Lying so far from the Sun, they must consist largely of solid ice. The numbers found to date suggest that the total population of these "ice dwarfs" must be more than 10,000.The ice dwarfs are chunks left over from the formation of the photogallery planets: closer to the Sun, billions of ice dwarfs came together in html the remote past to form the giant worlds of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. After the ninth planet, Pluto, was discovered in 1930, most astronomers thought there html must be at least one more planet farther out Now, it seems, there is no 10th html planet. photogallery Which means that Nessie, individually or collectively, is at best 31kg (about 68lb) in weight Not very monstrous.However, html photogallery the story does not end photogallery there. Military sonar experts working on photogallery Project Urquhart html recorded some strong contacts that could not be readily explained.
"These people," Mr Witchell says, "were extremely experienced and generally extremely sceptical. The last thing they wanted to come away with was unexplained results of this nature." But legends never die easily, and Nessie, all 31kg of him, her, it or them, remains as enigmatic as ever.. Add to this the energy required to keep basic body processes going and the total fuel bill for a cold-blooded aquatic predator is three times its body weight a year. Multiply this by the area of open water in Loch Ness and you have a total available food supply of 93kg per year.However, there is one more ecological rule: these charr need to be caught Which means swimming Fast And that requires energy.
This cuts the biomass of fish that can be sustainably consumed to about 23g - equivalent to about a tablespoon of sugar - per hectare. The first states that a predator can remove only about 10 per cent of its prey each year before it starts eating into "capital" rather than "interest". If this happens, the breeding stock for the following year might not produce enough food to support it. This gave a figure for annual production of slightly less than the standing stock: 230g per hectare of lake surface per year Then he applied two ecological rules. By examining the size distribution of fish, Dr Winfield worked out how much of this biomass is produced in a year and how much is carried over from previous years. "It is not very precise, but it usually puts you in the right ball park," says Dr Winfield "Unfortunately, it did not work for us in Loch Ness.
