It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, March 25, 2023
Mitsubishi enters Casino project in Yukon, acquiring 5% stake in Western Copper Staff Writer | March 24, 2023 | Site of the Casino copper-gold project in Yukon. Credit: Western Copper and Gold
Western Copper and Gold (TSX: WRN) announced Friday a strategic equity investment by Japan’s Mitsubishi Materials to further advance the company’s Casino copper-gold project in Canada’s Yukon Territory towards development.
Mitsubishi has agreed to acquire approximately 5% of Western’s outstanding shares at $2.63 per share. The exact number of shares to be issued (and by extension, total proceeds received) will depend on whether Rio Tinto Canada elects to exercise its pre-existing right to participate in equity financings by the company to maintain its current ownership interest of approximately 7.84%.
Assuming Rio Tinto elects to exercise its participation right in full, then it is expected that approximately 8.09 million shares will be issued to Mitsubishi for gross proceeds of C$21.3 million, and around 880,000 shares will be issued to Rio Tinto for gross proceeds of C$2.3 million.
Western Copper’s shares gained 0.8% by 12:45 p.m. ET on the investment by Mitsubishi. The Vancouver-based miner has a market capitalization of C$362.3 million ($263.7m).
In connection with the investment, Western and Mitsubishi will enter into an investor rights agreement whereby the latter could appoint a member to the Casino project technical and sustainability committee and have one or more representatives on the Western board.
Mitsubishi will also have the right to participate in future equity financings to maintain its ownership in the company. These rights can be exercised within 24 months of Mitsubishi’s investment, unless its share ownership falls below 3%.
“The investment by Mitsubishi Materials is a strong endorsement of the Casino project. We look forward to working with Mitsubishi Materials to advance Casino,” Paul West-Sells, CEO of Western Copper, said in a news release.
Following the investment, Western will remain the sole owner and operator of the Casino project, which it has been developing since 2008. The project encompasses the construction of a conventional open pit mine along with a mineral processing plant and heap leach facility, for which the environmental and socio-economic impacts are currently being reviewed by the Yukon government.
Located 300 km northwest of Whitehorse, the Casino property is host to a porphyry copper-gold-silver deposit containing 2.4 billion tonnes of measured and indicated resources at grades of 0.14% copper, 0.19 g/t gold and 1.5 g/t silver, for 7.6 billion lb. copper, 14.5 million oz. gold and 113.5 million oz. silver.
In summer 2022, Western published a feasibility study on the Casino project, outlining an after-tax net present value, at an 8% discount rate, of C$2.3 billion with an internal rate of return of 18.1%.
Over the 27-year project life (in the case of heap leach, 24 years), annual production would reach 163 million lb. copper, 211,000 oz. gold and 1.3 million oz. silver, the study shows.
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
JPMorgan’s mystery ‘nickel’ rocks: The hunt for clues begins with a kick
The revelation that about $2 million of “nickel” on the London Metal Exchange was actually just bags of stones has thrown a spotlight on the sprawling web of warehouses and metal stashes underpinning the billions of dollars of derivatives traded daily on the LME.
Over the past week, warehouse staff from Busan in South Korea to Genoa in Italy have rushed to check tens of thousands of two-ton bags of nickel – in some cases, by literally kicking them.
The LME advised warehouse operators to wear steel toe-capped boots for safety, one person who received the instructions said. The rule of thumb: If it hurts when you kick it, it’s probably nickel.
The mass inspection, which also included more carefully calibrated checks like weighing and scanning the bags, came after the LME last week announced it had discovered “irregularities” in nine nickel contracts. Bloomberg has reported that the contracts – now invalidated – belonged to JPMorgan Chase & Co. No other issues were found across the LME’s global network of warehouses, the exchange said on Thursday.
Attention will now turn to the question of how the bags of stones could have been bought and sold as nickel on the LME – long viewed by traders as the one place where they don’t need to second guess the contents of their cargoes.
The first sign of trouble came after some of the bags of “nickel” were bought from an LME-registered warehouse in Rotterdam by two trading companies, Trafigura Group and Stratton Metals. When the bags were delivered out, their weights didn’t match the paperwork. Inside, rather than nickel briquettes — which look like lumps of charcoal for barbecuing — the bags had stones instead.
When the rest of the Rotterdam warehouse was searched, the bags underlying nine LME contracts belonging to JPMorgan were also found to contain stones.
There are two possible explanations: either the bags were already full of stones when they were first delivered into Access World’s Rotterdam warehouse, or someone sneaked into the warehouse to steal the nickel.
Access World is leaning toward the second theory, according to people familiar with the matter, because it has a record of the material being weighed when it first entered the warehouse.
It’s far from the first time the metals industry has had to deal with scandals and theft, and nickel’s high value makes it a favorite of fraudsters. Just last month, Trafigura said it had been the victim of a “systematic fraud” whereby it spent some $600 million on cargoes of nickel that turned out not to contain the metal. (Trafigura has said the LME saga isn’t connected to its legal case over the alleged fraud.) In 2017, banks lost over $300 million after discovering fake warehouse receipts for nickel stored in Access World warehouses in Asia — in that case, outside of the LME’s network.
