Washington, Oct 5 (ANI): A two-year search to find the Kuiper Belt's smallest objects, located in the outer solar system, has returned empty handed, bolstering theories that 'all hell broke loose' in the solar system just a few hundred million years after it formed. According to a report in New Scientist, the search in question, the Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey (TAOS), spent two years periodically photographing portions of the sky to look for small chunks of rock and ice orbiting beyond Neptune, in a region of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt.

The survey targeted Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) with sizes between 2 miles (3 km) and 17 miles (28 km).

Since such objects are too small to see directly, the survey watched for stars to dim as KBOs passed in front of and occulted them.

After accumulating more than 200 hours of data watching for stellar flickers lasting a second or less, TAOS did not spot any occultations.

The smallest KBOs seen so far measure about 30 km across and were found five years ago using the Hubble Space Telescope. But only a few were seen - 25 times more of the small objects had been predicted based on the size distribution of larger KBOs.

The non-discovery of the outer solar system's tiniest residents has turned up nothing, suggesting that 'all hell broke loose' in the solar system just a few hundred million years after it formed.

The solar system began as a disc of slowly rotating dust grains and gas. When the dust grains collided, they stuck together, snowballing into ever-larger structures.

The collisions at these earliest times were gentle enough that "they mostly led to sticking rather than breaking up", said Charles Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This sticky process is thought to explain the distribution of medium- and large-sized KBOs.

But less than a billion years after the solar system began to form, "something happened that moved a lot of these bodies around", said Alcock.

The giant outer planets moved out of their initial orbits, scattering KBOs in their wake like bowling pins.

"Basically, everything sits around for 700 million years and then boom - all hell breaks loose," Hal Levison of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has previously said of the period.

"After that phase of planet migration, when two objects encountered each other, they broke each other up," Alcock said. "Smaller KBOs are thought to have formed during that more destructive phase of collisions," he added. (ANI)

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Washington, October 7 (ANI): Britney Spears' mum Lynne is relieved that her family's trying times are over and that 'things are looking up again' for them.

The mother of Britney and Jamie Lynn loves to spend time with her granddaughter, Maddie, who is "growing out of all her clothes".

And she's also thrilled with Britney's gradual recovery to stability and her return to success.

The 53-year-old had confessed that she had no control when Britney went through a public breakdown while her 16-year-old sister got pregnant.

She saw the 26-year-old singer losing custody of her two sons to ex-hubby Kevin Federline, followed by her landing in hospital for mental evaluation - twice.

However, mum Spears insisted that her family was now past the hurdles and happy to be where they were.

"Really wonderful things are happening now. It looks like things are looking up again," Contactmusic quoted her as telling People magazine.

"The seasons are changing and things are good this year. I am so happy where we are right now," she added.

The author of 'Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World' confessed that though she wanted things to happen differently but she cannot control what directs them.

She said: "I had a perfect little plan. But, you can't control the (kids)' peers, you can't control society and you do the best you can."

Hoping a better future for her children, she further added: "I would like smooth sailing for my children." (ANI)

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Arlington (Virginia US), Oct.13 (ANI): Republican presidential nominee John McCain vowed to 'whip' Democratic nominee Barack Obama's 'a..' in the final televised presidential debate this Wednesday.

According to FOXNews.com, McCain's pledge has sent shivers down the spines of some Republicans who find the racially charged verb may be used against the candidate.

Addressing several dozen volunteers at his campaign headquarters outside Washington, McCain promised some of his signature "straight talk" about the state of the race, and went on to acknowledge his drop in the polls.

National and many battleground state polls have shown him trailing Obama amid the deepening market crisis.

"We're a couple points down, OK, nationally, but we're right in this game. The economy has hurt us a little bit in the last week or two, but in the last few days we've seen it come back up because they want experience, they want knowledge and they want vision. We'll give that to America," McCain said in Arlington, Virginia.

McCain said he and running mate Sarah Palin would continue campaigning hard in the three weeks left before Election Day, in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado.

The two planned a joint appearance Monday in Virginia, a Republican stronghold turned battleground this time.

"We're going to spend a lot of time and after I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we're going to be going out 24/7," McCain said.

The two men will debate Wednesday at Hofstra University on Long Island, New York. CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer will moderate the 90-minute forum.

Meanwhile, top advisers say McCain is weighing new economic proposals to help the nation weather the financial crisis. The Arizona senator refused to answer a reporter's question Sunday about what plans he might be considering

McCain already has laid out proposals to address the crisis, including a 300 billion dollar plan for the federal government to buy distressed mortgages and renegotiate them at a reduced price.

The Arizona senator has said his plan is necessary to get thousands of bad mortgages off the books in order to stabilize home values and open up credit. But critics said the plan would do little more than reward financial institutions that made the bad loans to in the first place.

Obama also has offered plans to address the fiscal crisis but nothing as sweeping or controversial as McCain's mortgage proposal.

Aides said Obama also wants to extend the Small Business Administration's disaster loan program to help small businesses that cannot access other sources of capital, as well as eliminate fees on SBA loan guarantees and increase the size of loans that could be covered. They put the cost at five billion dollars. (ANI)

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Melbourne, Aug 27 (ANI): Sir Donald Bradman would be terribly disappointed by much of the conduct in modern day cricket, fellow Invincible Sam Loxton has said.

Loxton was a part of Don Bradman's Invincibles lineup that went through the 1948 tour of England undefeated, cricinfo reported.

Speaking ahead of the centenary of Bradman's birth today, Loxton said the nasty on-field environment prevalent in international matches these days was a far cry from the way the 1948 tour of England was conducted.

"If I ever hear Ian Healy or someone say sledging has been going on forever, I'm going to refer him to the video of the Invincibles - there wasn't a word out of place for the whole tour," Loxton said.

"If Bradman could come back today and see what's happening in the game of cricket, I think he'd be terribly disappointed."

Loxton is also unsure whether current Australian captain Ricky Ponting is the right choice to deliver Wednesday night's Bradman Oration at Cricket Australia's centenary dinner in Sydney, citing January's spiteful Sydney Test against India.

"When I heard about Ricky Ponting delivering the Bradman oration I thought to myself, 'Dear oh dear, oh well, that's the way they do things these days'," Loxton said.

Apart from touring with him in 1948, Loxton became firm friends with Bradman over the course of their time as administrators - Loxton as selector, Bradman as selector and Australian Cricket Board chairman.

Over that time Bradman earned a reputation among some players for aloofness, but Loxton said it was simply a case of their needing to make the first move. (ANI)

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