Earth’s core might be reversing its spin. It ‘won’t affect our daily lives,’ expert says

Sergei Korsakov/AP

Brendan Rascius
Mon, January 23, 2023 

Earth’s inner core, a red-hot ball of iron 1,800 miles below our feet, stopped spinning recently, and it may now be reversing directions, according to an analysis of seismic activity.

The discovery indicates that the Earth’s center regularly pauses and reverses its rotation, researchers in China wrote in a study published Jan. 23 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“We show surprising observations that indicate the inner core has nearly ceased its rotation in the recent decade and may be experiencing a turning back in a multidecadal oscillation, with another turning point in the early 1970s,” Dr. Yi Yang and Dr. Xiaodong Song, scientists at Peking University, wrote in the study.

Just as the Earth spins, the planet’s inner core turns, though not necessarily at the same speed, and some research indicates the core moves faster, according to the National Science Foundation. The inner core can spin independently because it is encased in a liquid outer core, similar to an egg yolk inside the more fluid egg white.


By analyzing earthquake data from across the globe over the last 28 years, researchers confirmed that the inner core’s rotation relative to the Earth’s mantle — the bulk of the planet’s interior between the core and the outer crust — had ceased around 2009, according to a story about the study in Nature Geoscience.

Additionally, their findings suggests the inner core may be in the process of reversing the direction of its spin, leading researchers to hypothesize a pattern.

“We infer the inner core rotation changes direction every 35 years,” Dr. Song told McClatchy News.

Why exactly this phenomenon occurs is not clear to researchers. The gravitational and magnetic forces that factor into the inner core’s movement are likely partly responsible, they said.

Importantly, their findings also imply a strong connection between the crust, the thin surface slice that we inhabit, and the deepest parts of the globe, researchers said.

The core’s multi-decade rotational pattern “coincides with several important geophysical observations,” researchers wrote, including changes in the magnetic field and the length of the day, meaning the inner workings of the planet could impact the duration of our days.

Still, we have no reason to be concerned, as these changes will not be noticeable to us, researchers said.

“The phenomenon does not affect our daily lives,” Dr. Song said.

Though more research is needed, these results represent another step in the process of unraveling the complex mechanisms of the inner Earth, an untraversable inferno that remains very difficult to study.

Earth's inner core may have started spinning other way: study

Daniel Lawler
Mon, January 23, 2023 


Far below our feet, a giant may have started moving against us.

Earth's inner core, a hot iron ball the size of Pluto, has stopped spinning in the same direction as the rest of the planet and might even be rotating the other way, research suggested on Monday.

Roughly 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) below the surface we live on, this "planet within the planet" can spin independently because it floats in the liquid metal outer core.

Exactly how the inner core rotates has been a matter of debate between scientists -- and the latest research is expected to prove controversial.

What little is known about the inner core comes from measuring the tiny differences in seismic waves -- created by earthquakes or sometimes nuclear explosions -- as they pass through the middle of the Earth.

Seeking to track the inner core's movements, new research published in the journal Nature Geoscience analysed seismic waves from repeating earthquakes over the last six decades.

The study's authors, Xiaodong Song and Yi Yang of China's Peking University, said they found that the inner core's rotation "came to near halt around 2009 and then turned in an opposite direction".

"We believe the inner core rotates, relative to the Earth's surface, back and forth, like a swing," they told AFP.

"One cycle of the swing is about seven decades", meaning it changes direction roughly every 35 years, they added.

They said it previously changed direction in the early 1970s, and predicted the next about-face would be in the mid-2040s.

The researchers said this rotation roughly lines up with changes in what is called the "length of day" -- small variations in the exact time it takes Earth to rotate on its axis.

- Stuck in the middle -

So far there is little to indicate that what the inner core does has much effect on surface dwellers.

But the researchers said they believed there were physical links between all Earth's layers, from the inner core to the surface.

"We hope our study can motivate some researchers to build and test models which treat the whole Earth as an integrated dynamic system," they said.

Experts not involved in the study expressed caution about its findings, pointing to several other theories and warning that many mysteries remain about the centre of the Earth.

"This is a very careful study by excellent scientists putting in a lot of data," said John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California.

"(But) none of the models explain all the data very well in my opinion," he added.

Vidale published research last year suggesting that the inner core oscillates far more quickly, changing direction every six years or so. His work was based on seismic waves from two nuclear explosions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

That timeframe is around the point when Monday's research says the inner core last changed direction -- which Vidale called "kind of a coincidence".

- Geophysicists 'divided' -

Another theory -- which Vidale said has some good evidence supporting it -- is that the inner core only moved significantly between 2001 to 2013 and has stayed put since.

Hrvoje Tkalcic, a geophysicist at the Australian National University, has published research suggesting that the inner core's cycle is every 20 to 30 years, rather than the 70 proposed in the latest study.

"These mathematical models are most likely all incorrect because they explain the observed data but are not required by the data," Tkalcic said.

"Therefore, the geophysical community will be divided about this finding and the topic will remain controversial."

