When planets collide...

Washington: Masses of dust floating around a binary star system suggest that two Earth-like planets obliterated each other in a violent collision, US researchers reported

“It’s as if Earth and Venus collided with each other,” Benjamin Zuckerman, an astronomer at the University of California Los Angeles, who worked on the study, said in a statement. “Astronomers have never seen anything like this before; apparently major, catastrophic, collisions can take place in a fully mature planetary system.”

Writing in the Astrophysical Journal, the team at UCLA, Tennessee State University and the California Institute of Technology said it spotted the dust orbiting a star known as BD +20 307, 300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aries.

A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles. So the observations are, in essence, looking back in time 300 years.

“If any life was present on either planet, the massive collision would have wiped out everything in a matter of minutes: the ultimate extinction event,” said Gregory Henry of Tennessee State University. BD +20 307 appears to be composed of two stars, both very similar in mass, temperature and size to the Earth’s sun. They spin about their common center of mass every 3 1/2 days or so.

“The planetary collision in BD +20 307 was not observed directly but, rather, was inferred from the extraordinary quantity of dust particles that orbit the binary pair at about the same distance as Earth and Venus are from our sun,” Henry said. “If this dust does indeed point to the presence of terrestrial planets, then this represents the first known example of planets of any mass in orbit around a close binary star.”

In July 2005, the team reported it had spotted the system, then believed to consist of a single star. It was surrounded by more warm orbiting dust than any other sun-like star known to astronomers. REUTERS

CELESTIAL IMPACT: Artist’s rendition of a collision between two Earth-like planets in the constellation Aries

COSMIC QUEST

Key to evolution of universe found, says space probe

‘Dark Matter Detected For First Time’

Jonathan Leake

Scientists may have detected dark matter — the mysterious substance thought to make up 85% of the universe — for the first time.

They have discovered a surge of high-energy particles from the heart of the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy, which closely matches the radiation signature predicted for dark matter. Details of the particles, detected by a European space probe, emerged at a cosmology conference in Stockholm.

“This is very exciting research,” said professor Carlos Frenk, a leading theoretical physicist and director of the institute for computational cosmology at Durham University, who attended the conference. “Dark matter holds the key to the evolution of the universe but it has never been detected before.”

The idea that visible matter, such as galaxies, stars and planets, is just a fraction of the universe’s mass was first put forward in 1933.

Astronomers had realised that many galaxies — the clusters of stars that dominate the visible universe — were moving so fast they should fly apart. Their survival over billions of years implied that each galaxy contained far more matter than astronomers could see and that this “dark matter” generated the extra gravity needed to hold galaxies together.

The theory has been strengthened by the observation that light from distant galaxies often appears to have followed a curved trajectory on its way to Earth as if it had been bent by the gravity from some invisible source.

Such calculations suggest that 85% of the universe’s mass is dark matter, with only 15% being visible. However, despite 75 years of theorising and hundreds of millions of pounds spent on satellites and experiments, astronomers have never detected dark matter directly.

Scientists believe that dark matter is made of particles called neutralinos which do not interact with ordinary matter. Billions pass through the Earth, and our bodies, every second. They are also transparent, which is why the clouds of dark matter pervading space do not block our view of other stars and galaxies.

In Stockholm, Mirko Boezio, who worked on the discovery, said that the probe, called Pamela, had detected a surge of positrons — a form of antimatter. The observation fitted predictions that dark matter would be concentrated in galactic cores becoming so dense that particles collide and smash each other apart, emitting positrons. SUNDAY TIMES

A power-less fridge that realizes Einstein’s dream

London: An Oxford electrical engineer has come up with a refrigerator that runs without electricity. Not his own idea. He has based it on a model invented by Albert Einstein in 1930.

Einstein and his colleague, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, patented a fridge that had no moving parts and used only pressurised gases to keep things cold. The idea is to eventually stop using modern refrigerators, which use gas that harm the environment. They work by compressing and expanding greenhouse gases called freons — far more damaging that carbon dioxide.

Almost every household in the developed world owns a fridge and its sales are rising as demand increases in developing countries.

Malcolm McCulloch, an electrical engineer at Oxford who works on green technologies, is leading a threeyear project to develop fridges that can be used in places without electricity.

The Einstein-Szilard model design was partly used in the first domestic refrigerators but the technology was abandoned when more efficient compressors became popular in the 1950s.

