This Mysterious Fire in Australia Has Been Burning For at Least 6,000 Years

Mount Wingen seen via satellite. (Google Earth)


FIONA MACDONALD
2 JANUARY 2022

In a national park a four-hour drive north of Sydney in Australia, a fire is smoldering out of control – and it's been doing so for at least 6,000 years.

Known as 'Burning Mountain', the mysterious underground blaze is the oldest known fire on the planet. And some scientists estimate it may be far more ancient than we currently think.

Located under Mount Wingen in the state of New South Wales (Wingen means 'fire' in the language of the local Wanaruah people, the traditional custodians of the land), this underground smolder is a coal seam fire – one of thousands burning at any one time around the globe.

Once ignited, these subterranean fires are almost impossible to put out. Slowly but intensely, they travel through the coal seam, a layer of coal that naturally occurs beneath Earth's surface.

"No one knows the size of the fire under Burning Mountain, you can only infer it," Guillermo Rein, a professor of fire science at Imperial College London in the UK, tells ScienceAlert.

"It's likely a ball of around 5 to 10 meters in diameter, reaching temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius [1,832 Fahrenheit]," he explains.

Rein visited Burning Mountain in 2014 – which was on his field trip bucket list.

Rein at Mount Wingen in 2014. (Copyright Guillermo Rein)

Unlike a typical fire, a coal seam fire burns underground; it's smoldering, which means there's no flame and it's more like embers in a barbecue, rather than a typical coal fire. It's also not to be confused with more dramatic coal seam gas fires, which are known to set even waterways on fire.

The fire at Mount Wingen is currently burning around 30 meters underground, and moving south at a speed of around 1 meter (3.2 ft) per year.

If you visit the national park – which is open to tourists – the only current evidence of its existence is some smoke and white ash, ground that's warm to the touch, discolored rocks of yellow and red, and a sulfuric smell emitted as the fire below cooks the minerals of the mountain.

(Beruthiel/Wikimedia, public domain)

But even though it's mostly invisible now, the path the fire has taken is visible upon closer investigation, with more recently burnt areas covered in ash and devoid of plant life.

"Ahead of the fire where it hasn't arrived you see this beautiful eucalyptus forest. Where the fire is now there's absolutely nothing alive, not even grass," says Rein. "And where the fire was 20 to 30 years ago, the forest has come back, but it's a different forest – the fire has shaped the landscape."

A sign at Burning Mountain National Park. (Copyright Guillermo Rein)

Many coal seam fires, particularly those in India, China, and the US, are caused by human interference such as coal mining – think of the infamous fire below Centralia, Pennsylvania, the now-deserted town that inspired Silent Hill, which has been burning for almost 60 years.

But that's a mere blink of an eye compared to the thousands of years of Burning Mountain.

Who started the fire?

Interestingly, no one's sure what first ignited it.

The first documented European sighting was in 1828, when a local farmhand declared he'd discovered a volcano in the Mount Wingen region.

Only a year later in 1829, geologist Reverend CPN Wilton concluded the alleged volcano was actually a coal seam fire. Measurements have since shown that the path of the fire covers around 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) – suggesting it's been alight for at least 6,000 years. But other than that, hardly any official research has been done on the area.

The site is considered sacred by the traditional custodians, the Wanaruah people, who used it for cooking and crafting weapons. Their origin stories talk about a widow whose tears ignited the fire, or the torch of a warrior captured by the 'Evil One' under the mountain.

According to Rein, natural causes are the most likely source.

"You cannot rule out anthropogenic interference, but it was most likely natural causes," he explains. "It could have been wildfire from a lighting strike that ignited an outcrop. Or it could have been self-heating ignition."

Self-heating ignition happens when the coal seam is close enough to the surface for coal to be exposed to oxygen. If there are enough sunny and hot days in a row – something that we'll see more of with climate change – the surface of the coal heats up and gets hot enough to heat up the next piece in the seam, eventually sparking ignition.

Studies show that the self-heating point for coal can range from just 35 to 140 degrees Celsius (95 to 284 °F).

What's perhaps more fascinating is we don't know exactly how old the fire is, either. Researchers have found evidence that indicates the same fire could have been burning a lot longer.

"It's not just that it's 6,000 years old… it's at least 6,000 years old," says Rein. "It could actually be hundreds of thousands of years old."

It's worth noting this evidence is unpublished and not peer-reviewed so needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But it only adds to the mystery of this understudied fire.

Painting of Mount Wingen by Emma Macpherson, 1833-1915. (Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons)

Under its own steam

How long will Mount Wingen burn? No one really knows that, either; we don't know how far the coal seam stretches or where it goes next. For now, it has no shortage of oxygen supply.

"It could burn for thousands of years without human intervention," says Rein.

"As the fire progresses, it heats up the mountain causing it to expand and crack, letting in oxygen so the fire can then move forward. The fire produces its own chimney and its own supply of oxygen."

Even with human intervention, coal seam fires are notoriously hard to put out, requiring tonnes of water and liquid nitrogen. In 2004, China claimed to have extinguished a fire that had been burning for 50 years, only to have visitors see signs of it burning a few years later.

Interestingly, during Rein's visit in 2014, he noted that the smolder at Burning Mountain was approaching a cliff down to a small river. Depending on what the coal seam does at that river, we could see some dramatic changes to Burning Mountain within the next decades.