Metals traders joke about how the oldest known written complaint – on a clay tablet housed in the British Museum – details a deal gone wrong over substandard copper.
But in today’s world, the LME’s system is the one place where metal is assumed to be unquestionably safe. The exchange’s contracts, which are the global benchmark for industrial metals like copper, nickel and zinc, are backed by physical metal in the network of warehouses around the world.
While the vast majority of trades on the exchange are purely financial transactions involving hedge funds seeking to bet on the price of metals, or producers looking to hedge, anyone who holds a contract to expiry receives a parcel of metal in an LME-registered warehouse. The whole system relies on warehouse companies to vouch for the metal they have loaded in when they produce an LME “warrant” – a warehouse receipt that can be delivered against an LME contract.
“Elevated prices on base metals make them a natural target for fraud and theft,” said Simon Collins, former head of metals at Trafigura and the CEO of digital trading platform TradeCloud. “Commodity companies need to protect themselves via stringent procedures around people, processes and technology.”
Access World has said it believes the nine warrants suspended by the LME were an isolated case, “specific to one warehouse in Rotterdam.” A promotional video for the company’s facility in Rotterdam’s port area shows a brightly lit warehouse filled with stacks of shiny metal, as well as numerous security cameras.
One headache for investigators is that it’s far from clear when any nefarious activity took place: the material was first delivered into the Rotterdam warehouse several years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.
It may have gone undetected for years, because of a quirk specific to the nickel market. Unlike aluminum and copper, which are kept in neat stacks in warehouses, most of the nickel in the LME is in the form of briquettes in bags. Warehousing and shipping companies typically don’t look inside the bags, checking only that the seals haven’t been tampered with. They issue warehouse receipts on what is called a “said to contain” basis – meaning they cannot vouch for the contents.
The number of problem bags was small, affecting only a few dozen tons of nickel. But the news that just a few of the LME’s nickel contracts were compromised has led traders to reconsider the assumption that LME registered metal is always perfectly secure.
The price of nickel for immediate delivery plunged to the biggest discount to three-month futures in 15 years this week, in a sign that some traders were suddenly wary of taking delivery of LME nickel contracts.
For the LME, the warehouse issue represents yet another headache as it wades through the fallout of its last nickel crisis a year ago. It also comes as the exchange is finally preparing to resume regular trading hours in nickel — now scheduled for Monday — when the market will open during the Asian day for the first time since early March 2022.
(By Jack Farchy, Archie Hunter, Alfred Cang and Mark Burton)
Graphic: The impact of vehicle sizes on mineral demand in the EV market
As the electric vehicles (EV) market grows, a debate is developing about the amount of minerals needed to supply the demand for EV batteries.
Following the US’ push for electrification with the Inflation Reduction Act, the European Union recently unveiled its Critical Raw Materials Act to “significantly improve” domestic extraction, processing, and recycling capacity for metals such as lithium and rare earths.
Other nations like Canada and South American countries are also discussing how to benefit from the expanding market.
The infographic above by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence demonstrates how different models and battery types impact critical mineral demand.
While a Tata Motors Tiago battery contains only 1.1kg of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), a Tesla Semi truck requires over 500kg of LCE to operate.
Canada and U.S. don't feel the same way about each other — and it may be getting worse, poll reveals
Canadians are taking U.S. President Joe Biden's first visit to Canada, late in his first term, as a sign that the relationship between the countries isn't improving Elianna Lev Thu, March 23, 2023
In light of President Joe Biden’s visit to Canada, a new survey gives surprising insights into how people across this country feel about our current relationship with the U.S.
The results of the recent poll, conducted by Maru Public Opinion and GZERO Media, find that Canadians’ feelings towards the U.S. still aren’t where they used to be, even in a post-Trump era. However, those feelings aren’t mutual.
How is Canada's relationship with the U.S.?
When reflecting back over the last year, compared to how things were during the Trump presidency, 30 per cent of Canadians felt that the relationship with our neighbours to the south is getting worse. That’s compared to 23 per cent who felt things were improving.
Nearly half - 47 per cent - felt the relationships stayed the same. It’s quite a different feeling when it comes to how Americans feel about us - one quarter (25 per cent) said the relationship is improving, compared to 17 per cent who felt it’s worse.
The majority - 58 per cent - felt the relationship has stayed the same.
John Wright is the executive vice president Maru Public Opinion. He says Canadians are interested in Biden’s visit to Canada and what he has to say, but there’s an element of weariness amongst the public. While we have cross border issues like trade and the economy that ties the two countries, there are a series of other issues like global warming, supply chains and military involvement in other parts of the world that need addressing urgently.
