Saturday, August 28, 2021

'I expect there will only be more': RCMP watchdog gets over 70 complaints about Fairy Creek enforcement

Rochelle Baker

Canada's National Observer
The Local Journalism Initiative
Thursday, August 26, 2021

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Old-growth logging protesters on Vancouver Island say RCMP arrest methods have grown increasingly violent in recent weeks.

VICTORIA -- The federal agency that holds RCMP to account has received a total of 73 public complaints associated with enforcement measures at the Fairy Creek old-growth logging blockades in British Columbia, says the legal team representing the activist group.

Counsel for the Rainforest Flying Squad (RFS) - the group behind the protests - received confirmation from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) about the number of complaints received as of Monday, said lawyer Phil Dwyer.

To date, 17 complaints fall under the agency's mandate and will be investigated, Dwyer said Wednesday afternoon.

News of the complaints comes days after videos showing RCMP using pepper spray against Fairy Creek old-growth protesters during a confrontation over the weekend surfaced on the internet.

And as a result, B.C.'s NDP government is taking fire from civil rights advocates while federal counterparts are calling for a public inquiry into police actions.

RCMP tactics and the use of force are increasingly aggressive, according to activists involved in the year-long civil disobedience movement in the Port Renfrew region, said Dwyer, who represents three RFS defendants named in the court injunction filed by Teal-Jones logging company.

The police are not using reasonable force and are reaching beyond the scope of what is required to fulfil their duties to enforce the injunction, he said, adding doing so increases the risks for everyone involved.

“Considering what I've seen in video and from conversations with people on the ground, it's not surprising that this many complaints would have arisen,” Dwyer said.

“And given the fullness of time, I expect there will only be more filed.”

Several online videos detail the confrontation between officers and protesters on a logging road in the region on Saturday.

In one longer video, officers can be seen setting off multiple canisters of pepper spray at close range at a huddle of protesters who had refused to disperse and had locked arms to make their arrests more difficult.

The premier and the public safety minister need to rein in the RCMP who are using unreasonable force against protesters, many of whom are Indigenous on unceded territory with inherent rights to protect the land, said Veronica Martisius, staff counsel with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA).

“The silence from (Premier) John Horgan and (Minister) Mike Farnworth is deafening,” Martisius said, noting the province has contracted the federal force to police municipalities in B.C.

“When RCMP are acting unlawfully, the province should be stepping in,” Martisius said, adding officers still have a responsibility to maintain public safety while enforcing injunctions.

“Police don't have carte blanche to do whatever they want. Their power is limited when it comes to respecting civil liberties and human rights, otherwise we'd be living in a police state.”

The RFS alleges police are using excessive and increasing force when making arrests, as well as operating heavy equipment and chainsaws dangerously close to protesters to extract them from the obstacles designed to frustrate arrests.

One 35-year-old protester was flown by helicopter to hospital in Victoria on Saturday with neck injuries after a forceful arrest, while others have suffered a sprained ankle, a broken rib, or cuts and bruises during arrests, said RFS in a statement.

The protests and protection of old-growth is cropping up as a hot-button issue in the federal election, with the Liberals pledging to do more to protect ancient forests, and members of the federal NDP calling for an investigation into police actions at Fairy Creek.

NDP MP Jack Harris, with the backing of Vancouver Island incumbent candidates Alistair MacGregor and Laurel Collins, called on Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to launch a full and independent investigation into RCMP actions at Fairy Creek.

The violent actions of RCMP at Fairy Creek are unacceptable and only escalate the situation, wrote MacGregor, who is running for re-election in the Cowichan-Malahat-Langford riding, on social media.

“We have written to Minister Blair calling for full federal review of the situation and police actions, and we are committed to more robust and independent civilian oversight of the RCMP,” he tweeted.

On Monday, hundreds of people gathered outside RCMP detachments in Victoria and other municipalities to call for the RCMP to stand down at Fairy Creek.

RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Chris Manseau said protesters failed to follow officers' directions during Saturday's confrontation, which he said left one officer with a concussion after he was knocked over in the scuffle.

“We really need to remember that it's the actions of the protesters that dictate the actions of the police,” Manseau said. “When crowds are failing to follow police direction, one thing does lead to another.

“In order to gain compliance from that large crowd of people â€¦ it took the use of pepper spray, and then the crowd followed police direction after that.”

A lot of the video snippets online do not illustrate the full context of the situation, Manseau said.

“There's lots of examples of peaceful, lawful, and safe protests that are occurring, even after the incident on the weekend,” he said.

