Geologist who discovered oldest water on Earth wins top science award

Research could help advance our search for life on other worlds like Mars

· CBC News · Posted: May 06, 2019 

Barbara Sherwood Lollar is the recipient of the 2019 Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal 

or Science and Engineering for her work on ancient Earth water. (Martin Lipman/NSERC)

Because she studies ancient water on Earth, Barbara Sherwood Lollar is usually looking down, but her work is also making her look to the stars.

Sherwood Lollar, an earth sciences professor at the University of Toronto, has won the prestigious Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering for her work on ancient Earth water and for advancing the search for life on other worlds. The award is handed out each year by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Humans have long wondered if we're alone in the universe. Mars has always been an appealing candidate for extraterrestrial life, but in recent years, scientists have begun to look at moons — specifically, Europa, a moon around Jupiter, and Enceladus, a moon around Saturn

Why the change in direction? The maxim in the search for life has always been: follow the water.

While not identical, both Europa and Enceladus are similar, in that they both have icy crusts under which astronomers believe are large bodies of water. It's also believed Enceladus may have hydrothermal vents, which are areas of heated, mineral-rich water. The moon is even spewing water vapour into space.

Enceladus, a moon around Saturn, sprays water from its underground

 ocean into space. (NASA/JPL)

Sherwood Lollar has been studying ancient water below the Earth's surface in mines on the Canadian Shield and around the world. Determining the chemistry of that water could be used to study moons like Europa and Enceladus.

"One of the major themes of planetary science is that we use the Earth to understand processes that might be going on on other planets," Sherwood Lollar said. "And so the work we do … has direct relevance for what we do when we go out to search for processes on other planets."
Digging deep

In 2016, she and her team of scientists found what was believed to be the oldest water on Earth, estimated to be two billion years old. The discovery earned her NSERC's John C. Polanyi Award.

Probing this deep allows Sherwood Lollar and her team to find out how life could thrive in these conditions. In particular, she wants to know: "What are they living off of?"

Her interest in the subject began when she was finishing high school. Scientists were just beginning to understand the nature of life in some of the deepest parts of the oceans, including around hydrothermal vents, which she found fascinating.

This graphic illustrates how Cassini scientists think water

 interacts with rock at the bottom of the ocean of Saturn's

 icy moon Enceladus, producing hydrogen gas. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Scientists were surprised to discover that some life didn't need the process of photosynthesis to live; that the chemistry of water-rock reactions could provide the energy needed for microbes to survive.

While hydrothermal vents are interesting places to study chemical processes taking place that provide habitability for life, Sherwood Lollar isn't looking there. Instead, she's concentrating on cooler regions like the Canadian Shield. This ancient rock doesn't experience shifting plates that tend to generate heat around hydrothermal vents, yet there is still chemistry taking place in the water that's under the rock.

Her work could help astrobiologists and astrophysicists search for life in cooler places in the solar system, including Mars. Just last year, a team of Italian scientists published a paper that suggested there was a lake below the planet's southern polar ice cap. For many, the question this raised was whether the region was habitable.

"One way of looking at Mars is that it looks like the Canadian Shield … in the sense that it is all ancient, billion-year-old rock on the surface," Sherwood Lollar said. So her work here on Earth will likely be used in the search for life on Mars.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express has used radar signals bounced through 

underground layers of ice to identify a lake of liquid water buried below the planet's south pole. 

(ESA/NASA/JPL/ASI/Univ. Rome)

Sherwood Lollar said she's immensely honoured to receive the Herzberg Medal.

"We use the word humbling, but it really is the only word to describe [it]," she said.

BLOGHydrothermal vents found on Mars raise hope in search for life
Erosion on Mars reveals ice, moves boulders

She looks forward to continuing her work, and to the search for life beyond Earth. And she's happy that we're rethinking how we find that life.

"When we go to the icy planets, the ocean worlds, those places are very, very cold. But we would be wrong to think about them as geologically inactive," she said.

"Anywhere where you've got gradients, between hot and cold — even if it's between cold and colder — you still have the potential for chemistry to be taking place. And this causes us to open our thinking a bit, to think outside the box about the nature of what can sustain habitability."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicole Mortillaro 
Senior Reporter, Science
Nicole has an avid interest in all things science. As an amateur astronomer, Nicole can be found looking up at the night sky appreciating the marvels of our universe. She is the editor of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the author of several books.