"The coal seam might break through and come out very close to the surface of the cliff, which could result in flames with much more heat," says Rein. He predicts that this may be similar to what happened in 1828 when the fire was mistaken for a volcano.

"Or if the coal seam goes very deep it will extinguish itself and smolder out – which would be very dramatic if that happens during our lifetime after burning for possibly hundreds of thousands of years," Rein adds.

One thing worth noting is that while Mount Wingen is far away enough from civilization to cause harm, larger coal fires can be a serious health and safety hazard that have become far more common in recent years.

Not only could they become more common due to climate change, they could also be contributing to the plight of our planet. Very little study has been done into how significant the impact is of coal fire greenhouse gases, but they're known to release large amounts of CO2, methane, as well as other pollutants such as mercury.

"The impact of climate change on coal seam fires, and the impact of coal seam fires on climate change is definitely something we should be very concerned about," Rein tells ScienceAlert.

"What's most frustrating as an engineer is that no one is benefitting from these fires – it's a huge potential source of heat and energy that's going untapped."

While further research is needed into coal seam fires as our planet heats up, it's somewhat comforting to know that mysteries such as Burning Mountain still exist relatively unstudied and unknown on this information-overloaded planet – and you can safely visit it when you're next in Australia.

Scientists Have Identified The Driving Force Behind Your Darkest Impulses

PETER DOCKRILL
26 DECEMBER 2021


Psychologists call it the dark triad: an intersection of three of the most malevolent tendencies of human nature – psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism.

But the truth goes deeper, and darker. There's also egoism, sadism, spitefulness, and more. And behind this rogues gallery of all our worst inclinations on the surface, a central, common core of human darkness lies, according to new research.

In a 2018 study, psychologists from Germany and Denmark mapped this driving force behind all our darkest impulses and gave it a name. Meet D, the newly identified Dark Factor of Personality.

The theoretical framework of the D factor has its underpinnings in what's known as the g factor: a construct proposed by English psychologist Charles Spearman over a century ago when he observed that individuals who performed well on one kind of cognitive test were more likely to score well on other kinds of intelligence tests, too.

In other words, a 'general intelligence factor' could be measured. But it turns out that's not all scientists are able to detect.

"In the same way, the dark aspects of human personality also have a common denominator, which means that – similar to intelligence – one can say that they are all an expression of the same dispositional tendency," explained psychologist Ingo Zettler from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark back in September 2018.

In a series of four separate studies involving over 2,500 participants, Zettler and fellow researchers surveyed participants with questions designed to measure their levels of nine distinct dark personality traits: egoism, Machiavellianism, moral disengagement, narcissism, psychological entitlement, psychopathy, sadism, self-interest, and spitefulness.


To do so, participants were asked to disagree with a range of variable 'dark' statements, such as: "I know that I am special because everyone keeps telling me so", "I'll say anything to get what I want", "It is hard to get ahead without cutting corners here and there", and "Hurting people would be exciting".

With all the responses in hand, researchers ran a statistical analysis, with the results suggesting that while these dark traits are all distinct, they all overlap to some extent, owing to the central core darkness factor, D, which reveals itself in different ways in different people.

"In a given person, the D factor can mostly manifest itself as narcissism, psychopathy or one of the other dark traits, or a combination of these," Zettler said.

"But with our mapping of the common denominator of the various dark personality traits, one can simply ascertain that the person has a high D factor. This is because the D factor indicates how likely a person is to engage in behavior associated with one or more of these dark traits."

It's pretty provocative stuff, but you don't just have to take the researchers' word for it: You can take the D test yourself.

The team set up an online portal where you can measure your own D score via a questionnaire.

Why would people want to know? Well, apart from personal curiosity about how dark you really are, the researchers said their findings could one day lead to new discoveries in psychology and therapy, advancing our understanding of how we interpret people's malevolent actions.

"We see it, for example, in cases of extreme violence, or rule-breaking, lying, and deception in the corporate or public sectors," Zettler said.

"Here, knowledge about a person's D-factor may be a useful tool, for example, to assess the likelihood that the person will re-offend or engage in more harmful behavior."

The findings were reported in Psychological Review.

New Insights Into the Timeline of Mammal Evolution With Precisely Dated Evolutionary Trees

By QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON DECEMBER 30, 2021

Mammal tree of life. Credit: Mario dos Reis Barros and Sandra Alvarez-Carretero

A new study, published on December 22, 2021, in the journal Nature, has provided the most detailed timeline of mammal evolution to date.

The research describes a new and fast computational approach to obtain precisely dated evolutionary trees, known as ‘timetrees’. The authors used the novel method to analyze a mammal genomic dataset and answer a long-standing question around whether modern placental mammal groups originated before or after the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) mass extinction, which wiped out over 70 percent of all species, including all dinosaurs.

The findings confirm the ancestors of modern placental mammal groups postdate the K-Pg extinction that occurred 66 million years ago, settling a controversy around the origins of modern mammals. Placental mammals are the most diverse group of living mammals, and include groups such as primates, rodents, cetaceans, carnivorans, chiropterans (bats) as well as humans.

The research team was led by Dr. Mario dos Reis (Queen Mary University of London) and Professor Phil Donoghue (University of Bristol), and included scientists from Queen Mary, University of Bristol, UCL, Imperial College London, and the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Sandra Álvarez-Carretero, lead author of the paper from UCL (then at Queen Mary), says: “By integrating complete genomes in the analysis and the necessary fossil information, we were able to reduce uncertainties and obtain a precise evolutionary timeline. Did modern mammal groups co-exist with the dinosaurs, or did they originate after the mass extinction? We now have a definite answer.”

