Are gas hydrates the cause behind Bermuda Triangle mystery?
by Sunit Roy
BERMUDA Triangle is a premise for several fascinating stories. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, the first recorded use of the term “Bermuda Triangle” or “Devil’s Triangle” was in February, 1964 in an article appearing in a magazine Argosy.

Internet telephony services
by Deepak Bagai
INTERNET telephony has been one of the most exciting developments in communications. IP telephony, using internet protocol networks, has the potential to change the way we think about telephones.

Train drivers can see round corners
by Tim Radford
SCIENTISTS have come up with a revolutionary laser system which will allow train drivers to see round corners and through tunnels.

Nobel Prize in Physics
by S.P. Gupta
The Royal Swedish Academy of Science has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics — 1998 to H.L. Stormer, D.C. Tsui and R.B. Laughlin.

Bermuda Triangle mystery
Are gas hydrates the cause?
by Sunit Roy

BERMUDA Triangle is a premise for several fascinating stories. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, the first recorded use of the term “Bermuda Triangle” or “Devil’s Triangle” was in February, 1964 in an article appearing in a magazine Argosy. The article, The Deadly Bermuda Triangle, by V. Giddis can be attributed to all the hype and craziness centred around the mythical BermudaTriangle.

There are many pseudo-scientific publications which make the triangle into some mystical place that is a wrap in the fabric of time or some kind of UFO landing spot. The unexplained disappearances of ships and aircrafts along with their crews and passengers in the Bermuda Triangle may be tied to the natural venting of gas hydrates.

Gas hydrates are a speical group of chemical substances called inclusion compounds of clathrates. The hydrates are solids resembling ice, although they form at temperatures above the freezing point of water. Generally they will form at temperatures below 72°F and above pressures 400 psia. They were discovered in 1812 by Sir Humphrey Davy and in 1823 by Faraday while he was liquefying chlorine in the presence of water.

Recently, researchers from the Naval Research Laboratory in the USA discovered a mud volcano under 1,250m of water in the Barents sea between Norway and Spitzbergen. They named the 1 km diameter feature the Hakon Mosby mud valcano. The researchers observed that gas emitted with the slurry of sediment turned to hydrate in the icy water and “snowed” down on the slops of Hakon Mosby building up a layer of methane hydrate around the volcano. This is the first time scientists have observed such a phenomenon as it occurred. The natural eruption of Hakon Mosby has led to hypotheses regarding the explanation of events observed in Bermuda Triangle.

The Bermuda Triangle covers approximately 500,000 square miles of Atlantic Ocean. It is generally considered to be the area bounded by a line connecting Miami, Bermuda and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Areas of boiling water and domes of disturbed water have been reported about the Bermuda Triangle since the time of Columbus. In 1963, officers of a Pan American jet flying over the triangle reported seeing a dome of boiling water. Since World War-II, ships radars have reported the presence of sizeable islands in the area where no islands exist. The boiling water and false radar images are attributed to large gas releases from deep ocean sediments.

Evidence of instability pockmarks the ocean floor in the Bermuda Triangle. Craters of 1000 feet wide and 100 feet deep are common. Huge scars on the Black Ridge have been dated to 18,000 years ago near the end of the last ice age. And off the north coast of Alaska is evidence of under water landslides matching calculated hydrate zones. If slumping sediments uncover the large hydrate deposit, gas can erupt both from hydrate melting and from the venting of free gas trapped beneath the hydrate seal. On a macro scale, major gas release triggered by geophysical activity could explain the mass extinctions at the end of the Permian and at the Creatceous/Tertiary boundary, 250 million and 65 million years ago respectively.

There have been about 140 recorded disappearances of ships and aircrafts in the Bermuda Triangle going back as far as 1840. When the Taxas A&M drillship cored hydrates on the Blake Plateau, Dr Richard Mclver of Exxon published a paper in the AAPG Bulletin in which he states: “If the Hydrate seal from such an accumulation were broken abruptly, the gas along with every fluid gas cut mud would be ejected. Potentially large volume of gas, even entire shallow gas fields, would rush to the surface, breaking into smaller and smaller bubbles during its ascent through the water column. If the gas escape were rapid and localised enough, the effect on the surface would be indentified to that of a blowout caused by marine drilling operations (i.e. there would be a patch of highly agitated, frothy water of very low relative density). Any vessel accidentally encountering such a patch could lose buoyancy and sink very quickly. If the gas flow were large, a plume of free gas would rise above ocean surface. Any low flying aircraft passing through gas concentration could experience engine failure and might crash”.

