THE ORIGINAL RED LIGHT DISTRICT

Large Roman fort built by Caligula discovered near Amsterdam

Fortified camp for thousands of soldiers thought to have been used by Emperor Claudius during conquest of Britain in AD43

An illustration of the first Roman fort in Velsen. Archaeological evidence was first uncovered in 1945 by schoolchildren who found shards of pottery in an abandoned German anti-tank trench. 

Photograph: Graham Sumner


Daniel Boffey in Brussels
Sun 26 Dec 2021 

A large Roman fort believed to have played a key role in the successful invasion of Britain in AD43 has been discovered on the Dutch coast.

A Roman legion of “several thousand” battle-ready soldiers was stationed in Velsen, 20 miles from Amsterdam, on the banks of the Oer-IJ, a tributary of the Rhine, research suggests.

Dr Arjen Bosman, the archaeologist behind the findings, said the evidence pointed to Velsen, or Flevum in Latin, having been the empire’s most northernly castra (fortress) built to keep a Germanic tribe, known as the Chauci, at bay as the invading Roman forces prepared to cross from Boulogne in France to England’s southern beaches.

The fortified camp appears to have been established by Emperor Caligula (AD12 to AD41) in preparation for his failed attempt to take Britannia in about AD40, but was then successfully developed and exploited by his successor, Claudius, for his own invasion in AD43.

Bosman said: “We know for sure Caligula was in the Netherlands as there are markings on wooden wine barrels with the initials of the emperor burnt in, suggesting that these came from the imperial court.

“What Caligula came to do were the preparations for invading England – to have the same kind of military achievement as Julius Caesar – but to invade and remain there. He couldn’t finish the job as he was killed in AD41 and Claudius took over where he left off in AD43.

Roman emperor Caligula is thought to have established the fort at Velsen. 

Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

“We have found wooden planks underneath the watchtower, or the gate of the fort, and this is the phase just before the invasion of England. The wooden plank has been dated in the winter of AD42/43. That is a lovely date. I jumped in the air when I heard it.”

Claudius’s invading forces, untouched by the Germanic tribes, made their landing in Kent and by the summer of AD43 the emperor was confident enough to travel to Britain, entering Camulodunum (Colchester) in triumph to receive the submission of 12 chieftains.

Within three years, the Romans had claimed the whole of Britain as part of their empire.

Bosman said: “The main force came from Boulogne and Calais, but the northern flank of that attack had to be covered and it was covered by the fort in Velsen. The Germanic threat comes up in Roman literature several times.

“It was an early warning system to the troops in France. It didn’t matter what the Germanic tribes put in the field as there was a legion there.”

The first evidence of a Roman fort in Velsen, North Holland, had been uncovered in 1945 by schoolchildren who found shards of pottery in an abandoned German anti-tank trench.

Research was undertaken in the 1950s during the building of the Velsertunnel, under the Nordzeekanaal, and archaeological excavations took place in the 1960s and 70s.

In 1997, Bosman’s discovery of Roman ditches in three places, and a wall and a gate were thought sufficient evidence for the area to become a state protected archaeological site.

But at this stage the Velsen camp, identified as having been used between AD39 and AD47, was thought to have been small.

This theory was complemented by the discovery in 1972 of an earlier fort, known as Velsen 1, which is believed to have been in operation from AD15 to AD30. A thoroughgoing excavation of that site found it had been abandoned following the revolt of the Frisians, the Germanic ethnic group indigenous to the coastal regions of the Netherlands. Archaeologists discovered human remains in some former wells, a tactic used by retreating Romans to poison the waters.

The existence of the two forts within a few hundred metres of each other had led researchers to believe for decades that they were both likely to have been mere castellum, minor military camps of just one or two hectares.

It was only in November, through piecing together features of the later Veslen fort that were noted in the 1960s and 70s, but not recognised at the time as Roman, and taking into account his own archaeological findings over the last quarter of a century, that a new understanding was reached.

“It is not one or two hectares like the first fort in Velsen, but at least 11 hectares,” Bosman said. “We always thought it was the same size but that is not true. It was a legionary fortress and that’s something completely different.”

Bosman added: “Up to this year I wondered about the number of finds at Velsen 2, a lot of military material, a lot of weapons, long daggers, javelins, far more than we found on Velsen 1.

“And we know there was a battle at Velsen 1, and on a battlefield you find weapons. The number of weapons at Velsen 2 can only be explained in a legionary context. Several thousand men were occupying this fort.

“At 11 hectares, this would not be a complete fort for a full legion of 5,000 to 6,000 men but we don’t where it ends in the north and so it could have been larger.”

The Velsen 2 fort was abandoned in AD47 after Claudius ordered all his troops to retreat behind the Rhine. Roman rule of Britain ended around AD410 as the empire began to collapse in response to internal fighting and the ever-growing threats from Germanic tribes.

Do Auroras Make Sounds We Can Hear? 

The True Answer Is Surprisingly Complicated


(Swen_Stroop/Getty Images)

FIONA AMERY, THE CONVERSATION
26 DECEMBER 2021

It's a question that has puzzled observers for centuries: do the fantastic green and crimson light displays of the aurora borealis produce any discernible sound?

Conjured by the interaction of solar particles with gas molecules in Earth's atmosphere, the aurora generally occurs near Earth's poles, where the magnetic field is strongest. Reports of the aurora making a noise, however, are rare – and were historically dismissed by scientists.