The RCMP cannot speak to the number of complaints made to CRCC, as it is an independent body that investigates the federal police force, Manseau said, adding he advises anyone who felt they were wronged or injured to reach out to the commission.

Regardless of any potential public inquiry, RCMP will likely do an internal review of enforcement measures at Fairy Creek, Manseau said.

“With enforcement actions like this, especially one that's so large, I'm sure there will be a review,” he said.

“And there are things to learn from it, and to have better practices in the future. We absolutely support that.”

Police immediately need to respect the limits of their powers and act within the confines of the law when arresting people, said Martisius, but RCMP in the videos are taking heavy-handed measures against non-combative protesters.

“Of course, there are folks who are engaged in civil disobedience, but that doesn't give the right to the RCMP to act violently towards those people,” she said, adding a recent court decision made it clear officers must safely arrest and remove people.

“They still have a duty to protect the public.”
RELATED IMAGES

An old-growth logging protester is suspended from a device while an RCMP officer watches on southern Vancouver Island. (RCMP)

Fashion brands sign new deal on Bangladesh garment workers’ safety

Campaigners and union leaders praise accord, which replaces one agreed after 2013 Rana Plaza fire

A garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

Global development is supported by

Lauren Cochrane
Thu 26 Aug 2021 13.40 BST

Campaigners have hailed a new agreement designed to protect garment workers in Bangladesh, signed by the likes of H&M and Inditex, which owns Zara and Bershka.

The accord replaces another agreement signed by more than 200 international fashion companies after the Rana Plaza factory fire in 2013, in which more than 1,100 people died. For the first time, these companies faced legal action if their health and safety standards were found lacking or if they did not address problems in an agreed time period. More than 38,000 inspections have been carried out since 2013, and nearly 200 factories have lost their contracts owing to poor safety standards.

That agreement is due to expire at the end of August, and the negotiations for the new pact were protracted. Union leaders were concerned that the legally binding elements were being threatened and that improvements in conditions, wages and safety made since 2013 would be undermined, along with campaigns to improve safety in garment factories beyond Bangladesh.

The new agreement, which is managed by the Ready-Made Garments Sustainability Council (RSC), is valid until October 2023. Companies signing up commit to expanding general health and safety for workers beyond fire and building safety, human rights due diligence along supply chains, and making the same commitment to garment workers in at least one other country. Signatories have agreed to meet in six months’ time to discuss which countries, with the aim of making changes within two years.

Campaigners and union leaders praised the deal. Ayesha Barenblat, the chief executive of the ethical fashion advocacy group Remake, told the Business of Fashion: “This, I think, is truly a model of building back better.”

Valter Sanches, the general secretary of IndustriALL Global Union, said: “This international accord is an important victory towards making the textile and garment industry safe and sustainable.”

The full list of companies signing on will be revealed on 1 September.

Bangladesh has the third-largest garment industry after China and Vietnam. In 2019 it was estimated there were about 4,000 factories and 4 million workers, and the industry represented 16% of the country’s GDP, with $34bn worth of exports.

The pandemic has had an effect on the industry. In March 2020 it was reported that $2.8bn worth of orders had been cancelled or paused. According to a survey of factory employers carried out by Pennsylvania State University’s Centre for Global Workers’ Rights, most international brands did not contribute to furlough wages of workers and more than 80% of workers were sent home without pay.

Halifax police evict more people living in tents from city parks

AUGUST 26, 2021 BY ZANE WOODFORD

Tents and emergency shelters are seen on Thursday in the park at the corner of Dublin Street and Chebucto Road, which residents and activists there are now calling People’s Park. — Photo: Zane Woodford

Police have evicted three more people living in tents from parkland in Halifax.

It’s the first action since the forceful eviction of several people living in tents and Halifax Mutual Aid emergency shelters from four parks in Halifax last Wednesday, when dozens of police officers were dispatched to the former Halifax Memorial Library to carry out the city’s plans.

The latest evictions happened Wednesday night, when two Halifax Regional Police officers approached a group of three men camping in two tents on the Halifax Common.

Gayle Collicutt, a housing advocate, arrived at the tent site with a friend at about 8pm to talk to the men and offer to connect them with supports. She said the police arrived soon after, shining flash lights in the tents and demanding to know who owned them. They had papers showing a list of services that aren’t available at night and a list of shelters that are full.

“They didn’t even offer to call the shelters for them, they just told them to have their stuff gone by 11pm,” Collicutt said in an interview Thursday.

“I believe they’re doing this in the evening so that the public and the media don’t see them doing it.”

Colicutt said the men, set up near the corner of North Park and Cogswell streets, told the police they had nowhere to go. The police told them to go to the park at the corner of Dublin Street and Chebucto Road, and one of the men evicted took some of his possessions and went there.