The fact the president has taken as long as he had to come to this country and because of some of those overarching issues that may not be on the table for this visit, there’s a group of people in this country that see it as the relationship worsening.John Wright, Executive Vice President, Maru Public Opinion
Canadians, Americans agree on one thing: China and Russia
One thing that the poll found Americans and Canadians are on the same page about is the threat to democracy from foreign agents in China and Russia. The vast majority of Canadians and Americans - 93 per cent for both - believe boosting security and intelligence efforts to stop foreign powers undermining democracy should be a priority.
“It’s a significant priority in both countries' populist that their leaders make it a priority to do what they can to stop it,” says Wright.
A similar percentage of people in both countries felt that Canada (71 per cent) and the U.S.(78 per cent) should have closer military defence relations. A majority of people polled on both sides felt that increasing joint North American military and defence capabilities should be a priority. Eighty-six per cent of Canadians and 90 per cent of Americans felt increasing these capabilities would guard against threats from countries like China and North Korea.
Wrights says the sharing of and support for all the military issues is much higher than you would have found 20 years ago.
“What’s conspired to that is that we live in a world where most Canadians believe that we’re already war footing with other countries right now,” he says. “The public is much more sensitized to military issues.”
'Incredibly dangerous': Video shows lion just metres away from Ontario road, sparking animal advocacy concerns
World Animal Protection is thankful no one was injured, but is calling on the Ontario government to finally take action against Jungle Cat World.
The original video, posted on TikTik on March 8, is now not publicly available, while Lapetite did not respond to Yahoo Canada in time for publication.
Following publication, Jungle Cat World's program director Peter Klose responded to Yahoo Canada in an email, saying "the story of a lion escaping was only a rumour and categorically false."
The video appears to be taken next to Concession Road 6, a major street with lots of local activity. Across the street, there is a gas station and local restaurant, with residential houses nearby.
“The video speaks for itself,” said Michèle Hamers, World Animal Protection wildlife campaign manager, to Yahoo Canada.
“The dog was stressed and barking, not expecting to see a lion that close nearby. The woman seemed distressed and she was trying to calm her dog down, as the lion was responding to [the barks] and tracking them along the fence line. This seemed to be a very uncomfortable situation.”
While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the zoo’s enclosure looks like in this video, World Animal Protection believes that the encounter raises safety concerns, claiming the lion appears to have escaped from its enclosure.
Another video that’s been posted to TikTok shows that there is another, taller fence separating the lion from the street, but World Animal Protection claims that's also not enough.
This is an incredibly dangerous situation. We are relieved that no one was injured, it’s a very strong reminder of how broken Ontario’s animal legislation is,” World Animal Protection said in its statement regarding the video.
“Lions can jump as high as 12-feet, which is why professional zoo standards recommend keeping lions behind fences at least 15-feet high. Additionally, safety measures should also be taken like the inclusion of an overhang at the top of the fence to prevent the animal from climbing out, and a proper perimeter fence surrounding the entire facility to prevent animals from leaving the zoo property.”
Hamers notes that an overhang, which is a fence that is curved inwards in the enclosure that will prevent a lion from climbing over the fence, “is missing in the video.”
Ontario Solicitor general spokesperson Brent Ross told CTV News that on March 13, following a complaint that the lion escaped from its enclosure, Animal Welfare Services inspected Jungle Cat World. At the time of inspection, all the lions were reportedly in their enclosures, while there was “no threat to public safety.”
Exotic animals in Ontario: Mounting concerns
This is not the first time that World Animal Protection has raised concerns about the zoo, among many others in Ontario — signalling a widespread problem.
A more recent 2022 report also reviewed 11 different zoos across Ontario, including Jungle Cat World. Issues were noted, such as poor design and construction of enclosures, which could lead to inappropriate interactions, such as the one seen in this video.
The report also states that “Ontario is the last major jurisdiction in Canada that has not licensed or restricted the keeping or use of exotic wild animals in captivity.”
“It’s truly the ‘wild west’ when it comes to wild animal ownership,” said Hamers. “How many more incidents like this need to happen before the province gets serious about reform?”
Questions around Ontario's minimal rules surrounding roadside zoos are still being asked. World Animal Protection wants Ontario to focus on building stronger animal legislation, just like the other provinces.
“Ontario has the weakest regulations in Canada,” said World Animal Protection in a press release following the viral video.
“The province leaves it up to municipalities to draft regulations, leading to a patchwork of rules. It’s estimated that approximately 50 per cent of municipalities in the province don’t have any bans on wild animal ownership.”
According to World Animal Protection, Ontario only bans the ownership of select native species. This leads to thousands more exotic species, such as tigers, lions and venomous snakes being kept as long as they’re not banned by municipalities.
World Animal Protection said they would like to see a comprehensive licensing system of facilities that keep animals for public displays, otherwise known as zoos.
“This licensing system should be according to the highest public health standards and animal welfare,” said Hamers “We are proposing to make this the last generation of these wildlife animals living in these tragic conditions.” hoo Canada in time for publication.
Following publication, Jungle Cat World's program director Peter Klose responded to Yahoo Canada in an email, saying "the story of a lion escaping was only a rumour and categorically false."