Dr Mclver confirmed his hypotheses in the Texas A&M wave tank. Building models of sulphur tankers known to have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, he sailed them through a gas plume he created with manifold in the bottom of the tank. When the models sailed into the frothy water, they sank like rocks.

Over the centuries, nature has provided us with the clues that have helped us unlock secrets of the earth’s vast resources. Could the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle be a clue to the development of untold riches in natural gas to benefit the mankind? — PTI

Mr Sunit Roy is a scientist at ONGC Ltd, New Delhi

Internet telephony services
by Deepak Bagai

INTERNET telephony has been one of the most exciting developments in communications. IP telephony, using internet protocol (IP) networks, has the potential to change the way we think about telephones. IP networks will merge the transmission of voice, data and video and permit customers to enjoy multimedia capabilities on the telecommunication system. IP connections can be set up to absolutely any networked location at virtually any time with lower tariffs.

The slogan, voice over IP (VOIP) is becoming more mainstream. Every company would like to save costs on long distance international calls. Initially the bottleneck in IP telephony was low quality, personal computer (PC) based VOIP. With the advent of more advanced equipment and managed services, VOIP has become an attractive proposition for the corporate sector. Another important issue corporations face as they consider IP telephony is how it will work with their existing equipment, namely the private branch exchange (PBX). The solution to this is to fit an existing PBX with an adjunct box that diverts traffic to gateways to go through an intranet or the internet.

Some vendors are working on how to integrate the IP telephony gateway with PBX equipment. Further there is also a drive toward moving PBX functionality to servers. These servers handling IP telephony gateway, voice mail and other communications functions have been named as CT servers. In this scenario, new applications and functionality can be added at will. CT server will be able to handle all types of applications such as managing routing tables and typing into e-mail and directory services.

IP Fax

Fax over internet protocol (FOIP) will give a tremendous boost to the fax technology and the corporate sector will save money to a great extent. With FOIP, faxes can be transmitted almost free of cost over private managed data networks that have excess capacity. FOIP makes sense especially for large enterprises with lots of international traffic. Companies that are looking to enter the IP world should begin with fax and then move towards benefits of voice over IP.

In India, government controlled telecom monopolies are dead against internet telephony. The Department of Telecom (DOT) is in the process of stalling attempts to introduce internet telephony in India. All overseas calls are routed through Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) and it has banned its internet subscribers from using IP telephony. Instead of paying $2.25 per minute for a call to the United States, it will cost nothing or a few rupees a minute to an internet telephony subscriber. VSNL fears that IP telephony will take away its lucrative international revenues. According to the internet policy announced by the government, the internet service providers (ISPs) would not be allowed to offer internet telephony services. The implementaion of this policy is a joke because VSNL’s gateway access for internet services (GAIS), cannot distinguish between voice and data. To counter this VSNL has decided to install a “proxy server” between the gateway and the user which would make internet telephony practically impossible.

Despite the question surrounding internet telephony, the day is not far when the faxes and calls will be on an IP network. With this day also will come the realisation of many value-added services like dedicated bandwidth, intergrated optical character recognition (OCR) functionality and text to speech software. Integration of fax with voice mail and e-mail would make it possible for travellers to receive their faxes wherever they move.

The writer is Asstt. Professor, Department of Electronics, Punjab Engineering College,Chandigarh.

Bullet detects mines

A newly developed bullet may soon help explosives experts locate and destory landmines without setting foot on the ground, reports Reuter.

The bullet, developed by researchers at the University of Missouri is fired from a helicopter flying around 100 metres (300 feet) above the ground.

When it penetrates the ground it sends out powerful bursts of radio weaves that are reflected from any landmines within a 15-metre radius and picked up by an antenna on the helicopter.

“Once the mines are located, they can be destroyed at once or their exact position noted so they can be dealt with later. A mine would explode if the bullet hits it.

Thomas Engel, one of the engineers who developed, it, believes the beauty of the bullet is that you do not have to be on the ground, stepping on mines, to use it.

Up to 100 million landmines are scattered in 64 countries around the world and an estimated 25,000 people are killed or maimed each year by the hidden weapons.

Engel said tests of the new system, which can be fitted to any helicopter, showed a 30 millimetre bullet gives out a four kilowatt radar pulse which is 10 times more powerful than standard ground-penetrating radar.

Train drivers can see round corners
by Tim Radford

SCIENTISTS have come up with a revolutionary laser system which will allow train drivers to see round corners and through tunnels. The system will help a driver to view the entire platform, on a screen mounted in his cab, 100 yards/metres before he arrives at the station - and for 100 yards/metres after he has pulled out.

If widely adopted, the technology could prevent thousands of minor accidents each year, and a few major ones. The design - for an unnamed foreign railway customer - will also mean that the driver can watch precious or sensitive cargoes being loaded.

