The independent Kyrgyz Inquiry Commission (KIC) was tasked with investigating bloodshed between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in which around 470 died.
With glass, an extremely brittle material, having a KIc value of 1, all other materials can be assigned values relative to that of glass.
Other governments have flatly rejected calls for similar investigations for example, after the government's shooting of hundreds of people in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley in 2005.The seven-member KIC, a Nordic initiative accepted by Kyrgyzstan's president, Roza Otunbayeva, found that some military people were at the least complicit, and at the worst took part, in the events.
Metals thus have relative KIc's in the 30 45 range (aluminum alloys) or the 40 65 range (steels).
It is given the symbol KIc and is measured in units of megapascals times the square root of the distance measured in metres (MPa√m).
However, in the case of KIC 8462852, which is 1,500 light years from Earth, its starlight dimmed by as much as 20 per cent with a mysteriously irregular timing – as if by design.
A scientific survey of a star system called KIC 8462852 has ruled out the existence of two types of radio signals which could indicate the presence of aliens who are either trying to communicate across space or who may be using spacecraft powered by intense microwave beams.
In recent weeks, a star known as KIC 8462852 caused a huge stir because the light coming from it seemed to be dimming in strange, unexpected and never-before-seen ways.
Although astronomers are still mystified about what can be causing the unusual dimming of KIC 8462852, some experts are leaning towards the idea that it is caused by passing fragments of a comet that had broken up – despite the apparent absence of the cometary dust normally associated with such a phenomenon.
But KIC 8462852 was emitting a stranger light pattern than any of the other stars in Kepler's search for habitable planets.
But the dip in starlight from KIC 8462852 does not seem to be the normal pattern for a planet.
