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Brave New Worlds There may be more things in the heavens than are dreamed of in our earthly astronomy, says Geoffrey Marcy. The Berkeley astronomer, who leads a team looking for new worlds outside our solar system, has just stumbled upon two strange new planetary systems that, he says, are as different from one another as they are from anything else he’s ever seen. “Both of these systems are quite unique,” Marcy told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego last month, “and a little frightening.” The first planetary system contains an object so huge that astronomers aren’t sure they can even call it a “planet.” Located 123 light years away, orbiting a star in the constellation Serpens, this monstrous globe is 17 times the size of Jupiter. According to current theories of how planets form, no planet should be more than 13 times the size of Jupiter. So it looks as though astronomers will have to modify their theories to accommodate this discovery. The second system is less troubling to theoreticians, but interesting nonetheless. It has two planets locked in synchronous orbits—one 30 days long, the other 60 days—the inner planet making two full turns for every single turn of the outer. The planets maintain their harmonious existence by gravitationally shepherding one another around their star. It’s been a busy time for Marcy, who was awarded the National Academy of Science’s Draper Medal the same week that he announced the finds. He shares the medal with Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Together they devised a way of detecting distant planets by exploiting the way stars wobble as their planets orbit. Using this technique, the two have discovered 38 of the 53 extrasolar planets so far identified. Return to Tiananmen Square Then regular troops, row by row, rushed onto the bridge... and turned their weapons on the crowd. People crumpled to the ground. Each time shots rang out, the citizens hunkered down; but with each lull in the fire they stood up again. Driven back by the troops, they stood their ground and shouted “Fascists!,” “Criminal government!,” and “Murderers!” —From The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leadership’s Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People—In Their Own Words (Public Affairs Press, 2001) A newly published collection of top secret Chinese Communist Party documents has returned to front-page headlines the Spring 1989 military crackdown on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square. Documents translated in The Tiananmen Papers contain minutes of secret high-level meetings, intelligence reports, and phone conversations, exposing Chinese leaders’ squabbles over the crushing of the 1989 protests. The documents—if authentic—show a leadership in turmoil over the million-strong democracy protests and their suppression on June 4, 1989. Graduate School of Journalism Dean Orville Schell helped construct the book from thousands of pages of what are believed to be internal party documents. The documents were spirited out of China by a pro-reform Chinese official who has adopted the pseudonym Zhang Liang to protect his identity. Zhang hopes that publication of the papers will revive the debate on Tiananmen and strengthen the cause of political reform as Party factions jockey for position before major leadership changes planned in 2002. Dean Schell played an integral role in analyzing and authenticating the documents, a task he reflects on in his afterword to the book. “My role was as a skeptical journalist,” Schell said in an interview in North Gate Hall. “In the authentication process, I worked closely with the compiler [Zhang Liang], and through a process of careful questioning and independent corroboration, developed trust in his credibility and the authenticity of the documents.” Schell added that, frustratingly, he knows much more about the compiler’s official background and The Tiananmen Papers’ provenance than he can reveal, including the identity of the high-level Communist Party patron necessary for a leak of such sensitive Party secrets. The Chinese government’s official verdict on the crackdown as “a necessary quelling of a counterrevolutionary rebellion,” is the major obstacle to any revival of political reform. Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin and leading Party elder Li Peng are most damaged by the revelations in the Papers. Li Peng, prime minister at the time of the Tiananmen crackdown and current parliamentary chairman, is portrayed as the primary proponent of a hardline, military response to the protests. At next year’s 16th Communist Party Congress, leadership will pass to China’s fourth generation (after Chairman Mao) of officials. After the congress, Schell observed, the clock will probably start ticking for a reversal of the verdict on the Tiananmen Square movement, just as a similar protest in 1976 was later declared “patriotic.” “As a journalist and veteran China-watcher, I am hesitant to make time-specific predictions,” Schell added. “But I have no doubt that the Communist Party’s cynical verdict on Tiananmen will eventually be overturned.” —Scott Savitt
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