But a Finnish study in 2016 claimed to have finally confirmed that the northern lights really do produce sound audible to the human ear. A recording made by one of the researchers involved in the study even claimed to have captured the sound made by the captivating lights 70 metres above ground level.

Still, the mechanism behind the sound remains somewhat mysterious, as are the conditions that must be met for the sound to be heard.

My recent research takes a look over historic reports of auroral sound to understand the methods of investigating this elusive phenomenon and the process of establishing whether reported sounds were objective, illusory of imaginary.
Historic claims

Auroral noise was the subject of particularly lively debate in the first decades of the 20th century, when accounts from settlements across northern latitudes reported that sound sometimes accompanied the mesmerizing light displays in their skies.

Witnesses told of a quiet, almost imperceptible crackling, whooshing or whizzing noise during particularly violent northern lights displays. In the early 1930s, for instance, personal testimonies started flooding into The Shetland News, the weekly newspaper of the subarctic Shetland Islands, likening the sound of the northern lights to "rustling silk" or "two planks meeting flat ways".

These tales were corroborated by similar testimony from northern Canada and Norway. Yet the scientific community was less than convinced, especially considering very few western explorers claimed to have heard the elusive noises themselves.

(Nasjonalbiblioteket, Norway)

Above: An early photograph of the aurora, captured in 1930 in Finnmark, Norway.

The credibility of auroral noise reports from this time was intimately tied to altitude measurements of the northern lights. It was considered that only those displays that descended low into the Earth's atmosphere would be able to transmit sound which could be heard by the human ear.

The problem here was that results recorded during the Second International Polar Year of 1932-3 found aurorae most commonly took place 100km above Earth, and very rarely below 80km. This suggested it would be impossible for discernible sound from the lights to be transmitted to the Earth's surface.

Auditory illusions?

Given these findings, eminent physicists and meteorologists remained skeptical, dismissing accounts of auroral sound and very low aurorae as folkloric stories or auditory illusions.

Sir Oliver Lodge, the British physicist involved in the development of radio technology, commented that auroral sound might be a psychological phenomenon due to the vividness of the aurora's appearance – just as meteors sometimes conjure a whooshing sound in the brain. Similarly, the meteorologist George Clark Simpson argued that the appearance of low aurorae was likely an optical illusion caused by the interference of low clouds.

Nevertheless, the leading auroral scientist of the 20th century, Carl Størmer, published accounts written by two of his assistants who claimed to have heard the aurora, adding some legitimacy to the large volume of personal reports.

Størmer's assistant Hans Jelstrup said he had heard a "very curious faint whistling sound, distinctly undulatory, which seemed to follow exactly the vibrations of the aurora", while Mr Tjönn experienced a sound like "burning grass or spray". As convincing as these two last testimonies may have been, they still didn't propose a mechanism by which auroral sound could operate.

Sound and light

The answer to this enduring mystery which has subsequently garnered the most support was first tentatively suggested in 1923 by Clarence Chant, a well-known Canadian astronomer. He argued that the motion of the northern lights alters Earth's magnetic field, inducing changes in the electrification of the atmosphere, even at a significant distance.

This electrification produces a crackling sound much closer to Earth's surface when it meets objects on the ground, much like the sound of static. This could take place on the observer's clothes or spectacles, or possibly in surrounding objects including fir trees or the cladding of buildings.

Chant's theory correlates well with many accounts of auroral sound, and is also supported by occasional reports of the smell of ozone – which reportedly carries a metallic odor similar to an electrical spark – during northern lights displays.

Yet Chant's paper went largely unnoticed in the 1920s, only receiving recognition in the 1970s when two auroral physicists revisited the historical evidence. Chant's theory is largely accepted by scientists today, although there's still debate as to how exactly the mechanism for producing the sound operates.

What is clear is that the aurora does, on rare occasions, make sounds audible to the human ear. The eerie reports of crackling, whizzing and buzzing noises accompanying the lights describe an objective audible experience – not something illusory or imagined.

Sampling the sound

If you want to hear the northern lights for yourself, you may have to spend a considerable amount of time in the Polar regions, considering the aural phenomenon only presents itself in 5 percent of violent auroral displays. It's also most commonly heard on the top of mountains, surrounded by only a few buildings – so it's not an especially accessible experience.

In recent years, the sound of the aurora has nonetheless been explored for its aesthetic value, inspiring musical compositions and laying the foundation for novel ways of interacting with its electromagnetic signals.

The Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds has used journal extracts from the American explorer Charles Hall and the Norwegian statesman Fridjtof Nansen, both of whom claimed to have heard the northern lights, in his music. His composition, Northern Lights, interweaves these reports with the only known Latvian folksong recounting the auroral sound phenomenon, sung by a tenor solo.

Or you can also listen to the radio signals of the northern lights at home. In 2020, a BBC 3 radio program remapped very low frequency radio recordings of the aurora onto the audible spectrum.

Although not the same as perceiving audible noises produced by the the northern lights in person on a snowy mountaintop, these radio frequencies give an awesome sense of the aurora's transitory, fleeting and dynamic nature.