“The timeline of mammal evolution is perhaps one of the most contentious topics in evolutionary biology. Early studies provided origination estimates for modern placental groups deep in the Cretaceous, in the dinosaur era. The past two decades had seen studies moving back and forth between post- and pre-K-Pg diversification scenarios. Our precise timeline settles the issue,” adds Prof Donoghue, co-senior author of the paper.

Fast approach for genome analysis

With worldwide sequencing projects now producing hundreds to thousands of genome sequences, and with imminent plans to sequence more than a million species, evolutionary biologists will soon have a wealth of information at their hands. However, current methods to analyze the vast genomic datasets available and create evolutionary timelines are inefficient and computationally expensive.

“Inferring evolutionary timelines is a fundamental goal of biology. However, state-of-the-art methods rely on using computers to simulate evolutionary timelines and assess the most plausible ones. In our case, this was difficult due to the gigantic dataset analyzed, involving genetic data from almost 5,000 mammal species and 72 complete genomes,” Dr. dos Reis says.

In this study, the researchers developed a new, fast Bayesian approach to analyze large numbers of genome sequences, whilst also accounting for uncertainties within the data. “We solved the computational hurdles by dividing the analysis in sub-steps: first simulating timelines using the 72 genomes and then using the results to guide the simulations on the remaining species. Using genomes reduces uncertainty because it allows rejection of unplausible timelines from the simulations,” says Dr dos Reis.

“Our data processing pipeline sourced as much genomic data for as many mammal species as possible. This was challenging because genetic databases contain inaccuracies and we had to develop a strategy to identify poor quality samples or mislabelled data that had to be removed,” adds Dr. Asif Tamuri, co-lead author of the paper from UCL, who was responsible for assembling the mammal genomic dataset.

More efficient and sustainable

Using their novel approach, the team was able to reduce computation time for this complex analysis from decades to months. “If we had tried to analyze this large mammal dataset in a supercomputer without using the Bayesian method we have developed, we would have had to wait decades to infer the mammal timetree. Just imagine how long this analysis could take if we were to use our own PCs,” says Dr. Álvarez-Carretero. “In addition, we managed to reduce computation time by a factor of 100. This new approach not only allows the analysis of genomic datasets, but also, by being more efficient, substantially reduces the CO₂ emissions released due to computing,” Dr. Álvarez-Carretero continues.

The method developed in the study could be used to tackle other contentious evolutionary timelines that require analysis of large datasets. By integrating the novel Bayesian approach with the forthcoming genomes from the Darwin Tree of Life and Earth BioGenome projects, the idea of estimating a reliable evolutionary timescale for the Tree of Life now seems within reach.

Reference: “A Species-Level Timeline of Mammal Evolution Integrating Phylogenomic Data” by Sandra Álvarez-Carretero, Asif U. Tamuri, Matteo Battini, Fabrícia F. Nascimento, Emily Carlisle, Robert J. Asher, Ziheng Yang, Philip C. J. Donoghue and Mario dos Reis, 22 December 2021, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04341-1

Evolution Keeps Making And Unmaking Crabs, And Nobody Knows Why


(Rod Long/Unsplash)

CLARE WATSON
1 JANUARY 2022

Our planet's convoluted history of evolving life has spawned countless weird and wonderful creatures, but none excite evolutionary biologists – or divide taxonomists – quite like crabs.

When researchers attempted to reconcile the evolutionary history of crabs in all their raucous glory just earlier this year, they arrived at the conclusion that the defining features of crabbiness have evolved at least five times in the past 250 million years.

What's more, crabbiness has been lost possibly seven times or more.

This repeated evolution of a crab-like body plan has happened so often it has its own name: carcinization. (And yes, if you lose crabbiness to evolution, it's called decarcinization.)

Frog crabs (Raninidae) are one unusual example. Features of the crab body plan were also lost en route to almost-legless Puerto Rican sand crabs (Emerita portoricensis) and various lop-sided hermit crabs – but then red king crabs regained crabby features at the last evolutionary minute.

A Puerto Rican sand crab. 

(Michelle Barros Sarmento Gama/iNaturalist/CC BY-NC 4.0)

Why evolution keeps crafting and shafting the crab-like body plan remain but a mystery, though evolution must be doing something right in fashioning crabby creatures time and time again.

There are thousands of crab species, which thrive in almost every habitat on Earth, from coral reefs and abyssal plains to creeks, caves and forests.

Crabs also boast an impressive display of sizes. The smallest, the pea crab (Pinnothera faba), measures just millimeters, while the largest, the Japanese spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi), spans nearly 4 meters (around 12 feet) from claw to claw.

With their species richness, extravagant array of body shapes and rich fossil record, crabs are an ideal group to study trends in biodiversity through time. But finding some order in the chaos of crabs is an ongoing challenge.
What's a crab, anyway?

It gets weirder, because not every crab is a crab, so to speak. There are 'true' crabs, such as mud crabs and swimmer crabs. Yet we also have so-called false crabs, such as shell-shy hermit crabs with their spiraling abdomens, or the spike-covered king crabs.