The screen will show passengers getting on and off along the entire reach of a curved platform. And if there is any danger from something unexpected on the track, it could also provide warning in time for the driver to stop.

The system has just been tested on a banked track and a curved platform in Wales, according to the journal Opto And Laser Europe.

The designers, Vector Technology, of Abertillery in Wales, have already provided curved laser beam ``safety rails'' for parts of highways in Italy.

``In the Dolomites, they have foggy days and sheer mountains where people were driving off the road because they couldn't see the edge,'' said Terry Lockey, the firm's operations director.

A new laser system produced a red ``hand rail'' between posts along the edge of the road. ``When there is fog in the atmosphere, you can see the projected laser beam,'' said Mr Lockey. ``As you are driving along, it looks like a red rail running around the side of the road.''

Engineers working on the rail project have employed laser transmitters and a newly patented way of manipulating the light beam to cut energy losses. The images from two cameras - one looking in each direction along a platform - are directed to a split screen in the driver's cab.

``If there was a fire on the platform the driver could either stop the train from entering the station, or he could take the train through the station without stopping,'' Mr Lockey said. ``It's not a panacea, but it is another aid to the driver to do what is a difficult job.''

By using lasers rather than radio or microwave, the railway can broadcast images without a licence, without interference and without fading or ``ghosting''. The engineers devised holographic lenses to shape the light beam and help keep the strength of the signal steady even though the receiver is moving at speed.

The system, called OptraLink, can transmit two channels of information simultaneously, and could transmit up to four. It could be used wherever there is a need for wireless communication over a short range.

``The breakthrough allows free space communications not only from fixed point to fixed point, but also between a fixed point and a moving point,'' said Ken Owen, managing director of Vector Technology. ``It is the first commercial laser system to be developed which is easy to set up, provides reliable communications and uses laser emissions which are safe.''

— The Guardian

Nobel Prize in Physics
by S.P. Gupta

The Royal Swedish Academy of Science has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics — 1998 to H.L. Stormer, D.C. Tsui and R.B. Laughlin. The three researchers and academics are being awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering that the electrons acting together in strong magnetic field can form new types of particles, with charges that are fractions of electrons. The Nobel Citation claims the prize is for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.

In 1879, E.H. Hall had discovered an unexpected phenomenon: He found that if a thin gold plate is placed in a magnetic field at right angles to its surface, an electric current flowing along the plate can cause a potential drop at right angles both to the current and the magnetic field. Termed the Hall effect, this takes place because electrically charged particles (electrons) moving in a magnetic field are influenced by a force and deflect laterally. Today, the Hall effect has become a standard tool (density and charge gauge) in physics laboratory. Hall performed his experiments at room temperature with moderate magnetic field. In 1970s researchers used extremely low temperature and very powerful magnetic fields. At a low temperature, electrons can be caused to move as if on a plane surface, that is, in two dimensions. This is seen most simply when one measures how the Hall resistance varies with the strength of the magnetic field.

In 1980, K. Von Klitzing discovered that the Hall resistance does not vary in linear way, but stepwise with the magnetic field. The steps do not depend on the properties of the material but are given by a fundamental constant divided by an integer. We say that the resistance is quantised. At quantised Hall resistance, normal Ohmic resistance disappears and material becomes in a sense superconductor. For his discovery, integer quantum Hall effect, Klitzing received Nobel Prize in Physics — 1985.

In 1982, in their redefined experiment of quantum Hall effect, using very low temperature and more powerful magnetic fields, Stormer and others found a new surprising step in the Hall resistance which was three times higher that Klitzing’s. All the new steps can be expressed with same constant, but now divided by different fractions. For this reason, the new discovery was named the fractional quantum Hall effect. The contributions of three laureate of 1998 have thus led to yet another breakthrough in our understanding of quantum physics and to the development of new theoretical concepts of significance in many branches of modern physics.

The writer is senior lecturer in physics, Kurukshetra University.

Was Raja Jai Singh a plagiarist?

THE name Jantar Mantar,sounding like hocus-pocus, would have pained Raja Sawai Jai Singh. The quaintly shaped buildings at Delhi and Jaipur that would have intrigued many a passer-by are in fact scientific instruments improvised and built, at least as wax models, by Jai Singh himself in the 1720s and 1730s.

