A planetary system with Jupiter-like planet
Shirish Joshi

Astronomers have found a distant planetary system with at least one planet whose orbit closely resembles Jupiter, a member of our solar system. This is for the first time that a planet, which is similar to one of the nine planets, in the solar system, we live has been discovered much beyond it.

Dr Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington both in the USA, have discovered a new planet about five times the size of Jupiter. It orbits around a sun-like star at a distance very much like Jupiter, the solar system’s biggest planet.

The newly discovered planet is one of three planets circling a star, called 55 Cancri, that is about 51 light years away from the earth. This is the first time that they have found a family of planets, which is very similar to the planets in our own solar system, with nine planets orbiting around the central star, the sun.

The new planet circles 55Cancri at a distance of 5.5 astronomical units, close to the 5.2 AU orbit of Jupiter. An AU is the distance between the earth and the sun, about 93 million miles. The new planet takes about 13 years to orbit around its central star, close to the 11.86 years it takes Jupiter to orbit the sun.

The two other planets around 55 Cancri are also Jupiter-or Saturn-sized bodies, but they orbit much closer to the parent star. One is in an orbit of about nine million miles and the other is about 23 million miles.

Marcy and Butler also announced they had found 13 other planets orbiting distant stars, bringing to 91 the total number of known planets in other solar systems.

They use a technique that measures the very slight wobble of a central star and then use the magnitude of this wobble to determine the presence of orbitting planets, the size and shape of their orbits and their mass. The technique works only for larger planets and cannot detect those much smaller than about half the mass of Saturn. The planet-hunting astronomers are in the midst of a long-term project to search each sun-like star in the Milky Way up to a distance of 150 light years. A light year is the distance light travels in a year in a vacuum, about 5.8 trillion miles.

The Milky Way is the galaxy in which our solar system lies and contains about 200 billion stars.

Although the 55 Cancri planet is the first to resemble a solar system-like orbit, the team feels that other astronomers will find many such planets over the next decade.

Why a building twists

In your childhood, you must have sat on a rope swing — a wooden cradle tied with coir ropes to the sturdy branch of an old tree. 

The more modern versions of these swings can be seen today in the children’s parks in urban areas; they have a plastic cradle tied with steel chains to a steel framework.

Consider a rope swing that is tied identically with two equal ropes. It swings equally, when you sit in the middle of the cradle. 

Buildings too are like these rope swings; just that they are inverted swings (Figure 1). 

The vertical walls and columns are like the ropes, and the floor is like the cradle. Buildings vibrate back and forth during earthquakes. 

Buildings with more than one storey are like rope swings with more than one cradle.

Thus, if you see from sky, a building with identical vertical members and that too uniformly placed in the two horizontal directions, when shaken at its base in a certain direction, swings back and forth such that all points on the floor move horizontally by the same amount in the direction in which it is shaken (Figure 2).

Again, let us go back to the rope swings on the tree: if you sit at one end of the cradle, it twists (i.e., moves more on the side you are sitting). 

This also happens sometimes when more of your friends bunch together and sit on one side of the swing.

Likewise, if the mass on the floor of a building is more on one side (for instance, one side of a building may have a storage or a library), then that side of the building moves more under ground movement (Figure 3). This building moves such that its floors displace horizontally as well as rotate about a vertical axis.

Authored by C.V.R. Murty (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur) for Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council, New Delhi.

RESPONSE
Dirty detergents

This refers to the article written by Roopa Vajpai i.e. “Beware of dirty detergents”, (Oct 10) the title itself is contradictory.

In the start of the article, the author has mentioned that each brand is claiming to wash the cleanest at unbeatable prices. However, at the end, she again mentioned that the detergent brands which are found to be the best are the ones with the highest concentration of phosphates. So this clarifies that the local brands which are not able to afford the price of advertisements in TV are the best washing powders, eco-friendly, non-polluting and not containing phosphates.

Further, the abbreviation used for Sodium Tripoly Phosphate is STPP; several times, the author used STTP instead of STPP.

Moreover, the cost of STPP is Rs 44/kg. Then how can a local manufacturer set up his formulation with STPP, as the supply rate (in bulk) to local manufacturers is merely Rs 11-13/kg, including sales tax and transportation cost.

Again, the author mentioned a damage of $ 5710 million on an average (according to World Bank) due to water pollution and its impact on rural and urban health. But there was no mention regarding any damage due to effluents by the factories and the role of Pollution Control Board.

If the data on effluents and effluent treatment plants had been given, then the article would have been more interesting and valuable.