The most visible difference between true and false crabs is how many walking legs they have: true crabs have four pairs of lanky legs, whereas false crabs only have three, with another pint-sized pair at the rear.

Both true and false crabs evolved their wide, flat, hard upper shell and tucked tails independently of one another, from a common ancestor that had none of those features, suggests an analysis published in March 2021, led by evolutionary biologist Joanna Wolfe of Harvard University.

But it wasn't a straightforward path after true and false crabs split. Evolution has made and remade crabs over the past 250 million years: once or twice in true crabs and at least three times during the evolution of false crabs, Wolfe and colleagues think.

Crabs have long stumped taxonomists who have invariably misclassified species as true or false crabs due to their striking similarities.

Besides figuring out where species belong in the tree of life, understanding exactly how many times evolution has crafted the crab-like body form and why, could reveal something about what drives convergent evolution.

"There has to be some kind of evolutionary advantage to be this crablike shape," crab expert and Wolfe's co-author Heather Bracken-Grissom told Popular Science in 2020, when carcinization had sent the internet into a spin.

As with many subjects, evolutionary biologists have plenty of ideas, but no firm answers on carcinization. Due to the narrow focus of past research on select crab species, "the unparsimonious history of crab body plan evolution must be reconciled", the team writes.

To make a start, the trio of researchers compiled data on crab morphology, behavior and natural history, from living species and fossils, and identified the gaps in genetic data which might help to resolve puzzling evolutionary relationships.

"Almost half of the branches on the crab tree of life remain dark," they write.

Most carcinized crabs have developed hard, calcified shells to protect themselves from predators – a clear advantage – but then some crabs have abandoned this protection, for reasons unknown.

Walking sideways, silly as it seems, means crabs are supremely agile, able to make a speedy exit in either direction without losing sight of a predator, should one appear. But sideways walking is not observed in all carcinized lineages (there are forward-walking spider crabs) and some uncarcinzed hermit crabs can walk sideways, too.

That some crabs evolved outsized claws to become shell-crushing predators in an ecological arms race also cannot fully explain the timing or successes of early crab evolution.

(Joanna M. Wolfe)

Above: Phylogenetic tree showing examples of carcinized and decarcinized clades, with colored dots noting characteristics on the branches.

Like anything in science, nothing is ever settled and evolution will continue on its merry way. Though with increasing amounts of genomic information on living and fossilized crab species, rest assured taxonomists are steadily piecing together what makes a crab, a crab.

This "will allow us to resolve the multiple origins and losses of 'crab' body forms through time and identify the timing of origin of key evolutionary novelties and body plans," says Wolfe.

More than that, studying crabs provides a tantalizing prospect for evolutionary sleuths who think it might be possible to anticipate the predictable shapes evolution makes based on environmental factors and genetic cues.

"Examining crab evolution provides a macroevolutionary timescale of 250 million years ago for which, with enough phylogenetic and genomic data, we might be able to predict the morphology that would result," says Bracken-Grissom.

A crab-like shape might be a safe bet.

The paper was published in BioEssays.

Japan pushes for undersea cables to solve wind power puzzle

Nikkei 

SAPPORO: Hokkaido carries the potential to supply Tokyo and other parts of Japan with offshore wind energy, but the lack of adequate transmission capacity has kept the northernmost prefecture from becoming a hub for the renewable resource.

© Provided by Free Malaysia Today Officials call for a new undersea transmission line either in the Pacific Ocean or the Sea of Japan. (Pixabay pic)

Japan looks to allocate ¥5 billion (US$43.4 million) in this fiscal year’s supplementary budget toward a feasibility study for undersea cables that could help Hokkaido become a destination for offshore wind operators.

The prefecture enjoys wide coastlines and strong winds over coastal waters.

“I see a greater potential of resolving the problem with transmission, which posed a bottleneck for offshore wind power,” said Tatsuyuki Kato, mayor of Ishikari, a coastal city in western Hokkaido.

Ishikari contains roughly 70km of coastline, most of it facing ideal locations for installing offshore windmills. The city’s coast could house over 100 offshore wind turbines depending on demand.

But that level of supply would require a power cable, because sparsely populated Hokkaido will not consume a lot of wind power itself.

Two high-voltage direct current transmission lines linking Hokkaido and Japan’s main island of Honshu are to have their combined capacity raised to 1.2 million kW by 2028, but that would not be enough.

One solution floated calls for a new undersea transmission line either in the Pacific Ocean or the Sea of Japan.

The line would connect to either Fukushima Prefecture or Niigata Prefecture, which both host robust transmission networks, enabling the power to be delivered to the Tokyo metropolitan area.

As Japan works to reduce carbon emissions, the economy and infrastructure ministries released a vision in 2020 for an offshore wind power industry. They want offshore wind to generate up to 45 million kW of electricity nationwide by 2040.

Hokkaido is expected to produce up to 14.65 million kW of wind power, about one-third of the target. Offshore wind turbines can generate around 10,000 kW of power each, and up to about 1,400 turbines are expected to be installed across Hokkaido.

“Now that the feasibility study is included in the supplementary budget, wind power companies based in the Tokyo area are also bullish about building in Hokkaido,” an executive at a local general contractor said.

Hokkaido municipalities are eager to ride the boom. Ishikari will launch a team led by the mayor in January to woo wind projects, with the cooperation of local fishers, farmers and the chamber of commerce.

Rumoi, which experiences winds of 5-7kph throughout the year, also has volunteered to host new projects.