The video appears to be taken next to Concession Road 6, a major street with lots of local activity. Across the street, there is a gas station and local restaurant, with residential houses nearby.
“The video speaks for itself,” said Michèle Hamers, World Animal Protection wildlife campaign manager, to Yahoo Canada.
“The dog was stressed and barking, not expecting to see a lion that close nearby. The woman seemed distressed and she was trying to calm her dog down, as the lion was responding to [the barks] and tracking them along the fence line. This seemed to be a very uncomfortable situation.”
While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the zoo’s enclosure looks like in this video, World Animal Protection believes that the encounter raises safety concerns, claiming the lion appears to have escaped from its enclosure.
Another video that’s been posted to TikTok shows that there is another, taller fence separating the lion from the street, but World Animal Protection claims that's also not enough.
Most powerful solar storm in 6 years caused auroras all over the US & Canada
And nobody saw it coming.
A purple aurora glows on the horizon in a picture taken from an airplane mid flight
Hannah Osborne Fri, March 24, 2023
The strongest solar storm to hit Earth for six years sparked stunning auroras across the U.S., with intense light displays appearing as far south as Alabama and Northern California. Yet no one saw it coming.
The March 24 solar storm was the result of a "stealth" coronal mass ejection (CME) – or a gargantuan, fast-moving blob of plasma and magnetic field released from the sun – Live Science’s sister site Space.com reports. The CME came from a coronal hole wider than 20 Earths that was spewing out solar winds at speeds over 1.3 million mph (2.1 million km/h).
Tamitha Skov, a U.S. space weather forecaster, told Space.com that no one saw the G4 storm coming because it was "nearly invisible." She said these stealth storms launch far slower than a typical CMEs that erupts, so are more difficult to observe.
The blob of particles smashed into Earth’s atmosphere early on March 24, compressing the planet’s magnetic field and triggering a geomagnetic storm. It was classified as a G4, or "severe" storm on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s five-level scale. Impacts of a G4 storm include radio blackouts for several hours and navigation outages.
Storms can also push auroras being pushed to much lower latitudes than usual. Auroras, or Northern Lights, normally only appear at high latitudes near the North and South Poles, because Earth's magnetic field deflects electrons in solar wind toward the poles. But when a solar storm strikes, more charged particles collide with gases in the upper atmosphere, meaning the night light shows can appear closer to the equator.
(The following tweet contains profanity.)
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That was the case for last night's stealth storm.
"Forecasters completely missed this one," a post on SpaceWeather.com said. "Auroras spread into the United States as far south as Colorado and New Mexico during a severe (category G4) geomagnetic storm — the most intense in nearly 6 years."
Video and images showing the phenomena were shared by onlookers, including photographer Dakota Snider, who captured images of pink aurora from a flight between Los Angeles and Phoenix.
Snider told Live Science in a message on social media that this was the first time he had seen auroras. Snider closely follows weather and rare events because he is a professional photographer.
"Before we took off I was thinking about how I might get the opportunity to see them from the air, but it would be a pretty far stretch if it was possible. Once we were up at elevation, you could see a faint glow, and I thought it was the lights." Snider said.
"Everyone was asleep on the plane except the flight attendants who were beyond stoked to see such a rare event this far south!"
Vincent Ledvina, an astrophotographer and graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute also posted footage of the display. "Witnessed literally the most insane aurora of my life tonight in Fairbanks," he wrote on Twitter. "This was unreal."
Generally, the stronger the geomagnetic storm, the further from the poles auroras can be seen. According to NASA’s Fermilab, in 1859 a solar flare caused auroras as far south as Cuba. The Carrington Event, as it is known, is considered the strongest geomagnetic storm in recorded history.
Editor's Note: This story was updated on Mar. 24 to correct Dakota Snider's pronouns.
Strongest solar storm in nearly 6 years slams into Earth catching forecasters by surprise
Daisy Dobrijevic Fri, March 24, 2023 Green band of aurora light in the sky above a rural building.
The most powerful solar storm in nearly six years slammed Earth today (March 24), but strangely, space weather forecasters didn't see it coming.
The geomagnetic storm peaked as a severe G4 on the 5-grade scale used by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to assess the severity of space weather events. The storm's unexpected ferocity not only made auroras visible as far south as New Mexico in the U.S., but it also forced spaceflight company Rocket Lab to delay a launch by 90 minutes.
Geomagnetic storms are disturbances to Earth's magnetic field caused by solar material from coronal mass ejections (CME) — large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun's atmosphere. It turns out that this particular geomagnetic storm was triggered by a "stealth" CME which — as the name suggests — is rather tricky to detect.
NOAA's National Space Weather Service originally announced a "geomagnetic storm watch" on March 22, to come into effect on 23-25 March with possible moderate G2 storm conditions expected on March 24. So forecasters weren't completely caught off-guard, they however didn't expect a magnitude G4 storm.
Graphic illustrating the G4 storm alert and shows high aurora activity in the northern polar regions illustrated by a bright red band across the globe.
