New ‘Striketober’ looms as US walkouts increase amid surge in union activity

Support for unions is on the rise as workers take action to raise pay and conditions amid booming company profits

American University staff members participate in a picket line while on strike in Washington DC last month. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA


Michael Sainato

THE GUARDIAN

Mon 26 Sep 2022

Thousands of workers around the US are going on strike or threatening to do so heading into October, amid a recent surge of labor action activity in America and just one month before crucial midterm elections.

Support for labor unions in the US has grown over the past year, as a surge in organizing has resulted in workers winning union elections at major corporations including Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, Trader Joe’s, Google, REI and Verizon.



Mass firings, wage cuts and open hostility: workers are still unionizing despite obstacles


Union election petitions increased 58% in the first three quarters of fiscal year 2022, compared with 2021. Public support for labor unions is at its highest point since 1965, according to the most recent Gallup poll, with a 71% approval of labor unions in the US.

According to the labor action tracker at Cornell University, strikes in 2022 so far have significantly outpaced strike activity in 2021, with 180 strikes involving 78,000 workers in the first six months of 2022, compared with 102 strikes involving 26,500 workers in the first six months of 2021. The tracker recorded 41 strikes that started between 15 August and 15 September 2022, involving 35,250 workers.

“Strikes appear to be increasing as we head into the fall,” said Johnnie Kallas, project director for the Cornell University ILR labor action tracker. “These strikes are being led by workers in the service sector. Starbucks workers have organized over 70 strikes so far this year in response to poor working conditions and employer retaliation. Over the past month, thousands of healthcare workers and educators have gone on strike to protest understaffing, low pay and poor conditions for patients and students.”

Last October was also dubbed “Striketober” by the US labor movement as a number of high-profile labor strikes and strike threats occurred throughout the month.

Some of the largest strikes in recent weeks in the US have included 15,000 nurses who went on a three-day strike in Minnesota, over 1,100 timber workers in Oregon and Washington, over 4,500 teachers and staff in Columbus, Ohio, more than 6,000 teachers and staff in Seattle, 2,000 mental healthcare workers in California, 1,200 casting plant workers at Stellantis in Indiana, and 700 nursing home workers in Pennsylvania.

Among the groups of workers that have recently authorized strikes include graduate workers at Clark University, while graduate workers at Indiana University will soon decide whether to resume a strike from earlier this year, about 800 auto workers at the Ultium Cells electric vehicle plant in Lordstown, Ohio, voted to authorize a strike for union recognition this month, and 115,000 railroad workers could still strike if they decide to vote down tentative contract agreements in the coming weeks.

UFCW Local 1059, representing about 12,500 workers at Kroger grocery stores in the Columbus, Ohio, area voted to authorize a strike on 16 September after rejecting the third contract proposal offered to members, Kroger’s latest and final offer.

A strike date hasn’t been set yet. A Kroger employee who voted in favor of authorizing the strike, but requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, explained they feel they have no choice due to many longtime workers still receiving poverty wages while working short-staffed.

“We should be making a living wage right now,” the worker said. “They’ve made a ton of money for the higher-ups, they’ve made a ton of money for their shareholders. But once again they’re saying that they can’t afford to pay us the wages that we just need to survive.”

The worker argued the proposed wage increases didn’t align with prices that have increased on customers and with Kroger’s profits, which have soared throughout the pandemic, with $3.5bn in operating profit in 2021 and projections of at least $4.6bn in operating profit in 2022, in addition to authorizing a $1bn stock buyback.

“I know for a lot of people that this strike is a really huge personal sacrifice to them, but we don’t have any other options,” the worker added. “We’re not trying to be greedy. But we’re just really tired and we sacrificed a whole lot during the pandemic.”

In Boston, about 300 workers at Sysco have a strike vote scheduled for 25 September as their contract is set to expire at the end of the month, with the union alleging Sysco has been dragging out negotiations, which Sysco has denied. Sysco workers have gone on strike so far this year in the Baltimore, Maryland, area and St Cloud, Minnesota.

“We’ve been called essential workers for the longest time and now it’s just empty words,” said Trevor Ashley, a driver at Sysco in Boston for over 20 years.

SEIU members shout their support for unions during a Labor Day parade in downtown Pittsburgh, on 5 September. Photograph: Steve Mellon/AP

In Buffalo, New York, over 6,300 healthcare workers at Kaleida Health voted to authorize a strike on 15 September amid their new union contract negotiations, with 96% in support. In the event of a strike, the unions representing workers will have to issue a 10-day notice.

“They left us no choice but to authorize a strike. For them to say they’re listening is not accurate,” said Kim Kornowski, a registered nurse at Millard Fillmore Suburban hospital.

Workers at Kaleida Health claimed staffing shortages and cuts have increased workloads and worsened working conditions throughout the pandemic, with hundreds of vacant positions that still need to be filled.

“We’re there to help take care of patients, but when there’s only one of me and a nurse that has seven or eight patients, it’s hard for us to take care of patients,” said Betty Thompson, a patient care assistant at Kaleida Health.

Kaleida Health has said it is making strike contingency preparations as they continue working to reach a contract with the union, but claimed the recent union proposal was too expensive.

“What we want is a fair contract that appropriately rewards our workforce and positions the organization for the future. That includes no concessionary bargaining, addressing staffing needs, and once again becoming the market leader in wages,” said a Kaleida Health spokesperson.

THESE ARE INVESTMENTS NOT TAXES

1. Uh, Mr. Poilievre? Canada Pension Plan premiums are not a tax

   https://www.theglobeandmail.com/.../article-pierre-poilievre-cpp-premiums-tax

   16 hours ago · opinion. Uh, Mr. Poilievre? Canada Pension Plan premiums are not a tax. Rob Carrick Personal Finance Columnist. Published 2 hours ago Updated 1 hour ago. T

EI, CPP premiums are on the rise, but there is more to the story than numbers

Ryan Tumilty - Thursday

OTTAWA – With new leader Pierre Poilievre at the helm, the Conservatives have made the cost of living their focus and have narrowed in on some looming increases in Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan premiums


Canada Pension Plan contribution rates for both employees and employers will rise to 5.95 per cent by 2023 from 4.95 per cent in 2018.© Provided by National Post

In the House of Commons Wednesday, Poilievre accused the government of making a bad economic situation worse for Canadians with new charges.

“It plans to raise both EI and CPP premiums, the paycheque tax, right at a time when we are facing 40-year highs in inflation; all-time highs and increased housing prices,” he said and then called on the government to cancel all of the increases.

As it stands, EI and CPP premiums will both increase on Jan. 1, 2023, taking a small dent out of Canadians’ paycheques.
Federal tribunal reverses EI denial for worker fired for not taking COVID vaccine
Conservatives consider supporting Liberal bill that would double GST credits

In April next year, the Liberals’ carbon tax will rise as well, adding $15 per tonne to a new total of $65 per tonne in the provinces where the federal program applies. Those increases are slated to continue until the tax reaches $130 per tonne in 2030.