2 Indigenous leaders explain why they are on opposing sides of the Trans Mountain debate

By Amanda Connolly National Online Journalist (Politics) Global News


The expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline remains a point of contention for many Canadians.

But there is also division on the issue within one key group of stakeholders in the project — Indigenous Canadians.

READ MORE: Trans Mountain pipeline still top priority for feds despite deadline extension, says transport minister

Over recent weeks, those differences of opinion regarding how — or if — the project should proceed have come under the spotlight, after the B.C. Union of Indian Chiefs issued a letter critical of the plan by the Indian Resource Council of Canada to purchase a 51 per cent stake in the expansion project.

In that letter, Chief Kukpi7 Judy Wilson, secretary-treasurer of the B.C. Union of Indian Chiefs, wrote along with Grand Chief Stewart Phillip that the expansion project is not viable because of opposition to it from other First Nations communities along the proposed route, and also stressed it wasn’t worth the money.

WATCH BELOW: Protesting grandpa climbs tree to stop Trans-Mountain pipeline

“There are good reasons why Kinder Morgan chose to walk away from this project and you should carefully consider them before investing your Nation’s money,” she wrote in the open letter to other First Nations leaders. “We believe that the government has clearly overstated both and their decision to invest in this project was clouded by their short-term political needs.

“We urge you not to make the same mistake and to carefully consider the enormous environmental, social, legal, and political ramifications before committing to this project,” the letter continued, arguing the pipeline could become a “stranded asset” as oil sector giants like Shell, Cononco-Phillips, and Statoil sell off their holdings.

Speaking on the West Block, Wilson reiterated those concerns, arguing that “as long as there is one nation saying no to the pipeline, it cannot be built.”

But Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi said the opposite in an interview with the West Block earlier this year, stressing no one community will have a veto.

WATCH BELOW: No community will have veto over Trans Mountain expansion, Sohi says

Stephen Buffalo, president and CEO of the Indian Resource Council, however, argued that the project and its potential revenues could offer a valuable means of investing in communities that are underfunded by the federal government.

“How we get out of poverty, how we adjust those social issues in our communities, is looking at investments such as this as infrastructure,” he said.

“So when the federal government purchased the TMX [Trans Mountain expansion project], it presented an opportunity — a door — for our First Nations to look at possibly owning the pipeline.”

READ MORE: Jason Kenney cites ‘deep frustration’ as Alberta’s ‘turn off the taps’ law proclaimed

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government purchased the existing Trans Mountain pipeline and associated infrastructure one year ago for $4.5 billion.

That came after Kinder Morgan walked away from its plans to triple the capacity of the pipeline through an expansion.

Fierce opposition has dogged the project since the start, with environmental advocates arguing the risk of a spill along B.C.’s coast is just too great.

And although the expansion was approved federally in 2016, the NDP and Green Party coalition in B.C. has repeatedly taken steps to block the project.

Construction is currently stalled, though, because of a Federal Court injunction last summer that said there was inadequate environmental assessment of the marine impacts of the project and not enough Indigenous consultation.

WATCH BELOW: New Alberta premier talks about “turning off the taps” for B.C.’s gas supply

While the additional environmental assessment has since wrapped up, renewed consultation with the 117 Indigenous communities along the pipeline route continues.

Buffalo said he trusts the federal government under Trudeau as a partner in the project and that things in Indigenous communities cannot continue as they are.

“We need to find balance between economic development and environmental conservation. You look around this area,” said Buffalo, who is a member of the Samson Cree Nation of central Alberta and whose organization is based on the Tsuu T’ina Nation in southwestern Alberta.

“Look at the water. You know that that’s paramount for First Nations and that’s for everyone. But in the same sense, we can’t continue to live in the conditions that our communities are in.”

The federal government last month pushed its deadline for making a decision on the future of the project.

The new date for a decision is June 18.


© 2019 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Fed flags high U.S. business debt, asset prices in financial report

“With financial volatility easing since the end of last year, the Federal Reserve Board’s Financial Stability Report suggests stretched asset valuations and risky corporate debt merit continued vigilance against a backdrop of low-to- moderate vulnerabilities in the household and banking sectors,” Brainard said in an emailed statement.

