“There’s something funny going on out there [in the Kuiper Belt],” Marc Bule of the prestigious Lowell Observatory in Arizona told New Scientist magazine. Alan Stern of the Southwestern Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said the area was “a region of planetary formation, with 100,000 objects that are ‘miniature planets’.”Modern astronomers reckon that Pluto, discovered in 1930, actually originated in the Belt. Its orbit sometimes passes within that of Neptune, the next most outlying planet. In October, a team at the California Institute of Technology discovered a Kuiper Belt object half the size of Pluto, which they named Quaoar.Dr Stern told New Scientist the discovery was probably only the first of many. “There are more likely 900 planets in the solar system than nine,” he said.

“And all but eight are in the Kuiper Belt.”But the existence of a planet is not yet confirmed. Other hypotheses could explain the Belt’s shape, Dr Melita said, such as a small star about one-tenth as large as the Sun, passing near when the solar system formed about six billion years ago “That could have created something like this,” he said.. Robert Fisk, The Independent’s Middle East correspondent, was one of six journalists to win the Association of Journalists of Rome Silver Microphone award last night in Rome. Among other reporters honoured was Robert M?rd, president of Reporters sans Fronti?s, the humanitarian organisation dedicated to the protection of foreign correspondents.. Early in the new year, 60 year 11 students from two Brighton schools will be attending a special set of revision lessons – at their local university.

The courses will be linked directly to their curriculum studies and they will be able to take away material to use for revision. It will be their first chance to experience a working laboratory, and the organisers hope that their enthusiasm will communicate itself to the students. “We want to give them a chance to really experience the excitement and magic of the workplace.”The Brighton Lab Day is an initiative funded by Planet Science, which has been running similar events across the country to give pupils a chance to visit labs and see science in action. Planet Science runs until summer 2003, and is a continuation of Science Year, which ended in September but was counted such a success that new initiatives to raise the profile of science among schoolchildren and the world outside the laboratory are set to continue.Real money has followed these campaigns, too – several million pounds have been invested by the Department for Education and Skills, by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and other sponsors.

That’s in addition to more than £5m of resources put into schools since September 2001 when Science Year started – and there’s more to come.”We carried on into 2003 because we achieved a lot in Science Year, but we also realised that a lot more could be done,” said Melanie Renowden, head of Planet Science. “We wanted to focus on some specific aspects of education and communication – more money for school equipment, looking at best practice in building laboratories and buildings, and targeting groups that tend not to have a great involvement with science – ethnic-minority groups and girls. Girls take biology, but the numbers taking physics and chemistry are declining – so we’re linking up with Sugar magazine to get science across that way.”For universities, both Science Year and Planet Science have offered huge opportunities. While experiments such as the Giant Jump – when one million children nationally tried jumping at the same time to see what the effect would be – made the headlines, other valuable experiments and fun days made less of a splash nationally but reaped rewards locally.The Institute of Genetics at Nottingham University also funded a Lab Day for local pupils. It was highly successful in mixing the popular with the practical, according to Dr Liz Sockett, senior lecturer in genetics at Nottingham.