The CPP increases are part of the government’s broader plan to increase benefits to retirees. The maximum benefit a retired Canadian can receive today from CPP is about $15,000, but under a deal worked out with provincial governments, including some Conservatives premiers, the contributions and benefits will be around $20,000 per year in a few years time.

To pay for those increased benefits, contributions are rising as well from 5.7 per cent of earnings this year to 5.95 per cent starting on Jan. 1. For a person with the maximum amount of pensionable earnings the contribution would rise by about $300 next year.

Trevor Tombe, an economist at the University of Calgary, said even if the Liberals wanted to postpone the coming CPP hikes, it can’t do so without provincial agreement.

“The federal government can’t change that unilaterally even if they wanted. It’s a joint federal, provincial program that requires agreement across governments,” he said in an email.

Of the three increases the Conservatives are calling to freeze, the carbon tax is the one the Liberals have the most direct control over. The government could choose to reduce or delay that tax, but the Liberals’ overall plan to reduce carbon emissions and meet Canada’s Paris target is based on a rising carbon levy.

Related video: Poilievre pushes inflation in first question period
Duration 2:08 View on Watch

7:39
'Today is important, targeted supports for Canadians who need it most': Associate finance minister.cbc.ca

When Poilievre and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland sparred over the issue during Wednesday’s question period, Freeland was quick to point out that even with the coming increase EI rates were higher when the Conservatives were in power and specifically when Poilievre was minister of the department.

Employment insurance premiums are based on a set amount per $100 of an employee’s earnings up to a maximum of $61,500.

The Conservative leader was minister of employment and social development in the final year of Stephen Harper’s government, 2015, when the rate Canadians paid was $1.88 per $100 on a maximum of $49,500 in annual income.



Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre rises during Question Period, in Ottawa, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022.© Adrian Wyld

The hike set to hit Canadians in January will bring the figure to $1.63, higher than the $1.58 it is now, but still lower than it was at any point during the Conservatives’ entire last tenure in office. Employers also pay into the system at a rate of 1.4 times the rate employees pay, which means they will pay $2.28 per $100 next year.

But one number doesn’t tell the whole story, because the amount of income covered under the program has also risen. When Poilievre was minister, the program cost a maximum of $930.60 for a worker, but next year it will cost a maximum of $1,002.45. An employer’s maximum contribution will be $1,403.43.

The government has the final say on EI premiums and the Liberals have frozen rates for the last two years. They also reduced the number of hours you need to work to qualify. The government does receive annual recommendations for rates based on estimates by economists and actuaries. Legislation requires the government to aim to ensure the overall EI account returns to balance over seven years.

When the account is in surplus, governments can lower premiums or, as both Conservatives and Liberals have done before, use the surplus funds for the government’s general revenues.

But the EI account today is far from surplus, the pandemic drained it to the point where it ended the last fiscal year $29 billion in the red. The government’s assessment of EI actually recommended a larger increase of $1.74 per $100 of earnings, but legislation prevents any increase of more than $0.05 in a single year.

Rachel Samson, Vice-President of research at the Institute for research on public policy, said with a debt that large in the account, the government’s only options is to increase premiums or spend taxpayer funds.

“Someone has to pay for it and it’s a question of who is going to be paying for those costs,” she said.

Samson said there are also larger issues with the program that need to be addressed, because as more people have started working as contractors or gig workers, the systems covers less and less people with only 40 per cent of Canadians covered today.

“If you’re thinking about it as an economic stabilization tool, in terms of preserving the purchasing power of workers that are laid off during a recession, it’s not fulfilling that role, potentially, as well as it could.”

Freeland said the increase to EI premiums adds up to $31 for the average Canadian worker next year. She said the Conservative approach to freeze EI contribution would cost $2.5 billion. She said the government believes that money could be better spent, pointing to the government’s plan to boost the GST credit for low-income families.

“Doubling the GST credit for six months is around $2.5 billion and the proposed EI freeze is around $2.5 billion,” she said. “I would say our targeted meaningful support is the right compassionate choice.”

Twitter: RyanTumilty

Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com

– with additional reporting by Catherine Lévesque.

HE HAS NOT CHANGED HIS TUNE SINCE 2016

Pierre Poilievre on Canada Pension Plan

In the House of Commons on October 24th, 2016. See this statement in context.

Canada Pension PlanGovernment Orders

October 24th, 2016 / 5:15 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Carleton, ON

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking the leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition for recently naming me the spokesperson for work and opportunity for the Conservative caucus. I will approach this issue and all issues by breaking them down into those two constituent parts, work and opportunity.

The reason that those two things are so important is because they will determine the well-being of our people. The best anti-poverty program is a good job. The greatest social safety net we have is a strong family and a strong community. I am here today to talk about how we can use the power of work and opportunity to lift people up, particularly people who are less fortunate. It is through that prism that I will comment on the government's proposed increase in Canada pension plan payroll taxes.

Let us start with the impact of that policy on work. What will be the impact on work? First, it will make it more expensive to work. Anybody who has a job and receives a wage will pay higher payroll taxes. According to one estimate, it will be as much as $2,200 in extra payroll taxes, and that will be matched by the employer. It would be $2,200 per household, and an equivalent amount for each contribution by the employee will then be paid by the employer.

That deals with the second half of the work dimension. Not only will it be more expensive to work, it would be more expensive to hire. When it becomes more expensive to hire, understandably less hiring happens. That is particularly the case for small businesses, whose ability to take on marginal costs like payroll taxes is lower than that of larger firms.

This is particularly important because new evidence has emerged this month showing that small and medium-sized firms are vastly outpacing big business when it comes to hiring people. A report from Scotiabank said:

Annual payroll growth among small firms (fewer than 100 employees) averaged 1.4% from 2010-2015, significantly stronger than the 0.9% increase among large firms (500 or more employees), though lagging the 2.0% gain among mid-sized firms (100-499 employees). Small firms generated more than 500,000 net new jobs over this period, or 45% of national payroll gains.

In other words, small companies were responsible for half of the net new hiring that occurred between 2010 and 2015, and large businesses, the kind that the Liberal government likes to associate with, are not generating jobs in the same numbers as the small and medium-sized enterprises. This new payroll tax will make it more expensive for the small companies to hire people, and therefore they will do less hiring.

Anyone who has been out in their communities and talked to small electrician firms, small construction companies, local mom and pop shops, will say they are hearing of the increased burden of government that applies every time a small business tries to hire someone, whether it is restrictive labour laws, higher payroll taxes, provincial and municipal building code restrictions, or the endless volumes of paperwork that a small business must complete for the mere crime of creating jobs and providing goods and services in a community. All of these burdens make it more difficult for entrepreneurs to hire and grow their payroll, and this new payroll tax will make it harder still.