The ratio of debt to assets among publicly traded, nonfinancial firms is near a 20-year high, the Fed noted, and the share of new loans going to the most indebted companies is near peaks reached in 2014 and just before the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis.

While the Fed sees the system overall as healthy, the levels of corporate debt stand out, said Fed Governor Lael Brainard.

“With financial volatility easing since the end of last year, the Federal Reserve Board’s Financial Stability Report suggests stretched asset valuations and risky corporate debt merit continued vigilance against a backdrop of low-to- moderate vulnerabilities in the household and banking sectors,” Brainard said in an emailed statement.

The Fed report is the central bank’s latest take on a financial system that went full circle in a matter of months, along the way prompting President Donald Trump to take aim at Fed policy and demand lower interest rates. After stock markets hit record highs early last fall, they plummeted by nearly 20 percent by year’s end, and investors began demanding higher interest rates to hold the bonds of weaker corporations.

Now, stocks are back near their records and by some measures prices are high, the Fed said - the expected future price-to- earnings ratio for the S&P 500 is above its 30-year median, though well below the levels hit during the 1990s tech bubble.

Corporate credit spreads have narrowed, again focusing attention on whether investors, markets and households are taking too muted a view of economic risks.

REASON FOR CAUTION

While not one of the Fed’s explicit mandates, financial stability issues are weighed as part of its policy discussions, and can shape the outcome. In the current environment, those issues provide more reason for the Fed to discount calls from the White House or elsewhere to cut rates, a step that could make riskier assets even more attractive by reducing the returns offered by safer investments like U.S. Treasury bonds.

As in the last edition of its now twice-yearly report on the financial sector, the Fed cited the rapid growth of business debt and leveraged lending to corporations as a source of possible concern, noting that it could leave weaker companies stressed if the economy softens. Business debt has grown faster than the overall economy for a decade, the Fed noted, and “the elevated level of debt could leave the business sector vulnerable to a downturn in economic activity or a tightening in financial conditions.”

Overall debt however, including that of households, has remained in line with the size of the economy.

Among the more immediate risks cited in talks with outside contacts, the Fed noted, trade tensions and tariffs were the “preeminent” potential problem, along with slowing growth globally, political risks surrounding “Brexit,” and uncertainty around Fed policy as well.

Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Andrea Ricci

 THE FACT THAT OVERALL DEBT IS IN LINE WITH THE SIZE OF THE ECONOMY MEANS IGNORE THE DOOMSAYERS WHO TELL US OUR HOUSEHOLD DEBT IS A TERRIBLE BURDEN TO BE CLEANED UP QUICK (PS YOU CAN'T)

IT IS TRUE BUT IT IS WHAT KEEPS CAPITALISM FUNCTIONING!!!

WHICH CAME FIRST DEBT OR CREDIT

DEBT OF COURSE

The greatest irony for the austerity crowd who constantly call for cuts, cuts to services and cuts to taxes is they like to blame debt (your mortgage) and deficits, (credit card debt) for the need to give them tax breaks and cut public services so they can be contracted out to these same privateers, as David Gabler showed in his work 5000 years of debt

Credit is the result of debt, debt begins with indentured servitude (not slavery) and thus the need for credit.  Capitalism: in, with, for and by debt Capitalism, nature, socialism  Anitra Nelson

Debt is the bond market on Wall St. It is the bonds that make the real money not stocks, the bonds are the debt the business owes to bond holders who no matter what always get paid first, last and always. See the invaluable Wall Street. How it works and for whom. Doug Henwood. Paperback originally published in 1998 by verso (New. York & London). Published on the web     

     

Workers and their pensions are sacrificed but not bondholders. For they own the company. As we have seen clearly repeated over and over again in Canada since the Nortel debacle

An Overview Of The Demise Of Nortel Networks And Key Lessons...

Key dates in Nortel Networks' history

Allthat is solid melts into Air…..