NOAA's National Space Weather Service declared a G4 solar storm alert on March 24.
(Image credit: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center)
U.S. space weather forecaster Tamitha Skov explained to Space.com in an email why the space weather community got it so wrong with this latest storm.
"These nearly invisible storms launch much more slowly than eruptive CMEs and are very difficult to observe leaving the sun's surface without specialized training," she said, adding that the stealth CMEs can also be "camouflaged" by other, more dense structures emanating from the sun, which makes them difficult to observe.
"This is why they are the cause of "problem geomagnetic storms" like the G4-level storm we are in now." Skov continued.
NOAA ranks geomagnetic storms on a scale running from G1, which could cause an increase in auroral activity around the poles and minor fluctuations in power supplies, up to G5, which includes extreme cases like the Carrington Event — a colossal solar storm that occurred September 1859, which disrupted telegraph services all over the world and triggered auroras so bright and powerful that they were visible as far south as the Bahamas.
Strong geomagnetic storms can be troublesome for spaceflight as they increase the density of gases in Earth's upper atmosphere, thereby increasing the drag on satellites and other spacecraft. In February 2022 SpaceX lost up to 40 brand-new Starlink satellites when they failed to reach orbit after being launched into a minor geomagnetic storm.
Rocket Lab delayed its launch this morning by approximately 90 minutes while assessing the evolving conditions of the geomagnetic storm, the company announced on Twitter. They successfully launched at 5:14 a.m. EDT (0914 GMT).
Another side effect of powerful geomagnetic storms is the incredible aurora displays they trigger. When energized particles from the sun slam into Earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 million mph (72 million kph), our planet's magnetic field funnels the particles toward the poles. The ensuing supercharging of molecules in Earth's atmosphere triggers the colorful spectacles, which usually remain limited to areas at high latitudes. This time, skywatchers around the world were treated to a dazzling auroral display that reached as far south as Colorado and New Mexico.
We can expect more extreme space weather events like this powerful geomagnetic storm as the sun builds towards a peak in its 11-year solar activity cycle, expected to occur in 2025.
Rare show of Northern Lights dazzles North America
Brandon Drenon - BBC News, Washington Fri, March 24, 2023 Northern Lights appear in the sky over Alaska.
Hues of pink, purple and green streaked the skies in North America overnight in a dazzling display of Northern Lights.
Weather officials said the aurora, which was seen from California to New York, as far south as Arizona and north into Canada, was "fairly unusual".
The event was categorised as a "severe geomagnetic storm" and received the second highest rating in strength, a G4. The strongest would be a G5.
A less severe storm is expected this weekend.
"We got more of an impact than we expected," Bill Murtagh, programme co-ordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather and Prediction Center, told the BBC. The aurora seen on Thursday from Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada
Mr Murtagh explained that the Northern Lights phenomenon experienced last night was due to "several eruptions on the sun", which released high energy particles that collided with Earth's atmosphere "like a big magnet getting shot out of the sun".
"When these clouds of particles and magnetic fields from the sun hit the Earth's magnetic fields, we see these high energy particles will interact with the Earth's upper atmosphere and that will create the Northern Lights," he said.
An event like this will happen about 50 times every solar cycle, he said, which is 11 years. But this was the most severe geomagnetic storm in almost six years, according to spaceweather.com.
Mr Murtagh said we are currently approaching a point in the solar cycle where more eruptions on the sun will occur, in a period defined as the solar maximum.
Throughout the solar minimum, when activity on the sun is lower, less severe geomagnetic storms more commonly occur, and are typically seen in northern states like New England and along the Canadian border, he said.
But more frequent high level solar storms are on the way.
"The next coming years we are going to see the most solar activity," he said.
A ‘hole’ in the sun’s atmosphere will bring intense northern lights on Friday.
An aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, is seen in the night sky on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023, near Washtucna, Wash. The northern lights are predicted to be visible in the U.S. on March 24, 2023, due to an intense solar storm. | Ted S. Warren, Associated Press
Due to the strongest solar storm in five years, several states will be able to witness intense northern lights on Friday night, according to Forbes.
The perfect storm: A combination of cracks in the Earth’s magnetic shield, and a giant coronal hole in the sun’s atmosphere, allowed a “big blast” of charged particles from solar winds cause a G4-class geomagnetic storm, which will result in vibrant northern lights, Forbes stated.
Usually, northern lights are only visible close to the Arctic Circle, but the Space Weather Prediction Center says they could be visible farther south than usual, per Insider.
On Thursday night, the lights were visible in some places as far south as northern California and Nebraska, according to USA Today.
Where will the lights be visible? The aurora borealis forecast predicted a Kp index of 6 for Friday, per Insider, meaning that the lights will be visible somewhere in between the green and yellow lines in the image below:
NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center
The states along the northern border of the U.S. are the most likely to see the lights on Friday.
Tips for viewing the northern lights: The Space Weather Prediction Center states that in order to get a good view of the lights, you need to have a clear view of the northern horizon. Standing on a hill or elevated land is optimal so nothing blocks your view.