Einstein and Szilard’s idea avoids the need for freons. It uses ammonia, butane and water and takes advantage of the fact that liquids boil at lower temperatures when the air pressure around them is lower.

“If you go to the top of Mount Everest, water boils at a much lower temperature than it does when you’re at sea level, and that’s because the pressure is much lower up there,” says McCulloch.

At one side is the evaporator, a flask that contains butane. “If you introduce a new vapour above the butane, the liquid boiling temperature decreases and, as it boils off, it takes energy from the surroundings to do so,” says Mc-Culloch. “That’s what makes it cold.”

He is not the only one interested in environmentfriendly fridges. Engineers working at a Cambridge-based start-up company, Camfridge, are currently using magnetic fields, instead of gas, to cool things.

Managing director Neil Wilson says: “When the magnetic field is next to the alloy, it’s like compressing the gas, and when the magnetic field leaves, it’s like expanding the gas. This effect can be seen in rubber bands — when you stretch the band it gets hot, and when you let the band contract it gets cold.” IANS

SEE, NO ELECTRICITY: In 1930, Einstein had patented a fridge that had no moving parts and used only pressurised gases to keep things cold

Preschools spell big bucks today

Anahita Mukherji | TNN

Mumbai:Million-dollar baby could well be an apt description for the average middle-class Indian toddler. In the absence of government regulation for preschool education, the private sector is making a killing in the market. Listed companies and strategic investors are backing big brands that operate playschool chains in metros and small towns.

The profit after tax of KidZee, a play school that runs 463 centres and is planning another 632, was Rs 80 lakh last year. The company expects that figure to rise to Rs 2 crore this year. The KidZee chain is backed by the investing might of the Essel group, of which it is a part. Essel is an entertainment company listed on both the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Educomp, another company listed on the BSE, bought a 50% stake in EuroKids, a preschool chain worth around Rs 80 crore. Educomp runs 450 centres in 160 cities and towns, including 30 centres in the northeast.

Most preschool companies use the franchise model. The company invests in curriculum development, teaching methods and “brand-building’’, while the franchisee provides infrastructure, including the premises.

It’s not just big brands backed by huge investors that have franchises. First Steps, a playschool that opened shop in Mumbai two years ago, recently started its first branch in the city and is considering a few more in future. “Starting a franchise is beneficial, as we can concentrate on our curriculum and do not need to invest in property,’’ says Sweta Kapadia, principal of the playschool.

Preschools give rise to high schools on parents’ demand
Mumbai: The private sector is investing in playschools in a big way. Eighty to ninety percent of franchisees investing in EuroKids are women entrepreneurs, ranging from chartered accountants to housewives, says company MD Uday Mathur.

“The franchise model works where investments are not huge. For a preschool, the typical investment is Rs 10 lakh per centre, unlike a high school, which would require up to Rs 10 crore,’’ said Sumeet Mehta, CEO of Zee Interactive Learning Systems (ZILS), which runs KidZee.

But that has not deterred popular preschool chains from spawning high schools, as parents who are happy with their toddler’s playschool want their child to stick with the brand right up to Class X. For instance Lina Ashar’s popular chain—Kangaroo Kids Education Limited (KKEL), which runs 60 playschools nationwide, has started 13 schools called Billabong High, while EuroKids runs four EuroSchools, the oldest being in Hyderabad. ZILS has eight operational high schools called KidZee High, and 12 more are coming up.

While the demand for playschools is higher in metros, they are steadily making inroads in small towns like Jalna and Akot in Maharashtra. Investment and fees, of course, are higher in Tier One cities. For instance, while Eurokids invests around Rs 15 to 20 lakh in a “premium school’’, the investment is around Rs 5 lakh in smaller centres. The investment is directly proportional to the fee charged. So parents in metros cough up around Rs 40,000 annually to send their child to a EuroKids centre, while their counterparts in small towns fork out Rs 10,000 a year.

Similarly, parents in big cities pay Rs 18,000 to Rs 30,000 a year at KidZee, the fee in Kolhapur or Pathankot is Rs 9,000.

Interestingly, hefty fees don’t necessarily translate into large pay packets for preschool teachers, who earn Rs 4,000 to Rs 8,000 a month. Some preschools offer their own teacher-training certificate courses for new recruits.