Fiona Amery, PhD Candidate in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

BLASPHEMY
Listen To Gollum Sing The Iconic Leonard Cohen Song “Hallelujah”

A Day Ago

by Joey Paur

Ian Walters is a 6th grade history and science teacher in Oakland, California, and he does a great job impersonating Gollum’s voice from The Lord of the Rings! He is now using his talent to help celebrate Christmas by singing a rather “precious” cover of the iconic Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah”. He also changed some things up in the song to make references to The Lord of the Rings. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Because why not? Merry Christmas ya filthy hobbitses

These Calgary hobbyists polish fossils and make jewelry out of rocks — and their numbers are doubling

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Rock and lapidary stores have been busy with a resurgence

in interest

Dan McGarvey · CBC News · Posted: Dec 25, 2021 

Polished rocks for sale at a northeast Calgary rock and lapidary store. The store has seen a jump in interest in rock cutting and polishing during the pandemic. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)

The Calgary Rock and Lapidary Club started way back in 1959 as people took advantage of Alberta's proximity to the Rocky Mountains and some of the world's richest fossil-hunting grounds.

It was still the Wild West when it came to treasure hunting for rocks and fossils, before laws to protect and preserve fossils came into effect in the 1970s.

Not long after the club formed, a young David Gill was introduced to the world of lapidary by an older boy at school. 

Lapidary involves finding, cutting and polishing rocks and fossils. It's something Gill has been doing for the last 60 years.

David Gill was introduced to the hobby as a boy and it soon turned into a lifetime hobby. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)

"In the mountains, I would pick up rocks and I was interested. Then in Grade 7, an older student took me under his wing and showed me his rock saw and sanders in his basement," said Gill. "That would have been in 1960."

Gill soon got some of his own equipment and never looked back. Now 60 years later, he's still picking up rocks and putting them in his pocket. 

"It can be a lifelong hobby," he said.

Gill makes bowls out of ultra-smooth, polished beach rocks and other pieces of jewelry for family members, including his wife and daughter. Some projects involve rocks he started polishing decades ago. 

Gill’s lapidary collection spans six decades. He still polishes rocks and makes jewelry today. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)

"It's fascinating what's inside these rocks when you cut them and polish them," said Gill. "But you've got to pick and choose if you want it to be interesting, like a fossilized piece of wood or a mineral."

The hobby has seen a boom of sorts during the pandemic with wannabe rock hounds lining up to buy some entry level equipment and give it a try.

"With COVID, people have found an opportunity to stay at home more and turn to hobbies more," said Erik Gregson, who owns Green's Rock & Lapidary store.

"What we've seen at our shop is a real resurgence and an interest in rocks," said Gregson.

He says the biggest jump in sales has been rock tumbling equipment, where a small machine tumbles a load of small rocks producing shiny and colourful stones.

"At the store, we saw a doubling last year and a doubling again this year on top of last year. The interest is unbelievable. If we can find some positives out of COVID, this would be one," said Gregson.

Erik Gregson owns Green’s Rock & Lapidary store in Calgary and says he’s seen a big boom in interest in rock tumbling. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)

Gregson says he gets a lot grandparents through the doors buying equipment for grandkids, giving them a screen-free activity that they can do together.

The rock tumbling world is also alive and well on social media, with video channels, tutorials and Facebook groups to help with the learning curve and make it easier than ever to get into the hobby.

As well as cutting and polishing rocks, more people are trying their hand at making their own jewelry out of rocks.

It costs $5 to drop by the club and use their machines and jewelry workshop.

"People turn those stones into little pieces of jewelry. They'll add little metal pieces on to make a pendant," said Gregson. "It's a lifetime of opportunity and learning."

The club has been running since the 1950s. Its main source of funding comes from an annual show that hasn’t been able to go ahead for the past two years due to COVID. (Dan McGarvey/CBC)

The rock club's studio space and club activities are mainly funded through running its annual Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show, which usually attracts thousands of attendees and hundreds of vendors.

The non-profit organization was also boosted financially by a former senior member who died and donated some money to the club, allowing the group to rent a long-term space in the city's northeast.

The rock show hasn't been held the past couple of years but the club is hoping it will be able to go ahead again in 2022, with many newer hobbyists getting the chance to check it out for the first time.

"They'll be amazed at how far this hobby can go," said Gregson. 

"You could spend a lifetime learning."

Japan’s whaling town struggles to keep 400 years of tradition alive

The resumption of killing whales for profit for the first time in over 30 years is offering little cause for celebration

Fisheries workers butcher a Baird's beaked whale in Wada. Photograph: Justin McCurry

Justin McCurry in Wada
Sun 26 Dec 2021 

You don’t have to look far to find evidence of Wada’s centuries-old connection to whaling. Visitors to the town on Japan’s Pacific coast are greeted by a replica skeleton of a blue whale before entering a museum devoted to the behemoths of the ocean.

At a local restaurant, diners eat deep-fried whale cutlet and buy cetacean-themed gifts at a neighbouring gift shop. At the edge of the water stands a wooden deck where harpooned whales are butchered before being sold to wholesalers and restaurants.

In 2019, when Japan withdrew from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) – the body that had effectively banned whaling in the late 1980s – Wada rejoiced at the prospect of a return to commercial hunting and at a popular reconnection with a source of food that had sustained coastal communities for 400 years.
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But here and in other whaling towns in Japan, the resumption of killing whales for profit for the first time in more than three decades has offered little cause for celebration.

While condemnation from conservation groups has eased in the three years since Japan’s fleet exited the Antarctic, the country’s whalers face other obstacles: ageing fishermen and vessels, mysterious changes in cetacean behaviour possibly linked to climate change, and a stubborn refusal among Japanese people to eat enough whale meat to make killing them a profitable venture.