Let us be clear. The government has argued that the CPP payroll tax increase is not a tax at all. It argues that it is simply deferred income, that it goes in one end of the CPP machine, and that when the person retires, it comes out the other. That is not the case for small business. The entrepreneur will pay an increased premium, but he or she will get absolutely nothing in return for it. Their pension will not go up as a result of the increased payroll tax. Their costs will simply go up.

The reality is that they do not have spare change sitting around waiting to throw at the government, so they will have to make difficult decisions. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has already said that many employers will either cut wages or jobs to make up the extra cost from new tax burden.

That is how this new tax will affect small business in particular, but what about businesses in the export market? Canada is a trading nation. Without exports, we do not have an economy.

I look at the struggling manufacturing sector in Ontario, already hammered with literally tens of billions of dollars in inflated electricity prices imposed by the provincial government to reward well-connected, so-called green energy firms. We look at the new carbon tax these firms will have to pay just to keep their factories operating, and now they will have to pay new contributions to CPP. Large manufacturing firms, particularly in the auto sector, have already warned that this triple whammy will make it more difficult to create jobs here in Canada.

We have a global supply chain where investment goes to where the returns are, and if the returns on hiring Canadians are lower because the costs are higher, then these firms will just build and hire somewhere else. They have lots of options. Other places around the world are competing fiercely for opportunities and jobs for their people, and they are doing it by lowering taxes and streamlining red tape. The government is doing precisely the opposite of that, so we can expect that this new and expanded tax on jobs will mean fewer jobs and less work.

As the critic for work and opportunity, I think that is terrible. We need to expand job opportunities for people by lowering the cost of hiring. If we do that, then entrepreneurs, large and small, will come here and hire in record numbers. That is the agenda we should push.

Let me remind our colleagues across the way who say we need to have more contributions to the CPP, that if someone loses their job, the contribution they make to their CPP retirement is zero. They get absolutely nothing put away in a rainy day fund, in their retirement nest egg. If we want to ensure that people have enough money to retire, we have to make sure they have a chance to work so they can contribute to their savings in the present day rather than taxing them out of a job.

Let us move to the second part of my new duties as critic and spokesperson on the issue of opportunity for Canadians. What kind of opportunity will this proposal bring to the Canadian people? The government says that we need to increase the mandatory contributions to CPP because people cannot afford to save for their retirement. Let us think about that for a second: people cannot afford to save for their retirement, so we will force them to save.

If the government's position is that no one has any money to set aside at the end of the month, then how will they afford to pay this new tax? It has to come from somewhere. It is not magic. The amount that the government is proposing the average family contribute is $2,000. If Canadians do not have $2,000, what will they do when this new tax kicks in? They will not have a lot of options.

In fact, options are precisely what we should be providing them. We should live in a big, opportunity filled free enterprise economy where Canadians get to choose what is right for them. That is what free enterprise means, and that is why it is the greatest poverty fighting machine ever invented.

Prior to the current government's taking office, we as a Conservative government introduced the tax-free savings accounts. The government does not actually understand the purpose or the use of those accounts. It has suggested that tax-free savings accounts are merely a tool for the rich. They are exactly the opposite. It has been proven that RRSPs tend to be weighted more in that direction. TFSAs are weighted to favour low-income people. That is because low-income people often do not have access to the biggest tax-free savings account that has ever existed in Canada, which is the capital gains tax exemption on a primary residence. We have long had a tax-free savings account for real estate so that we can grow the value of our property infinitely without paying any capital gains tax at all as long as it is our primary residence. What about low-income people who do not have a primary residence but who instead rent because they have never been able to afford a down payment? A tax-free savings account is precisely the equivalent for them. It gives them the ability to save tax free through equities and other savings instruments the way that more affluent Canadians already have saved tax free through the ownership of a principal residence.

Lower income people pay a lower marginal tax rate because they are in a lower tax bracket. As a result, an RRSP does not necessarily save them as much money when they contribute to it. Therefore, if their marginal tax rate is somewhere around 20%, an RRSP contribution does not defer nearly as much either in percentage or absolute terms as if they were a millionaire, like the finance minister, and pay a marginal tax rate of 48%. The millionaire would save 48% whereas the working class person would only save or defer 18% or 19% on an RRSP. With tax-free savings accounts, not only do the savings accrue over time but the accounts also exempt a low-income person from having eventual GIS and OAS benefits clawed back later in life because TFSA earnings are exempt from that clawback. Therefore, lower income people can retain the GIS and the OAS while they take gains out of their tax-free savings account.

The government will say that low-income people never contribute in the first place. Actually, the statistics from Finance Canada prove exactly the opposite. The average income of a TFSA contributor is $42,000. Maybe the government does not consider that middle class. Its so-called middle-class tax cut did not give a penny to anyone earning below $45,000 a year. I consider that middle class. At the very least, the people who earn $42,000 a year are working hard to join the middle class, and TFSAs are one way to help them do it.

Of those who actually maxed out their tax-free savings account, the average income is about $60,000 a year. Our friends across the way will say that it is impossible for someone earning only $60,000 to max out a $5,500 tax-free savings account. That is because the Liberal government does not understand when and how people contribute to those accounts. They do not always do it out of their income but out of big life events. When a spouse dies, an elderly survivor may want to put the inheritance in a place where it will not be taxed. That is why he or she would take that inheritance and put it into a tax-free savings account. If a senior gets too old and can no longer climb the stairs in his or her large multi-level house, if he or she disposes of the house and moves into an apartment, he or she has turned a hard, real asset into a liquid asset and can put that money into a tax-free savings account. That is why the people who have maxed out TFSAs are not all rich. They are often people with low incomes who have had major life events that cause them to turn their assets into cash, and they want to turn that cash into tax-free income. We wanted to give them the opportunity to do that, which is why we created the tax-free savings account, and that is why we increased the amount people can contribute to it.

On the other hand, the government wants to force everyone to contribute through the CPP, arguing that this instrument is the only way people should be allowed to make contributions to their savings. However, we are increasingly finding data that shows that it is not the best savings instrument compared to the other alternatives out there in the marketplace.

In fact, a recent study by the Fraser Institute demonstrated that the 1.07% management cost of running the CPP is quite high. It is not low, as was argued earlier. It is actually quite high, and Canadians, increasingly, can access exchange traded funds with the click of a mouse on the Internet, from very reputable firms like Vanguard, iTrade, or others. These funds are massively diversified, with extremely low management costs, much lower than the CPP. In fact an investor can own the entire American stock market, the entire Canadian stock market, and even the entire worldwide stock market and be diversified into every single company that exists and is publicly traded on planet earth, with a management expense ratio lower than the current CPP's.