“We made the decision partly because the study was included in the new budget,” a city government worker said.

But building a four million kW link connecting Hokkaido and Tokyo would cost ¥800 billion to ¥1.2 trillion, according to an estimate published in July by the Organization for Cross-regional Coordination of Transmission Operators in Japan.

Such a project likely would not be completed until the 2030s. The turbines themselves also are slated for completion in the 2030s and 2040s.

“It’s unclear how much the new transmission capacity and offshore wind power will benefit local companies,” said Kentaro Kato at Deloitte Tohmatsu Group. “Businesses in Hokkaido need to hone their abilities in construction and maintenance services, starting now.”

Can farm equipment truly be sustainable?

By Ron Lyseng
WESTERN PRODUCER
Published: December 30, 2021


(UPDATED 12/31/2021 – This story has been updated from an earlier version that contained some out-of-date material)

“How sustainable is my five-year old German combine that’s maybe still functional for another decade, but now it’s junk because I can’t find a replacement electronic panel?”

So asks one Manitoba farmer, whose situation is far from unique.

The panel he needed was nowhere to be found. Every scrapped Claas had long ago been stripped of this particular part. So he and a buddy “fixed” the faulty part.

It worked. Sort of. Except for some safety issues.

“The manufacturers are building twice as many combines as the market can absorb,” says Larry Hertz, vice-president of the Western Equipment Dealers Association.

“North American farmers might buy 6,500 combines next year. The companies are building double that number. Where’s the sustainability in that?

“Obviously as the machines become dated and the electronics systems become dated, I’m not sure that a lot of those components will remain in production. Those parts become more expensive with time and that makes the machine obsolete.

“Some people may try to repair circuit panels or build new ones, but that becomes a safety factor. If you’re building your own panels and they’re off-spec or OEM (original equipment manufacturer) spec, you could have a hidden glitch that can create a big problem in the field or on the road.”


Hertz says the used combine market poses a real problem in terms of sustainability. Many combines are traded by the first-generation owner with 200 to 400 hours. Traditionally, those combines were purchased by medium-sized farmers.

But the proliferation of big farms has come at the expense of medium-sized farms. Those second-generation buyers are disappearing, which has disrupted the combine market.

Gene Breker is one of the founders of Amitytech, and before that worked with the development of the venerable Concord air drill. He deals with farmers on a regular basis on issues of obsolete technology and sustainability.

“Farmers don’t like scrapping a piece of equipment if there’s still life in it, or if it’s just the electronics that have gone bad,” says Breker.

“Farmers really appreciate the fact that our single disc drill has gone through four electronic cycles over 13 years. Four different electronic systems so the drill can keep on working, because the mechanical components don’t wear out. Electronics improve all the time, so we’ve put together four complete electronic packages for the drill.

“A complete electronic change is $5,000 to $8,000. That includes new sensors, new wiring harness and everything else. The entire industry now is ISO and nearly everything made now plugs into the tractor ISO monitor head, so you seldom need to buy a new monitor head.”

Breker says there’s virtually no market for used seeding and tillage machinery in the 60-foot to 80-foot and bigger range. Farmers looking for used equipment want 40-foot machines and smaller. In terms of sustainability, that leaves a lot of expensive orphaned iron.

“This is a serious issue. Over the years I’ve suggested to the company we should make a 60-foot machine designed to remove the 10-foot wing tips and turn it into a 40-foot machine,” says Breker.

“When it comes to seeding and tillage, I don’t think there’s very much scrap. Remember Concord? We sold more than 5,000 Concords in North America. Just about every one is still working. Farmers have figured out different ways to use them. You very rarely see a Concord scrapped in the trees. I think that meets the criteria for sustainability.”

CHESS IS TOO DAMN SERIOUS

Dramatic endgame! Moment furious UPSET Polish chess master falls off his chair after blunder costs him match

Pawel Teclaf, 18 from Poland fell off a chair after he made a losing move in chess

He blundered in a World Blitz Championship match against Tigran Petrosian

The hilarious clip shows Mr Teclaf get up straight away and offer a handshake

By ELMIRA TANATAROVA FOR MAILONLINE
31 December 2021 |

This is the moment a chess player realised he had made a move which cost him a championship match and became so furious that he fell off his chair.

Pawel Teclaf, 18, from Poland, lost to Tigran Petrosian, 37, from Armenia in the fast-moving match at the World Blitz Championship in Warsaw on December 29.

A hilarious clip shows Mr Teclaf, playing white, make his move. As soon as his opponent counters with a winning play, he swears and dramatically throws himself back in his chair.

But the chair overbalances and his humiliation is deepened as he tumbles onto the floor.
Moment angry Polish chess champion falls off his chair after losing



Pawel Teclaf, 18, from Poland, loses to Tigran Petrosian, 37, from Armenia in a World Blitz Championship match at the PGE National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland

Mr Petrosian reaches out for him, but cannot stop Mr Teclaf's fall.

An embarrassed Mr Teclaf quickly stands up and gives his opponent a handshake.

Afterwards Mr Teclaf, an International Master, said he was feeling OK and had simply 'lost balance'.

He said: 'I usually swing on the chair because I just like it, but this is the first time I just fell down.

'I just lost balance and fell down, he (Mr Petrosian) tried to help me up.

'I just stood up fast. Yesterday I was very angry but I look back at the video and it's very funny.

