiation from a black hole due to quantum effects
D. Splitting of white light into different colours by a prism

Q4. Which country recently launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to observe dark energy, dark matter and exoplanets?
A. Russia
B. United States
C. China
D. Japan