He compared seismologists to doctors "who study the internal organs of patients' bodies using imperfect or limited equipment".

Lacking something like a CT scan, "our image of the inner Earth is still blurry", he said, predicting more surprises ahead.

That could include more about a theory that the inner core might have yet another iron ball inside it -- like a Russian doll.

"Something's happening and I think we're gonna figure it out," Vidale said.

"But it may take a decade."

dl/gil

The mysterious iron ball at the center of the Earth may have stopped spinning and reversed direction


Chris Panella,Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Tue, January 24, 2023 

A 3D rendering of the Earth's layers, including its inner core.Getty Images

Earth's inner core may have paused and reversed its spin, a new study suggests.

Earthquakes and nuclear blasts can send seismic waves through the mysterious solid-iron core.

Those waves hint that the core changed direction in the 1970s, and may be undergoing another reversal today.

Living on Earth's surface, we only see about 0.5% of the planet. Deep below the crust, then the hot rock mantle, then the liquified outer core, lies one of our planet's biggest mysteries: the solid iron core at the center.

That iron ball — Earth's inner core — may have recently stopped rotating, then reversed direction for no apparent reason, a new study found.

That may sound apocalyptic, but don't worry. Scientists don't think it will significantly change life on the surface, except by befuddling them.

"It's probably benign, but we don't want to have things we don't understand deep in the Earth," John Vidale, a geophysicist at the University of Southern California, told The Washington Post.

Published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday, the peer-reviewed research suggests that the solid inner core of the Earth could experience changes in its rotation every several decades.

Clues from earthquakes and nuclear blasts hint at a change around 2009

The light from an atomic bomb test explosion is reflected in the waters of Enewetak Atoll on May 30, 1956.STR New / Reuters

Scientists can't look directly at the inner core, but they can get hints of its activities from powerful earthquakes and Cold War nuclear-weapons tests, which have sent seismic waves reverberating through the center of the Earth.

Those deep seismic waves have shown that the core is mostly composed of pure, solid iron and nickel, and that it may spin a little faster than the rest of the Earth.

If the inner core was inert, spinning in line with the outer layers of the planet, similar waves should travel similar paths through it. But over time, the movement of those waves changes, indicating that the core itself is changing. Spinning is one of the leading explanations for these seismic mismatches.

The new study throws a wrench in the core's spin. It looks closely at seismic waves from the 1960s to the present day. The researchers found a quirk starting in 2009: In the last decade, the paths of similar seismic waves did not change. That suggests the inner core may have stopped spinning around that time.

Data from two pairs of nuclear blasts hint at a similar pause around 1971, with the core spinning eastward afterwards, leading the researchers to believe that the inner core may pause and reverse its spin about every 70 years.

The theory is that Earth's magnetic field pulls the inner core and causes it to spin, while the gravitational field of the mantle creates a counter force, dragging on the inner core. Every few decades, one force may win out over the other, changing the spin of the great iron ball.

The inner core is a major mystery, and we may never solve it

An artist's conception of the different layer's of our planet, including the crust, mantle, and inner and outer cores.Getty

Explaining these quirks in the seismic record is difficult, and involves speculation, since there is so little information about the inner core.

Another explanation is that the surface of the inner core is changing over time, rather than the whole iron ball spinning. Lianxing Wen, a seismologist at Stony Brook University, discussed this theory in a 2006 paper and still stands by it today. He told The Washington Post that would explain the pauses in 1971 and 2009.

"This study misinterprets the seismic signals that are caused by episodic changes of the Earth's inner core surface," Wen told the Post.

The new study may help shed further light on the mysterious nature of the inner core and how it interacts with Earth's other layers. It could be a long time before scientists piece together the full picture, though — if they ever do.

"It's certainly possible we'll never figure it out," Vidale told The New York Times.

An illustration of Earth's core.Getty

Still, he said, "I'm an optimist. The pieces are going to fall into place someday."

Until then, Vidale and his colleagues will just keep listening to seismic waves that travel from one side of the planet to the other, straight through the iron core that the 

3,600-year-old hoards may contain the earliest silver currency in Israel and Gaza

Tom Metcalfe
Mon, January 23, 2023 




The hacksilver hoard from Tell el-ʿAjjul in Gaza is the earliest known example of silver used as currency by weight in the region, about 3,600 years ago.

Ancient silver hoards from Israel and Gaza, which contain not coins but irregularly cut pieces of the precious metal, may be the earliest known silver currency in the region and likely came from the faraway regions of what is now Turkey and Europe, a new study suggests.

These newly analyzed hoards date to about 1550 B.C., hundreds of years earlier than other discoveries of silver currency in what is now Israel and Gaza, the researchers said. However, not everyone agrees that this is a new finding, with some experts noting that other research has already found that silver currency was being used during the Middle Bronze Age in this region.

The practice of using cut silver as currency may be a sign that administrators in the region — part of the "southern Levant" — were more numerically literate than their predecessors, which enabled them to accurately measure the weight of silver when making payments.