Warren Buffett was recently asked how he would encourage the average investor to prepare for their future. Given that most people do not have the time or expertise to pick one stock at a time, he suggested exchange traded funds because of their extremely low management expense ratios, because it costs so little to invest in them, and because they diversify so widely it protects the investor against major losses.

That is just one vehicle, but there are all sorts of other vehicles available to people if they so choose. I am not here to offer them financial advice. I think most of us in this place struggle just to plan our own financial futures. However, we do acknowledge the cornucopia of opportunity for people out there in the private sector, and that Canadians are smart and wise enough to make those decision for themselves. They should not be robbed of those decisions by a government that thinks it knows best how they ought to prepare for their future. That is exactly what this government is doing by forcing people to invest more money in an expensively managed CPP savings account.

I conclude by turning the attention of the House to a column recently written by Kevin Libin in the Financial Post, who said:

So what if a new report by Morneau Shepell, the human resources firm once chaired by our current federal finance minister, finds that the new enhanced CPP doesn’t significantly tackle all that much—and, in some ways, makes our retirement system even worse.

The article goes on to say:

Even Bill Morneau, before he was a politician and still worked at the human resources firm that bears his family’s name, co-authored a book with Vettese that repudiated—

First U.S. hydrogen train to use Canadian fuel cells

Jeff Lagerquist
Mon, September 26, 2022 

Ballard Power Systems says any rail line served by a diesel locomotive can be converted to hydrogen power

. (Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Shares of Canadian fuel cell producer Ballard Power Systems (BLDP.TO)(BLDP) climbed on Monday after the company said the first hydrogen train in the United States is expected to enter service in 2024 using its technology.

Vancouver-based Ballard builds fuel cell solutions for trucks, buses, trains, and ships. The company announced an initial order of six fuel cell engines on Monday from Stadler Rail. The Swiss manufacturer is under contract to deliver a hydrogen-powered train capable of seating over 100 passengers to the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority in southern California.

Toronto-listed shares climbed 3.09 per cent to $9.00 as at 11:20 a.m. ET on Monday.

Ballard Power Systems Inc. (BLDP.TO)

Ballard says nearly any train route served by a diesel locomotive can be served by a "hydrail train." The company's fuel cells convert hydrogen into electricity, which is fed into batteries that power the train's motors. The vehicle's brakes capture excess energy, improving efficiency.

Last March, Ballard inked a deal with Canadian Pacific Railway (CP.TO)(CP) that was expanded earlier this year to a total of 14 fuel cell modules. The company recently announced a fuel cell order from a company contracted to develop India's first hydrogen-powered trains. It's also working with Germany's Siemens Mobility on a train fleet planned to be in service in the Berlin-Brandenburg region in late-2024.

Once a top-performing name on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Ballard shares surged in late-July amid investor excitement over the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes a massive climate spending component.

However, shares have fallen over 45 per cent year-to-date, due in part to recession fears and protracted COVID-19 lockdowns in China, where the company runs a manufacturing facility with its largest investor and strategic partner, Weichai Power.

In August, CEO Randy MacEwen said the company's latest quarterly results came in "softer than expected," citing weaker sales and tighter margins.

While Ballard has long pinned its hopes on China's energy transition, MacEwen calls the IRA legislation a "major catalyst" in the U.S., where the company has a small manufacturing footprint.

"It wasn't too long ago, maybe two years ago, where the U.S. market was not a high priority for us," MacEwen said on an Aug. 10 post-earnings call with analysts.

"That has clearly changed over the last year."

Jeff Lagerquist is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jefflagerquist.

Alberta won't participate in federal efforts to seize prohibited weapons, Shandro says

Provincial justice minister says Alberta will not agree to having RCMP officers act as confiscation agents

The Canadian Press · Posted: Sep 26, 2022 

Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro says he received a letter from the minister of public safety asking for police resources to begin confiscating firearms this fall.

 (Government of Alberta)

The Alberta government is taking steps to oppose federal firearms prohibition legislation and the potential seizure of thousands of assault-style weapons.

Since May of 2020, Ottawa has prohibited more than 1,500 different models of assault-style firearms from being used or sold in Canada.

Gun ownership laws in Canada are about to change. Here's what is happening in Alberta

It has committed to establishing a buyback program to remove those firearms from communities.

Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro says he received a letter from the minister of public safety asking for police resources to begin confiscating firearms starting this fall.

Government tables bill to limit handguns, pledges to buy back assault-style weapons

He says Alberta will not agree to having RCMP officers act as confiscation agents and will protest any such move under the provincial-federal agreement that governs policing.

"Alberta taxpayers pay over $750 million per year for the RCMP and we will not tolerate taking officers off the streets in order to confiscate the property of law-abiding firearms owners," said Shandro, speaking at a news conference in Calgary.

Doug King, a professor of justice studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, pushed back against Shandro's portrayal of the buyback program.

New federal gun control legislation 'virtue signalling,' Sask. premier says

While officers might seize weapons in the course of their duties, no one should worry "that, in rural Alberta, that the RCMP are going to be busting down their doors looking for illegal firearms," he said.

"That's not going to happen," King said. "I mean, let's be real."

As for telling the RCMP not to enforce a federal law, King said that would be "extraordinarily unusual," and not likely very effective.

Alberta also plans to seek intervener status in six ongoing judicial review applications challenging the constitutionality of the legislation.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

KLEIN DID THIS IN THE NINTIES WHICH LED TO THE FAILURE IN PART, OF THE LIBERALS FEDERAL GUN REGISTRY, SEE MY; BILLION DOLLAR BOONDOGGLE

Sunday, January 16, 2005
Canada’s Billion Dollar P3 Boondoggle

What the Liberals and Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know

The real story behind the cost overruns at the Canadian Firearms Centre

"Just read your piece on the firearms P3 – quite a revelation. I am amazed we have never heard this before – congratulations for bringing it to light." Murray Dobbin, author of Paul Martin Canada's CEO

Giorgia Meloni, far-right ‘Christian mother,’ is Italy’s new leader. Here’s how that might change Europe and the world

Stance on migrants, EU seen as a potential break with the international status quo, but positions on Ukraine and China might mollify allies.

By Joanna Chiu

TOR STAR 

Staff Reporter
Mon., Sept. 26, 2022

A party with neo-fascist roots, the Brothers of Italy, has triumphed in Italy’s snap general elections, setting up Giorgia Meloni as the country’s first far-right leader since the fall of Benito Mussolini.

Meloni, 45, now likely to become Italy’s first female prime minister, praised Mussolini in her early career, saying in 1996 on French television that the fascist dictator “was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy.”

The rising star of Europe’s far right more recently summed up her values in a now-famous chant at a 2019 rally: “I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian … No one will take that away from me.”