While Japan skirted the IWC ban by conducting limited “scientific” hunts in the Antarctic, it had long argued that only a return to commercial whaling would guarantee a stable supply of affordable meat and ignite a revival in consumption.

“But all the evidence points in the opposite direction,” says Patrick Ramage, senior director for outreach and programme collaboration at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “Whether pursued on the high seas under the pretext of science or in coastal waters in pursuit of profit, Japan’s commercial whaling is an economic loser, kept afloat only by government subsidies.”

Ramage believes the future of Japan’s ageing whaling towns rests on embracing ecotourism. “Whale-watching is making growing contributions to local economies around the world, particularly in locations previously involved in whaling. It’s better to have tourists paying to see whales than taxpayers paying to keep whaling on life support.”

Deep-fried whale meat cutlets at a restaurant in Wada. Photograph: Justin McCurry

Barely 300 people in Japan are directly connected to whaling, while whale made up only about 0.1% of the country’s total meat consumption in 2016, according to government data. About 4-5,000 tonnes of whale meat enter the domestic market every year – the equivalent in volume of about half an apple for every person.

But Yoshinori Shoji, the president of the Gaibo Hogei, a whaling company in Wada, said abandoning coastal hunting was unthinkable. “I know it is controversial in other parts of the world, but for us, whales are simply a source of food,” said Shoji, whose company has been processing whale meat for more than 70 years.

To keep the town’s whaling culture alive, whale meat is served twice a year at local primary schools and children are invited to watch workers flense Baird’s beaked whales after they have been harpooned and dragged ashore, where they are left intact for 18 hours to allow their meat to mature.

“Why shouldn’t we eat whale meat?” says Shoji. “Humans have always eaten local wildlife. It depends on the surrounding environment. My job is to give people the chance to eat and appreciate locally caught whale meat. We’re not forcing anyone to eat it.”

He displays hunks of frozen meat and blubber, some of which is sent to Japan’s north-east coast where it is made into soup. On the roof of his factory, slices of Baird’s beaked whale blacken beneath the winter sun before being sold as a local delicacy reminiscent of beef jerky.


Shell to go ahead with seismic tests in whale breeding grounds after court win

But Wada’s 30 whale-industry employees are struggling. During last year’s April-October season, they caught just nine whales and have harpooned the same number so far this year. Shoji believes warmer seas may have sent the whales farther north, while more frequent powerful typhoons have confined the town’s two whaling boats to port for days on end.

Japan’s commercial whaling industry would grind to a halt without government subsidies of ¥5.1bn (£.033bn) a year, says Junko Sakuma, a freelance journalist and expert on Japan’s whaling economy.

“The government has said that it can’t continue to subside what is supposed to be a commercial concern for ever,” she says. “When Japan left the IWC, fisheries officials thought they would be able to catch as many whales as they needed to sustain the industry, but in fact it has shrunk. Japanese whaling will continue, but in a much smaller form.”

Paradoxically, the end of “scientific” whaling and the Japanese fleet’s annual clashes with the anti-whaling organisation Sea Shepherd may be hastening whaling’s decline. “In the past, Japanese people were defensive because they didn’t like white people telling them not to eat whale meat,” Sakuma says. “But whaling is barely mentioned these days by anti-whaling countries like Australia, Britain and the US. Now Japanese people have nothing to rebel against, so they could end up just forgetting about whale meat.”

Canada’s first chess prodigy and grandmaster still commands international respect

CECIL ROSNER

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Abe Yanofsky v. Alberto Dulanto, Argentina 1939 (See diagram)

Fans of The Queen’s Gambit know that chess prodigies are possible, but many may not realize that Canada had its very own prodigy nearly a century ago.

Abe Yanofsky of Winnipeg started winning national events at 11, and 80 years ago he won the first of his eight Canadian championship titles.

How does White avoid losing his Queen or getting checkmated?THE GLOBE AND MAIL

It was hardly a surprise, because he had already notched some significant international successes. He represented Canada at the Buenos Aires Olympiad when he was 14, winning the prize for best performance on the second board.

Even the reigning world champion took note of the young Canadian’s play, especially his game against the Peruvian champion which is featured in today’s diagram. The game was included in a compilation of chess highlights of the 20th century.

Yanofsky went on to become the first Grandmaster in Canadian history, and arguably the strongest player Canada has ever produced. While studying in London, he also managed to become British champion.

But chess wasn’t Yanofsky’s only pursuit. He was a practising lawyer, and an elected official. He became mayor of the Winnipeg suburb of West Kildonan, and served for many years on Winnipeg city council.

He died in 2000 at the age of 74.

Answer:

White uncorked 22.Rxe6+ and after Kxe6 23.Re1+ Kd6 24.Qf6+ Kc5 25.Re5+ Kc4 and White can force mate.

Check mates: how chess saved my mental wellbeing

‘At the start of that year I was playing several games a week; 10 months later, I was playing at least three or four times a day’: Sam Parker with his chess set. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

Sam Parker’s grandfather taught him to love chess, a joy he rediscovered in the pandemic, along with a deeper understanding of its positive effects on mental and emotional health

Sam Parker
Sun 26 Dec 2021 11.30 GMT

My grandfather was a man with a tut as loud as a dropped plate. He’d deploy it whenever you fell short in some way: a length of the pool finished too slowly; a garden bed not weeded well enough; a portion of vegetables left unfinished. But he softened over chess, a game he bequeathed to me over long sessions, played in our pyjamas by the fireplace. Across the board, his sternness would melt into a kind of pensive calm, the admonishments replaced with instructions and then a small smile when he saw the move that would win the game and send me to bed.