"We know that the Middle Bronze Age is a period of [making] large ramparts and fortifications," Tzilla Eshel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa, told Live Science. "But how do you pay your workers?"

It's possible that workers would have been paid an agreed-upon weight of silver, following the practice already in use in the northern Levant, a region now covered by Lebanon and Syria, Eshel and her colleagues reported in the new study, published in the January issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The practice of exchanging silver by weight for other objects of value was also common during the Viking Age in Europe, where silver for this purpose came to be known as "hacksilver" (or "hacksilber").

"The use of silver as currency [in the southern Levant] came in this period because it was needed," Eshel said, "[and] there was a big enough organization that could manage it."

Related: 10 dazzling gold and silver treasures dug up in 2022

Ancient silver

Eshel and her colleagues studied 28 pieces of silver from four hoards found at Bronze Age archaeological sites: one from Gezer in the Judaean Mountains, one from a tomb at Megiddo in northern Israel, one from Shiloh in the West Bank, and one from Tell el-ʿAjjul in Gaza.

The authors reported that the silver hoards from Gezer, Shiloh and Tell el-ʿAjjul were not found alongside silversmith tools — a fact that they interpreted as evidence that the hoards were being used only for exchange, and not to create other silver objects.

That indicated that weights of silver had been used as a currency in the region since at least the approximate date of those hoards, which span from 1600 B.C. to 1550 B.C., Eshel said.

"There would have been different means of exchange, which is always true," she said. But "silver was the means of reference … so if you wanted to value your wheat, or to value your textiles, you would have valued them in silver shekels." A shekel was an ancient measurement of weight, in use since Mesopotamian times, that was equal to just over a third of an ounce, or about 9.6 grams.

Silver sources

Eshel and her colleagues also attempted to determine the origins of the silver in the hoards by studying their chemical impurities and isotopes — variations in the number of neutrons in the nuclei of particular elements, which change over time at known rates due to radiation.

The analysis revealed signs of a widespread transition between sources in about 1200 B.C., possibly from silver mined in Anatolia — now Turkey — to silver mined in southeastern Europe, which was then brought to the Levant by long-distance trade.

The silver of later origin was surprisingly similar to silver found in famous graves from the Bronze Age Mycenaean culture in Greece; these burials might have the same silver source as the hoard from Tell el-ʿAjjul, the researchers said.

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"As the silver items from Tell el-ʿAjjul are isotopically similar to silver from the [Mycenaean] Shaft Graves, it is possible that both contemporaneous assemblages originated from the same source," the authors wrote in their study.

Raz Kletter, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki who has studied ancient economies and silver hoards from the Levant but was not involved in the new research, told Live Science in an email that the new study "advances our knowledge." However, he said scholars had pointed out 20 years ago that silver must have been used for weight economy since the late Middle Bronze period in the southern Levant, based on studies of the same hoards.

Kletter is also concerned that hoards found without metalworking tools were interpreted in the study as being only for exchange. "We cannot identify the owners," he said, "and the places where hoards are hidden ... do not necessarily tell us about their origins."

Stunning CT scans of 'Golden Boy' mummy from ancient Egypt reveal 49 hidden amulets

Jennifer Nalewicki
Mon, January 23, 2023 

A mummy wearing a gilded face mask.

Incredibly detailed computed tomography (CT scans) of the so-called "Golden Boy" mummy from ancient Egypt have revealed a hidden trove of 49 amulets, many of which were made of gold.

The young mummy earned its nickname because of the dazzling display of wealth, which included a gilded head mask found in the mummy's sarcophagus. Researchers think he was about 14 or 15 years old when he died because his wisdom teeth had not yet emerged.

The Golden Boy was originally unearthed in 1916 at a cemetery in southern Egypt and has been stored in the basement of The Egyptian Museum in Cairo ever since. The mummy had been "laid inside two coffins, an outer coffin with a Greek inscription and an inner wooden sarcophagus," according to a statement.

While analyzing the scans, the researchers found that the dozens of amulets, comprised of 21 different shapes and sizes, were strategically placed on or inside his body.

Those included "a two-finger amulet next to the [boy’s] uncircumcised penis, a golden heart scarab placed inside the thoracic cavity and a golden tongue inside the mouth," according to the statement.

Related: Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies, new exhibit reveals

The mummy was also wearing a pair of sandals, and a garland of ferns was draped across his body, according to the statement.

"This mummy is a showcase of Egyptian beliefs about death and the afterlife during the Ptolemaic period," Sahar Saleem, the study's lead author and a professor of radiology at the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University in Egypt, told Live Science in an email.

While researchers aren't sure of the mummy's true identity, based on the grave goods alone, they think he was of high socioeconomic status.

The amulets served important roles in the afterlife.

A series of images, including CT scans of a mummy.