Officially called Meagher Park, it’s become the main site for tents and emergency shelters in the city. Residents and advocates there are calling it People’s Park, and have formed a new group, P.A.D.S. (Permanent, Accessible, Dignified, and Safer) Housing Network, in solidarity with Halifax Mutual Aid, the anonymous group of volunteers building the emergency shelters on city land.

The Halifax Examiner spoke to a few of the residents there on Thursday, including the man evicted from the Common on Wednesday, agreeing not to use their names.

They said they have not been offered hotel stays or any other kind of temporary housing. The municipality and councillors have repeatedly claimed that every occupant of a tent or shelter has been offered temporary housing. The Examiner has yet to speak to a resident who has been offered any kind of temporary housing. One man said he’s actually been trying to find a way to get into a hotel, but he’s still sleeping in a tent because he hasn’t been offered other shelter.

Residents at the park were shaken up after Wednesday’s eviction, and worry it’s a matter of time before that park is targeted by police.

Tari Ajadi speaks for P.A.D.S. Housing Network, and said the park has become the go-to site for people kicked out of others.

“They end up here because we are offering whatever we possibly can with the resources that we have, and the resources that we have are community care and support, donations, neighbours being kind, and a lot of people who are taking their time to be here,” Ajadi said.

“Everyone who can offer support, that’s not the municipality, has offered support. This is not this is not a Haligonian issue. This is an HRM issue, truly.”

A sign at the park at the corner of Dublin Street and Chebucto Road, now dubbed People’s Park. — Photo: Zane Woodford

The site is growing rapidly, and with more tents come more worries. P.A.D.S. has been able to get COVID tests, Narcan spray for overdose prevention, medical supplies, and plenty of food and water. But there are some services it can’t provide.

“The first and most urgent concern is that we don’t have permanent bathroom access here. We don’t have a porta potty, we don’t have anything that’s around that will be safe,” Ajadi said.

Ajadi said they’d fundraise for a porta potty, but it’s not like they can get one delivered to a city park.

Collicutt said the city seems to just be “stockpiling” people at the park, and Ajadi wonders if it’s a tactic: push everyone into one small park, provide no support, and then let the ensuing issues justify the eviction of those residents. The police were already there once, on Friday night for a noise complaint, and the encampment has only grown since then.

A city-sanctioned park could work, Ajadi said, but it needs support and washrooms at the very least.

Halifax Regional Police addressed the latest evictions in a statement on Thursday from acting spokesperson Const. Alicia Joseph.

“We have no intention nor can we prioritize the mass removal of encampments; however, enforcement will continue to take place as necessary on a case by case basis and always starting with engagement and conversation,” Joseph wrote.

“It is based on public safety concerns related to specific locations that we are aware of as well as those we are hearing day to day. Accordingly, we have removed two tents this week from the Halifax Commons as well as we had a conversation with the occupant of a third, who indicated they required more time.”

At the North Common on Thursday afternoon, one Halifax Regional Police officer on a bicycle was patrolling the area, circling the green space. But there were no tents remaining.

Collicutt said the third tent referenced may be one that popped up on Wednesday near the washroom on the North Common, on Cunard Street, but it was gone by the afternoon.

For people working on behalf of the city’s unhoused residents, like Ajadi and Collicutt, the further police action is demoralizing.

“I don’t recognize this city anymore,” Collicutt said.

US achieves laser-fusion record: what it means for nuclear-weapons research

Scientists are hopeful that the National Ignition Facility’s

recent success will advance understanding of

thermonuclear reactions.

Jeff Tollefson

People inside the NIF Target Chamber — The US National Ignition Facility (target chamber shown) is the size of three American football fields.Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s flagship laser facility shattered their own record earlier this month by generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for a fraction of a second — roughly 700 times the generating capacity of the entire US electrical grid at any given moment. News of the breakthrough has revived hopes that the long-troubled National Ignition Facility (NIF) might yet attain its goal of producing more energy than it consumes in a sustained fusion reaction.

UK hatches plan to build world's first fusion power plant

Housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the US$3.5-billion facility wasn’t designed to serve as a power-plant prototype, however, but rather to probe fusion reactions at the heart of thermonuclear weapons. After the United States banned underground nuclear testing at the end of the cold war in 1992, the energy department proposed the NIF as part of a larger science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program, designed to verify the reliability of the country’s nuclear weapons without detonating any of them.

