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Wednesday, April 22.1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 9
Scientists starstruck by findings
Evidence shows possible current planet formation
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Signs of a new family of planets orbiting a distant star are the clearest evidence yet of worlds forming beyond our solar system and suggest that planets where life could evolve may exist throughout the universe, astronomers say.
Using powerful new instruments on telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, two teams of astronomers independently found a doughnut-shaped disk of dust rotating around a star 220 light-years away. A light-year is about 5.9 trillion miles.
Astronomers said at a news conference yesterday that the hole in the doughnut may have been caused by the birth of planets.
"A solar system like our own is being constructed in the middle of this disk," said David Corner of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of an astronomy team that used the Neck II telescope in Hawaii to study the star.
He said the finding, along with similar discoveries reported this week in the journal Nature, suggests that new planets may be very common throughout the universe.
Another astronomy team, using the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile, confirmed the observation.
"Perhaps there are lots of places for life to exist," he said.
Both teams focused on a star, called HR 4796, that earlier studies had suggested could be at the center of what is called a protoplanetary disk.
"These disks are thought to be the birthing rooms of planets," said NASA astronomer Edward Weiler, head of a space agency program that is searching for evidence of extrasolar planets and life.
"We haven't actually detected any planets," said Lee Hartmann of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a member of the Cerro Tololo team. But he said the most likely explanation for the absence of dust in the hole of the disk was that planets had formed.
He said new and highly sensitive instruments were allowing astronomers to move from just speculating about planets forming to actually seeing the formations. Hartmann said that during the next few years there would be many new planetary families discovered outside the solar system.
A new type of infrared detector attached to the Keck and the Cerro Tololo telescopes determined that the dust about HR 4796 existed mostly in a thin outer ring and that an empty cavity was between this ring and the star. It is believed that this cavity was carved out by planets that swept up the dust in their birth processes.
A team of American and British
astronomers tells this week in tature finding the telltale doughnut holes in dust disks about three other stars: Vega, Fomalhaut and Beta Pictoris. These stars are older than HR 4796, and it is believed that planetary formation there is further along.
As planets form, said the astronomers, they would tend to act like gravitation vacuum cleaners, sucking up the dust and gas from areas near their orbits. After all the planets are formed, only a faint outer ring of dust and gravel is left. Such a ring, called the Kuiper Belt, exists now around the sun, orbiting beyond Pluto and Neptune, the outermost planets of the solar system.
"This may be what our solar system looked like at the end of its main planetary formation phase," said Michael Werner of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He said comets may be forming now in the outer dust ring about HR 4796, just as comets are thought to have formed in the Kuister Belt.
Crash victim's family sues companies
The Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The family of one of five skydivers killed in a plane crash last month is suing the maker of the plane's motor, the company owning the plane and Independence Memorial Airport.
The lawsuit filed Monday in Jackson County Court alleges that the engine contained a defective crankshaft and other defective parts.
Paul and Lynda Rueff of Shelbyville, Ill., are seeking unspecified damages in the death of Eric Rueff. 32, of Kansas City, Kan.
The other victims in the March 21 crash wereJulie Douglass,24, of Kansas City,Mo.; pilot Dave Snyder,57, of Independence, Mo.; Marion Rudder,47, of Oksaloosa; Ken Buckley,50, of Independence,Mo.; and John Schuman,47, of Lawrence.
Their single-engine Cessna 206 was attempting an emergency
landing at the East Kansas City Airport in nearby Grain Valley, Mo. Snyder had reported an electrical emergency after taking off from the Independence, Mo., airport, and witnesses said they saw smoke coming from the plane before it clipped some trees and plowed into the ground about 60 yards from the runway.
Whuffo Inc., the company that owned the plane, is a Missouri corporation registered to Snyder, the pilot, who died in the crash.
The lawsuit charges that Whuffo and the airport were negligent in maintenance and service of the aircraft.
Airport owner Robert Schlotzhauer Jr. said Monday that the airport provided no maintenance services to users or tenants.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident. The investigation is not completed, but an agency official
said Monday that a metal tube that kept oil from leaking was missing from the plane. In addition, a metal piece that covered one of the plane's six cylinders and kept oil inside to lubricate the valves and pistons was loose.
The Kansas City Star reported yesterday that aircraft mechanics said such a situation could lead to oil spewing from the engine onto the manifold and other hot parts, producing smoke and possibly fire.
That is consistent with witness reports from the crash. Witnesses said they first saw white smoke, then black smoke and orange flames coming from the plane's cowling.
The board's final report is not expected for several months.
Two years ago, the United States Parachute Association, the industry's main safety advisory group, asked the Greater Kansas City Skydiving Club to give up its membership because of alleged safety problems. The club protested and agreed to withdraw.
Maintenance logs obtained from the FAA indicate that work was done on the plane's cylinders and rings in February. John Cochrane, an AFA-certified mechanic since 1993, worked on the plane's oil pump and declared the craft airworthy on March 14.
Ron Sharp, president of the Greater Kansas City Skydiving Club, and pilot Charlotte Leach said the Cessna's fuel-injected engine flooded at one point on the afternoon of the crash.
Later, Sharp said, the plane's battery was recharged. Another pilot took a test flight. Then Snyder and his passengers took off.
"It sounded good," Sharp said of the motor. "It sounded perfect. He took off, and that was the last I saw of him."