"Ancient Egyptians believed in the power of amulets … and they were used for protection and for providing specific benefits for the living and the dead," Saleem said. "In modern science, this is explained by energy. Different materials, shapes and colors (e.g. crystals) provide energy with different wavelengths that could have [an] effect on the body. Amulets were used by ancient Egyptians in their lives. Embalmers placed amulets during mummification to vitalize the dead body."

For example, the teenage mummy's tongue was capped in gold "to enable the deceased to speak" and the sandals "were to enable the deceased to walk out of the tomb in the [afterlife]," Saleem said.

However, one amulet in particular stood out to Saleem: the golden heart scarab placed inside the torso cavity. She wound up creating a replica of it using a 3D printer.

"It was really amazing especially after I 3D printed [it] and was able to hold it in my hands," Saleem said. "There were engraved marks on the back that could represent the inscriptions and spells the priests wrote to protect the boy during his journey. Scarabs symbolize rebirth in ancient Egyptians and [were] in the form of a discoid (disc-shaped) beetle."

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She added that the heart scarab measured about 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) and was inscribed with verses from "The Book of the Dead," an important ancient Egyptian text that helped guide the deceased in the afterlife.

"It was very important in the afterlife during judging the deceased and weighing of the heart against the feather of Maat (the goddess of truth)," Saleem said. "The heart scarab silenced the heart [on] judgement day so not to bear witness against the deceased. A heart scarab was placed inside the torso cavity during mummification to substitute for the heart if the body was ever deprived [of] this important organ for any reason."

The findings were published Jan. 24 in the journal Frontiers of Medicine.

Maybe rats didn't spread the Black Death after all, new evidence suggests


Samuel Cohn

THE CONVERSATION
Tue, January 24, 2023

A large number of black rats swarming all over each other.

The Black Death ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1353, killing millions. Plague outbreaks in Europe then continued until the 19th century.

One of the most commonly recited facts about plague in Europe was that it was spread by rats. In some parts of the world, the bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, maintains a long-term presence in wild rodents and their fleas. This is called an animal "reservoir."

While plague begins in rodents, it sometimes spills over to humans. Europe may have once hosted animal reservoirs that sparked plague pandemics. But plague could have also been repeatedly reintroduced from Asia. Which of these scenarios was present remains a topic of scientific controversy.

Our recent research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has shown that environmental conditions in Europe would have prevented plague from surviving in persistent, long-term animal reservoirs. How, then, did plague persevere in Europe for so long?

Our study offers two possibilities. One, the plague was being reintroduced from Asian reservoirs. Second, there could have been short- or medium-term temporary reservoirs in Europe. In addition, the two scenarios might have been mutually supportive.

However, the rapid spread of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the next few centuries also suggest slow-moving rats may not have played the critical role in transmitting the disease that is often portrayed.

European climate

To work out whether plague could survive in long-term animal reservoirs in Europe, we examined factors such as soil characteristics, climatic conditions, terrain types and rodent varieties. These all seem to affect whether plague can hold on in reservoirs.

For example, high concentrations of some elements in soil, including copper, iron, magnesium, as well as a high soil pH (whether it is acidic or alkaline), cooler temperatures, higher altitudes and lower rainfall appear to favour the development of persistent reservoirs, though it is not entirely clear why, at this stage.

Based on our comparative analysis, centuries-long wild rodent plague reservoirs were even less likely to have existed from the Black Death of 1348 to the early 19th century than today, when comprehensive research rules out any such reservoirs within Europe.

This contrasts sharply with regions across China and the western US, where all the above conditions for persistent Yersinia pestis reservoirs in wild rodents are found.

In central Asia, long-term and persistent rodent reservoirs may have existed for millennia. As ancient DNA and textual evidence hints, once plague crossed into Europe from central Asia, it appears to have seeded a short- or medium-term reservoir or reservoirs in European wild rodents. The most likely place for this to have been was in central Europe.

However, as local soil and climatic conditions did not favour long-term and persistent reservoirs, the disease had to be re-imported, at least in some instances. Importantly, the two scenarios are not mutually exclusive.
Radical difference

To go deeper into the role of rats in spreading plague in Europe, we can compare different outbreaks of the disease.

The first plague pandemic began in the early sixth century and lasted until the later eighth century. The second pandemic (which included the Black Death) began in the 1330s and lasted five centuries. A third pandemic began in 1894 and remains with us today in places such as Madagascar and California.

These pandemics overwhelmingly involved the bubonic form of plague, where the bacteria infect the human lymphatic system (which is part of the body’s immune defences). In pneumonic plague, the bacteria infect the lungs.

The plagues of the second pandemic differed radically in their character and transmission from more recent outbreaks. First, there were strikingly different levels of mortality, with some second pandemic outbreaks reaching 50%, while those of the third pandemic rarely exceeded 1%. In Europe, figures for the third pandemic were even lower.

Young steppe marmot in natural reserve

Second, there were different rates and patterns of transmission between these two plague epochs. There were massive differences in the frequency and speed of transporting goods, animals, and people between the late middle ages and today (or the late 19th century). Yet the Black Death and many of its subsequent waves spread with astonishing speed. Over land, it raced almost as fast each day as the modern outbreaks do over a year.

