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No, that is not an image from a 1960s era science fiction movie…
The Naica Mine in Chihuahua, Mexico is an active lead, zinc and silver mine. In the year 2000, while tunnelling under a mountain for lead, the mining company discovered a huge cavern 300m beneath the surface– a cave a football field in size, two stories high and filled with huge selenite crystals. The crystals in the cave are truly massive. Although related to the grade school crystal growing projects many of us have done, there is a distinct difference of scale. Some of the crystals in the cave are as long as telephone poles and weigh over 45 tonnes! It was a 500 000-year submersion in scalding mineral-rich water that allowed the crystals in the Crystal Cave to grow this way. Other caves in the region, such as the Queen’s Eye cave and the Cave of Sails show smaller crystal structures, because they were not submerged as long, or because submergence has been intermittent. For now, the caverns and the mines are kept clear of water by the mining company which keeps pumps running 24 hours a day, removing over 60 000 litres per minute.
In 2006, The Naica Project was initiated to preserve, explore and document the caves as well as to raise public awareness. In 2008 explorers in the cave found a small passage that indicated that there might be more interconnecting chambers. The possibility of this was confirmed in 2009, when the mining company bored a 600m ventilation shaft down into the earth. The shaft, called the Robin Hole, was filmed with a camera mounted on the drill bit. The image seemed to reveal more large crystals at about the 150 m deep level. Was this part of a possible Great Crystal Cave complex?
In 2009, National Geographic sponsored an expedition to the Cueva de Los Cristales. This was possibly the last expedition before the mining company turned the pumps off, allowing the caves to flood once more. There were two teams – the first was to do research within the Crystal Cave and to explore the possibility of entering more chambers. The second team was going to descend the ventilation shaft to find out if another cave had been revealed. Continue reading →
Canada’s Conservative Goverment is already noted for how it muzzles its own elected members of Parliament. But it doesn’t end there. They are also muzzling federal scientists, and that is beginning to create quite a stir:
From CBC News:
Recent access-to-information documents obtained by PostMedia News reveal that all media inquiries to scientists working for Natural Resources Canada must now pass through a Byzantine thicket of “subject matter experts” and the minister’s director of communications — “no exceptions.”
As one bureaucrat warned in an internal email: “What may appear to be a simple request for facts may actually relate to policy or high-profile issues.”
The email simply puts in print what journalists covering the Harper government deal with on a daily basis.
And it’s a continuing irritant that has alarmed many public service professionals and research scientists.
The NCSE is featuring another book excerpt, this time for the children’s book Stones and Bones, by Char Matejovsky and illustrated by Robaire Ream. Stones and Bones tells the story of evolution in verse combined with delightfully intricate illustrations. Check out the website for more information, interactive pages for kids and links to more resources.
News from the Alberta Wilderness Association indicates the the Alberta Government is about to sell off 100 quarters (about 16000 acres) of public land without public consultation. The land, which is west of Medicine Hat, contains native prairie habitat, the home of several species listed under the federal Species at Risk Act, including burrowing owl, ferruginous hawk, Sprague’s pipit, chestnut-collared longspur, McCowan’s longspur, short-eared owl, and long-billed curlew.
This prairie habitat is apparently slated for potato production for purpose of making potato chips.
Around the world, sharks are being harvested for the fins. Hong Kong is the major hub for shark fins in Asia, with most of the fins going into mainland China. The demand for the fins is driven by the popularity of shark fin soup, a delicacy that the Chinese believe is nutritious, with some believing, incorrectly, that it helps prevent osteoarthritis and cancer. For most Chinese the soup is a luxury item, served at social gatherings to show status. It is practically tasteless by itself, and it serves only to provide texture in the soup. With the growth of the middle class in China, this style of soup is driving the massacre of tens of millions of sharks every year.
The New Scientist Culture Lab has a quick review of a new book which examines the Asian shark trade:
Sharks attacking humans is big news; humans attacking sharks, not so much. Conservation photographers Paul Hilton and Alex Hofford are trying to redress this imbalance. In revealing the extent of the bloody trade in shark fins, their book Man and Shark is a testament of our cruelty towards these majestic creatures.
Hilton and Hofford, who both live in Hong Kong, have witnessed the butchery of sharks in places as diverse as Mozambique, Yemen and Sri Lanka. But Hofford had seen nothing until he went to Japan.
“Seeing it in Japan shocked me beyond all belief,” he says. “I thought Yemen was bad, but then I walked into this warehouse and saw 75 tonnes of blue shark laid out across the dock at 8:30 in the morning, with workers silently moving among them, cutting off their fins.” The tableau is the same every morning, except on Sundays, when the market is closed. Hilton calls it “shark genocide”.
Back at my old Evolving Complexity blog, I began posting the statements on evolution that various scientific organizations have produced. My goal was to show how ubiquitous the science was in support of evolution. It turns out that the NCSE has produced a volume, now in its third edition (2008), that pulls together statements on evolution from not only scientific organizations but also from educational, civil rights and even religious organizations. The volume is called Voices for Evolution, and it can be downloaded free as a pdf. file.
The Alberta Government and the oilsands industry have long claimed that pollutants found in the Athabasca River were from natural sources rather than the result of industry practices. A new study† led by Erin Kelly and David Schindler of the University of Alberta proves them wrong:
High levels of toxic pollutants in the Athabasca River system are linked to oilsands mining, researchers have found.
The findings counter the reports by a joint industry-government panel that the pollutant levels are due to natural sources rather than human development.
Mercury, thallium and other pollutants accumulated in higher concentrations in snowpacks and waterways near and downstream from oilsands development than in more remote areas, said a study to be published Monday afternoon in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Upstream and undeveloped sites exposed directly to the McMurray Geologic Formation, the natural source of the oilsands, did not show high levels of pollutants.
†Oil sands development contributes elements toxic at low concentrations to the Athabasca River and its tributaries PNAS published ahead of print August 30, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.1008754107
"My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity."
Bertrand Russell
Unless otherwise indicated - and without intruding on the copyrights of others - all photographs displayed in A Natural Evolution are under the copyright of Adrian Thysse (2010). The use of these photographs, for any purpose, is not permissable without permission of the copyright holder.
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