He played chess all his life and was chairman of his local club right up until he entered the retirement home where he died, but I didn’t follow his example myself until some 25 years later. By then it was too late to thank him.

The moment came at around 6pm on New Year’s Day 2021. Lying alone on my living room carpet, watching the first rain drops of the year drizzle on to the window, all the adrenaline of the past 12 months seemed to evaporate, leaving behind an overwhelming sense of dread. Like everyone else, I’d made it to the end of 2020 only to find Covid wasn’t going anywhere, and now the thought of resuming what passed for “real life” towered over me like the biggest pile of dirty dishes – which, incidentally, was also waiting in the kitchen.

Desperate for a distraction, I opened my laptop and logged into chess.com for the first time in years. With a heavy, hopeless sigh, I made the move drilled into me as my tiny primary school’s fourth best player, who was roundly beaten in the junior club semi-finals by Jason Wood in front of my father in 1992 – king’s pawn to E4.

I was not alone. People all around the world were discovering chess. In the year after March 2020, chess.com picked up over 11 million new users, many no doubt inspired by Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit. On live streaming apps, such as Twitch, blossoming communities of young chess players were revelling in the strange, shared language with which you can analyse and debate games. At a time of existential worry, something about a 1,500-year-old boardgame was drawing people in.

King of the castle: ‘I was not alone. People all around the world were discovering chess.’ 

Photograph: Maurizio Di Iorio/The Observer

One silver lining of Covid was the rapid development in our conversation about mental health. In Britain, this was something at least partially ignited by the sobering National Office of Statistics report in 2014 which named suicide, for the first time, as the number one killer of men under 50. The conversation kept simmering in subsequent years, with moments such as #MeToo, which made us reconsider the way victims process trauma, and then Donald Trump, a real-time experiment in untreated narcissism during which the game “would you go back in a time machine and kill baby Hitler” became replaced by “would you go back in a time machine and give baby Trump a hug”.

But the pandemic was the moment for many of us when mental health went from the political to the abruptly personal. Family c onversations about my (other) grandfather – alive at the time, but on his own when lockdown started – changed quickly from keeping him physically well to how we could prevent him becoming depressed. Managers and HR departments, fearful of losing unseen staff to long-term stress, quickly learned the language of self-care. (“We just had an online seminar,” a newly evangelical 60-year-old neighbour and veteran of corporate finance told me, “called ‘It’s OK to not be OK.’”)

Most of all, we had to learn coping mechanisms for ourselves. No matter where you sat on the “quite lucky, really!” continuum, Covid was a mental health challenge. For me, this meant increased bouts of acute anxiety, something I’ve experienced since childhood; an all-consuming dread, often coupled with extreme self-criticism, which makes it difficult to eat properly, sleep or feel optimism or joy.

Searching for the right ways to cope had led to a skipping-in-the-garden phase, an ill-fated morning meditation regime, the month I became briefly but intensely obsessed with the teachings of Wim “the Iceman” Hof and started each day with loud breathing exercises and a cold shower (admittedly with more commitment to the former than the latter). Next came journaling – churning out pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness misery in an effort to purge my way to feeling better.

Where I didn’t expect to find relief was in an ancient board game, which had previously left me so humbled and humiliated I’d retreat in frustration after a few days and swear off it for good. But this time something clicked. By the end of January, I was playing several games a week; 10 months later, I play at least three or four times a day.

Chess, I quickly realised, was giving me far more than just a pleasant distraction. Instead, it was offering a window of clarity into my state of mind, a place where the fog of the day’s stresses and distractions were cleared to show me what was really going on, good or bad. My therapist had often told me: you need to find ways to tune into more of your emotions, not just anxiety but the rest of the “big four”; joy, sadness, and anger. Chess is an extremely fast route to experiencing them all – often within the course of a few moves. At a time when the outside world was too extreme to contemplate, it became a useful internal bellwether. If I was playing with frustration and impatience, I knew tackling that big problem at work or having that difficult conversation with a friend or partner was probably best left until tomorrow. If I was playing with grit and purpose, it clarified that I was strong and gave me the confidence to do what needed to be done elsewhere.

In chess, there is no element of chance: no dice to throw, no bit of kit that can falter (unless the board splits in two, which is fairly unlikely), no adverse weather conditions to point to and curse. It is a pure test of your ability to master your thoughts and emotions in the moment; failure to make a good move is, ultimately, the only thing that leads to your downfall. This is why you punch the air when you win and feel unspeakably furious with yourself when you lose. In chess, there are no ways to downplay your victory or excuse your defeat.

Then there is the obvious matter of resilience. Chess is a relentless, real-time test of your resolve. Can you make a mistake (called “blunders” in the game) – particularly the worst ones, like losing a queen – and keep going, or do you slam your laptop shut and be grumpy for the rest of the evening? Do you react to a setback by lashing out with an ill-considered attack, or can you take a breath, analyse the situation and make a smart move instead? Can you contain the joy of winning a clear advantage, and not get complacent? (Comebacks in chess are almost always about this.) Chess, in short, began to feel like a mindfulness exercise and an emotional HIIT class rolled into one. What was hard to tell was whether it was truly transformative, or whether I was merely projecting what I needed on to chess at that time, just as others were with birdwatching or baking.