Jai Singh was not a sovereign ruler. He was a high-level mansabdar (official) in the Mughal administration, paid for his services by the allotment of his vatan (native) jagir retrospectively called Jaipur and other transferrable jagirs. He was a key player in the politics and intrigue of his turbulent times. He was also a skilled astronomer. Astronomy was his passion and, one suspects, his refuge. The Delhi observatory commemorates, in a way, the restoration of order if not leadership under emperor Muhammed Shah. Jaipur with its observatory symbolises Jai Singh’s dreams of making personal peace with the menacing Mahrattas and carving out a bigger niche for himself. Jai Singh was thwarted in his political ambitions. It now turns out that history’s vedict on his astronomical enterprise may not be any the less harsh.

Historically, the most outstanding feature of Jai Singh’s astronomy is its anachronism. Though he came on the scene a hundred years after Galileo and 50 years after the setting up of the Paris and Greenwich observatories, his role model was the 15th century king-astronomer Ulugh Beg, the more revered for being a collateral ancestor of the Mughal dynasty. Jai Singh came to know about the telescope,but did not view it as a revolutionary break with the past that it was. To him the modern astronomers were Europe’s Ulugh Begs with whom he wished to interact and compare notes.

In 1732, after the more or less completion of his masonry observatories Jai Singh received a valuable gift from the king of Portugal. It was a copy of the 1702 astronomical tables prepared in Latin at Paris by Phillipe de La Hire. Jai Singh brought out his own set of tables, or Zij. In his preface dedicating it to the emperor,Jai Singh declared that he had found that La Hire’s tables did not agree with his own observations and that his own tables were an attempt to “arrive as near as possible at the truth”.

Contemporaneous accounts cast aspersion on the validity of Jai Singh’s claims to originality, a French astronomer, Joseph Dubois, employed at the Jaipur observatory, was asked to prepare a copy of La Hire’s tables. In his preface to the tables, also written in Latin, he noted that Jai Singh had got La Hire’s tables “transcribed in his own script” and that he had “ordered all his astronomers to make calculations by them”.

A more explicit statement came from the Jesuit father Francis Pons who spent some years in Jaipur. He wrote in 1740 that “The Tables of M. de La Hire, under the name of this Prince, will be in use every where”.

The actual comparison of Jai Singh’s Zij with La Hire’s tables had to wait for another 250 years. An astronomical table is an intricate mix of observations,available data and tedious calculations.If two tables are independently prepared,their entries will be unrelated to each other. Recently, a British historian of astronomy, Raymond Mercier, has shown that the entries in the two tables are not un-correlated:

Take a number quoted by La Hire for the position of,say ,the sun or moon. Now carry out a two-step mathematical transformation:change the epoch from 1 January 1 to 20 February 1719, the nominal date of ascension of Muhammad Shah to the throne.In the second step,change the longitude from that of Paris to the longitude of Jaipur.You obtain the corresponding number listed in Jai Singh’s Zij!! Obviously , as a homage to Jai Singh’s own pet city, the calculations were carried out for Jaipur; but as a concession to the empire’s city they were listed as if the actual observations had been made at Delhi.

Jai Singh died in 1743. The Delhi observatory was ransacked by the Jat leader Suraj Mal’s son Javahar Singh. Perhaps the most telling comment on Jai Singh’s anachronistic astronomical efforts comes from the rather disconcerting fact that his grandson at Jaipur used the ancestral 400 kg brass astrolabe for target practice.

The story can be summed up simply : A part rajah-part scientist creates a scientific facility with great fanfare. But then takes the easy way out and borrows data from abroad. His successors abandon the facility altogether,creating a ruin.

What makes the story rather unsettling is that it does not merely describe the India of the early 18th century but perhaps also the India of the later 20th century.

1. Name the three US scientists whose discoveries led to the use of Viagra as an anti = impotence drug and brought them the coveted 1998 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Which simple gas has proved pivotal to their discoveries?

2. A Defence and Research Development Organisation Laboratory at Pune has developed a vehicle that can track the movements of the enemy and events on the battlefield on a minute-to-minute basis, without itself being detected by enemy radars. What is this vehicle called?

3. What is common about “Intelsat”, “Panamsat” and Asiasat”?

4. Radio took 30 years to reach an audience of 50 million (5 crores), while TV reached the same population in 13 years. How many years did Internet take to reach this number of people?

5. The leaves of a “touch me not” plant droop immediately on being touched. It is believed that this occours due to sudden decrease in the osmotic pressure in the cells of the leaves. What is this phenomenon called in botany?

6. Green, white and Blue Revolution respectively, refer to the production of crops, milk and fish. What does Brown Revolution refer to?

7. With a view to saving some of the world’s endangered species of animals, US scientists have recently grown an elephant egg in an animal species that could be used as a factory to produce eggs of other species. Name this small animal species.

