Professional Documents
Culture Documents
: DL-SW-1/4082/15-17
ISSN : 0972-169X Date of posting: 26-27 of advance month
Date of publication: 24 of advance month
Being Pluto 30
Fibromyalgia: Sutras to 24
win over the aches and
pains
Recent developments 21
in science and technology
36
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Clyde Tombaugh and his icy world (Continued from page 27)
he got instead was a job offer from the a needle in a haystack. He would say it was
Observatory. a tedious job but better than pitching hay
on his father’s farm.
Further search at Lowell Tombaugh never lost his passion for
After discovery of Pluto in 1930, stargazing even after retirement. Once, the
Tombaugh continued to work at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
Lowell Observatory for 13 years. He D.C. requested him to lend them his old
could not find any other planet, but he 9-inch telescope that he had used when he
discovered hosts of new variable stars, was quite young. He replied to them that
several new asteroids, new star clusters, he was still using it.
and clusters of galaxies including one
supercluster of galaxies stretching Awards and honours
from Andromeda to Perseus. He also In recognition of his contributions,
discovered a periodic comet 274P Tombaugh was awarded Hannah Jackson-
Tombaugh-Tenagra. In some literature Gwilt Medal and Gift in 1931 by the
on astronomy, he is also credited with Royal Astronomical Society. His other
the discovery of another comet; however, honours include an honorary doctorate
its name is not known. It seems that he from Northern Arizona University (1960),
probably misidentified this comet with the Distinguished Alumni Certificate
an asteroid. Tombaugh compared his photographic plates using from the University of Kansas (1966),
this blink comparator. (Credit: Wikipedia) the Regent’s Medal (1980) and Crouch
Beyond astronomical career Award (1990) from New Mexico State
In 1943, Tombaugh was called to service years before it was finally improved upon. University and the NASA Distinguished
during World War II. He taught navigation After nine years at White Sands, Public Service Award (1980). He was also
to U.S. Navy personnel at Arizona State Tombaugh left the missile range in 1955. awarded the Medal of the Pioneers of White
College in Flagstaff from 1943 to 1945. He joined the faculty of New Mexico Sands Missile Range. In 1982, the University
After the war, Lowell Observatory was State University in 1955 in Las Cruces. He of Kansas Observatory was named the Clyde
unable to rehire Tombaugh due to a funding continued teaching there till his retirement W. Tombaugh Observatory. To honour
shortfall. So, in 1946, he returned to work in 1973. Even after the retirement he Tombaugh, a heart-shaped feature on Pluto
for the military at the ballistics research remained involved with the academics of the has recently been named “Tombaugh Regio”.
laboratories of the White Sands Missile University. To raise funds for an astronomy Asteroid 1604 Tombaugh has been named
Range in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where post-doctoral research programme, started by in his honour.
he supervised the optical instrumentation the New Mexico State University, Tombaugh Tombaugh died of congestive heart
used in testing new missiles. In the course toured the U.S. and Canada from 1985 to failure on 17 January 1997 at his home in
of this work, Tombaugh designed many new 1990 delivering public lectures. Las Cruces, New Mexico, U.S.A.
instruments including a super camera called In his extensive lecture tours, he would Dr. P. K. Mukherjee is an Associate Professor of
IGOR (Intercept Grand Optical Recorder) recount his childhood days as a farm boy, Physics, Deshbandhu College, New Delhi and
which remained in use at White Sands for 30 comparing the discovery of Pluto to finding popular science writer.