The traditional view of chess is that playing it will make us smarter, that its unique blend of arithmetic, geometry and lateral thinking offers a workout for the mind that will make us stronger at logic, strategy and problem-solving. Just as heavyweight boxers are used as shorthand for physical supremacy, chess players are considered the height of intelligence, if not genius. This is certainly the view in places such as Armenia, the only country in the world to make chess mandatory in school (resulting, unsurprisingly, in one of the world’s highest proportions of grandmasters).

The problem is, this is a romantic fallacy with no scientific basis. At least that’s the conclusion of Fernand Gobet, author of The Psychology of Chess and an international master who once faced the great Garry Kasparov when part of the Swiss national team. A cognitive scientist and professor at Liverpool University, he has researched the question of chess’s relationship to intelligence.

“About 15 years ago,” Gobet says, “someone from the US Chess Fan Federation asked me to research the benefits of chess on education. He told me: ‘I want the truth.’ They mailed me this big box full of about 90 studies into the topic. We realised pretty quickly they were almost all very poor quality with almost no methodology. Maybe five or six were usable.”

Gobet set out to discover once and for all whether playing chess can have a positive impact on other areas of cognitive ability, particularly those that similarly combined “intelligence with working memory”. Unlike the studies in the box, Gobet and his team applied scientific conditions – properly sized control groups, placebos, standard deviations. “The conclusion we came to was that playing a lot of chess makes you very good at chess,” he says. “And no evidence for anything else.”

You might think this would have sent shockwaves through the chess community, who’d been using this particular piece of propaganda for years. Instead, fingers were placed firmly in ears. “They basically totally ignored us,” Gobet says. “Every year I get invited to conferences and I often tell the same story. Sometimes they get sick of hearing it and talk about other things. There are still reports being published today claiming chess is great for mathematic intelligence, working memory capacity, Alzheimer’s – everything. But there’s no evidence.”

Chess may not make us smarter in a cognitive sense, but what about the idea it can help us learn to understand and master our feelings better?

“It’s possible,” Gobet says, “Although there’s absolutely no data about that.” He agrees chess is an unusually emotive game. “If you do an experiment and ask people to propose the best move in any position, they often use very emotional terms: ‘This move is disgusting, this move is lovely.’ Clearly, chess generates powerful emotions, especially when you’re losing. People hate losing at chess. You can speculate that chess teaches us a few simple things, like learning to lose graciously, to think before you move and so on. I think it’s more just a way to reveal innate abilities that people have. It’s going to reveal whether you’re resilient or not, if you can manage your emotions.”

Or perhaps it can be a way to chart your personal growth in these things. The boy I was at 12, losing in front of my father, or the man I was at 26, writing it off as a waste of time after each defeat, were not as emotionally resilient as me today, whose Elo (chess-rating system) rating lingers stubbornly in the “class D” range (one step above total novice), but keeps playing anyway. This maturity may be unsurprising, but that doesn’t mean it is not worth observing: self-care is about celebrating and viewing yourself with kindness.

Which leads me to another thing I value about chess. Beneath the cut and thrust of attack and defence, it is also a curious exercise in empathy – for yourself, but also your opponent. Even when you’re playing an anonymous stranger on the internet you can intuit something of their emotional state within a few moves: what opening they choose (or how they respond to yours); how quickly they move; how boldly they exchange material (pieces). Each game has a distinct texture and emotional arc. To the best of my knowledge, no one says this about Boggle.

I asked my father once if my grandfather ever struggled with his mental health. Difficult or unpleasant emotions were taboo in my grandparent’s household. The only self-help they knew was the stiff upper lip, an example which has extended down the family like ivy covering a crumbling wall. He told me there had been a period when he was a child, not discussed during or since, when Grandad took to bed for weeks in a closed off room with what was euphemistically described by everyone at the time as “nerves”. I struggled to picture it.

Later, when we cleared out his house, we found piles of Grandad’s chess books with pencil notes scribbled in the margins where he taught himself opening theories, just as today I spend hours watching “How to DESTROY opponents with the Sicilian Defence!” tutorials by Russian YouTubers. My grandfather lived and died before we had a shared language for the mental health struggles that are also part of his legacy to me, but chess was a journey he set me on which we undertook in the same way, decades apart. I would love to be able to ask him what relief, if any, he got from this infinitely joyful, endlessly maddening game; whether it was his refuge, too.

Perhaps, like me, he appreciated how the game functions as a handy metaphor for life. You start with endless options laid out in front of you, fumble some of your earliest moves, battle through a complicated and difficult middle passage before, eventually, entering a final stretch in which the pieces and the clock start to run out. There will always be better players, silly blunders, missed wins. All you can do is make the best move you can, and when things really go wrong, try and find the will to reset the board and go again.

Samaritans can be reached on 116 123; or go to mind.org.uk

‘We got quite crazy with it’: Inside Formula 1’s driver chess club

By:

Luke Smith

   Dec 26, 2021

Formula 1 knows all too well just what a game-changer a Netflix series has been for its profile, enjoying a boom off the back of Drive to Survive’s success.

But it is not the only sport or pastime to enjoy such a surge. In October 2020, The Queen’s Gambit became a hit on Netflix, based on the 1983 novel about a female chess prodigy, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who rises to become the greatest player in the world.

