Dozens of failed stars discovered

A new survey has turned up more than two dozen failed stars, including one lightweight only about six times the mass of Jupiter.

The Canadian-led discovery could shed light on these strange objects, known as brown dwarfs, which straddle the boundary between stars and planets.

Brown dwarfs fail to accumulate enough material, and hence mass, to begin the nuclear fusion process that makes stars like our Sun shine.

Astronomers using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope in Chile made optical and infrared observations of two clusters of young stars while searching for brown dwarfs. Their study has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

One paper focuses on the star cluster NGC-1333, which is 1,000 light years away in the constellation Perseus. Astronomers found that up to a third of stars in the cluster were actually brown dwarfs, raising questions about the kind of environmental conditions needed to encourage brown dwarf development.

They also discovered one of the least massive brown dwarfs ever detected. Despite being the size of a large planet, it doesn't orbit a host star, raising questions about how it formed.

Stars form from the collapse of gas and dust clouds, while planets form out of protoplanetary disks of material left over from star formation.

Scientists believe most brown dwarfs form like stars. However, the small brown dwarfs may form like planets around a host star and are later ejected into interstellar space.

"The findings suggest [planet-sized] objects not much bigger than Jupiter could form the same way stars do," lead researcher Professor Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto said.

"What's more, one cluster contains a surprising surplus of them, harbouring half as many of these astronomical oddballs as normal stars. In other words, nature appears to have more than one trick up its sleeve for producing planetary mass objects."

The second paper examines the star cluster Rho Ophiuchi, 460 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Scientists discovered six new brown dwarfs, making up a fifth of the known stellar population in the cluster.

Fred Watson from the Australian Astronomical Observatory said the papers indicate brown dwarfs may be more common than previously thought.

"The work sheds new light on the sort of conditions in which brown dwarfs form," he said. "It also pushes down the lower limit for brown dwarf star mass, previously thought to be at least 13 times Jupiter's mass. That figure was set because deuterium burning, which powers brown dwarfs, drops off below this point.

"All this further blurs the boundary between what we call stars and what we define as planets," he added.

Cyclists need be cowboys no more

I have commuted by bicycle to school and work in Montreal for at least 25 years. The last seven years have been specifically on bicycle paths, due to the proximity of my home to a bike path, and due to the fact that I have a new young cyclist in the family: my son. This ratio of years on and off bicycle paths is probably comparable to most in the city, as the path network has grown.

For those who hadn't biked in Montreal prior to its recent transformation into a bicycling city, I would like to explain how it was to be an urban cyclist. Cyclists had to take on a different mentality; some would say they had to act like cowboys. We became cowboys because there was no place for cyclists in the city. There were no apparent regulations for cyclists, so we had to make our own rules.

We'd go through intersections on walk signals; no one wanted us on the roads, so we'd follow the rules of the sidewalk.

We'd go on green Led light with a no-walk signal; no one wanted us on the sidewalk either, so we'd follow the rules of the road.

We had to jostle our way between parked cars and speeding traffic, keeping a careful eye out for parked cars opening doors.

We'd dread having to play tag with city buses, which ride at the same pace as a bicycle, weaving in and out of the path of bicycles to reach bus stops. The only way to get out of bus tag is to get ahead by running red lights.

Cycling through red lights was also a necessity in order to get ahead of the adjacent traffic that would tend to turn right as soon as the light would turn green without signalling or checking for bikes.

Thankfully, through the perseverance of the bicycling community in co-operation with the cities on the island of Montreal, an incredible network of appropriate bicycle paths has been built, giving access to a growing population of urban bicyclists.

With this transformation there is a slow but sure change in the mentality of cyclists.

We now have a dedicated place on the roads. With this newly established sense of place comes pride for our space and a desire to hold onto it and ensure that these paths are not taken away from us.

We have a place to commute without jostling amongst opening doors and bus routes. We are seeing (in most places) that priority is given to cyclists at intersections and that traffic lights take into account the requirements of the cyclist. At first we had to yell at cars and pedestrians to remind them to heed the newly paced traffic lights, but now even the other cowboys on the road are starting to follow the rules set up around cyclists.

‘You Can Never Tell’: Cluttered stage robbed play of its magic

If there is a chair on the stage and a person in a wig sits on it and reads out a sentence, you will believe that this person is a judge in his courtroom.

And if the person exits and two people in white coats walk in immediately discussing the health of a patient, you will not question how this very space has transformed itself from a courtroom into a hospital in a matter of seconds. This is because once you take your seat in a theatre auditorium, you consciously or unconsciously slip into what is known in theatre circles as suspension of disbelief.

I rather hoped that theatre directors in Nairobi would have more faith in the audience’s suspended disbelief, when I watched Strathmore University Drama Society’s production of You Can Never Tell (1897) by Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw on Friday, September 9.

Though I am now well acquainted with Dramsoc’s use of stage space, this time, the play was staged in the Strathmore auditorium where the lighting is not suited to theatre productions but rather to lectures and other forms of public speaking.

Thus, it did not allow for Led light off on the sets that were not in use. Also, the arrangement resulted in too much clutter and the cast being limited to a very small part of the stage at any given time, which was a shame as the stage is very large. This led to awkward movement around furniture, which greatly compromised the actors’ performance.

This insistence on realism — that there must be a dentist’s surgery that looks as much like a dentist’s surgery as resources can allow, and a dining room and a hotel room suite and a window overlooking the seaside, all at the same time, robs the stage of its magic.

And after all that, the play lacked the attention to detail that realism demands, though it wasn’t clear if this was due to negligence on the part of the director, Nick Muthama or the stage manager, Paula Bosire. The dining table — in an upmarket hotel — was set with an uncharacteristic mix of goblets and wine glasses, Mrs Chande did not sit facing the table squarely and primly in a manner that reflects her social class, ginger beer came in a Smirnoff bottle, scotch was served in mugs, and the audience even succumbed to unsolicited mirth when water was poured out of a green plastic jug.

Mrs Chande and her children Gloria (Nicole Dusenge), Dolly and Philip have returned to Kenya, having lived in South Africa for 18 years. Dolly and Philip finally meet their estranged father Cosmas at the dentist’s surgery and invite him to lunch without knowing who he really is.