'I was completely winning but we had maximum ten seconds on the clock. I managed to screw it up. I just wanted to finish the day.'

The clip, which has gone viral, was shared to YouTube channel SpeedChess where it has had more than 30,000 views.


Mr Teclaf, an International Master, leans back in his chair in frustration and loses balance as he falls

It has attracted 702 comments, some remarking on the fact that Mr Teclaf could potentially have been injured in a sport not known for its physicality.

Om Kale said: 'This is officially the first chess win by knockout.'

John Kervin added: 'Anyone who thinks chess players are not athletes refer them to this clip. World class endgame technique here by Petrosian.

'Stunning sense of balance and timing to stay in his chair whilst finding the top engine move.

'Teclaf gets some bonus points from the judges due to his clean dismount.'

'And after this somebody says that chess isn't a dangerous sport, man could break his bone,' Anton Kucherenko also commented.


The chess player quickly made his way back up and went for a handshake with his opponent

The 2021 World Rapid & Blitz Championship, organised by The International Chess Federation (FIDE) along with the Women's Rapid & Blitz Championship are elite chess events gathering players who face-off with rapid time controls.

In the World Blitz Championship, the players only have three minutes each per match, with only seconds to think about every move.

Champions and grandmaster-level competitors from all around the globe come to participate across the tournaments for their share of a $1 million prize fund.

This year the event, which ran from December 26 through December 30 at the PGE National Stadium, saw Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from France place first in the World Blitz Championship Open.

Bibisara Assaubayevaalso, from Kazakhstan, also won her first world blitz champion title after winning the Women's World Blitz Championship.

CLASSIC FORTEAN PHENOMENA

It rained fish over a Texas town this week in a bizarre weather event
Scottie Andrew
CNNDigital
 Saturday, January 1, 2022


It's raining fish in east Texas -- but it's nothing too out of the ordinary.

Earlier this week, residents of Texarkana reported small fish falling from the sky in what seemed like an epochal weather event. The reality was more mundane: The swimmers, many of them palm-sized, were likely picked up by a waterspout and dropped back down to earth as it lost momentum, the city told residents in a Facebook post.

The fish showers are an example of "animal rain," the city explained, and "while it's uncommon," it can happen when the weather is just right -- and the fish are just light enough.

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Fish fall from sky with rain in northern Mexico

The animals didn't originate in the sky before they started raining, of course -- rather, they were picked up off the ground by powerful waterspouts, which begin in the air and move down toward water's surface. As these spouts gain momentum, the vortex at the center of the waterspouts can start picking up small, light objects -- including fish. And when the waterspout loses energy, those small objects come falling back down, explains the Library of Congress.

Updrafts -- super-strong winds -- are more powerful than waterspouts and can pick up animals larger than skinny fish, according to National Geographic, including birds, bats, frogs and snakes.

The residents of Texarkana were by all accounts relatively nonplussed by the bizarre weather event. Tim Brigham told CNN affiliate KSLA he thought it was "pretty cool" to see tiny fish falling from the sky and useful, too -- he said he "started to get me a bucket and pick them up for fishing bait." The employees of Discount Wheel and Tire stepped away from the tires and instead started cleaning up their parking lot's surprise seafood platter.

Others shared photos of their own backyard fish finds after the city's Facebook page asked them to "show us your fishy pics." Most of them were no bigger than the palm of the hand of the resident who took the photo.

Texarkana's animal rain may be one of the only recorded instances of the phenomenon in the state, but California last saw the same thing in 2017, when elementary school officials in Oroville reported that 100 fish fell from the sky and onto school property. Fish have fallen from the sky in the town of Lajamanu in Australia's Northern Territory at least three times in the last 30 years, per the Weather Channel.

For Canada’s Ocean Playground, a more terrifying kind of tourist — great white sharks

'We never expected to see a shark there, it was probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life'

Author of the article: Abigael Lynch, Special to National Post
Publishing date: Jan 01, 2022 • 

Nearly five decades after Jaws, great white sharks continue to have a hold on our psyches. 

PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES / STOCK
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On a sunny, unseasonably warm Tuesday in November, Chris Harvey-Clark donned a wetsuit and slipped into Halifax Harbour, near where it ends and the open Atlantic Ocean begins.

He and a friend were at the wreck of HMHS Letitia, a hospital ship that ran aground in 1917. The duo planned to tag torpedo rays — an electrified but minor sea nuisance.

Instead, they came across the most fearsome predator in the North Atlantic, the stuff of blockbuster movies and a million nightmares: a great white shark.

“We never expected to see a shark there, it was probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life,” said Harvey-Clark, director of animal care and professor of shark biology at Dalhousie University.

The water was colder than what sharks usually favour, and the nearest colony of seals — sharks’ favoured meal — was a kilometre away.

And yet there it was.

As soon as I saw the tail disappear, I knew it was a great white

“We went down, and the water was really murky so we couldn’t see much. As we were just deciding to head back to the boat, I looked up and saw this huge tail disappearing just out of sight in the murky water, maybe 30 feet away.”

“As soon as I saw the tail disappear, I knew it was a great white. I tried to get my buddy’s attention, but he was looking in the opposite direction. I started banging on my tank to get his attention when the shark passed by again, my buddy still didn’t hear.”