Italy’s lurch to populism and the far right immediately shifted continental politics, putting a Euroskeptic party in position to lead a founding member of the European Union and its third-largest economy. Right-wing leaders across Europe immediately hailed Meloni’s victory.

The snap election after PM Mario Draghi’s government collapsed comes at a crucial time as Europe grapples with energy and cost-of-living crises — mostly triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — that look set to intensify this winter.

Meloni is chair of the right-wing European Conservative and Reformist group in the European Parliament, which gathers her Brothers of Italy, Poland’s Law and Justice Party and Spain’s Vox as well as the Sweden Democrats, who finished on top of a national elections this month on a platform of cracking down on crime and limiting immigration.

During her campaign, Meloni called Italy’s past investment deal with China a “big mistake” and said the EU must “put pressure as hard as possible” to prevent China from causing military conflict over Taiwan.

On Monday, as final results were tallied, the Star asked experts about what Meloni’s win could mean for Europe and the world.



What comes next?

While Meloni’s conservative coalition was the clear winner, a government’s formation is still weeks away and will involve consultations among party leaders and President Sergio Mattarella. Given Italy’s fractured political makeup, no single party ever stands much chance of winning enough seats to govern alone, but right-wing and right-leaning centrists forged a campaign pact that had propelled Meloni into power.

Near-final results showed the centre-right coalition netting some 44 per cent of the vote, with Meloni’s Brothers of Italy snatching up 26 per cent. Her coalition partners divided up the remainder, with the anti-immigrant Northern League of Matteo Salvini winning nearly nine per cent and the more moderate Forza Italia of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi taking around eight per cent.

Voter turnout declined to a historic low of 64 per cent. Polls suggested voters stayed home in part because they were disenchanted by the backroom deals that had created three different governments since the previous national election in 2018.

The Economist Intelligence Unit had rated Italy a “flawed democracy” in 2019, citing its short-lived coalition governments. Since the end of the Second World War, the nation has changed governments at a rate of once every 1.14 years.

Neo-fascist roots

Meloni’s party traces its origins to the postwar neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, but she sounded a moderate, unifying tone in a victory speech early Monday.

“If we are called to govern … we will do it for all Italians and we will do it with the aim of uniting the people (of this country),” she said. “Italy chose us.”

While she had praised Mussolini in her youth, Meloni addressed criticism about her party’s threat to democracy head-on, saying in a campaign video: “The Italian right has handed fascism over to history for decades now, unambiguously condemning the suppression of democracy and the ignominious anti-Jewish laws.”

However, analysts say her party clearly clashes with the EU’s dominant principles.

“The history of the European Union is rooted in a set of principles that appear distant from the ideology of the Italian far right, especially in terms of civil rights, minorities, migration, and refugees,” said Paolo Wulzer, professor of history of international relations at University L’Orientale of Naples.

So far, the rise of populism in Europe has weakened “but not collapsed the European project,” Wulzer told the Star, but Italy is far more influential than other countries that elected far-right leaders.

“Italy’s weight and relevance in the European Union is incomparable to countries like Poland or Hungary. Italy has the potential to influence the future of the European Union in a very significant way.”

The vice-president of the European Parliament, Katarina Barley of the Germany’s ruling Social Democrats, said Meloni’s victory was “worrying” given her affiliations with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Donald Trump.

“Her electoral lip service to Europe cannot hide the fact that she represents a danger to constructive coexistence in Europe,” Barley was quoted as saying in German daily Die Welt.

Migrants

A shift likely to cause friction with European powers regards migrants. Meloni has called for a naval blockade to prevent migrant boats from leaving North African shores, and has proposed screening potential asylum-seekers in Africa, before they set out.

However, she may have little room to boldly challenge pro-migration EU policies given the windfall Italy gets from Brussels in COVID recovery funds. Italy secured some 191.5 billion euros, the biggest chunk of the EU’s 750-billion-euro recovery package, and is bound by certain reform and investment milestones it must hit to receive it all.

Although Meloni’s party has been vocally against migrants from the Mediterranean, it is seen as unlikely that this could alter Italy’s support of Ukraine and acceptance of Ukrainian refugees.

Tough on China

Meloni pledged to strengthen ties with Taiwan and reverse course on her country’s involvement in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

In 2019, Italy became the first major European country to join Beijing’s global infrastructure investment project, but Meloni has called the move a “big mistake” and said she would find it hard to approve the renewal, scheduled for 2024, of Italy’s memorandum of understanding with China.

Describing the relationship between her country and Taiwan as a “sincere friendship,” Meloni said recently that she has been “following closely with unease” events around Taiwan as a result of intensified Chinese threats.

Last month, China’s army completed the largest military exercises ever around Taiwan, sending warships and planes across the dividing line of the strait separating Taiwan and continental Asia. “This is an unacceptable conduct by Beijing, a conduct that we strongly condemn,” she said.

Meloni’s tough China stance could be one of her policies that would bring her in closer alignment with Italy’s traditional allies, says Enrico Fardella, visiting scholar at John Cabot University in Rome and director of the ChinaMed project, which tracks China’s role in the Mediterranean.

Her criticism of Beijing over issues such as human rights represent a “consistent component of her political career,” Fardella said, but he thinks the timing of her Taiwan statements was also intended to send a message to the U.S., NATO and other parties that Italy would hew closer to their criticism of China.

“A critical stance towards China, however, has become quite shared among most of the political forces in Italy and in the EU and it can function as a balancer of Meloni’s more controversial positions,” Fardella told the Star.

With files from the Associated Press

Joanna Chiu is a B.C.-based staff reporter for the Star. She covers global and national affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @joannachiu

Science is on brink of a materials revolution

Ability to control subatomic ‘spin’ crucial to designing advanced new materials set to change the world



Particle spin occurs in the subatomic world where the laws of quantum physics apply

Seán Duke
Thu Sep 22 2022 - 

Imagine a world where super-strong, super-light, flexible, durable new materials, which don’t exist in nature could be made to order. New breakthroughs in the understanding of “spin”, a characteristic of subatomic particles — like mass and charge — mean we are on the brink of such a revolution.

“The ability to control spin, one of the fundamental properties of particles, is crucial to us being able to design advanced new materials that will change the world,” says Prof Alessandro Lunghi, a physicist at Trinity College Dublin, who heads up a team investigating the phenomenon.

The scientific concepts of particle mass and charge are widely understood and known, but the third property of particles — that of spin — remains mysterious to most. It’s a concept that even many scientists struggle to understand.

Prof Alessandro Lunghi, a physicist at Trinity College Dublin: 'Spin is a very exciting and fragile property of particles and disturbs very easily.'

“This is a tricky one,” says Lunghi. “In the early 1900s when spin was first discovered it was called spin because the mathematical equation describing the behaviour of this property of particles resembled that which also described a classical rigid body rotating — or spinning — on itself.