Women work inside a Northern Electric Co. Ltd. (NORTEL)factory in Montreal, Que. 

during the First World War. (Library and Archives Canada/Canadian Press)

Gun control takes center stage in 2020 Democratic presidential race

PARKLAND STUDENTS

FOR EUROPE'S MILLENNIALS IT IS CLIMATE CHANGE THAT THREATENS THEM WITH EXTINCTION IN THE USA IT'S GUNS (EP)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Cory Booker on Monday released a sweeping plan to curb gun violence by creating a national licensing program and repealing a law that gives gun manufacturers legal immunity, becoming the latest Democrat in the 2020 presidential race to make gun control measures a feature of their campaign.

In the past, Democrats have feared that supporting gun restrictions could cost them the backing of working-class, swing voters - the group widely credited with tipping the 2016 presidential contest to Republican Donald Trump.

After dozens of mass shootings in recent years, however, including at schools like the February 2018 massacre in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead, curbing gun violence has become a component of the Democratic policy platform embraced by congressional and presidential candidates.

“In my community, kids fear fireworks on the Fourth of July because they sound like gunshots,” Booker said of his hometown of Newark, New Jersey, in a news release. “In communities across the country, from Newark to Charlotte, from San Diego to Chicago, and everywhere in between, Americans are being killed and families are being torn apart. We must do better. We need to do better.”

Booker’s plan would also ban assault weapons; allow the Consumer Product Safety Commission to regulate gun manufacturers; require microstamping technology be incorporated into new models of semi-automatic handguns; calls for universal background checks for gun sales; and close the “boyfriend loophole” that allows dating partners to purchase firearms after being convicted of abuse or under a restraining order. Current and former spouses convicted of abuse or under a restraining order are prohibited from purchasing a firearm.

Most but not all components of Booker’s plan would require approval of the U.S. Congress. Democrats currently control the House of Representatives and Republicans the Senate, where gun safety legislation would likely meet intense pushback.

‘THE CENTER HAS SHIFTED’

“Today is more proof that the center has shifted on gun control,” Igor Volsky, founder of Guns Down America Action Fund, said in a statement. “Senator Booker has clearly listened to and heard from the majority of Americans that are crying out for a future with fewer guns. Fewer guns means safer communities.”

Senator Kamala Harris, another 2020 contender, said last month that she too would move quickly to curb gun violence if elected to the White House.

Harris said she would give Congress 100 days to pass gun-control legislation, such as a universal background checks bill or a renewal of the ban on assault weapons, before using presidential executive power to act on the issue.

Harris said she would use executive power to require sellers of five or more weapons a year to run background checks for all gun sales; revoke the license of gun manufacturers and dealers who break the law; reverse a move by Trump to redefine “fugitive from justice” that allowed those with outstanding arrest warrants to buy guns; and close the boyfriend loophole.

An assault weapons ban was enacted in 1994 during Bill Clinton’s presidency. It was among the reasons cited when Democrats lost congressional seats in the 1994 midterm elections. The ban expired in 2004.

In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry did not make gun control a focus of his campaign and was photographed with a weapon on a hunting trip. Former President Barack Obama did not make guns a focus of his 2008 or 2012 campaigns. Hillary Clinton supported gun control measures during her 2016 campaign but did not emphasize them.

But gun-control advocates say the Parkland shooting and many others, including the Las Vegas concert shooting in 2017 that left 58 dead and hundreds more wounded, and another at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub in 2016 when 49 were killed have shifted public opinion on the issue.

Reuters/Ipsos polling in Feb. 2019 showed that 58 percent of Americans support policies that would make it more difficult to own a gun. About 69 percent said they strongly favored prohibiting individuals with a history of mental illness from buying a firearm. About 61 percent strongly or somewhat favored banning online sales of ammunition.

Supporting gun control measures did not hinder Democrats during the 2018 midterm congressional elections. Nearly 80 percent of the 62 newly elected Democrats included the issue in their campaign platforms. A Reuters analysis found the percentage far outstripped the proportion of Democratic candidates who did so during 2016 congressional elections.

After Democrats regained control of the House, they passed in March a universal background checks bill, the first major gun control legislation since the 1994 ban on assault weapons.

It was not taken up by the Republican-controlled Senate and Trump has threatened to veto it should it reach his desk.

Reporting By Amanda Becker; editing by Bill Berkrot