As described by contemporary chroniclers, physicians, and others – and as reconstructed quantitatively from archival documents – the plagues of the second pandemic spread faster and more widely than any other disease during the middle ages. Indeed they were faster than in any period until the cholera outbreaks from 1830 or the great influenza of 1918-20.

Regardless of how the various European waves of the second pandemic began, both wild and non-wild rodents – rats, first and foremost – move much slower than the pace of transmission around the continent.

Third, the seasonality of plague also shows wide discrepancies. Plagues of the third pandemic (except for the rare ones, principally of pneumonic plague) have closely followed the fertility cycles of rat fleas. These rise with relatively humid conditions (although lower rainfall is important for plague reservoirs to first become established) and within a temperature band between 10°C and 25°C.

By contrast, plagues of the second pandemic could cross winter months in bubonic form, as seen across the Baltic regions from 1709-13. But in Mediterranean climes, plague from 1348 through the 15th century was a summer contagion that peaked in June or July – during the hottest and driest months.

This deviates strikingly from plague seasons in these regions in the 20th century. Because of the low relative humidity and high temperatures, these months were then the least likely times for plague to break out among rats or humans.

These differences raise a crucial question about whether the bubonic form of the plague depended on slow-moving rodents for its transmission when instead it could spread much more efficiently directly, from person to person. Scientists have speculated that this could have occurred because of ectoparasites (fleas and possibly lice), or through people’s respiratory systems and through touch.

Questions such as the precise roles played by humans and rats in past plague pandemics need further work to resolve. But as shown by this study, and others, major steps forward can be made when scientists and historians work together.

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

Bigger population, smaller carbon footprint: Can Canada have both?

Having more people means more heating, lighting, and general demand for energy

Jeff Lagerquist
Tue, January 24, 2023

Experts hope immigration-fuelled population growth will create economies of scale for Canada's energy transition. (GETTY)

Canada's population is rising at the quickest pace since the height of the post-war baby boom as Ottawa targets almost 1.5 million new permanent residents by the end of 2025. That's good news for a nation with an aging workforce and stubbornly-tight labour market. But what about reaching net-zero by 2050? Can a larger Canada achieve meaningfully lower emissions?

Simple math suggests more people means more heating, lighting, and general demand for energy. Owing partly to its large geography, dispersed population, and wide range of temperatures, Canada had the worst per-capita lifestyle-related carbon emissions record by far in a recent analysis of 10 economies spanning various income levels.

At the same time, the nation's population is booming. Statistics Canada data show Canada is growing at the fastest clip since the second quarter of 1957. International migration accounted for 94 per cent of the 362,453-person increase seen in the third quarter, according to the agency. This sent the national population above 39 million for the first time.

Growth is set to pick up in the coming years. Ottawa's annual immigration plan released in November calls for 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025 to counter "critical labour market shortages causing uncertainty for Canadian businesses and workers."

"I think the government's preference is to think about immigration to enhance the economy, and then enable green investment," Bruce Newbold, a professor at McMaster University's School Of Earth, Environment & Society, said in an interview. "There are challenges, yes, in terms of that relationship between immigration and energy use."

Andrew Leach, an energy and economics professor at the University of Alberta, says it's essential to consider both sides of the supply-demand equation when it comes to Canada's immigration-fuelled population growth. Immigrants add to the labour supply, but also push up demand through increased consumption.

"One of those demand items is also going to be energy. All else equal, more energy consumption will mean more emissions," he told Yahoo Finance Canada.

"But I think you need to include consideration of where we need to end up re: net-zero, which is rapid decarbonization of household and transportation energy use."

Last April, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) released a report calling for swift action by world leaders to avoid the worst potential impacts of the climate crisis. Canada was identified as one of the highest per-capita emissions producers among developed countries, alongside Australia and the United States.

It’s going to take a lot more investment to meet these goals.Bruce Newbold, professor at McMaster University’s School Of Earth, Environment & Society

In late-2021, Royal Bank of Canada pegged the cost of transitioning Canada's economy to net-zero emissions at $2 trillion over the next 30 years. The bank's report calls the 13-digit sum "hefty," but "affordable." Of course, that was some time before widespread calls for a recession in 2023.

Among today's headwinds for Canada's economy is a persistent skilled labour shortage, which factors into scarce affordable housing in cities where new immigrants typically settle. The situation prompted the federal government last week to bolster a program for construction workers who have overstayed work permits or visas to become permanent residents.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation figures released earlier this month show urban housing starts actually declined year-over-year in 2022. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada data show cities seeing their strongest population growth in over two decades.

Mike Moffatt, senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, says building affordable urban density will help lower emissions through more efficient buildings and less reliance on cars.

"Size does matter," he said. "It's one of the reasons larger population cities tend to have a lower carbon footprint [per capita]."

On top of the housing supply issue, Moffatt says Canada lacks the labour capacity to hit ambitious green building retrofit targets set by Ottawa.