“The first time that people might hear of spin in school might have been when a teacher asked them to imagine an electron, a tiny ball of electrical charge, spinning on itself, either clockwise or anticlockwise,” he adds.

“We know that this typical description of spin is very far from the reality of what spin is,” Lunghi notes. “It can only be fully understood by getting right down to the nitty gritty of quantum mechanics, but it’s a starting point.”

Particle spin occurs in the subatomic world where the weird laws of quantum physics apply. This is a world of possibilities — but few certainties — where something can be two things at once, or even in two places at the same time.

Different particles have different spin, and this affects whether they are drawn to come together in strong chemical bonds or repel one another. It is also true that spin can be easily disturbed by tiny movements in the environment; something that has been known since at least the 1940s.

The Schrodinger equation famously provides the means to calculate how particles will behave at quantum level. These calculations are difficult but are made far easier through the use of powerful supercomputers, such as those available through the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC).

The Lunghi team at TCD used ICHEC facilities to apply the Schrodinger equation to better understand spin, and to pin down how molecular motion can disrupt particle spin. This breakthrough research was published in Science Advances.

“We want to study spin, to accelerate the development of new materials,” says Lunghi. “There are an infinite number of molecules and compounds that make up materials, which we can produce in the lab, but we want to focus on developing the ones that are most promising, and to do this faster.”

TCD's spin materials lab

The goal of Lunghi and his colleagues is to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to look at information, accumulated over many decades of particle research and processes it in more clever ways. “That means instead of reading an endless number of scientific papers to try and come up with a ‘recipe’ for new materials, we use computers to do that. We have started to developed algorithms in my laboratory that can do this, and the early results are very encouraging.”

Applications

The study of particle spin is far from being an academic exercise, and it is already being applied in key areas. The exploitation of spin is at the heart of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology that produces detailed anatomical images from inside the body in a safe and non-invasive way.

“We often talk about the possible spinning directions of a particle with one spin type converting into another,” says Lunghi. “With an MRI scan you are measuring the conversion rate of one spin type to another, and this is what provides the contrasts between body tissues during the scanning.”

Spin is also something very important to magnets, which are all around us, from the playful magnets that we put on our fridge to the electric cars we drive, or the hard drives that store images of the pictures we took when on holiday.

Industry is always keen to find new, and better magnets, for new applications. Up to now this has proven extremely difficult, but new insights into spin could change that.

Physicists such as Lunghi are providing greater insight into spin and how it works. That’s crucially important, but the huge challenge for the future is to find ways to control spin and to apply this to develop new quantum sensors.

The fact that spin is so sensitive to tiny changes in the environment means it can applied very effectively into better, more sensitive and effective quantum sensors.

“Spin is a very exciting and fragile property of particles and disturbs very easily,” says Lunghi. “Yet, if we have something that is easily disturbed by the environment then we can use it to sense the environment itself. Atoms are wobbling around, and this constant atomic motion disturbs spin and that is what we are trying to fight against.”

“Our recent paper in Science Advances was about trying to understand that,” he says. “If we can achieve spin stabilisation then it opens the door to a world of new, advanced materials that we can develop in the future.”

Spin control, says Lunghi, can lead to the design of new materials such as quantum sensors, magnets or MRI contrast agents. “In my lab we use machine learning to speed up the design of spin-based materials in a similar way to how other people are doing it to speed up the design of drugs.”

Jonathan Coleman, a professor of chemical physics at TCD, has led research into wearable sensors using graphene and rubber bands

Graphene: manipulating nature down to the level of single atoms

Prof Jonathan Coleman is head of the school of physics at TCD, and principal investigator at the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research (Amber), where Lungi also works.

Coleman, while not involved in investigating spin, is very much involved in the development of advanced new materials through the manipulation of atoms and molecules — and on developing the new applications that can change the world.

One material he is particularly interested in is graphene, a type of carbon that is made of a two-dimensional, single layer of atoms. Graphite — the stuff in pencils — is made up of layers of graphene, arranged like a deck of cards. Coleman’s group discovered a way to make these sheets.

“In graphite, those building blocks sheets of carbon are just one atom thick,” says Coleman. “We can make this one-atom-thick sheets and use them in new applications. We can manipulate nature, down to the level of the single atom.”

Graphite is not the only layered material around. There are, says Coleman, thousands of layered materials. “That’s important because these materials have different properties to graphene and can be used for different things,” he says.

“It turned out that the real strength and importance of our method for making graphene was that it could be used to make all of these other layered 2D materials. We have used this method for maybe 30 materials up to this point.”

“You might have a 2D material that’s a fantastic battery electrode material,” says Coleman. Or you might have a 2D material that is a fantastic semiconductor for making a transistor. Or you might have a 2D material that’s super strong, to put in a plastic to reinforce the plastic.”

“We can make loads of different 2D materials, depending on what applications study we want to do,” he adds.

HIS MOTHER WAS A WITCH

Why Johannes Kepler is a scientist’s best role model

When people pick the greatest scientist of all-time, Newton and Einstein always come up. Perhaps they should name Johannes Kepler, instead.

Johannes Kepler, whose life spanned from the late 1500s to the early 1600s, was perhaps most remarkable as a scientist for his discovery that planets moved in ellipses around the Sun. Without the ability to throw out his own brilliant idea, he never could've gotten there.
(Credits: August Köhler/public domain (L); Datumizer/Wikimedia Commons (R)

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The annals of history are filled with scientists who had incredible, revolutionary ideas, sought out and found the evidence to support them, and initiated a scientific revolution.

 
But much rarer is someone who has a brilliant idea, discovers that the evidence doesn't quite fit, and instead of doggedly pursuing it, tosses it aside in favor of a newer, better, more successful idea.

 
That's exactly what separates Johannes Kepler from all of the other great scientists throughout history, and why, if we have to choose a scientific role model, we should admire him so thoroughly.

Ethan Siegel

For a great many people in the world, the three hardest words to say are simply, “I was wrong.” Even if the evidence is overwhelmingly decisive that your idea or conception is unsupported, most people will instead find a way to discount or ignore that evidence and stick to their guns. People’s minds are notoriously resistant to change, and the greater their own personal stake in the outcome of the issue under debate, the less open they are to even the possibility that they might be mistaken.

Although it’s often asserted that science is the exception to this general rule, that’s only true of science as a collective enterprise. On an individual basis, scientists are just as susceptible to confirmation bias — overweighting the supporting evidence and discounting the evidence to the contrary — as anyone in any other walk of life. In particular, the greatest difficulties await those who themselves have formulated ideas and invested tremendous efforts, often amounting to years or even decades of time, in hypotheses that simply cannot explain the full suite of data that humanity has amassed. This applies even to the greatest minds in all of history.Albert Einstein could never accept quantum indeterminism as a fundamental property of nature.