Pentaquark discovered at LHC up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm. meson interacting relatively weakly with
After the historic discovery of the elusive Anti-quarks also come the same six flavours. each other via pion exchange (the same force
Higgs boson in 2013, the Large Hadron Both protons and neutrons are made up of that binds atomic nuclei) in a ‘meson-baryon
Collider at CERN has spotted yet another three quarks bound together by the strong molecule’”.
long-sought subatomic entity called the force. When five quarks combine, it is According to the researchers, “The
pentaquark. It was first predicted to exist in called a pentaquark, which is a hypothetical pentaquark is not just any new particle…
the 1960s but, much like the Higgs boson It represents a way to aggregate quarks,
before it, the pentaquark eluded discovery namely the fundamental constituents of
for decades until its detection at the LHC. ordinary protons and neutrons, in a pattern
The discovery, which amounts to a new form that has never been observed before in over
of matter, was made by the Large Hadron fifty years of experimental searches. Studying
Collider’s LHCb experiment. The LHC its properties may allow us to understand
was restarted in April this year after a two- better how ordinary matter, the protons
year shutdown to complete a programme of and neutrons from which we’re all made, is
repairs and upgrades. constituted.”
The LHC researchers were studying
how baryons (particles made of three Largest ever winged
quarks) break down, but during the particle dinosaur discovered
decay the quarks were forming intermediate The fossil of the largest ever dinosaur with
structures. After examining all possibilities bird-like wings and feathers was discovered
for the signals detected the researchers recently in China. The nearly complete
concluded that they could only be explained skeleton of the large winged dinosaur
by pentaquark states (Physical Review Letters, An artist’s rendering of what a pentaquark – a sleek, bird-like creature adorned with
2015, arXiv:1507.03414 (hep-ex)). So structure might look like. (Credit: CERN) multiple layers of feathers all over its arms
far, physicists have observed only one type and torso that lived 125 million years ago
of pentaquark in the LHC data, but there subatomic particle consisting of four quarks – was found in northeast China’s Liaoning
could be many other varieties. – two up quarks, one down quark, a charm province. The fossil, almost two metres long,
For more than 50 years, physicists quark – and one anti-charm quark, bound is so well preserved that scientists have been
had suspected that more exotic subatomic together. able to reconstruct its impressive plumage,
particles might exist, but they could not The first claim of pentaquark discovery from the tiny feathers on its head and neck, to
find any. In 1964, two physicists – Murray was recorded at the 8-GeV Laser Electron the larger quill pen-like feathers that sprout
Gell-Mann and George Zweig – had Photon (LEP) Experiment in Japan in 2003. from its tail and substantial wings. The
independently proposed that the groups Thereafter several experiments in the mid- specimen was found by a local farmer near
of particles known as baryons and mesons 2000s also reported discoveries of other Sihedang in Jianchang, Liaoning Province.
were actually made up of still tinier charged pentaquark states. However, others were Sun Zhenyuan of the Jinzhou Paleontological
subatomic particles known as quarks and not able to replicate the LEP results, and Museum made the anonymous farmer donate
antiquarks. The proton and neutron are each the other pentaquark discoveries were not it to the Museum. The fossil was studied by
composed of three quarks while mesons are accepted because of poor data and statistical paleontologists Junchang Lü of the Chinese
made up of two quarks bound by the strong analysis. The breakthrough came on 13 Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing
force. The theory also implied that even more July 2015, when the LHCb collaboration and Stephen Brusatte of the University of
complex quark structures could form larger at LHC reported results consistent with Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. The
particles. For example, if three quarks made pentaquark states in the decay of bottom specimen has been named Zhenyuanlong
a proton or neutron, then what could five or Lambda baryons. suni, which means “Zhenyuan’s dragon”
six or seven quarks form? The existence of The binding mechanism for (after Zhenyuan Sun, who procured the
pentaquarks was thus not unexpected. pentaquarks is not yet clear. According to the fossil from the farmer).
Quarks are tiny particles that bind researchers, “They may consist of five quarks The Zhenyuanlong was large compared
together to form different types of larger tightly bound together; but it is also possible to other carnivorous dinosaurs found
subatomic particles such as protons and that they are more loosely bound and consist around the same time and place, and it
neutrons. Quarks come in six “flavours”: of a three-quark baryon and a two-quark had relatively shorter arms than its close