It resulted in a massive swell in interest for chess. Retailers reported sales for chessboards were up as much as 1,000%, according to The New York Times, while new sign-ups to chess.com, one of the world’s biggest online chess websites, were seven times greater than usual.

But it was not only the general public who entered 2021 with a heightened interest in playing chess, which, along with golf and padel, has become one of the major new hobbies for F1 drivers this year.

Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr are the two drivers who have taken chess the most seriously this year. As well as excelling on-track as team-mates, helping lead Ferrari to third place in the constructors’ championship ahead of McLaren, Sainz and Leclerc have also become good mates off-track. It’s given a youthful, fresh feel to the atmosphere at Maranello.

Chess is an interest that has always been with Leclerc, but as he and Sainz looked for something to do during the quiet periods at the start of the season, it quickly got competitive.

“I’ve actually always been into it, I always liked chess as a child,” Leclerc told Motorsport.com.

“I think it was during all the media days at the beginning of the year, we didn’t know what to do and I was playing chess, and he saw me, and said OK, I’m downloading this.

“We got quite crazy with it in the first part of the year. We played against each other, and we’ve never stopped.”

It was a new obsession for Sainz in particular. “He freaking loves his chess with Charles,” said former McLaren team-mate Lando Norris. “I think I might have beaten him in the first game - then I just quit! I might be wrong, he’d probably tell you I’m lying…

“He was playing like hours and hours of it, him and Charles. I never knew he played before.”

From flights between races to between sessions in the car, and even during the lengthy rain delay at the Belgian Grand Prix, Leclerc and Sainz have been glued to their phones playing each other using an app.

And unsurprisingly, it has become incredibly competitive. In a video for Autosport earlier this year, Leclerc and Sainz debated who was better at chess and won games more often.

“Today we played on the plane, and it was 2-2,” Sainz told Leclerc. "And you didn’t want to play the last one. So if anything… I had the upper hand.”

“No, no,” replied Leclerc. “Remember Spa?” Sainz claimed he lost because he was so focused on the race.

“He’s very good at chess in the night, so whenever we come back from races from 9pm onwards, he’s very good,” said Leclerc. “But in the morning to the evening, I’m much better.”

But Leclerc and Sainz are not the only drivers to have gotten hugely into chess this year. Between sessions and various commitments down at Haas on race weekends, Mick Schumacher is another driver who will typically be found playing the game with any free time available.

A chess board has become part of Schumacher’s essential kit to take with him to races, giving him the chance to sit and play to unwind. Schumacher typically plays with Kai Schnapka, a physio who worked with Michael Schumacher towards the end of his F1 career before linking up with Mick in junior categories. Schumacher also played some games with Timo Glock, but is yet to play the Ferrari drivers.

Yet it was only by accident that Schumacher really got into chess. “We have a chess board at home, we’ve always been playing it here and there, but never properly,” Schumacher told Autosport/Motorsport.com.

“We were very big into backgammon, Kai and I. And then we actually stopped playing - we forgot our backgammon board, and the only thing we had was chess, so we started playing chess!

“Then for a time, we were mixing chess and backgammon, and now basically we just play chess. It’s fun, I beat him the whole time!”

Mick Schumacher, Haas F1 Team

Photo by: Haas F1 Team

Chess is something Schumacher has found himself improving at as the year went on. “At the beginning of the year I was losing most of them,” he said. “Then for some reason I’ve understood the game a bit better and started winning most of them.”

That kind of mental improvement is exactly the benefit Schumacher sees in test. Back in May, he discussed the benefit of playing such games in an interview with GP Racing.

“I feel like these games kind of bring focus back, as you always have to be switched on with your mind,” Schumacher said. “In a weekend, I always want to be mentally ready for every challenge that comes.”

Next year’s 23-race season is set to give drivers more time than ever on the road, meaning more flights and more periods at racetracks to fill between their racing duties - and for F1’s unofficial but growing chess club, perhaps some more members.

Resolving a Dangerous Conundrum: Earthquake Depth Impacts Potential Tsunami Threat

By UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA DECEMBER 26, 2021

Earthquakes of similar magnitude can cause tsunamis of greatly varying sizes. This commonly observed, but not well-understood phenomenon has hindered reliable warnings of local tsunamis.

Research led by University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Manoa scientists provides new insight that connects the characteristics of earthquakes—magnitude, depth where two tectonic plates slip past each other and the rigidity of the plates involved—with the potential size of a resulting tsunami.

Previous researchers identified a special class of events known as tsunami earthquakes, which produce disproportionately large tsunamis for their magnitude. Kwok Fai Cheung, professor of Ocean and Resources Engineering in the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), Thorne Lay from the University of California – Santa Cruz, and co-authors discovered a straightforward explanation for this conundrum. Their findings were published recently in Nature Geoscience.

Graphic showing how a tsunami works. Credit: Ocean Institute, modified by NOAA/ NWS/ CGS

Using computer models, the team incorporated physical processes that produce earthquakes and tsunamis with a wide range of observations of real-world events, including those classified as tsunami earthquakes. The model results demonstrated that for a given earthquake magnitude, if the rupture extends to shallow depth in the less rigid part of the plate, the resulting tsunami is larger than if the rupture is deeper.

“In a subduction zone, the upper plate is thinner and less rigid than the underthrusting plate near the trench,” explained Cheung. “A concentrated near-trench or shallow rupture produces relatively weak ground shaking as recorded by seismometers, but the displaced water in the overlying deep ocean has enhanced energy and produces shorter tsunami waves that amplify at a high rate as they move toward the shore.”

