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Thursday • September 12, 1996
rati scientists say Miltw Way holds surprises
I
NEW YORK (AP) —After a year in which sci-
tists discovered several apparent planets
[tside the solar system, a new analysis con-
udes that folks, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Hidden planets may be lurking around half
e Milky Way galaxy’s 100 billion stars, the
alysis suggests.
“We’ll see an explosion” in planet discover-
Lsaid researcher Steven Beckwith of the Max
anck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg,
fermany.
He presented the evidence for his optimism
Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature with
nelia Sargent of the California Institute of
chnology in Pasadena.
Scientists want to find distant planet sys-
jjns not only for the tantalizing possibility of
idinglife, but also to test theories of how the
larsystem formed.
There’s no direct way to tell now how many
ordinary stars like the sun have planets.
For years, astronomers have believed plan
ets were rare. But the rush of reports in the past
year has encouraged the belief that they are
quite common, and Beckwith’s 50 percent esti
mate fits in with that thinking, said Steve
Maran, assistant director of space sciences at
the Godddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md.
Not everyone is guessing that high. David
Black, director of the Lunar and Planetary
Institute in Houston, said he wouldn’t be sur
prised if the answer turned out to be 10 percent.
Since last fall, at least eight stars have been
found to have a telltale wobble that suggests
they’re being pulled around by orbiting plan
ets. Some researchers maintain, however, that
at least some of these orbiting bodies may be
failed stars called brown dwarfs instead.
In the Nature article, Beckwith and Sargent
analyze previous studies to argue that a lot
more planets are out there. They note that in
several regions of the cosmos, half or more of
very young stars show signs that they’re sur
rounded by disks of gas and dust that look like
the forerunner of the solar system.
Scientists believe that when the sun was
young, a disk of gas and dust surrounded it like
a huge spinning pizza. Dust in this disk started
to clump up, and some of these clumps grew
into planets.
In all, it took maybe 10 million to a few
hundred million years to build the solar sys
tem’s planets, which sucked up material
from the disk.
“If you look at other stars, you have evi
dence of enough material and enough time
and the right conditions to make planetary
systems,” Beckwith said in a telephone
interview.
loctors find way to save premature babies with
ventilation
deal Iscue critica ly ill premature babies
)m almost certain death by filling
lying uncs eir feeble, underdeveloped lungs
he Baltim ith oxygen-rich liquid for a few
) the hospsi lys to restore their breathing.
)n planks; The babies breathe through the
Is outsidt l u ^’ which takes the place of air
nil it gradually evaporates,
p . , A pilot study on 13 babies was
, e swe f markably successful: Seven sur-
baving« ve( j w ith ou t serious lung damage,
lt - ental retardation or any of me
nost cenai her ill effects common in
or withdrai tremely small infants.
“Some of the babies were almost
alcoholtln fag as we put the liquid in,” said
/iolentlyii [ Corinne Lowe Leach of
is with aid ^ rens Hospital of Buffalo, N.Y.
hviheii :oi:ot h ers ’ we were at die limit of
, * ,% current technology and con-
almost aiw .med they might not survive.”
The same experimental tech-
part of a cli iqite j s being tested on children
ommones id adults with a variety of other
ctors are pi e-threatening lung illnesses and
atient and ijuries, including infections, near-
nptoms.tli rowningand smoke inhalation. In
ient and pi ^ out ^00 patients in hospitals
F cross the United States are being
. ,,, nrolled in studies of the liquid^
hat hect w nownasperflubron or LiquiVent.
patient u | ts developers, Alliance
writer fro harmaceutical Corp. of San
vasschedulf liego and Hoechst-Roussel
eks later, hEfharmaceuticals Inc. of Frankfurt,
iermany, are financing the stud
ies as part of their effort to win
Food and Drug Administration
approval to sell the product for
this use.
“This is a very exciting new fron
tier in medicine that we have
explored. We have taken critical care
management of patients with lung
disease to a new level,” said Leach,
who directed the first human study
of the approach.
In infant respiratory distress syn
drome — also known as hyaline
membrane disease — the lungs lack
enough surfactant, a chemical that
keeps the air sacs open so oxygen
ana carbon dioxide are exchanged.
While artificial surfactant can
often relieve breathing difficulties,
the treatment sometimes fails.
Babies must be placed on respira
tors, but the breathing machines
can damage the lungs, and the tiny
patients may die anyway.
About 3 percent of premature
babies die of respiratory dis
tress syndrome.
In the larger studies now under
way, doctors will randomly assign
patients to get either LiquiVent or
ordinary care.
The new treatment involves a
substance called a perfluorocarbon,
a clear, oily liquid twice as dense as
water that easily dissolves oxygen
and carbon dioxide.
Doctors trickle the liquid down
Partial liquid ventilation
A new technique may help premature babies survive by helping them breathe.
perfluorocarbon -
a clear liquid twice
as dense as water
that easily dissolves
oxygen and carbon
dioxide
Doctors trickle the
liquid down the
breathing tube
until it partially fills the
lungs. This forces open
collapsed air sacs like
J water balloons.
Gas ventilator replenishes oxygen in the liquid
and carries away carbon dioxide
the baby’s breathing tube until it
partially fills the lungs. This forces
open the collapsed air sacs like
water balloons. The respirator
replenishes the oxygen in the liq
uid as the oxygen moves through
the air sacs into the bloodstream.
The liquid then carries away car
bon dioxide.
The liquid also displaces water,
mucus and other lung-damaging
debris so they can be removed, and
it seems to reduce inflammation. In
a few days, the liquid is allowed to
evaporate, and if all goes well, the
babies are able to breathe air.
Of the eight surviving babies,
seven were weaned to ordinary
room air and showed normal phys
ical and mental development after
one year. One remained on a respi
rator and eventually died.
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