"If we do it right, bringing in more of a skilled workforce actually helps us make those investments," he said. "Adding more people doesn't necessarily make the situation better, but it provides the raw ingredients."

Moffatt says new residents in regions like Quebec, where electricity is virtually emissions-free and EVs are more popular than average, will be inclined to have a smaller carbon footprint. However, he also expects those who settle in areas where more fossil fuel is needed to play an important role.

"Let's say we had a bunch of people locate in rural Saskatchewan. Ironically, that actually might make it easier for Saskatchewan to make investments in new power generation, and close existing coal plants," he said. "The analysis gets kind of complex."

Leach sees climate-friendly economies of scale kicking in as Canada's population grows.

"As we move toward vehicle and home electrification, and decarbonization of our electricity supply, adding more people doesn't change the trajectory much," he said. "Insofar as we have more distributed energy storage, generation, and demand response, more people add more flexibility to our power systems."

Leach also notes that some of Canada's worst-emitting sectors, like oil and gas production, are export-oriented, and therefore subject to the whims of global markets more so than forces within Canada.

"More domestic immigration doesn't really change the global market for Canadian commodities," he said.

For McMaster professor Newbold, the correlation is clear. Canada's population must get bigger before its economy can become greener.

"If we don't have immigration, our economy is not going to prosper, and we're not going to be able to pay for those investments that we need in order to make a green economy," he said.

"It's going to take a lot more investment to meet these goals."

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

NASA and DARPA will test nuclear thermal engines for crewed missions to Mars

The agencies hope to demonstrate the tech as soon as 2027.


NASA/DARPA


Kris Holt
·Contributing Reporter
Tue, January 24, 2023

NASA is going back to an old idea as it tries to get humans to Mars. It is teaming up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to test a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space with the aim of using the technology for crewed missions to the red planet. The agencies hope to "demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said. "With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever — a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars."

Under the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate will take the lead on technical development of the engine, which will be integrated with an experimental spacecraft from DARPA. NASA says that nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) could allow spacecraft to travel faster, which could reduce the volume of supplies needed to carry out a long mission. An NTD engine could also free up space for more science equipment and extra power for instrumentation and communication.

As far back as the 1940s, scientists started speculating about the possibility of using nuclear energy to power spaceflight. The US conducted ground experiments on that front starting in the '50s. Budget cutbacks and changing priorities (such as a focus on the Space Shuttle program) led to NASA abandoning the project at the end of 1972 before it carried out any test flights.

There are, of course, risks involved with NTP engines, such as the possible dispersal of radioactive material in the environment should a failure occur in the atmosphere or orbit. Nevertheless, NASA says the faster transit times that NTP engines can enable could lower the risk to astronauts — they could reduce travel times to Mars by up to a quarter. Nuclear thermal rockets could be at least three times more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion methods.

NASA is also looking into nuclear energy to power related space exploration efforts. In 2018, it carried out tests of a portable nuclear reactor as part of efforts to develop a system capable of powering a habitat on Mars. Last year, NASA and the Department of Energy selected three contractors to design a fission surface power system that it can test on the Moon. DARPA and the Defense Department have worked on other NTP engine projects over the last few years.

Meanwhile, the US has just approved a small modular nuclear design for the first time. As Gizmodo reports, the design allows for a nuclear facility that's around a third the size of a standard reactor. Each module is capable of producing around 50 megawatts of power. The design, from a company called NuScale, could lower the cost and complexity of building nuclear power plants.

Post-nuclear Moscow subway novels strike chord as Doomsday Clock nears midnight

Dmitry Glukhovsky poses in this undated handout picture

Tue, January 24, 2023 at 9:39 AM MST·3 min read

(Reuters) - Best-selling novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky says sales of his books depicting life in the Moscow Metro after a nuclear apocalypse have been booming since Russia put him on a "wanted" list for opposing the war in Ukraine and he was forced to flee abroad.

Glukhovsky, 43, is known mainly for his dystopian novel "Metro 2033" and its sequels, along with their spin-off video games, about how Muscovites survive in the city's famed metro system - "the world's biggest nuclear shelter" - after a war.

With President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian politicians regularly warning the West of nuclear war over its support for Ukraine, Glukhovsky said it was hardly surprising that Russians were trying to imagine life after such a disaster.

"It's getting us much closer (to midnight) because during Soviet times, during the times of the Cold War, nobody dared to really invoke that (possibility of Armageddon)...," he told Reuters in an interview from an undisclosed location.

"... Never a diplomat, let alone the head of state, would threaten another superpower with using nukes against his capital. So that definitely gets us way closer to that possibility," he said, speaking in English.

Atomic scientists on Tuesday reset the "Doomsday Clock" - a symbolic timepiece - based on their latest assessment of how close they believe humanity is to annihilation due to existential threats such as nuclear war. The "time" is now 90 seconds to midnight, they said, 10 seconds closer than it has been for the past three years.