“Earthquake and tsunamigenic processes are complex, involving many factors that vary from one event to another,” said Lay, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. “We utilized a simplified numerical model to isolate key earthquake parameters and evaluate their importance in defining tsunami size.”

On September 29, 2009, a tsunami caused substantial damage and loss of life in American Samoa, Samoa, and Tonga. The tsunami was generated by a large earthquake in the Southern Pacific Ocean. Credit: NOAA

Having verified that the presence of shallow earthquake rupture can be a more significant factor than the earthquake magnitude for the resulting tsunami size led the researchers to an important question: Can earthquake magnitude continue to be used as the primary indication of potential tsunami impacts?

“The practice of using earthquake magnitude to estimate potential tsunami threat has led to poor predictive capability for tsunami impacts, and more information about the source is required to do better,” said Cheung.

An important aspect of this interdisciplinary research is the synergy of expertise in seismology, with Lay, and tsunamis, with Cheung’s research group, applied to a large set of observations. This study motivates development of new seismological and seafloor geodesy research that can rapidly detect the occurrence of shallow rupture in order to achieve more reliable tsunami warning.

While shorelines throughout the Pacific Ocean and along the “Ring of Fire” are vulnerable to tsunamis, the situation is most critical for coastal communities near the earthquake, where the tsunami arrives quickly—when detailed information about the earthquake is not yet available.

Cheung and Lay continue their collaboration to investigate prehistorical, historical, and future tsunami events to better understand the hazards posed to coastal communities and enable more accurate warning systems.

Reference: “Tsunami size variability with rupture depth” by Kwok Fai Cheung, Thorne Lay, Lin Sun and Yoshiki Yamazaki, 13 December 2021, Nature Geoscience.
DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00869-z

Tsunamis' magnetic fields are detectable before sea level change

by American Geophysical Union

The aftermath of a 2010 tsunami in Chile, which was analyzed in a new study in JGR 

Solid Earth. Earlier warnings made possible by the study of tsunami-generated magnetic 

fields could better prepare coastal areas for impending disasters. 

Credit: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

A new study finds the magnetic field generated by a tsunami can be detected a few minutes earlier than changes in sea level and could improve warnings of these giant waves.

Tsunamis generate magnetic fields as they move conductive seawater through the Earth's magnetic field. Researchers previously predicted that the tsunami's magnetic field would arrive before a change in sea level, but they lacked simultaneous measurements of magnetics and sea level that are necessary to demonstrate the phenomenon.

The new study provides real-world evidence for using tsunamis' magnetic fields to predict the height of tsunami waves using data from two real events—a 2009 tsunami in Samoa and a 2010 tsunami in Chile—that have both sets of necessary data. The new study was published in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, which focuses on the physics and chemistry of the solid Earth.

The study confirms the magnetic field generated by a tsunami arrives ahead of sea-level change and that its magnitude can be used to estimate the tsunami's wave height. How much earlier the magnetic field arrives depends on water depth, but in their results, the study authors found the early arrival time to be about one minute prior to sea level change over a 4,800-meter deep sea.

This information could provide earlier disaster warning if incorporated into tsunami risk models, potentially saving lives.

"It is very exciting because in previous studies we didn't have the observation [of] sea level change," said Zhiheng Lin, senior study -author and a geophysicist at Kyoto University. "We have observations [of] sea level change, and we find that the observation agrees with our magnetic data as well as theoretical simulation."

The research team looked at simultaneous measurements of sea level change from seafloor pressure data and magnetic fields during the two tsunamis. They found that the primary arrival of the magnetic field, similar to that of the beginning of a seismic wave, can be used for the purpose of early tsunami warning. The tsunami-generated magnetic field is so sensitive that even a wave height of a few centimeters can be detected.

"They did something that basically needed to be done," said Neesha Schnepf, a researcher of geomagnetics at the University of Colorado, Boulder who was not involved in the study. "We've needed a study that compared the magnetic field data with the sea level change from the pressure data, and I'm pretty sure they're the first to really compare how well the sea level from magnetic field matches the sea level from pressure, so that's definitely very useful."

When the researchers compared the horizontal and vertical components of the tsunami magnetic field with sea level change, they found that both components can precisely predict tsunami sea level change, if models include good estimates for ocean depth and the electrical structure below the seafloor.

This relationship between magnetic fields and wave height can be used to improve tsunami source models, which estimate the initial sea surface topography of a tsunami and then predict water wave arrival time and wave height—important data for informing disaster readiness and response.

The difficulty of maintaining already limited observational stations means these types of data from tsunamis are often not available. Furthermore, these findings only apply in deep-sea and not coastal environments, where deep water in the region filters out environmental noise to allow the tsunami signal to be detected.

However, providing warning for these severe events—which have the potential to cause intense damage to large areas—makes the predictions worthwhile, said Lin.

"I think the practical goal would be if your ability to model tsunamis is so improved … you could come up with much better predictions of what areas might need to be warned [and] how badly it might hit certain places," Schnepf said.

Earthquake depth impacts potential tsunami threat

More information: Zhiheng Lin et al, Direct Comparison of the Tsunami‐Generated Magnetic Field With Sea Level Change for the 2009 Samoa and 2010 Chile Tsunamis, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2021JB022760

Journal information: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 

Provided by American Geophysical Union