With this month’s laser-fusion breakthrough, scientists are cautiously optimistic that the NIF might live up to its promise, helping physicists to better understand the initiation of nuclear fusion — and thus the detonation of nuclear weapons. “That's really the scientific question for us at the moment,” says Mark Herrmann, Livermore’s deputy director for fundamental weapons physics. “Where can we go? How much further can we go?”

Here Nature looks at the NIF’s long journey, what the advance means for the energy department’s stewardship programme and what lies ahead.

How does the NIF achieve nuclear fusion?

Ten storeys high and spanning the area of three American football fields, the NIF houses an array of optics and mirrors that amplify and split an initial pulse of photons into 192 ultraviolet laser beams, ultimately focusing them onto a target that is smaller than a pencil eraser. The beams hit the target — a gold cylinder — with around 1.9 megajoules of energy in less than 4 billionths of a second, creating temperatures and pressures seen only in stars and thermonuclear bombs.

Faced with this pulse power, the cylinder, which holds a frozen pellet of deuterium and tritium, collapses as the hydrogen isotopes at the pellet’s core heat up, fuse and generate helium nuclei, neutrons and electromagnetic radiation. The goal is to unleash a cascade of particles that leads to more fusion and more particles, thus creating a sustained fusion reaction; by definition, ‘ignition’ occurs when the fusion reaction generates more energy than it consumes. Preliminary results from the experiment on 8 August indicate that fusion reactions generated a record-shattering 70% of the power that went into the experiment — nearly achieving ignition.

The NIF began operations in 2009. Why has it taken so long to (nearly) achieve ignition?

Nobody said it would be easy, but building the NIF proved to be a more complex endeavour than officials originally thought. Construction began in 1997 and ended more than a decade later, several years behind schedule and at least $2.4 billion over budget.

The NIF missed its goal of achieving ignition by 2012; scientists have spent the years since fine-tuning the facility and introducing optimized targets into the reaction chamber. The recent success was achieved after multiple changes to the massive system, including new diagnostics, improved target-fabrication techniques and enhancements to the precision of the lasers.

NIF Target Positioner — The NIF focuses 192 laser beams onto a target, creating temperatures and pressures like those inside thermonuclear bombs.Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Long before the NIF fired its first shot, it was surrounded by controversy. Independent scientists raised questions about both the design and management of the facility. As recently as May 2016, the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a branch of the Department of Energy (DOE) that oversees nuclear weapons and funds the NIF to the tune of around $350 million per year, questioned whether the facility would ever achieve its ignition goal.

But even long-time critics of the facility have acknowledged the recent breakthrough as a significant step forward. Stephen Bodner, a plasma physicist who formerly worked at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, said he is both “surprised and pleased” with the result — assuming it’s reproducible. “I look forward to reading the scientific report that explains it,” he says.

The Livermore team and its collaborators are just beginning to pore over results, but preliminary data suggest an eight-fold increase in energy yield compared with experiments conducted several months ago, and a 25-fold increase compared with the previously reported record, set in 2018. Laboratory officials said they made the announcement about the experiment before peer-reviewed publication because news of the results was already spreading through the fusion community.

If the NIF achieves full ignition, what could the results teach scientists about nuclear weapons?

In theory, the NIF could offer a better understanding of the precise conditions necessary to initiate and sustain a fusion reaction — which is, in a sense, what the facility’s scientists have been working out as they’ve optimized the system over the past 12 years. This question is also at the heart of the stockpile stewardship programme.

The labs that forge distant planets here on Earth

Since 1992, physicists have been building a comprehensive programme to study the US nuclear arsenal with increasingly powerful supercomputers and dozens of other research facilities designed to test everything from nuclear materials and components to explosives. Although the NIF is not detonating miniature bombs, says Herrmann, its experiments could help scientists improve the computer models they use to simulate how weapons will detonate, potentially reducing uncertainties. Other experiments might test how the electronics and other components in a weapon hold up in the face of intense bursts of radiation expected in a hostile war environment.

Many scientists argue that the facility also bolsters confidence in the nation’s weapons stockpile — and wards off external threats — by helping to attract young researchers to the nuclear field and maintaining a broader scientific enterprise. “There is an overall element of showing scientific prowess that is important as well,” says Herrmann.

But is the NIF essential to the US stockpile stewardship programme?

Some critics have questioned whether scientists need the facility to maintain the United States’ nuclear weapons. They say the stewardship programme has already bolstered confidence in the stockpile within the NNSA, and point out that the agency is now proposing to build what are effectively new nuclear weapons, rather than simply maintaining the current cache with minimal changes.