It must be dark to view the northern lights, meaning that you’ll need to get away from any city lights. This means that people near large metropolitan areas might have a lower chance of seeing them. Even the full moon or clouds can obstruct the view of the lights.
Northern lights are usually brightest between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, the SWPC said. The aurora borealis are usually their most intense around the fall and spring equinoxes, which is when geomagnetic storms are more likely to occur.
Scientists uncover the reason for alien comet ‘Oumuamua’s strange acceleration
Published March 24, 2023 `Oumuamua seems to be a dark red highly-elongated metallic or rocky object, about 400 metres long, and is unlike anything normally found in the Solar System.
Source - ESO/M. Kornmesser, CC SA 4.0.
Discovered in 2017, ‘Oumuamua became the first observed interstellar object to zip through our solar system, and its appearance sparked questions scientists are still trying to answer.
‘Oumuamua was first spotted on 19 October 2017. A telescope in Hawaii spied it as it made its way past the Sun, reaching a top speed of 87 kilometers per second, or 54 miles per second —too fast to have originated in the Solar System. Astronomers named the object 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.”
For several years, scientists speculated on what the strange interstellar object up to 400 meters long could actually be – was it an alien spacecraft? or possibly an asteroid?
No such object from beyond our Sun’s reaches had visited us before, with this interloper moving so fast it could not be bound to the Sun. ‘Oumuamua was also odd in that it looked like an asteroid but behaved like a comet.
Another odd thing about ‘Oumuamua was its strange acceleration as it hurtled away from the sun. All kinds of hypotheses were floated in light of its unexpected behavior, according to Reuters.
However, a new study published in the journal Nature last week has offered a more sober explanation – that ‘Oumuamua’s speed-up was due to the release of hydrogen gas as the comet warmed up in the sunlight.
The team of researchers says ‘Oumuamua was definitely a comet, albeit one with an unusual makeup. “We can explain a lot of the strange behavior,” says Jennifer Bergner, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study.
Bergner and her colleague Darryl Seligman, an astronomer at Cornell University, think they can now explain what happened. Their modeling shows ‘Oumuamua could have begun life as a regular water-rich comet around a nearby star, before being ejected.
They found that high-energy cosmic rays that pervade the Galaxy, emitted by supernovae and other energetic events, could have turned up to 30 percent of the comet’s water ice into hydrogen, which could have become trapped in ‘Oumuamua’s ice as it journeyed through interstellar space.
‘Oumuamua was accelerating as it moved, which would require more than just gravity. The object appeared to be pushed like comets are when they near the sun and the evaporation of their gas and dust by the sun’s heat causes a propulsive effect.
However, ‘Oumuamua didn’t look like a comet, nor did it have a tail or an envelope of gas and dust, called a coma, that all comets have, reports CNN News.
‘Oumuamua then was warmed up as it passed through our inner solar system, causing the comet’s ice structure to rearrange and releasing the trapped hydrogen gas.
This action gave ‘Oumuamua a little bit of a kick as it headed away from the sun. The release of this hydrogen in a process called outgassing would not cause a visible tail.
The simplest explanation, and exactly what we would expect for an interstellar comet, fits all of the data with no fine-tuning,” said Seligman, who is also a co-author in the study.
The study is “the most convincing model so far” for ‘Oumuamua, says Marco Micheli, an astronomer at the European Space Agency in Italy who was not involved with the work. The alien visitor, he says, was actually not so different from Solar System comets, Science.org. reports.
Surprisingly simple explanation for the alien comet 'Oumuamua's weird orbit
2017 comet's unusual acceleration explained by hydrogen outgassing from ice
IMAGE: AN ARTIST'S DEPICTION OF THE INTERSTELLAR COMET 'OUMUAMUA, AS IT WARMED UP IN ITS APPROACH TO THE SUN AND OUTGASSED HYDROGEN (WHITE MIST), WHICH SLIGHTLY ALTERED ITS ORBIT. THE COMET, WHICH IS MOST LIKELY PANCAKE-SHAPED, IS THE FIRST KNOWN OBJECT OTHER THAN DUST GRAINS TO VISIT OUR SOLAR SYSTEM FROM ANOTHER STAR.view more
CREDIT: NASA, ESA AND JOSEPH OLMSTED AND FRANK SUMMERS OF STSCI
In 2017, a mysterious comet dubbed 'Oumuamua fired the imaginations of scientists and the public alike. It was the first known visitor from outside our solar system, it had no bright coma or dust tail, like most comets, and a peculiar shape — something between a cigar and a pancake — and its small size more befitted an asteroid than a comet.
But the fact that it was accelerating away from the sun in a way that astronomers could not explain perplexed scientists, leading some to suggest that it was an alien spaceship.
Now, a University of California, Berkeley, astrochemist and a Cornell University astronomer argue that the comet's mysterious deviations from a hyperbolic path around the sun can be explained by a simple physical mechanism likely common among many icy comets: outgassing of hydrogen as the comet warmed up in the sunlight.