Glukhovsky deplored what he called the "routinisation" of the nuclear threats by Russia's leaders but said the Ukraine war was unlikely to trigger a global nuclear catastrophe.

"... the Russian regime is not suicidal. You know, they're not religious or political fanatics. They are very pragmatic. I would say they're mainly motivated by such things as greed and self-esteem. And I don't see (how) greed and self-esteem can bring you to begin a nuclear holocaust," he said.

'FOREIGN AGENT'

Glukhovsky, who faces up to 15 years in jail if he returns home due to his anti-war stance, said his books must now be sold in Russia with a label bearing the disclaimer "This was written by a foreign agent". Under-18s are barred from buying them.

"But "Metro 2033" was the number one bestseller within my publisher. And my publisher was the biggest publisher in Russia. So there is some kind of schizophrenia where, on the one hand, they are persecuting me and, on the other, the books are still available in the bookstores and they are bestsellers," he said.

Glukhovsky, a former journalist who also wrote the screenplay for an award-winning film version of his novel "Text", said he got the inspiration for his subway novels travelling the Moscow Metro as a child during the Cold War and discovering it was built some 40 to 100 metres below ground.

"I really started to imagine what it was going to be like if we are hit by missiles and then we have to live in the subway as if it was a modern-day Noah's Ark, you know, and we would not be able to go outside of the metro, of the subway, ever," he said.

The nuclear war depicted in "Metro 2033" occurs in 2013, he noted, adding grimly: "So apparently I was wrong (by) a decade."

(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

'Doomsday Clock' moves to 90 seconds to midnight as nuclear threat rises




Tue, January 24, 2023
By Katharine Jackson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Atomic scientists set the "Doomsday Clock" closer to midnight than ever before on Tuesday, saying threats of nuclear war, disease, and climate volatility have been exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, putting humanity at greater risk of annihilation.

The "Doomsday Clock," created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to illustrate how close humanity has come to the end of the world, moved its "time" in 2023 to 90 seconds to midnight, 10 seconds closer than it has been for the past three years.

Midnight on this clock marks the theoretical point of annihilation. The clock's hands are moved closer to or further away from midnight based on scientists' reading of existential threats at a particular time.

The new time reflects a world in which Russia's invasion of Ukraine has revived fears of nuclear war.

"Russia's thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict by accident, intention or miscalculation is a terrible risk. The possibilities that the conflict could spin out of anyone's control remains high," Rachel Bronson, the bulletin's president and CEO told a news conference in Washington on Tuesday.

The bulletin's announcement will for the first time be translated from English into Ukrainian and Russian to garner relevant attention, Bronson said.

A Chicago-based non-profit organization, the bulletin updates the clock's time annually based on information regarding catastrophic risks to the planet and humanity.

The organization's board of scientists and other experts in nuclear technology and climate science, including 13 Nobel Laureates, discuss world events and determine where to place the hands of the clock each year.

Apocalyptic threats reflected by the clock include politics, weapons, technology, climate change and pandemics.

The clock had been set to 100 seconds to midnight since 2020, which was already the closest it had ever come to midnight.

The board said the war in Ukraine had also heightened the risk that biological weapons could be deployed if the conflict continued.

"The continuing stream of disinformation about bioweapons' laboratories in Ukraine raises concerns that Russia itself may be thinking of deploying such weapons," Bronson said.

Sivan Kartha, a bulletin board member and scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute, said natural gas prices pushed to new heights by the war had also spurred companies to develop sources of natural gas outside of Russia and turned power plants to coal as an alternative power source.

"Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, after having rebounded from the COVID economic decline to an all-time-high in 2021, continue to rise in 2022 and hit another record high... With emissions still rising, weather extremes continue, and were even more clearly attributable to climate change," Kartha said, pointing to the devastating flooding in Pakistan in 2022 as an example.

The clock was created in 1947 by a group of atomic scientists, including Albert Einstein, who had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the world's first nuclear weapons during World War Two.

More than 75 years ago, it began ticking at seven minutes to midnight.

At 17 minutes to midnight, the clock was furthest from "doomsday" in 1991, as the Cold War ended and the United States and Soviet Union signed a treaty that substantially reduced both countries' nuclear weapons arsenals.

(Reporting by Katharine Jackson, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

Doomsday Clock to be updated against backdrop of Ukraine war

Mon, 23 January 2023 


The "Doomsday Clock," which represents the judgment of leading science and security experts about the perils to human existence, is to be updated on Tuesday against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and other crises.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will announce at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) whether the time of the symbolic clock will change.

The organization describes the clock as a "metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation" and says the annual resetting should be seen as a "call-to-action to reverse the hands."

A decision to reset the hands of the clock is taken each year by the Bulletin's science and security board and its board of sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates.

For 2023, the Bulletin said they will take into account the Russia-Ukraine war, bio-threats, proliferation of nuclear weapons, the continued climate crisis, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and disruptive technologies.

The hands of the clock moved to 100 seconds to midnight in January 2021 -- the closest to midnight it has been in its history -- and remained there last year.