Fuel for world’s largest fusion reactor ITER is set for test run

“That shows either an enormous amount of hubris, or an incredible confidence that you can build a lot of what we need for the next 50 years, even without a functioning NIF,” says Hans Kristensen, who heads the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC.

Herrmann argues that the NIF can still help, though. He says nuclear weapons scientists are constantly extrapolating from limited experimental data as they evaluate their computer simulations. Information gathered from more energetic fusion reactions at the NIF, he says, will allow them to test the models more directly, hopefully reducing uncertainties and making it easier for the NNSA to certify that weapons in the arsenal will detonate if needed, and not before.

So what happens next for the NIF?

The ultimate test — whether the team can replicate its 8 August success — could come as early as October, say laboratory officials. Meanwhile, scientists are rushing to understand and publish their findings. Because the facility is operating at the scientific edge of what is possible, even slight variations in the manufacture of the target capsule or the tuning of the lasers could cause the system to produce more, or less, energy than the earlier experiment, says Herrmann. “We can’t do the exact same target experiment, because we blew the target up,” he says. But with time, he adds, the science team should be able to repeat and build on this success — and push the facility even further.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02338-4

Why Nuclear Fusion Is Still The Holy Grail Of Clean Energy

By Haley Zaremba - Aug 24, 2021,

Just 100 years ago, when English mathematician and astronomer Arthur Eddington suggested that the stars power themselves through a process of merging atoms to create energy, heat, and light, the idea was an unthinkable novelty. Now, in 2021, we’re getting remarkably close to recreating the process of nuclear fusion here on Earth. Over the last century, scientists have been steadily chasing commercial nuclear fusion, ‘the holy grail of clean energy.’ The first direct demonstration of fusion in a lab took place just 12 years after it was conceptualized, at Cambridge University in 1932, followed by the world’s first attempt to build a fusion reactor in 1938. In 1950, Soviet scientists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm propelled the pursuit forward with their development of the tokamak, a fusion device involving massive magnets which is still at the heart of many major fusion pursuits today, including the world’s biggest nuclear fusion experiment ITER.

Since that breakthrough, scientists have been getting closer and closer to achieving nuclear fusion. While fusion has indeed been achieved in labs throughout this timeline, it has always required far more energy than it emits, defeating the purpose of the commercial fusion initiative. If unlocked, commercial nuclear fusion would change life as we know it. It would provide an infinite source of clean energy requiring no fossil fuels and leaving behind no hazardous waste products.

Nuclear fission, the process which powers all of our nuclear energy production now, requires the use of radioactive isotopes to achieve the splitting of atoms, and leaves behind waste products which remain hazardous to human and ecological health for up to tens of thousands of years. Not only does nuclear fusion leave nothing behind, it is many times more powerful. Yet, it has remained elusive despite decades of attempts and considerable investment and collaboration from both public and private entities around the world.

Related: Oil Glut In Asia Worsens

But just this month there was an incredible breakthrough that may indicate that we are getting close. “For an almost imperceptible fraction of a second on Aug. 8, massive lasers at a government facility in Northern California re-created the power of the sun in a tiny hot spot no wider than a human hair,” CNET reported in August. This breakthrough occurred at the National Ignition Facility, where scientists used lasers to set off a fusion reaction that emitted a stunning 10 quadrillion watts of power. Although the experiment lasted for just 100 trillionths of a second, the amount of energy it produced was equal to about “6% of the total energy of all the sunshine striking Earth's surface at any given moment.”

Even more importantly than the stunning power of the reaction, however, was the fact that scientists observed that this hotspot was able to “ ignite a self-sustaining chain reaction.” This means that the fusion caused by the lasers was able to cause additional fusion reactions in a continuous chain of energy production, a breakthrough that lies at the heart of commercially successful nuclear fusion. While this experiment still was unable to produce more energy than went into its production, it marks a monumentally important milestone in the journey to finally creating net energy with human-created nuclear fusion.

"This phenomenal breakthrough brings us tantalizingly close to a demonstration of 'net energy gain' from fusion reactions -- just when the planet needs it," said Arthur Turrell, physicist and nuclear fusion expert. What’s more, scientists and experts are hopeful that the rate of fusion breakthroughs will continue to speed up, and commercial nuclear fusion could be achieved sooner than ever seemed possible before. At a time when it has never been more important or more urgent to find a powerful and affordable means of producing clean energy, commercial nuclear fusion can’t come fast enough.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

Martian cave entrances may offer the perfect radiation shelter for human settlements

Mars is bombarded by a ton of radiation. But cave entrances block most of these dangerous rays.

by Tibi Puiu
August 27, 2021

The entrance of a Martian cavern. Credit: NASA, JPL and University of Arizona.