Arthur Eddington could never accept quantum degeneracy as a source for holding white dwarfs up against gravitational collapse.

Newton could never accept the experiments that demonstrated the wave nature of light, including interference and diffraction.

And Fred Hoyle could never accept the Big Bang as the correct story of our cosmic origins, even nearly 40 years after the critical evidence, in the form of the Cosmic Microwave Background, was discovered.

But one person stands above the rest as an exemplar for how to behave when the evidence comes in against your brilliant idea: Johannes Kepler, who showed us the way more than 400 years ago. Here’s the story of his scientific evolution, an example we should all strive to emulate.

This chart, from around 1660, shows the signs of the zodiac and a model of the solar system with Earth at the centre. For decades or even centuries after Kepler clearly demonstrated that not only is the heliocentric model valid, but that planets move in ellipses around the Sun, many refused to accept it, instead hearkening back to the ancient idea of Ptolemy and geocentrism.

(Credit: Johannes Van Loon, Andreas Cellarius Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1660/61)

For thousands of years, humans assumed that the Earth was a static, stable, and unchanging point in the Universe, and that all the heavens literally moved around us. Observations seemed to support this: there was no detectable motion occurring on our surface that supported an Earth that either rotated on its axis or revolved around the Sun through space. Instead, there were three key observations that had been made that helped people determine what our best model of the Universe would be.

The entire sky appeared to rotate a full 360 degrees over the course of 24 hours, most evident at night, as the stars rotated about either the northern or southern celestial pole.

The stars themselves appeared to remain fixed in their relative position to one another from night-to-night and even over much longer timescales.

However, there were a few objects that did move relative to one another from night-to-night or day-to-day: the planets, or “wanderers” of the sky.

Additionally, the Sun and Moon shifted in the night as well, as did the entire canopy of stars over longer periods of time. However, it was the first observation that led to the static, stable, unchanging conception of the Universe.

This timelapse view of the night sky from Hyatt Lake shows the sky as it appeared just after the summer solstice on June 21, 2020. The apparent motion of the objects in Earth’s sky could either be explained by the Earth rotating beneath our feet or by the heavens above rotating about a fixed Earth. Simply by watching the skies, we cannot tell these two explanations apart.

(Credit: Bureau of Land Management OR & WA/Kyle Sullivan)

Think about the above observation: that everything in the sky appears to rotate a full 360 degrees over the span of a full day. This could be caused by one of two potential explanations. Either the Earth itself was rotating about some axis, and that our world completed a full rotation once per 24 hours, or the Earth was stationary and everything in the heavens was rotating around it, also once per 24 hours.

How, physically, could we tell these two situations apart? The answers were twofold.

First, it should be possible, if the Earth were rotating, to note a curved trajectory to falling objects. The higher they fell from, the greater the curve would be. Yet no curve was ever observed; in fact this effect wouldn’t be measured until the demonstration of the Foucault pendulum in the 19th century.

Second, a rotating Earth would lead to a difference in the relative positions of the stars from dusk until dawn. The Earth was big, and its diameter had been measured precisely by Eratosthenes in the 3rd century B.C.E., so if any of the stars were closer than most of them, a parallax would appear: similar to holding your thumb out and watching it shift relative to the background as you alternated which eye you used to view it. But no parallax could be seen; in fact this wouldn’t be observed until the 19th century as well! 

The stars that are closest to Earth will appear to shift periodically with respect to the more distant stars as the Earth moves through space in orbit around the Sun. Before the heliocentric model was established, we weren’t looking for “shifts” with a ~300,000,000 kilometer baseline over the span of ~6 months, but rather a ~12,000 kilometer baseline over the span of one night: Earth’s diameter as it rotated on its axis.(Credit: ESA/ATG medialab)

It’s easy to see, based on what we knew and could observe at the time, how we’d conclude that the Earth was static and fixed, while the heavenly bodies all moved around us.

Then, there were those additional observations that required an explanation: why did the stars remain fixed relative to one another while the planets appeared to “wander” through the sky?

It was quickly modeled that the planets, as well as the Sun and the Moon, must be closer to Earth than the stars were, and that these bodies must be in motion relative to one another.

With a fixed, static Earth, that meant that it must be the planets themselves that were in motion. The motion must have been incredibly complex, however. While the planets overwhelmingly appeared to move in one direction relative to the backdrop of stars on a night-to-night basis, every once in a while, the planets would:slow down in their usual motion,
come to a complete stop,
reverse their motion to move opposite their original direction (a phenomenon known as retrograde motion),
would then slow and stop again,
and finally would continue on in their normal (prograde) direction of motion.

This phenomenon was the most challenging aspect of planetary motion to model and understand.

Mars, like most planets, normally migrates very slowly across the sky in one predominant direction. However, a little less than once a year, Mars will appear to slow down in its migration across the sky, stop, reverse directions, speed up and slow down, and then stop again, resuming its original motion. This retrograde (west-to-east) period stands in contrast to Mars’s normal prograde (east-to-west) motion.(Credit: E. Siegel/Stellarium)

The prevailing assumption, since the Earth had already been deemed to be static, was that the planets themselves each typically moved in circular paths around the Earth, but atop those circles were smaller circles known as “epicycles” that they moved about as well. When the motion through the smaller circle proceeded in the opposite direction from the main motion through the larger circle, the planet would appear to reverse course for a brief while: a period of retrograde motion. Once the two motions lined up in the same direction again, prograde motion would resume.

Although epicycles did not start with Ptolemy — with whose name they are now synonymous — Ptolemy did make the best, most successful model of the Solar System that incorporated epicycles. In his model, the following occurred.Each planet’s orbit was dominated by a “great circle” that it moved along, moving around the Earth.
Atop each great circle, a smaller circle (an epicycle) existed, with the planet moving along the outskirts of that small circle, with the center of the small circle always moving along the larger one.
And the Earth, rather than being at the center of the great circle, was offset from that center by a particular amount, with the specific amount differing for each planet.

That was the Ptolemaic theory of epicyclic motion, leading to a geocentric model of the Solar System.

One of the great puzzles of the 1500s was how planets moved in an apparently retrograde fashion. This could either be explained through Ptolemy’s geocentric model (L), or Copernicus’ heliocentric one (R). However, getting the details right to arbitrary precision was something that would require theoretical advances in our understanding of the rules underlying the observed phenomena, which led to Kepler’s laws and eventually Newton’s theory of universal gravitation.(Credit: E. Siegel/Beyond the Galaxy)

Going all the way back to ancient times, there was some evidence — from Archimedes and Aristarchus, among others — that a Sun-centered model for planetary motion was considered. But once again, the lack of any detectable motion for the Earth or of any detectable parallax for the stars failed to provide the corroborating evidence. The idea languished in obscurity for centuries, but was finally revived in the 16th century by Nicolaus Copernicus.