What made 'Oumuamua different from every other well-studied comet in our solar system was its size: It was so small that its gravitational deflection around the sun was slightly altered by the tiny push created when hydrogen gas spurted out of the ice.
Most comets are essentially dirty snowballs that periodically approach the sun from the outer reaches of our solar system. When warmed by sunlight, a comet ejects water and other molecules, producing a bright halo or coma around it and often tails of gas and dust. The ejected gases act like the thrusters on a spacecraft to give the comet a tiny kick that alters its trajectory slightly from the elliptical orbits typical of other solar system objects, such as asteroids and planets.
When discovered, 'Oumuamua had no coma or tail and was too small and too far from the sun to capture enough energy to eject much water, which led astronomers to speculate wildly about its composition and what was pushing it outward. Was it a hydrogen iceberg outgassing H2? A large, fluffy snowflake pushed by light pressure from the sun? A light sail created by an alien civilization? A spaceship under its own power?
Jennifer Bergner, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of chemistry who studies the chemical reactions that occur on icy rocks in the cold vacuum of space, thought there might be a simpler explanation. She broached the subject with a colleague, Darryl Seligman, now an National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, and they decided to work together to test it.
"A comet traveling through the interstellar medium basically is getting cooked by cosmic radiation, forming hydrogen as a result. Our thought was: If this was happening, could you actually trap it in the body, so that when it entered the solar system and it was warmed up, it would outgas that hydrogen?" Bergner said. "Could that quantitatively produce the force that you need to explain the non-gravitational acceleration?"
Surprisingly, she found that experimental research published in the 1970s, '80s and '90s demonstrated that when ice is hit by high-energy particles akin to cosmic rays, molecular hydrogen (H2) is abundantly produced and trapped within the ice. In fact, cosmic rays can penetrate tens of meters into ice, converting a quarter or more of the water to hydrogen gas.
"For a comet several kilometers across, the outgassing would be from a really thin shell relative to the bulk of the object, so both compositionally and in terms of any acceleration, you wouldn't necessarily expect that to be a detectable effect," she said. "But because 'Oumuamua was so small, we think that it actually produced sufficient force to power this acceleration."
The comet, which was slightly reddish, is thought to have been roughly 115 by 111 by 19 meters in size. While the relative dimensions were fairly certain, however, astronomers couldn't be sure of the actual size because it was too small and distant for telescopes to resolve. The size had to be estimated from the comet’s brightness and how the brightness changed as the comet tumbled. To date, all the comets observed in our solar system — the short-period comets originating in the Kuiper belt and the long-period comets from the more distant Oort cloud have ranged from around 1 kilometer to hundreds of kilometers across.
"What's beautiful about Jenny's idea is that it's exactly what should happen to interstellar comets," Seligman said. "We had all these stupid ideas, like hydrogen icebergs and other crazy things, and it's just the most generic explanation."
Bergner and Seligman will publish their conclusions this week in the journal Nature. Both were postdoctoral fellows at the University of Chicago when they began collaborating on the paper.
Messenger from afar
Comets are icy rocks left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago, so they can tell astronomers about the conditions that existed when our solar system formed. Interstellar comets can also give hints to the conditions around other stars surrounded by planet-forming disks.
"Comets preserve a snapshot of what the solar system looked like when it was in the stage of evolution that protoplanetary disks are now," Bergner said. "Studying them is a way to look back at what our solar system used to look like in the early formation stage."
Faraway planetary systems also seem to have comets, and many are likely to be ejected because of gravitational interactions with other objects in the system, which astronomers know happened over the history of our solar system. Some of these rogue comets should occasionally enter our solar system, providing an opportunity to learn about planet formation in other systems.
"The comets and asteroids in the solar system have arguably taught us more about planet formation than what we've learned from the actual planets in the solar system," Seligman said. "I think that the interstellar comets could arguably tell us more about extrasolar planets than the extrasolar planets we are trying to get measurements of today."
In the past, astronomers published numerous papers about what we can learn from the failure to observe any interstellar comets in our solar system.
Then, 'Oumuamua came along.
On Oct. 19, 2017, on the island of Maui, astronomers using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope, which is operated by the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, first noticed what they thought was either a comet or an asteroid. Once they realized that its tilted orbit and high speed — 87 kilometers per second — implied that it came from outside our solar system, they gave it the name 1I/‘Oumuamua (oh MOO-uh MOO-uh), which is Hawai'ian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.” It was the first interstellar object aside from dust grains ever seen in our solar system. A second, 2I/Borisov, was discovered in 2019, though it looked and behaved more like a typical comet.
As more and more telescopes focused on 'Oumuamua, the astronomers were able to chart its orbit and determine that it had already looped around the sun and was headed out of the solar system.
