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ITHE TIMES OF INDIA, PUNE SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2015 17TIMES TRENDS

iTOONS SUNIL AGARWAL & AJIT NINAN

Andrew Griffin

Scientists have spottedstrange changes in lightdeep in space — which so-

me claim might be a huge alienpower station.

The huge cluster of objectsseen is said to be so strangethat scientists have very littleidea what it is. Some have spe-culated that it could be aswarm of megastructures bu-ilt by aliens, while others say itmight be one of the biggest clo-uds of space dust ever seen.

The reports originate fromfindings about a star namedKIC 8462852, which has beenwatched by the Kepler space te-

their galaxy. The Dyson spherewould be an example of a waythat such a civilisation couldcollect energy from their star.

But it’s just as likely thatthe star is being covered up bysomething else. The Yale scien-tist who led the study that fo-und the star, Tabetha Boyaji-an, has said that the star is pro-bably being covered by clumpsof dust. That dust cloud wouldhave to be huge — KIC 8462852is far bigger than the sun, sothere would have to be an enor-mous amount of matter aro-und to cover it so fully.

It’s not clear where such ahuge cloud of dust would havecome from. THE INDEPENDENT

me have pointed out that anypossible Dyson sphere aroundthe KIC 8462852 star must be sofar incomplete — it is still let-ting light through, which is theonly way we can see it.

But it might in fact have be-en completed already, since thestar is 1400 lightyears away andso our current informationabout it is hundreds of yearsold. The Kardashev scale is away of measuring the techno-logical advancement of a cer-tain civilisation.

It is based on the idea thatas civilisations become advan-ced, first they will collect ener-gy from their planet, then fromtheir star and eventually from

to indicate something planet-shaped. If it is an alien megast-ructure, then the most likelyreason for building it would beto construct a Dyson sphere —a huge shell structure that wo-uld sit entirely around a star,collecting all of the energythat comes out of it.

The idea of a Dyson sphereevolved as a thought experi-ment that suggested technolo-gical civilisations graduallylook to harness more energy.The ultimate end of that gra-dual process would be lookingto harness all of the energyfrom its sun, collecting it thro-ugh an advanced form of solarpanel or something similar. So-

would be seen as they crosstheir star — but when it spot-ted the light from the newly-fa-mous star, the data didn’t seem

lescope, which looks for otherplanets like ours.

It sees planet by watchingfor variations in the light that

Huge Cluster Of Objects Seen Could Be Megastructures Built By Extraterrestrial Creatures: Experts

Sign of alien life? Kepler spots strange star

WE SEE YOU, EARTHLINGS

Stocktrek Images

After decades of study, testing andarguments, scientists could be about

to reach an agreement on how much akilogram (Kg) weighs. The weight of a Kg,currently, is defined by a physical object— it’s called the International PrototypeKilogram (IPK), or ‘Le Grande K’, and it’s asolid cylinder made from platinum andiridium that sits in a high-security vault inSevres, France. The cylinder may weigh aKg, but it can be subject to change — itcan lose or gain atoms over time, oraccidentally be destroyed.To make thisdefinition, scientists need to relate it toPlanck’s constant, an important quantityin quantum physics that links the amountof energy in a photon to the frequency ofits wave. One method is counting theatoms in a silicon sphere, and the other isthe use of a watt balance, which works byweighing a test object against an elec-tromagnetic force. There’s still some wayto go — more data has to be put together,and more silicon spheres from Russia willhave to match up with the existing results.

SHORT CUTS

Consensus on how mucha kilogram weighs soon

Reuters

LEVEL-UP: Women take part in a high-heelsprint competition in Paris. Competitors inteams of three girls race wearing shoeswith more than 8 cm-high heels

Jamie merrill

Prosthetic limbs couldsoon be designed with asense of touch, after sci-

entists developed a revolutio-nary plastic “skin”.

After a decade of study re-searchers from Stanford Uni-versity in California havemade a major breakthroughin attempts to mimics theskin’s ability to sense touch,temperature and pain.

The plastic skin is made oftwo layers. The top layer crea-tes a sensing mechanism,while the bottom layer trans-mits electrical signals intobiochemical stimuli for ner-ve cells to receive.

It is able to detect pressure

nal to a component of the ner-vous system,” said professorZhenan Bao from the univer-sity’s department of chemi-cal engineering, who led the17-person research team.

The team at Stanford firstused plastic as a pressuresensor five years ago, by mea-suring the natural springi-ness of their molecularstructures. Now though, theyhave exploited this by scatte-ring billions of one-atomthick grapheme tubes thro-ugh the plastic. This allowsthe plastic skins to mimic hu-man skin, which transmitspressure information asshort pulses of electricity, si-milar to Morse code, to thebrain. THE INDEPENDENT

over the same range as hu-man skin, from a light fingertap to a firm handshake.