8. What does PEACE stand for in relation to environment?

9. According to the latest researches, which vitamin has been found useful for controlling diabetes? Who discovered this vitamin and in which year?

10. “Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands of men, all thinking of the same problem, and each doing his little bit to add to the great structure of knowledge which is being erected”. Who said this?

Answers:

1. Robert Furchgott, Ferid Murad and Louis Ignarro, nitric oxide 2. Remotely Piloted Vehicle 3. These are geostationary satellites launched by India for communication 4. Four years 5. Seismonasty 6. Production of leather 7. Mouse 8. Protection of Environment for A Cleaner Earth 9. Vitamin E; Herbert Mc-Lean Evans and K.J. Scott in 1922 10. British scientist Ernest Lord Rutherford.

Innovative spark plug

An innovative father and son duo from Baprour village in Ghanur block of Patiala district has come up with another new invention. This time it is a spark plug used in petrol-based automobiles.

Mr Chanan Singh and his son, Mr Joga Singh, both small time farmers engaged mainly in bee-keeping and dairy farming, had earlier invented a lactometer and an artificial honeycomb. Both these inventions when tested at scientific level had proved their worth. In fact, Mr Chanan Singh has got an invitation from the USA to apply his honeycomb technology at the field level.

Mr Joga Singh says that the sparkplug prepared by them is different from the one available at present in the market. The existing gadget is a single piece plug. The one prepared by the duo is a three-piece plug with rare possibility of short-circuiting.

Mr Joga Singh claims that any of the three parts of the plug, in case of any fault, can be replaced with a new one and it will not cost more than 10 to 15 rupees. At present the complete plug available in the market has to be thrown away in case of any fault and replaced with a new one by spending Rs 40 to 50.

He says that any expert in the plug technology can test their plug but after they have got its patent rights.

Mostly, insulator of the plug is rendered useless. It could be replaced in the plug prepared by Mr Joga Singh and his father by spending a very meagre sum. They had filed an application with the Department of National Research and Development Corporation, a Union Government enterprise.

The corporation authorities have agreed to provide financial assistance for filing their patent application on this invention in India. A deputy director of the corporation Mr C.M. Gaind, has told them in writing that the corporation will bear all expenditure incurred in the filing patent application up to the stage of sealing. The duo is happy on receiving this offer.

—Sarabjit Singh

El Nino’s secrets cracked

Methods used to forecast the effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon may also soon help farmers plan for a dry summer. US researchers say the recently developed forcecasting methods can predict the general trends of future seasons more easily and accurately than anyone thought possible.

“Things are more predictable than we thought within that otherwise chaotic world,” Jagadish Shukla from the George Mason University in Virginia, who led the study, said.

Shukla said some meteorologsts used the new method last winter to predict the harsh El Nino conditions that followed.

“That’s not a fluke,” Shukla said. “That’s not an accident. It’s not just El Nino, it’s a fundamental property.”

El Nino, a recurring weather system marked by warmer-than-usual water in the eastern Pacific, caused floods, severe storms and droughts around the world over the past year.

The new method looks at current scientifc conditions to predict the future, rather than making forecasts based on the statistics of past occurrences, Shukla said.

Forecasters have been making predictions about advance weather for years, but their data is based on looking at the past. If a summer is unsually hot and dry, meteoroglogists will look at past hot and dry summers and see how severe were the winters that followed.

His team looked at factors such as the change in ocean temperature, soil wetness and snowfall in areas to predict the long term weather pattern of a region.

Tropical regions closest to the equator are the easier to predict because slight changes in their generally warm water temperatures have a dramatic effect on the weather, Shukla said.

The method also works well for North America since weather patterns move in a northeasterly direction the continent benefits from its geographic relationship with the Pacific tropics.

Shukla cautioned that the new methof cannot be used to predict perfectly the day-to-day weather fluctuations months in advance, which are still dominated by the wild gyration of atmospheric conditions.

Anti-corrosion system

To protect steel reinforcement, US researchers have developed a new anti-corrosion system that is automatically activated if the situations demand so.

The system, developed by researchers at the University of Ilinois School of Architecture, reduces early initiation of corrosion and the damage due to it by using calcium nitrite, reports Elsevier Science journal Cement and Concrete Research.

Applying these techniques would result in less corrosion in the field, lengthening the life of the steel reinforcement and thus, the structure, the report says.

Anti-graffiti coating

German scientists have developed an environment-friendly protective coating comprising natural polymers that can be easily applied on buildings and monuments to clean walls.

The water-soluble coating forms two layers over a surface after drying.

A water-soluble polymeric primer adheres to the wall while the outer skin is formed by an insoluble film which is impermeable to water but permeable to water vapour.