"The clock remains the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment," the Bulletin said in a statement at last year's event.

The clock was originally set at seven minutes to midnight.

The furthest from midnight it has ever been is 17 minutes, following the end of the Cold War in 1991.

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project which produced the first nuclear weapons.

The idea of the clock symbolizing global vulnerability to catastrophe followed in 1947.

cl/jh

Ford in talks with China's BYD to sell German plant - WSJ

Jan 24 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co is in talks with Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD Co over the sale of a manufacturing plant in Germany, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The factory in discussion is the Saarlouis plant, where vehicle production is slated to eventually end in 2025, the WSJ report said, adding that the talks are still in a preliminary stage and may ultimately fall through.

Ford, which manufactures its Focus compact model at the plant, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Rising costs for electric vehicle battery materials and projected slowdown in the United States and European economies are putting pressure on automakers to cut expenses.


Separately, Ford said on Tuesday that it intends to decide by mid-February on how many jobs will be cut in Europe after announcing plans to cut up to 3,200 jobs at a factory in the German city of Cologne.

The report said Ford is also gauging interest from around 15 potential investors, but terms of the deal could not be learned.

 (Reporting by Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Philips)

Brazil’s female diplomats in new equality push after dark days of Bolsonaro

Constance Malleret in Rio de Janeiro
Mon, January 23, 2023 

Photograph: Sérgio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

More than a century after Maria José de Castro Rebello Mendes became, in 1918, the first woman to enter Brazil’s diplomatic service, the country’s female diplomats have launched a new push for equal rights and opportunity. Women make up less than 25% of Brazil’s diplomatic corps and just 12% of ambassadors.

“We are blossoming at this moment of democratic government,” said Irene Vida Gala, a senior diplomat who served as ambassador to Ghana and is now the president of the newly created Association of Female Brazilian Diplomats.

This institutional push to address the lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office, known as Itamaraty, after the 19th-century Rio palace where it was once housed, coincides with the return to power of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after the four-year term of his openly misogynistic far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Lula, who has appointed Brazil’s most diverse cabinet ever, promised a fresh start after the trail of devastation left by Bolsonaro.

Related: Brazilian diplomats ‘disgusted’ as Bolsonaro pulverizes foreign policy

In the case of Itamaraty, this means “total reconstruction, because what we have today is scorched earth,” said Marília Closs of Plataforma Cipó, a thinktank focused on governance, peace and climate. “Bolsonaro’s foreign policy wasn’t used as a tool to guarantee Brazil’s national interest, but instead as a tool for bolsonarismo.”

When he took office in 2019, Bolsonaro appointed a Bible-bashing climate denialist to lead the foreign office and defend his nationalistic, ultra-conservative agenda abroad. Together, they took a hammer to Brazil’s decades-old tradition of foreign policy based on cooperation and multilateralism, cosying up to rightwing strongmen, torpedoing Brazil’s environmental leadership, and undermining the country’s past work defending human rights, with a particularly persistent campaign against expanding gender rights.

“Gender was emblematic of the transformation of Brazil’s foreign policy [under Bolsonaro],” said Jamil Chade, a Brazilian foreign correspondent in Geneva.

The country’s highly professional and once-respected foreign service was “hijacked” to serve this ultra-conservative agenda, Chade added. He describes watching embarrassed Brazilian diplomats forced to defend outlandish positions at the United Nations, while the international community looked on with befuddlement and concern.

“We were there having to back positions that were basically against our vocation, against our very nature,” said Vida Gala. Fearing retribution that would further harm their career progression, female diplomats who were once vocal about their demands retreated into the shadows.

Now, they are being given a role in recovering Brazil’s international credibility and soft power. There is some disappointment that Lula failed to name Brazil’s first female foreign minister – the post went to Mauro Vieira, who previously held the position in 2015 to 2016 under Lula’s hand-picked successor Dilma Rousseff – but Itamaraty nonetheless gained its first female secretary-general, the second highest position, in Maria Laura da Rocha.

Meanwhile, women are tipped to represent Brazil in Washington and Buenos Aires, two of the most prestigious diplomatic postings.

“We women have a really important contribution to make to [Lula’s] agenda,” said Vida Gala. “We can strengthen diplomatic action … to contribute to a diplomacy focused on reducing inequality, care of the most vulnerable, and even the construction of peace.”

The three-week-old government has already turned its back on the Bolsonaro era with regards to Brazil’s position on Israel, migration and reproductive rights, notably withdrawing from a coalition of ultra-conservative, anti-abortion nations known as the Geneva Consensus. Bolsonaro-appointed ambassadors in the US and Israel have been sacked.

Restoring Brazil’s battered reputation will not happen overnight, warned Chade, but these signals are welcome, “showing, look, we’re not only formulating a new policy, but also a new team that is going to take the lead on this new foreign policy”.

“Brazil no longer wants to be part of the problem, it wants to be part of the solutions,” he added. Ambassador Vida Gala and her colleagues will be striving for those solutions to be female.