There are very good reasons why Mars is such a desolate, barren landscape. With no thick atmosphere nor a magnetic field, the Red Planet’s surface is bombarded daily by radiation up to 900 times higher than seen on Earth. However, some places are sheltered. New research has found that cave entrances are shielded from the harmful radiation that normally hits Mars. This may make them ideal as both sites for future settlements and robotic missions meant to scour for signs of alien life.

Despite amazing advances in space exploration in the last decade, if we’re going to take the idea of settling Mars sometime during this century seriously, there are many challenges that need to be overcome. That’s unless we’re content with one-way suicide missions.

There’s no shortage of environmental hazards out to kill any astronaut bold enough to dare set foot on Mars. For one, the planet only has 0.7% of Earth’s sea-level pressure, meaning any human on Mars must wear a full pressure suit or stay barricaded inside a pressure-controlled chamber, otherwise oxygen wouldn’t flow through the bloodstream and the body could swell and bleed out.

Then there’s the issue of radiation. Mars is farther away from the Sun than Earth, receiving roughly 60% of the power per square meter seen on a similar site on Earth. But since Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field to deflect energetic particles, coupled with the paper-thin atmosphere, its surface is exposed to much higher levels of radiation than Earth. Furthermore, besides regular exposure to cosmic rays and solar wind, it receives occasional, lethal radiation blasts due to strong solar flares.

Measurements performed by the Mars Odyssey probe suggest that ongoing radiation levels on Mars are at least 2.5 times higher than what astronauts experience on the International Space Station. That’s about 22 millirads per day, which works out to 8000 millirads (8 rads) per year. For comparison, the people in the U.S. are exposed to roughly 0.62 rads/year on average.

Any attempt to colonize the Red Planet will require measures to ensure radiation exposure is kept to a minimum. Some of the proposed ideas thus far involve habitats built directly into the ground or even above-ground habitats using inflatable modules encased in ceramics.

But a better idea may be to take advantage of the natural shelters already in place. Mars is dotted with deep pits, caves, and lava tube structures across its surface. According to a new study performed by researchers led by Daniel Viúdez-Moreiras at Spain’s National Institute for Aerospace Technology, many of these caverns could offer ample protection to human settlers.

“Caves and their entrances have been proposed as habitable environments and regions that could have preserved evidence of life, mostly due to their natural shielding from the damaging ionizing and non-ionizing radiation present on the surface. However, no studies to date have quantitatively determined the shielding offered by these voids on Mars,” the researchers wrote in the journal Icarus.

The researchers found that the levels of UV radiation inside Martian caverns were, in some cases, ~2% of those values found on the surface.

“Numerical simulations of cave entrances show a reduction even more than two orders of magnitude in UV radiation, both in the maximum instantaneous and cumulative doses, throughout the year and at any location of the planet,” the researchers found.

What’s more, the amount of active radiation is still higher than the minimum required for Earth-like photosynthesis. In other words, cave entrances could shelter both humans and their plant food source. However, it’s unclear whether ionizing radiation — the kind of electromagnetic radiation associated with cancer — is blocked in the same way as UV radiation.

“Ionizing radiation doesn’t present exactly the same behavior as UV radiation,” Viúdez-Moreiras. told New Scientist. “However, it is expected that ionizing radiation will also be strongly attenuated in pit craters and cave skylights.”

Tharsis caves from the MGC3 catalog. Credit: G. Cushing and USGS.

High-resolution surface imaging data recorded over the past couple of decades by instruments like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera system (CTX), together with Mars Odyssey’s thermal emission imaging system (THEMIS), suggest that the Tharsis bulge may be the best region for cave candidates on Mars. More than 1,000 suitable caves have been identified in this region, which also contains three enormous shield volcanoes, Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons.

Tharsis city sounds like an awesome name for the first human settlement on Mars. Remember the name.

Bacterial bloom as the Earth thawed

by Kunio Kaiho, Tohoku University

Around 650 million years ago, the Earth entered into the Marinoan glaciation that saw the entire planet freeze. The "Snowball Earth" impeded the evolution of life. But as it warmed, biotic life began to flourish. A research team from Tohoku University has analyzed rock samples from China to tell us more about this transition.

Some researchers hypothesize that ice sheets enveloped the earth during the Marinoan glaciation (650–535 million years ago) in what is dubbed the "Snowball Earth." The glaciation also impacted the climate and chemical compositions of the oceans, restraining the evolution of early life. Yet, as the earth warmed, and the Ediacaran period dawned, biotic life began to evolve.