Further, I think that it is of no use to present the data on per-capita consumption of washing powder in India and then to compare it with other countries. Ultimately, the article signifies that the local brands (of washing powders) are better than the branded ones because they do not contain STPP and further cannot pollute the water system of India and only the local brands will figure out the losses that had been estimated by the World Bank. So please tell the people not to use branded washing powders and only the local brands.

Harmohinder Singh, Ludhiana

Lab device mimics Black Hole jets

Among the most powerful phenomena in space are the jets of material spat out by supermassive black holes, which anchor many galaxies. These hypervelocity streams of superheated gas, called plasma, are concentrated into two narrow paths that travel in opposite directions, along a galaxy’s axis of rotation.

But the forces and processes that funnel and propel these magnificent structures, which can span light-years of space, are mostly mysterious.

New clues come from an unlikely source: a nuclear research programme.

In recent years, two Caltech researchers have been modeling magnetic activity on the Sun by using a stainless steel vacuum chamber called a spheromak. The device was developed primarily to study nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun and which has been studied as a possible source of terrestrial power. The scientists, Scott Hsu and Paul Bellan, have now figured out how to employ the spheromak to mimic a black hole’s jets. 

NEW PRODUCTS & DISCOVERIES
Hide-away houses

Michael Jantzen foresees a time when you will be able to pack away your house.

Jantzen’s concept Hide Away house, made predominantly of fabric, folds up for storage. Yet it features all the comforts of home, including hot water, electricity, a bathroom, and heat.

During the off-season, hard shells store the water-gathering devices, solar panels, sewage treatment tanks, and other off-the-grid necessities, as well as the fabric walls and ceilings. Everything fits into the back of a pickup truck.

Jantzen is working with Advanced Structures of Marina del Rey, California, to make his Hide Away house a reality. There are no firm plans for production. www.humanshelter.org

Simultaneous solar flares

Scientists say they have made the unprecedented discovery of solar flares erupting almost simultaneously on opposite sides of the sun.

The flares - massive eruptions of hydrogen from the sun’s surface — were observed by researchers at the National Solar Observatory in southern New Mexico on October 31.

Simultaneous solar flares have been seen in the past, but never so far apart. Scientists at the observatory are trying to determine whether the eruptions were linked or a coincidence, said solar physicist Don Neidig.

Experts said the discovery could have far-reaching consequences if more cases are observed.

“Now we have only one example of two flares that go off simultaneously that far apart, so it could be an accident. If we see more of these ... then it becomes extremely important,” said Stephen Greggor, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico.

Observatory researchers speculated that magnetic fields may have primed the flares to erupt seconds apart. They cautioned, however, that there is too little data even to put forward a theory.

Solar flares are the largest known explosions in the solar system and are driven by magnetic fields. Neidig said the ones observed on Halloween had an explosive force equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs.

The New Mexico scientists said they did not know if the flares had been observed anywhere else in the world.

The researchers were using a new solar telescope being developed by the Air Force to help predict dangerous conditions in space. AP 

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CROSSWORD

Clues

Across:

1. Instrument for comparing colour of solutions with that of standard solutions.

9. A soluble polysaccharide consisting of fructose and used to make bread for diabetics.

10. A mineral containing a metal & sometimes a nonmetal.

11. Abbr. for a new development in transportation, flying faster than sound.

12. Primitive plankton, seaweed.

14. Load at which a material or structure fractures.

16. ….odd nucleus contains even number of protons but odd number of neutrons.

17. Saltpetre or Potassium nitrate.

20. Symbol for a soft silvery metallic element related to nuclear technology.

21. Abbr. for National Council on framing of policies for development of drugs & pharmaceuticals.

22. Prefix denoting water or compounds of hydrogen.

23. Prefix denoting the O= radical in a compound.

Down:

1. A collection of similar cells or inter-cellular material forming structure of a plant or animal.

2. A harmone produced by pancreas to control sugar metabolism.

3. An oscillation of Earth’s poles about the mean position.

4. Smooth greasy healing preparation for skin application.

5. Symbol for Manganese.

6. A colourless inflammable liquid hydrocarbon of benzene series.

7. Units of work or energy.

8. A temperature scale in which melting point of ice is taken as 0oR and boiling point as 80oR.

13. A deep or hollow place in a rock.

15. Mollusc that bores into submerged timber.

18. A kind of proton storage ring having synchrotron for injecting counter-rotating protons.

19. …meter is another name for rain gauge.

20. Abbr. for growth controlling harmone.

Solution to last week’s Crossword