Paul McCartney says he loves her
The Associated Press
LONDON — A heartbroken Paul McCartney paid eloquent tribute yesterday to his late wife, Linda, detailing her final moments before she succumbed to breast cancer and vowing that she was, and still is, the love of his life.
When his wife of 29 years lay dying Friday, the former Beatle said his last words to her.
"You're up on your beautiful Appalaloa stallion," he said in a statement. "It's a fine spring day. We're riding through the woods. The bluebells all are out, and the sky is a clear blue."
"I had barely got to the end of
the sentence when she closed her eyes and gently slipped away," he said.
McCartney also released six pictures of his 56-year-old wife, a photographer and vegetarian pioneer, taken recently by their daughter Mary.
Two days before her death in Santa Barbara, Calif, the McCartneys had ridden horses together. Their close aide, Geoff Baker, said Mrs. McCartney's rapid deterioration came without warning, the morning of the day she died
"The past two years we spent battling her disease have been a nightmare," McCartney said. "She never complained and
always hoped to be able to conquer it. It was not to be."
"Our family is so close that her passing has left a huge hole in our lives," he said. "We will never get over it, but I think we will come to accept it."
The final words of McCartney's statement were "I love you, Linda."
Mrs. McCartney was cremated in California before her husband and four children flew back to Britain on Saturday, Baker said.
No details of a service were released. However, the Sun, a tabloid newspaper, reported yesterday that her ashes had been scattered on the family farm at
Peasmarsh, 50 miles southeast of London.
A vegetarian cookbook, called "Linda McCartney on Tour," will be released later this year, and an exhibition of her photographs will take place in New York.
About six songs Mrs. McCartney recorded shortly before she died could be released as part of an album tribute to her life, Baker said.
Forty rolls of film taken of the Beatles by Mrs. McCartney in the 1960s, which were found undeveloped a month before her death, likely will be released as a documentary of the band's final days, Baker said.
Judges examine claims that firm is anti-competitive
Hard questions about Microsoft
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Three federal appeals judges, asked to consider procedural questions in the Justice Department's fight against Microsoft, instead went to the heart of the debate: Is the company illegally trying to dominate its competitors?
Microsoft is appealing a judge's Dec. 11 preliminary injunction that prohibited it from forcing computer makers who sell Windows 95 to also offer Microsoft's Internet browser. The company claims the browser is bundled so tightly within its dominant Windows operating system that Internet Explorer is not actually a separate product.
The sometimes-esoteric debate is important because Microsoft may, under a 1995 agreement with the Justice Department, develop integrated products for its Windows operating system, which is used on the vast majority of desktop computers. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is second in popularity only to Netscape Communication Corp.'s browser.
The Justice Department, which is considering a broader antitrust case against Microsoft, contends the software company is using its Windows market muscle to foist its browser on customers unfairly, illegally squeezing other companies' browsers out of the market. Government attorneys say "tying" the sale of Windows 95 to the use of Internet Explorer is anti-competitive and wrong.
U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia M.
Wald questioned yesterday how that injunction was granted.
In a broader sense, the fight about browsers is vital to Microsoft because of the Internet's explosive popularity and the possibility that Internet browsers eventually could replace Windows as software operating systems.
The court's decision could be announced in one to three months.
"What it all comes down to in the end is, what is an integrated product," Wald said. Much of the hearing was spent trying to answer that question.
The Justice Department argued that Microsoft's current Internet browser is a stand-alone product, in part because it had been marketed simultaneously alongside Windows 95. Microsoft has said its original Internet Explorer was not included in the earliest Windows 95 because of technical delays.
"If Microsoft stopped selling the browser separately, it's not a violation? Why does that make sense?" asked Judge A. Raymond Randolph. "What's to prevent Microsoft from bundling a new browser, one that's never been marketed, with Windows 98?"
Internet Explorer
"There may be no basis, your honor," answered Justice lawyer Douglas Melamed, the deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust.
The third judge, Stephen F. Williams, noted "the complete overlap of code, or if not complete overlap then a large degree of overlap" between Windows 95 and Internet Explorer.
But when Microsoft defended its right to integrate products with Windows, Wald accused the company: "Your position is, you can have your cake and eat it, too?"
Microsoft's attorney, Richard J. Urowsky, asked the three-judge panel to overturn the Dec. 11 preliminary injunction because the Justice Department had never requested such a move. Instead, the government had asked U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to find Microsoft in contempt for allegedly violating that 1995 agreement.
Taking on that argument, Wald told Justice lawyer Melamed: "For a preliminary injunction, you are supposed to show irreparable harm (to consumers). If you didn't think harm was so great, how do you justify your strategy?"
"We were wrong," Melamed conceded, in failing to describe fully how tying Windows 95 and Internet Explorer together hurt customers. But he defended Jackson's preliminary injunction, even while acknowledging it was odd to get that ruling without requesting it.
"That's not the way we hand out preliminary injunctions up here," Wald said.
Microsoft also contends that Jackson overstepped his authority when he appointed a special master, Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig, to consider important technical issues in the case. Microsoft claimed Lessig was biased against it, and that the judge tried to give Lessig too much authority.
Although the issue was barely raised yesterday, the panel appeared sympathetic to the need for experts.
The Justice Department declined to comment afteryesterday's hearing.
"We are in an area as judges — as smart as we are — where we don't always understand," Wald said.
Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Neukom praised the judges for exploring what it means to integrate programs into Windows, calling that the central issue in the appeal.
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