Preschool chains are out to capture a variety of market segments. Kangaroo Kids, which caters to an elite clientele, is now targeting the middle-class niche in Mumbai, Thane, Pune and Nagpur with its new brand, Brainworks. “We had a strategic investor for Kangaroo Kids, but a private company has invested in Brainworks,’’ says Ashar. While Kangaroo Kids charges parents around Rs 3,500 a month, the fee at Brainworks is Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,500. The curriculum, too, is different for the two brands. Investment in infrastructure and imported equipment is also slightly lower for Brainworks.

So what drives parents to enrol kids who can barely talk in playschools? “I put both my children in a Bandra playschool when they were 18 months old, mainly so that they could interact with other children. One of my kids is rather shy, and opened up a bit, thanks to the playschool,’’ says Anisha Seth, a Mumbai mother who shelled out a handsome Rs 25,000 a year for the playschool.

But while playschool companies rake in the rupees, the absence of government regulation leaves preschoolers and their parents vulnerable. “India is not the only country where preschool education is heavily privatised. The problem, though, is that we have no system of checks and balances,’’ says Nalini Chugani, president of the Mumbai branch of the Indian Association for Preschool Education (IAPE). Often, playschools are not as childfriendly as they claim to be, and may be little more than tiny airconditioned rooms stuffed with attractive equipment, she says. She adds that preschools often use a regimented method of learning that may be damaging to a child.

Interestingly, one of the big names approached IAPE for content development. IAPE drew up a roadmap that required an investment of Rs 5 lakh. “The preschool chain was unwilling to invest the amount we suggested, and dumped us, along with our plan,’’ adds Chugani.

NO KIDDING: Most playschool firms in India use the franchise model

NO CHILD’S PLAY

A clock that tells more than time, evokes mortality

London: Most clocks just tell time. Not the newly unveiled clock at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, which aims to disorient and dazzle, to remind people of their own mortality and to pay tribute to one of the most famous watchmakers of all time.

No wonder it cost more than $1.8 million to build and drew the attention of famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who formally unveilled the masterwork on Friday. This clock blasts away all preconceptions about timepieces. For one thing, it has no hands. And it is specially designed to run in erratic fashion, slowing down and speeding up from time to time.

The ‘Corpus clock’ is the brainchild of inventor John Taylor, who used his own money to build it, in part to pay homage to the genius of John Harrison, the Englishman who in 1725 invented the “grasshopper” escapement—a mechanical device that helps regulate a clock's movement.

Making a visual pun on the grasshopper image, Taylor has designed a fantasy version of a grasshopper at the top of the clock face, and uses this beast— with its long needle teeth and barbed tail—as an integral part of the clockworks. Its jaws begin to open halfway through a minute, then snap shut at 59 seconds. The grasshopper is called a chronophage, or “time eater”. “Time is gone, he’s eaten it,” said Taylor. “My object was simply to turn a clock inside out so that the grasshopper became a reality.”

The chronophage stands atop the clock face, which is four feet in diameter. It displays time with light—a light races around the outer ring once every second, pausing briefly at the actual second. The next ring inside indicates the minute, and the inner ring shows the hour. The apparent motion is regulated mechanically through slots in moving discs. Weirdly, the pendulum slows down or speeds up. Sometimes it stops, the chronophage shakes a foot, and the pendulum moves again. Because of that, the time display may be as much as a minute off, although it swings back to the correct time every five minutes.

He noted Albert Einstein’s observation about how the pace of time varies based on experience: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”

On Taylor’s clock, the hour is tolled not by a bell or a cuckoo, but by the clanking of a chain that falls into a coffin, which then loudly bangs closed. AP

GIANT TIMEPIECE

About two metres in diameter, the Corpus clock is made from discs of stainless steel and plated with 24-carat gold

A brainchild of inventor John Taylor, it does not use hands or numerals to show the time
With each slackening of the grasshopper’s jaw, and release of its claws, a minute is devoured
The hour is tolled not by a bell or a cuckoo, but by the clanking of a chain that falls into a coffin, which then loudly bangs closed

The time display may be as much as a minute off, although it tells the correct time every 5 minutes

The clock took seven years to build at the cost of $1.8 million

Professor Stephen Hawking after unveiling The Corpus Clock at the Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, England, on Friday

Big Bang machine shut for 2 months

London: The huge particlesmashing machine built to simulate the conditions of the ‘Big Bang’ that recreated the universe has malfunctioned and may be shut down for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research said on Saturday.