Because 'Oumuamua's brightness changed periodically by a factor of 12 and varied asymmetrically, it was assumed to be highly elongated and tumbling end over end. Astronomers also noticed a slight acceleration away from the sun larger than seen for asteroids and more characteristic of comets. When comets approach the sun, the water and gases ejected from the surface create a glowing, gaseous coma and release dust in the process. Typically, dust left in the comet's wake becomes visible as one tail, while vapor and dust pushed by light pressure from solar rays produces a second tail pointing away from the sun, plus a little inertial push outward. Other compounds, such as entrapped organic materials and carbon monoxide, also can be released.
Why was it accelerating?
But astronomers could detect no coma, outgassed molecules or dust around 'Oumuamua. In addition, calculations showed that the solar energy hitting the comet would be insufficient to sublimate water or organic compounds from its surface to give it the observed non-gravitational kick. Only hypervolatile gases such as H2, N2 or carbon monoxide (CO) could provide enough acceleration to match observations, given the incoming solar energy.
"We had never seen a comet in the solar system that didn't have a dust coma. So, the non-gravitational acceleration really was weird," Seligman said.
This led to much speculation about what volatile molecules could be in the comet to cause the acceleration. Seligman himself published a paper arguing that if the comet was composed of solid hydrogen — a hydrogen iceberg — it would outgas enough hydrogen in the heat of the sun to explain the strange acceleration. Under the right conditions, a comet composed of solid nitrogen or solid carbon monoxide would also outgas with enough force to affect the comet's orbit.
But astronomers had to stretch to explain what conditions could lead to the formation of solid bodies of hydrogen or nitrogen, which have never been observed before. And how could a solid H2 body survive for perhaps 100 million years in interstellar space?
Bergner thought that outgassing of hydrogen entrapped in ice might be sufficient to accelerate 'Oumuamua. As both an experimentalist and a theoretician, she studies the interaction of very cold ice — chilled to 5 or 10 degrees Kelvin, the temperature of the interstellar medium (ISM) — with the kinds of energetic particles and radiation found in the ISM.
In searching through past publications, she found many experiments demonstrating that high-energy electrons, protons and heavier atoms could convert water ice into molecular hydrogen, and that the fluffy, snowball structure of a comet could entrap the gas in bubbles within the ice. Experiments showed that when warmed, as by the heat of the sun, the ice anneals — changes from an amorphous to a crystal structure — and forces the bubbles out, releasing the hydrogen gas. Ice at the surface of a comet, Bergner and Seligman calculated, could emit enough gas, either in a collimated beam or fan-shaped spray, to affect the orbit of a small comet like 'Oumuamua.
"The main takeaway is that 'Oumuamua is consistent with being a standard interstellar comet that just experienced heavy processing," Bergner said. "The models we ran are consistent with what we see in the solar system from comets and asteroids. So, you could essentially start with something that looks like a comet and have this scenario work."
The idea also explains the lack of a dust coma.
"Even if there was dust in the ice matrix, you're not sublimating the ice, you're just rearranging the ice and then letting H2 get released. So, the dust isn't even going to come out," Seligman said.
'Dark' comets
Seligman said that their conclusion about the source of 'Oumuamua's acceleration should close the book on the comet. Since 2017, he, Bergner and their colleagues have identified six other small comets with no observable coma, but with small non-gravitational accelerations, suggesting that such "dark" comets are common. While H2 is not likely responsible for the accelerations of dark comets, Bergner noted, together with 'Oumuamua they reveal that there is much to be learned about the nature of small bodies in the solar system.
One of these dark comets, 1998 KY26, is the next target for Japan's Hayabusa2 mission, which recently collected samples from the asteroid Ryugu. The 1998 KY26 was thought to be an asteroid until it was identified as a dark comet in December.
"Jenny's definitely right about the entrapped hydrogen. Nobody had thought of that before," he said. "Between discovering other dark comets in the solar system and Jenny's awesome idea, I think it's got to be correct. Water is the most abundant component of comets in the solar system and likely in extrasolar systems, as well. And if you put a water rich comet in the Oort cloud or eject it into the interstellar medium, you should get amorphous ice with pockets of H2."
Because H2 should form in any ice-rich body exposed to energetic radiation, the researchers suspect that the same mechanism would be at work in sun-approaching comets from the Oort cloud at the outer reaches of the solar system, where comets are irradiated by cosmic rays, much like an interstellar comet would be. Future observations of hydrogen outgassing from long-period comets could be used to test the scenario of H2 formation and entrapment.
Many more interstellar and dark comets should be discovered by the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), allowing astronomers to determine if hydrogen outgassing is common in comets. Seligman has calculated that the survey, which will be conducted at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile and is set to become operational in early 2025, should detect between one and three interstellar comets like 'Oumuamua every year, and likely many more that have a telltale coma, like Borisov.
Bergner was supported by a NASA Hubble Fellowship grant. Seligman was supported by the National Science Foundation (AST-17152) and NASA (80NSSC19K0444, NNX17AL71A).
JOURNAL
Nature
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Computational simulation/modeling
ARTICLE TITLE
Acceleration of 1I/‘Oumuamua from radiolytically produced H2 in H2O ice
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
23-Mar-2023
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