The great idea of Copernicus was that if the planets moved in circles around the Sun, then during most times, the inner planets would orbit more quickly than the outer ones. From the perspective of any one planet, the others would appear to migrate relative to the fixed stars. But whenever an inner planet passed by and overtook an outer planet, then retrograde motion would occur, as the normal apparent direction-of-motion would appear to reverse.

Copernicus realized this and put forth his theory of a Sun-centered Solar System, or a heliocentric (rather than geocentric) one, offering it up as an exciting and possibly superior alternative to Ptolemy’s older Earth-centered model

.
This simulation of the Solar System over the duration of one Earth-year shows the innermost planet, Mercury, “overtaking” the Earth from an interior orbit three independent times during the year. With Mercury’s orbital period of just 88 days, three or four retrograde periods exist every year for Mercury: the only planet annually with more than one. The outer planets, by contrast, experience retrograde only when Earth overtakes them: roughly once per year for all planets except Mars, which experiences them less frequently.(Credit: dynamicdiagrams.com, 2011, now defunct)

But in science, we always have to follow the evidence, even if we loathe the path it leads us down. It’s not aesthetics, elegance, naturalness, or personal preference that decides the issue, but rather the success of the model in predicting what can be observed. Leveraging circular orbits for both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican models, Copernicus was frustrated to discover that his model gave less successful predictions when compared against Ptolemy’s. The only way Copernicus could devise to equal Ptolemy’s successes, in fact, relied on employing the same ad hoc fix: by adding epicycles, or small circles, atop his planetary orbits!

In the decades following Copernicus, others took interest in the Solar System. Tycho Brahe, for example, constructed the best naked eye astronomy setup in history, measuring the planets as precisely as human vision allows: to within one arc-minute (1/60th of a degree) during every night that planets were visible towards the end of the 1500s. His assistant, Johannes Kepler, attempted to make a glorious, beautiful model that fit the data precisely.

Given that there were six known planets (if you included the Earth as one of them), and exactly five (and only five) perfect polyhedral solids — the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, and dodecahedron — Kepler constructed a system of nested spheres called the Mysterium Cosmographicum

.
Kepler’s original model of the Solar System, the Mysterium Cosmographicum, consisted of the 5 Platonic solids defining the relative radii of 6 spheres, with the planets orbiting around the circumferences of those spheres. As beautiful as this is, it couldn’t describe the Solar System as well as ellipses could, or even as well as Ptolemy’s model could.(Credit: Johannes Kepler, 1597)

In this model, each planet orbited along a circle defined by the circumference of one of the spheres. Outside of it, one of the five Platonic solids was circumscribed, with the sphere touching each of the faces in one spot. Outside of that solid, another sphere was circumscribed, with the sphere touching each of the solid’s vertices, with the circumference of that sphere defining the orbit of the next planet out. With six spheres, six planets, and five solids, Kepler made this model where “invisible spheres” held up the Solar System, accounting for the orbits of each of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Kepler formulated this model in the 1590s, and Brahe boasted that only his observations could put such a model to the test. But no matter how Kepler did his calculations, not only did disagreements with observation remain, but Ptolemy’s geocentric model still made superior predictions.

In the face of this, what do you think Kepler did?Did he tweak his model, attempting to save it?
Did he distrust the critical observations, demanding new, superior ones?
Did he make additional postulates that could explain what was truly occurring, even if it was unseen, in the context of his model?

No. Kepler did none of these. Instead, he did something revolutionary: he put his own ideas and his own favored model aside, and looked at the data to see if there was a better explanation that could be derived from demanding that any model needed to agree with the full suite of observational data.
Kepler’s second law states that planets sweep out equal areas, using the Sun as one focus, in equal times, regardless of other parameters. The same (blue) area is swept out in a fixed time period. The green arrow is velocity. The purple arrow directed towards the Sun is the acceleration. Planets move in ellipses around the Sun (Kepler’s first law), sweep out equal areas in equal times (his second law), and have periods proportional to their semimajor axis raised to the 3/2 power (his 3rd law).

(Credit: Gonfer/Wikimedia Commons, using Mathematica)

If only we could all be so brave, so brilliant, and at the same time, so humble before the Universe itself! Kepler calculated that ellipses, not circles, would better fit the data that Brahe had so painstakingly acquired. Although it defied his intuition, his common sense, and even his personal preferences for how he felt the Universe ought to have behaved — indeed, he thought that the Mysterium Cosmographicum was a divine epiphany that had revealed God’s geometrical plan for the Universe to him — Kepler was successfully able to abandon his notion of “circles and spheres” and instead used what seemed to him to be an imperfect solution: ellipses.

It cannot be emphasized enough what an achievement this is for science. Yes, there are many reasons to be critical of Kepler. He continued to promote his Mysterium Cosmographicum even though it was clear ellipses fit the data better. He continued to mix astronomy with astrology, becoming the most famous astrologer of his time. And he continued the long tradition of apologetics: claiming that ancient texts meant the opposite of what they said in order to reconcile the acceptability of the new knowledge that had emerged.

But it was through this revolutionary action, of abandoning his model for a new one that he himself devised to explain the observations more successfully than ever before, that Kepler’s laws of motion became elevated to scientific canon.

Tycho Brahe conducted some of the best observations of Mars prior to the invention of the telescope, and Kepler’s work largely leveraged that data. Here, Brahe’s observations of Mars’s orbit, particularly during retrograde episodes, provided an exquisite confirmation of Kepler’s elliptical orbit theory.(Credit: Wayne Pafko)

Even today, more than four full centuries after Kepler, we all learn his three laws of planetary motion in schools.Planets move in ellipses around the Sun, with the Sun at one of the ellipse’s two focal points.
Planets sweep out equal areas, with the Sun at once focus, in equal amounts of time.
And planets orbit in time periods proportional to their semimajor axes (half of the longest-axis of the ellipse) to the 3/2 power.

These were the first calculations that advanced the science of astronomy beyond the stagnated realm of Ptolemy, and they paved the way for Newton’s theory of universal gravitation, which transformed these laws from simple descriptions of how motion occurred to one that was physically motivated. By the end of the 17th century, all of Kepler’s laws could be derived simply from the laws of Newtonian gravity.

But the greatest achievement of all was the day Kepler put his own idea of a Mysterium Cosmographicum — an idea that he was arguably more emotionally attached to than any other — in order to follow the data, wherever it led him. That brought him to elliptical orbits for the planets, which kicked off the revolution in our understanding the physical universe around us, i.e., the modern sciences of physics and astronomy, that continues to the present day. Like all scientific heroes, Kepler certainly had his faults, but the ability to admit when you’re wrong, to reject your insufficient ideas, and to follow the data wherever it leads are traits we should all aspire to. Not only in science, of course, but in all aspects of our lives.