“It was on that pass I got a good look at the animal. It was a 10-foot-long untagged female. It just kind of cruised along slowly and looked at me, then disappeared again. When it came back for a third pass, my buddy saw it, and we both couldn’t believe our eyes. We both couldn’t believe what we had seen and how close the shark had gotten. I gave him the signal and we took off for the boat. Both of us knew that this was not a safe situation.”

For Nova Scotians, such sightings are becoming a kind of new normal. Sharks aren’t everywhere, but it suddenly seems they could be, due to historically high seal populations, the Gulf Stream, conservation efforts — and the Twitter feed of a shark named Hilton that was tagged and tracked to Nova Scotia by researchers.

Hilton – one of over 100 sharks tagged by scientists at American non-profit OCEARCH — takes a charming tone for his 46,000 followers. OCEARCH sees social media as a fun way to raise awareness about sharks, as well as work to educate the public about them.

But great whites maintain their menace.

On Aug. 13, 2021, Taylor Boudreau-Deveaux, 21, went swimming with friends off a boat about a half-mile west of Margaree Island off Cape Breton when she was bitten by a shark . She was rushed to surgery in Halifax with serious injuries to her legs and thighs. Family members have told reporters she is recovering but Boudreau-Deveaux did not respond to interview requests.

“I followed the story of Taylor’s attack very closely, I even reached out to the investigating officer of the RCMP to try and get in touch with her,” Harvey-Clark said. “The place where Taylor and her friends were swimming was by a deep-water site, a drop off, and there was a nearby island with seals on it. Sharks can be found in that kind of an area.”

It was the first reported shark attack on a human in Nova Scotia since a woman was knocked overboard in 1891.

Frederick Whoriskey, the executive director of the Ocean Tracking Network at Dalhousie University, said shark attacks are rare — he estimates there were three attacks in the U.S. the last 10 years, under similar conditions to Boudreau-Deveaux.

“It’s tended to be people that are swimming in the offshore areas, isolated on their own around seals. It’s not like the sharks are actively developing the taste for and are attacking people preferentially. If they were, we wouldn’t be talking about three attacks every 10 years.”

“There were conservation efforts to bring the great white shark back from the brink of extinction decades ago, so most of the great whites we see now are in their sub-adolescent phase, where they are feeding on fish and around 10 feet long. As they get bigger and more powerful, they begin to move on to larger, more energetic prey like seals. As adolescents they have to figure out what makes good prey and what doesn’t, so they begin experimenting. If one comes across a swimmer, it looks like good prey to the adolescent shark, so they will take a test bite. As more of the population comes into this phase, there is a chance that we will see more bites occurring,” Whoriskey explained.

If one comes across a swimmer, it looks like good prey to the adolescent shark, so they will take a test bite

As well, Whoriskey said oceans are warming, causing more people to go into the water and for later in the year. And the anti-sealing movement has shrunk the East Coast seal hunt and led to historically high levels of grey seal and harbour seal populations.

“I think the estimate is 20,000 or 30,000 grey seals, although depending on who you talk to, some say it is 200,000 seals; either way it is far above what it was 33 years ago,” Harvey-Clark said.

Harvey-Clark agrees with Whoriskey in that there will be an increase in shark interactions, but with a different theory.

“The whole reason they’re coming north is food and their main food source is seals. So as long as Canada’s got historically high seal populations specifically on the east coast, and as long as we have white sharks being conserved and not actively fished, I think we will see an increasing trend of spotting white sharks up here, and probably sooner or later, we may see an impact on seal populations as well,” he said.

Christine Murphy, an owner of the Tuna Blue Inn in Hubbards, N.S., hasn’t changed her relationship with the water, but her husband has, and it’s due to Boudreau-Deveaux’s attack.

Their inn overlooks the picturesque Hubbards Harbour, near one of Nova Scotia’s most popular swimming beaches, Hubbards beach.

“I am a regular swimmer in the ocean, my entire life I have been swimming and I never thought about sharks. The attack in August shows us that they are around, but it hasn’t changed my routine. I still jump off the boat and go swimming, but my husband won’t. He will religiously check the tracking sites and he will go out on the boat with us, but he is terrified to jump into the water,” Murphy says.

A great white shark swimming just under the surface. 

PHOTO BY STOCK IMAGE

Although Murphy has never seen a shark in her 55 years of swimming, she says there is now an interest around town about sharks where there wasn’t previously. “People go out on their boat and go fishing and they are always talking about how seeing a shark would be great, but they never see one, some tourists even come into the area in the hopes of seeing one. There is more interest than fear I would say.”

Tagged sharks visit that stretch of Nova Scotia’s south shore fairly often, according to OCEARCH’s shark trackers. Its website allows for visitors to see where in the world the tagged sharks are, as well as where they have been in the past 24 hours, including the distance they have travelled.

“There are definitely people who don’t go swimming in the ocean as much as they used to and won’t go as far out, or they will stick to the beaches where they didn’t before,” Murphy says.

Whoriskey, though, said it is important to keep perspective.

We are talking about an average of about 60 attacks a year. Compare that to the 500 crocodile attacks every year across the globe and the 120 people killed by falling coconuts a year

“We are talking about an average of about 60 attacks a year. Compare that to the 500 crocodile attacks every year across the globe and the 120 people killed by falling coconuts a year. Some kind of perspective is needed to understand the nature of what this actually is.”

He likens the ocean to a forest wilderness: We are never alone in there.