An incident on Friday resulted in a large helium leak into the tunnel. Preliminary investigations indicate the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, the organization said. “Strict safety regulations ensured that at no time was there any risk to people,” it said. “A full investigation is underway but it is already clear that the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place. This implies a minimum of two months down time.”

Earlier this month international scientists celebrated the successful start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine located in the tunnel on the Swiss-French border.

When the LHC starts up at full speed, it will be able to engineer 600 million collisions every second, with protons travelling at 99.99% of the speed of light around its 27-km underground chamber. REUTERS

Scientists spot blast at edge of universe

Astronomers have detected the most distant gamma-ray burst ever found. The cosmic explosion came from a star that detonated about 12.8 billion light years from earth.

The new record holder, called GRB 080913, was first detected on September 13 by Nasa’s Swift space observatory. Telescopes around the world soon detected its afterglow at longer wavelengths, and the light spectrum they observed revealed its incredible distance: 12.8 billion light years away, Newscientist.com reported.

That is about 70 million light years farther than the previous record holder. “This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen,” said the mission’s lead scientist Neil Gehrels of the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“It’s coming to us from near the edge of the visible universe,” the website quoted him as saying.

Astronomers have been hoping to discover very distant GRBs because they exploded when the universe was young—they are being seen now because their light took billions of years to reach earth. These ancient GRBs could reveal details about the lives and deaths of the very earliest stars.

GRB 080913 exploded less than 825 million years after the big bang. “This burst accompanies the death of a star from one of the universe’s early generations,” said Swift team member Patricia Schady of University College London.

Gamma-ray bursts are fleeting blasts of high-energy radiation that occur when massive stars die and shoot out high-speed jets of matter. The expanding matter initially produces gamma rays, but when it starts colliding with surrounding gas, it creates afterglows at longer wavelengths.

Gamma rays don’t penetrate earth’s atmosphere and so have to be viewed from space. AGENCIES

Astrophysicists find biggest star to date
Washington: An international team of astrophysicists has found and “weighed” the most massive star to date, which has a mass 116 times greater than that of the sun.

The team was led by Universite de Montreal researchers from the Centre de recherche en astrophysique du Quebec (CRAQ). They successfully “weighed” a star of a binary system with a mass 116 times greater than that of the Sun, waltzing with a companion of 89 solar masses, doubly beating the previous record and breaking the symbolic barrier of 100 solar masses for the first time.

Located in the massive star cluster NGC 3603, the supermassive star system, known under the name of A1, has a rotation period of 3.77 days. ANI

FROM A DISTANCE: The blast seen here through Nasa observatory Swift’s X-ray and UV/optical sensors. The blast was from an exploding star 12.8 billion light-years away

Students threatened maths teacher in Bollywood ‘Style’

V Narayan I TNN

Mumbai: The three students who were arrested for using gangster Chhota Rajan’s name to threaten a teacher, were produced before a local court on Saturday. They have now been sent to the remand home in Dongri.

According to police, the students were inspired by the film Style. In the movie, two students — Chantu and Bantu — intimidate their professor over the phone, saying they have links with gangsters, and force him to give them high grades.

The students had threatened Virasat Raza Sayyed (29), a mathematics teacher at Sinhal Coaching Classes in Tardeo, in a similar manner on September 11. They had called Sayyed from their cellphone and told him that they were members of the Chhota Rajan gang and that they would eliminate him because he had scolded one of his students for misbehaviour. According to the police, the trio had admitted that they had made the calls to their professor.

The boys, all aged 17, are students of science in standard XI at a college in the western suburbs. They have been booked under various sections of the IPC, including intentional insult and criminal intimidation.

“Two of them used their cellphones to make the calls at regular intervals,’’ said sub-inspector (investigating officer) Manoj Chalke, Meghwadi police station. He added that the police tracked them from the cellphone numbers given by Sayyed.

“The students and their families were asked to come down to the police station,’’ Chalke said. The students told the police that they had bought the cellphones 15 days before they had made the threat calls.

The three boys are the only sons in their families. “Two boys’ fathers are unwell and are undergoing treatment, while the third boy’s father is a retired postman,’’ the police said.
narayan.namboodiri@timesgroup.com