A research team from Tohoku University has unveiled more about the evolutionary process of the Marinoan-Ediacaran transition. Using biomarker evidence, they revealed possible photosynthetic activity during the Marinoan glaciation. This was followed by photosynthetic organisms and bacteria entering a period of low productivity. However, as eukaryotes expanded during the early Ediacaran period, they blossomed.

Dr. Kunio Kaiho, who co-authored a paper with Atena Shizuya, said, "Our findings help clarify the evolution of primitive to complex animals in the aftermath of the Snowball Earth." Their paper online was published in the journal Global and Planetary Change on August 8, 2021.

The late Neoproterozoic era (650–530 million years ago) witnessed one of the most severe ice ages in the Earth's 4.6-billion-year history. Researchers believe that ice sheets covered the entire earth since glaciogenic units, such as ice-rafted debris, are distributed globally. Overlaying these glaciogenic formations are cap carbonates. These precipitate under warm conditions and therefore suggest that the glacial environment changed rapidly into a greenhouse environment.

The Snowball Earth hypothesis purports the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration controlled the change from a frozen state to an ice-free state. Ice sheet-covered oceans prevented the dissolution of carbon dioxide into seawater during the Marinoan ice age, meaning greenhouse gas concentration, emitted by volcanic activity, increased gradually. Once the extreme greenhouse effect kicked in, glaciers melted and excess carbon dioxide precipitated on glaciogenic sediments as cap carbonates.

Whilst the Snowball Earth theory explains the wide distributions of glacial formations, it fails to shed light on the survival of living organisms. To counteract this, some researchers argue that sedimentary organic molecules, a molecular clock, and fossils from the late Neoproterozoic era are evidence that primitive eukaryotes such as sponges survived this severe ice age. Alternative models also propose that an ice-free open sea existed during the glaciation and acted as an oasis for marine life

But what is understood is that the Marinoan glaciation and the succeeding extreme climatic transition likely had a marked impact on the biosphere. Shortly after the ice age, the Lantian biota, the earliest-known complex macroscopic multicellular eukaryotes, emerged. The Lantian biota includes macrofossils that are phylogenetically uncertain but morphologically and taxonomically diverse. Meanwhile, pre-Marinoan species have simple body plans with limited taxonomic variety.

Bacteria and eukaryote biomarkers demonstrate that bacteria dominated before the glaciation, whereas steranes/hopanes ratios illustrate that eukaryotes dominated just before it. However, the relationship between the biosphere changes and the Marinoan glaciation is unclear.

In 2011, Kaiho and his team traveled to Three Gorges, China under the guidance of China University of Science's Dr. Jinnan Tong to take sedimentary rock samples from the deeper outcrops of marine sedimentary rocks. From 2015 onwards, Shizuya and Kaiho analyzed the biomarkers of algae, photosynthetic activity, bacteria, and eukaryotes from the rock samples.

They found photosynthetic activity based on n-C17 + n-C19 alkanes for algae and pristane + phytane during the Marinoan glaciation. Hopanes within the early and late carbonate deposition showed photosynthetic organisms and other bacteria entering a state of low productivity before recovering. And steranes from carbonates and mudstones after the cap carbonate deposition from the early Ediacaran period indicated the expansion of eukaryotes. The expansion of eukaryotes corresponded to the Lantian biota being morphologically diverse when compared to pre-Marinoan species.

Kaiho believes we are one step closer to understanding the evolutionary process that occurred before and after Snowball Earth. "The environmental stress of closed ocean environments for the atmosphere followed by high temperatures around 60°C may have produced more complex animals in the aftermath." Their findings show that bacterial recovery preceded eukaryotes' domination.

Kaiho's team is doing further studies to clarify the relationship between climate change and the biosphere in other locations. They are also studying the relationship between atmospheric oxygen increases and animal evolution from the late Cryogenian to early Cambrian (650 to 500 million years ago).

Changes in Earth's orbit enabled the emergence of complex life

More information: Atena Shizuya et al, Marine biomass changes during and after the Neoproterozoic Marinoan global glaciation, Global and Planetary Change (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2021.103610

Provided by Tohoku University

6 mysterious structures hidden beneath the Greenland ice sheet

By Stephanie Pappas

Nearly 2 miles thick in places, the ice sheet hides a landscape of canyons, mountains, fjords and gem-like lakes.

There are many hidden wonders beneath Greenland's ice sheet. (Image credit: Martin Zwick/REDA&CO/Universal Images Group)

Fridtjof Nansen, the leader of the first expedition to cross Greenland, once described what he found in the Arctic as "the great adventure of the ice, deep and pure as infinity." Nansen, who made his journey in 1888, could not have known of the wonders hidden below the icy landscape beneath his skis.