“We know that when we are walking into a national park, quite often, we know there are very large, potentially dangerous animals in there, like wolves and bears and coyotes. And we don’t not go into the national parks and go for a hike. What we do is we begin to take the measures … these animals are living by the rules that they live by and they’re powerful and they’re predators. And you need to be careful. So, the education component of what we want to do now and to try to get those messages out to people to remember that this is stepping into the wilderness, and there are predators in the ocean.”

Harvey-Clark doesn’t disagree, but said he has surfer friends who avoid specific areas because they are aware sharks are present. None have ever been attacked, but nearly five decades after Jaws, great white sharks continue to have a hold on our psyches.

Most especially, those of us who’ve encountered them.

“It felt like the longest five minutes of my life,” Harvey-Clark says of his sighting last month.

KENNEYVILLE

'Dropping the ball': Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise COVID-19 outbreak not being tracked, says AHS source

'It's shocking to me, I never thought it would get this far — when is AHS or the hotel going to do something'

Author of the article: Bill Kaufmann
Publishing date: Dec 30, 2021 •

The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise stands at Lake Louise, Alta., about 180 kilometres west of Calgary, Alta., on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016. PHOTO BY LYLE ASPINALL/POSTMEDIA NETWORK
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A COVID-19 outbreak that’s infected about 100 staff at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise is being ignored by health-care authorities, says an Alberta Health Services source and hotel staff emails.

The outbreak at the majestic Rocky Mountain hotel that began last week — and has sent dozens more workers into isolation — hasn’t been publicly disclosed on the Alberta Health website and isn’t being subject to its procedures the way it was earlier in the pandemic, said the AHS staffer.

“We are not consulting medical officers of health anymore . . . regardless of what the risk is,” said the source.

“It’s moving to endemic status so there won’t be any focus on COVID, it’s like the open for summer business.”

Last summer, the UCP government eliminated nearly all COVID-19 restrictions for what Premier Jason Kenney coined the “best summer ever.” Provincial officials have since said it was a mistake ahead of a devastating fourth wave of the disease that peaked last fall.

The roughly 100 hotel workers thought to be infected as of Tuesday yielded positive results using rapid antigen tests that aren’t being confirmed with more accurate PCR screening, said the AHS staffer.

“It spreads like wildfire through (staff),” said the source, adding hotel employees live in close proximity for most hours of the day.

“It’s unsettling (AHS) isn’t doing anything — we’re just dropping the ball.”

That source said those confirmed infections, and others ill or waiting for tests and in isolation, numbered 210, which would be more than a third of the hotel’s total workforce.

But aside from the 97 infections, another 45 staffers were symptomatic and in isolation, according to an email sent to employees on Dec. 28 by hotel general manager Tracy Lowe.

“While the initial increase in cases that we saw moved quite quickly, we do seem to be seeing a slight (if only just) slow down on the number of positive cases that we are experiencing each day,” stated Lowe.

“The wider Lake Louise community and the wider Bow Valley (and beyond) are experiencing the same scenario.”

A hotel employee also raised concerns, saying employees’ calls to AHS about the worsening situation had fallen on deaf ears.

“It’s shocking to me, I never thought it would get this far — when is AHS or the hotel going to do something,” said the staffer, who also requested anonymity.

“There’s a lot of anxiety — my co-workers are pretty wildly uncomfortable.”

The employee said possible outbreaks or COVID-19 cases at the hotel were more closely monitored and addressed by AHS early on in the pandemic.

Currently, said the staffer, the hotel is at 73 per cent capacity and expects to be 80 per cent full for New Year’s.

Many staff who’ve been exposed to colleagues who have tested positive are still working, said the staffer, adding, “we’re extremely short-staffed, they’re pushing people to the brink.”

The hospitality industry across the country says it’s facing increasing staff shortages from employees being sidelined by COVID-19.

In an email, Lowe told staff that new guest bookings have been suspended at the hotel from Dec. 24 through Jan. 2, and that signage informing visitors of the situation has been posted at entrances.

“We realize this won’t stop all visitors from entering and that is fine but we hope it helps to reduce the volume that we can see during this time of year,” she said on Christmas Day.

Access to some of the hotel’s venues has been reduced in response to the outbreak, she stated.

Critics of the UCP government have questioned the decision to limit the use of PCR testing to those who are symptomatic, while emphasizing the employment of rapid antigen screening that doesn’t provide data on case numbers.

The situation at Lake Louise isn’t being ignored, but such situations can be expected to multiply, AHS said in a statement.

“AHS is aware of a cluster of COVID-19 cases in the Lake Louise area. Our communicable disease team and medical officers of health have been supporting local medical staff and are working with employers,” the statement said.

“With high community spread of COVID-19, we expect to see cases connected to workplaces increase in the coming weeks.”

The latest available official data from the province, released Wednesday, showed 17,396 active cases, more than double the 8,359 reported last Friday, though the crucial measurement of hospitalizations has remained stable.

But health-care officials say those case numbers, including a daily record of an estimated 4,000 new cases reported Thursday, only represent a small portion of the real numbers and come with a positivity rate of around 30 per cent.

The tsunami of new cases driven by the Omicron variant has forced medical authorities to focus tracing efforts on priority areas, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Tuesday.

“Last week we were following protocols . . . however, with the surge of numbers and volumes we’re currently seeing it’s not possible to maintain those individual followup notifications . . . so that protocol has been altered because we do have to focus our capacity where there’s highest risk of outcomes,” she said.