“This is the first time aflexible, skin-like materialhas been able to detect pres-sure and also transmit a sig-

Scientists design an artificial‘skin’ that can feel sensation

AS GOOD AS REAL: A newdevelopment in plastic skin lets ittransmit pressure information asshort electric pulses, similar toMorse code, to the brain

© Richard T Nowitz/CORBIS

Sewell Chan

London: Is competitive bridge —the four-player card game favou-red by the likes of Warren E Buf-fett and Bill Gates — a sport?

No, a British court ruled onThursday, dealing a blow to bridgeplayers who had brought a lawsuitin an attempt to obtain official re-cognition and government finan-cing to teach the game in schoolsand encourage students to take itup. The English Bridge Union bro-ught the suit after Sport England,

France, Ireland, the Netherlandsand Poland recognize competitivebridge as a sport. The InternationalOlympic Committee recognizedbridge and chess as sports in the1990s, although neither has beenplayed at the Olympics. “The impor-tance of supporting physical trai-ning and physical recreation rema-ins a significant element of publicpolicy,” justice Dove wrote, thoughhe added: “That is not to say thatthere may not be good reason forpublic policy to promote mentalactivity and agility.” THE INDEPENDENT

formerly known as the EnglishSports Council, said last year thatit would not recognize so-calledmind sports like bridge and chess.

Justice Ian Dove, ruling for theHigh Court of Justice of Englandand Wales, insisted that the issuewas “not the broad, somewhat phi-losophical, question as to whetheror not bridge is a sport,” but ratherthis narrower question: “whetheror not the defendant lawfully adop-ted a definition of sport, which ef-fectively excludes ‘mind sports’.”

Other countries like Belgium,

A bridge too far: Court says card game not a sport© Elke Van De Velde/Corbis

‘NO PHYSICAL RECREATION’

Olivia Blair

A man has built such a precise replica ofThor’s hammer that only he is “worthy”enough to lift it. Allen Pan built a replica

‘Mjolnir’, which in the Marvel comics and filmscan only be lifted by Thor or somebody deemed“worthy” enough, otherwise it is too heavy to lift.

The engineer made the device through pla-cing a microwave oven electromagnet in thehammer’s head, which created a very strongmagnetic field, according to C Net. He then madethe handle touch-sensitive, meaning when some-one holds the hammer the electromagnet turnson. However, Pan also devised a fingerprint sen-sor which can turn off the magnet.

By programming it to his fingerprint, Pan isthe only one who can pick it up as his finger-prints disable the magnet. A video where Pan letpassers by attempt lifting it has amassed over 4million views on YouTube. THE INDEPENDENT

Created: A replica ofThor’s ‘Mjolnir’ that

only its maker can liftNicole Perlroth

San Francisco: It should co-me as no surprise that the in-ternet is riddled with holes.

For as long as people havebeen writing code, they havebeen making mistakes. Andjust about as long as they havebeen making mistakes, crimi-nals, governments, so-calledhacktivists and people whowreck things for kicks havebeen taking advantage.

But if 2014 was the yearthat hackings of everythingfrom federal governmentcomputer networks to thecomputers of Sony Picturesbecame routine news, 2015may be the year that compani-es tried to do something aboutit. Though not without somerough nudging. Technologycompanies including Google,Facebook, Dropbox, Micro-soft, Yahoo, PayPal and eventhe electric-car maker Teslanow offer hackers bountiesfor reporting the flaws theyfind in the companies’ wares.

It is a significant shift fromthe tech industry’s standardway of responding — or not re-sponding — to hackers whofind vulnerabilities. Twentyyears ago, reporting a bug to abig company might fetch a well-intentioned programmer a T-shirt, credit on a website or asmall bounty. But more oftenthan not, such people were ig-nored or even threatened withcriminal prosecution.

It should not be that shock-ing, then, that a healthy black

market for so-called zero daybugs — flaws that have yet tobe discovered or patched andcan be easily exploited witho-ut setting off an alarm — hasemerged over the years. Onli-ne criminals and govern-ments have been paying forword of such flaws and stock-piling them for future hack-ings, according to foreign poli-cy experts who have beentracking claims by govern-ment officials who have publi-cly disclosed their online wea-ponry or whose online attackprograms have been leaked.

An additional 40 countriesare also buying so-called spy-ware tools from a growing listof companies in the UnitedStates and Europe that sell togovernments. “As the globalwater level of threats natural-ly increases, what you see arethese lower-tier groups, cri-minal actors and hacktivistsbegin to acquire capabilitiesthat used to only be availableto nation-states,” said Micha-el V Hayden, former directorof the National SecurityAgency. NYT NEWS SERVICE

Tech cos paying afortune to hackersfor security checks

THE SMARTEST JOB?

© Justin Paget/Corbis

Times of India, Pune, October 17, 2015 Pp.17