Howland student wins national essay contest

The Howland freshman is interested in black holes and quasars.
By TIM YOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
HOWLAND -- Manish Mehta more than blinked when informed he'd captured first place in the DuPont Challenge Science Essay Awards program -- beating out 70,000 other contestants in the junior division.
"I'm still in shock. It's difficult to comprehend," said the 15-year-old Howland High School freshman.
His reward was a $5,000 educational grant and an all-expense paid trip to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and also Space Center Houston.
He took his mother and teacher Denise Clontz along with him. Manish is the son of Paresh and Sushma Mehta of Rolling Meadows Drive.
"It's such a big number of people," Manish said of those in the seventh through ninth grades from the U.S. and Canada who entered the competition.
His winning essay is titled "Acoustic Black Holes, Hawking Radiation, and the Very Fabric of Reality."
Theories
In it, he suggests that recent theories may change the way physics is taught. He describes how scientists are setting up virtual black holes and devices that would bring them close to quantum gravity and the "theory of everything," thus refuting Einstein's theory of relativity.
Einstein's theory says time, space and gravity have no separate existence from matter.
Even Clontz, who teaches honors biology and physical science, admits she had to read the essay twice to grasp it.
"I became interested in black holes and quasars because we don't really know much about them," Manish said.
Quasars are celestial objects that resemble stars but are apparently far more distant and emit large quantities of radiation. Black holes are regions of space time from which nothing escapes, not even light.
When Manish returned earlier this month from Houston, his father -- a gynecologist -- told him he had also won the Trumbull County Bar Association's essay contest for freshmen students, for another essay. He wrote about the purpose of separation of powers between the three branches of government.
Looking ahead
While at NASA, Manish and his party lunched with Rex Walheim, an astronaut who spent 22 days in space on the shuttle Atlantis, servicing the International Space Station.
Manish has no interest in being an astronaut, though. "I have this terrific fear of heights," he said.
Manish is a straight-A student and wants to spend the rest of his high school days getting more As and sharpening his speech, debate and tennis skills.
He sees himself having a career in medicine combined with astronomy and cosmology, a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe.
Manish credits Clontz with making him and other students aware of the DuPont contest.
"My natural competitive spirit took over. I couldn't turn in a trashy piece of work," he said.
His teacher says Manish is very interested in what he wrote about.
Because he's such an academic standout, Manish says other students' opinions of him change "like the weather in Ohio."
If it's a day when grades aren't the topic of discussion, Manish said, opinions of him are "pretty good." If grades are announced and he does well, "it goes downhill."
Manish is a member of the tennis team, speech and debate team, Latin Club, plays the saxophone in the school band and participates in Prep Bowl.
yovich@vindy.com