Today, thanks to radar and other technologies, the part of Greenland that sits below its 9,800-foot-thick(3,000 meters) ice sheet is coming into focus. These new tools reveal a complex, invisible landscape that holds clues to the past and future of the Arctic.
The world's longest canyon

3D view of the subglacial canyon, looking northwest from central Greenland. (Image credit: J. Bamber, University Bristol)

The Greenland ice sheet hides the longest canyon in the world.

Discovered in 2013, the canyon stretches 460 miles (740 kilometers) from the highest point in central Greenland to Petermann Glacier on the northwest coast. That's significantly longer than China's 308-mile-long (496 km) Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, the longest canyon on the planet that you can actually see.

The canyon plunges up to 2,600 feet (800 m) deep in places and is 6 miles (10 km) wide. For comparison, the Grand Canyon in Arizona averages about 1 mile (1.6 km) deep and 10 miles (16 km) across.

Parts of the canyon may route meltwater from beneath the ice sheet to the sea. It probably formed before the ice sheet and was once the channel for a mighty river.

Invisible mountains

As ice in Greenland melts at the surface, water carves fissures and reaches the base, where ice meets land. This sub-glacial ice can lubricate a glacier, causing it to flow to the ocean faster and be depleted more quickly. (Image credit: Ashley Cooper via Getty Images)

The canyon isn't the only rugged part of Greenland's under-ice landscape. Decades of mapping the island by ice-penetrating radar (which is usually mounted on airplanes) have revealed rugged mountain ranges and plunging fjords beneath the ice sheet.

A 2017 map of Greenland stripped of its ice shows a bowl-like depression in the center of the island. A circle of coastal mountain ranges rings this depression. The map revealed the topography underlying Greenland's flowing glaciers, which can help scientists predict how fast the glaciers will move in warming conditions and how quickly they will calve icebergs into the ocean.

A primeval lake

Ice seems to go on forever at Humboldt Glacier in northwest Greenland. (Image credit: VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, before Greenland was covered with ice, it was home to a lake the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

Today, the lake is a depression filled with sediment. But it was once filled with water 800 feet (250 m) deep in some places. The lake basin covers 2,700 square miles (7,100 square km) and was fed by at least 18 different streams.

The lake bed could hold valuable clues to the climate of the Arctic in the distant past, though discovering these secrets would require drilling through the 1.1 miles (1.8 km) of ice that now caps the ancient site.

Hidden gems

The blue rivers and splotches are Greenland's surface meltwaters. (Image credit: Andrew Sole/University of Sheffield)

Greenland's ice sheet also hides a landscape of jewel-like lakes filled with crystalline meltwater. There are at least 60 of these small lakes, mostly clustered in northern and eastern Greenland, Stephen Livingstone, a senior lecturer in physical geography at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom and co-researcher of a study into the lakes, Live Science previously reported.

The lakes range in size from 656 feet (200 m) across to 3.7 miles (5.9 km) across. The meltwater in these lakes may flow from the surface of the ice sheet, or it may melt because of friction from the movement of ice or geothermal energy from below.
Evidence of meteor impacts

Crater in Greenland below the ice sheet. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/ Cynthia Starr)

Not all the topography below the ice sheet is of Earthly origin. Scientists have found at least two likely meteor craters buried beneath the ice. Both are in northwest Greenland: One sits below Hiawatha Glacier, while the other is 114 miles (183 km) away from the first. The Hiawatha crater sits under about a half-mile (930 m) of ice, while the second crater is buried under 1.2 miles (2 km) of ice. The second crater is 22 miles (36 km) across, making it the 22nd-largest impact crater ever found on Earth. The first is a bit smaller at 19 miles (31 km) across.

Perfectly preserved fossil plants

Greenland's ice sheet may have disappeared far more recently than once thought, enabling plants and trees to thrive. (Image credit: Joshua Brown/UVM)

An ice core dug up during a Cold War-era attempt at building a nuclear weapons base was rediscovered in a freezer in 2017 and found to hold the perfectly preserved fossils of plants dating to a million years ago.

"The best way to describe them is freeze-dried," Andrew Christ, lead author of a study into the core and a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in the Department of Geology at The University of Vermont in Burlington, told Live Science at the time. "When we pulled these out and put a little water on them, they kind of unfurled, so they looked like they died yesterday."

The core came from northwestern Greenland, and the plants held within may have grown in a boreal forest. Such a forest could only grow in largely ice-free conditions, suggesting that parts of Greenland's ice sheet may be younger than researchers previously believed.

Originally published on Live Science

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