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EXTREME ENVIRONMENT OF DANAKIL DEPRESSION SHEDS LIGHT ON MARS, TITAN, AND NUCLEAR WASTE

The Danakil Depression in Ethiopia is a spectacular, hostile environment that may resemble conditions encountered on Mars and Titan – as well as in sites containing nuclear waste. From 20 to 28 January 2018, five teams of researchers and more than 30 support staff visited two locations in the region to study the microbiology, geology, and chemistry at the Dallol hydrothermal outcrop and the saline Lake Afrera.

The research trip was supported by the EU-funded Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure (RI), which has organised a series of field campaigns over the past two years to characterise the site as an analogue for other planetary surfaces and for astrobiological studies.

Dallol is a uniquely hostile place for life due to the combination of its extreme salinity, high temperature, and acidity. It is one of the hottest places on Earth, at more than 100 metres below sea level. Upwelling water, rich in many different salts and heated by magma close to the surface, forms brightly-coloured, highly acidic pools. Toxic gases, including chlorine and sulphur vapour, hang in the air.

Karen Olsson-Francis and Vincent Rennie from the Open University are studying how microbiology is affected by variation in the physical and chemical conditions at Dallol, and where pockets of habitability might be found. They focused on two channels of highly acidic, saline water with temperatures ranging from 40 to 70°C. The pair took measurements on-site and collected samples for further analysis in the laboratory.

“Our initial findings showed that microbes may be present, despite the extreme salinity and acidity,” said Rennie. The team will now undertake further geological and microbial analysis in the coming months and hope to have preliminary results of the outflow channel study by early September.

Hugo Moors and Mieke De Craen of SCK-CEN also studied microbiology in the context of the geology and the chemistry of the water at a number of locations, and successfully tested a range of new sampling techniques and sample preservation systems. In addition to their astrobiology research related to exoplanets, the pair are using Danakil as an analogue for nuclear waste.

“The extreme conditions in the Danakil Depression might resemble some of the conditions encountered in the disposal of waste from nuclear reactors. We will now try to cultivate microbes and chemically analyse samples of the water from Danakil to attempt to understand what might be able to survive in nuclear waste,” said Moors.

Next summer, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will begin a study of rift zones on Mars, which are characterised by salt deposits and ancient magma systems and have strong similarities to the Afar rift currently forming between the Erta Ale and Dallol volcanoes. To support the upcoming mission observations, Daniel Mège of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Ernst Hauber of DLR carried out a preliminary study of the structure of hydrothermal systems and took soil samples from several centimetres below the surface to determine microbial life present.

“We need to analyse our findings, but some of the preliminary results look very exciting,” said Mège. “We’ve also carried out reconnaissance work for a ground magnetic survey next year, in which we aim to characterise intrusive magmatic activity in the rift. We look forward to returning in 2019.”

Jani Radebaugh of Brigham Young University, with Ralph Lorenz of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, used a handheld digital camera and ‘kite-cam’, a kite-lofted GoPro, to create image-derived Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) at a variety of locations across the playas and other regions in the Afar. They have gathered 15 different image datasets at a variety of locations, which they will then compare to RADAR data on the roughness of the terrain.

“This region is absolutely spectacular for field work from a planetary perspective, as there are so many unusual and extreme environments that have strong planetary analogues,” said Radebaugh. “The comparison of our datasets gathered on the ground with RADAR images taken from space, which quantify roughness in a different way, will help us interpret data from space missions on the roughness of surfaces at Titan and Mars.”

David Vaz and Lourenço Bandeira of the Centre for Earth and Space Research of the University of Coimbra surveyed the shape, subsurface geometry and ages of fault scarps on a rift located south of Lake Afrera. Understanding how erosion degrades these volcanic structures in very arid environments on Earth will enable them to interpret similar features on Mars and infer erosion rates throughout the Red Planet’s geological history.

Vaz said: “When you spend several years at a computer, looking at images from the surface of Mars and trying to understand what happened there, it’s easy to lose the sense of scale. Going to the field, and actually seeing things with your own eyes gives you a more real perspective on what you are dealing with. To achieve our purpose of using fault scarps as paleo-environmental markers on Mars, it would be great to survey other faults, with different ages and presenting different states of preservation. On this trip, the geophysical instruments that should give a perspective on the underground fault geometry did not work, but that’s the price we pay when working in such remote and difficult conditions. We hope to return to the site to carry out further studies.”

Felipe Gomez, Nuria Rodriguez and Beatriz Flores of CAB-INTA worked on the preparation of the Danakil site as a planetary analogue for Europlanet 2020 RI’s transnational access programme, which provides funding for researchers to visit the site and carry out experiments.

“The diversity of the research carried out by these five teams shows the versatility of this exotic landscape for planetary research,” said Gomez. “We have already had interesting findings about the preservation of organic matter under such harsh conditions, which gives important clues about martian habitability. Any scientist can now apply to carry out planetary experiments at Danakil. We look forward to seeing the results!”

“In visiting Danakil, we have purposely brought together people from different parts of the world to encourage the sharing of ideas across institutions, countries and continental boundaries,” said Gian Gabriele Ori of the International Research School of Planetary Sciences in Pescara, who led the expedition. “Seasoned researchers have worked side by side and shared their experience with young scientists. It has been a very successful trip.”

The expedition was supported by Monica Bufill and Daniela D'Alleva of the International Research School of Planetary Sciences in Pescara, Italy, Miruts Hagos from Mekelle University and Mikael Tamrat and Zablon Beyene of Zab Tours Ethiopia. The team was accompanied by the photographer, Alex Pritz.

TOP IMAGE….Hugo Moors and Mieke De Craen collecting samples at Dallol. Credit: Alex Pritz/Europlanet

CENTRE IMAGE….Kitecam picture of the Dallol, with the research groups at the edge. Credit: Jani Radebaugh/Europlanet

LOWER IMAGE….Pool at the Dallol site. Credit: Alex Pritz/Europlanet

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“Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, S.D. ― Dominique Amiotte, 17, always makes sure to keep a few extra tampons in her locker. It’s not much, but it’s enough to encourage at least some of her struggling friends to come to school when they have their periods.

About half of Amiotte’s girlfriends can’t afford tampons or sanitary pads. As a result, when they menstruate, they’ll skip school for as long as a week. This can lead them to fall behind in class, contributing to the already abysmal graduation rates on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There are no official records on how many of the young women at the reservation’s 13 schools have felt the consequences of this issue, but individuals we spoke to say it’s an inescapable part of everyday life.

“It makes me angry,” Amiotte told HuffPost unflinchingly while seated in an empty classroom at the Crazy Horse School, where there are 70 girls enrolled in middle or high school classes.”

Read the full piece here

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Veronica Lake, 1941, photo by A.L. “Whitey” Schafer

“I was always a rebel and probably could have got much farther had I changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I got pretty far without changing attitudes. I’m happy with that.”  - interview later in life

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Privileged folk ridiculing safe spaces is so funny as if men don’t refuse to enter “girly” stores and have “man caves”, as if white people don’t avoid black neighbourhoods, as if straight people don’t ostracise gay people from their social circles, like who’s really the one with the safe spaces lol

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How physicists see other fields:

Biology: squishy physics

Geology: slow physics

Computer Science: virtual physics

Psychology: people physics

Chemistry: impure physics

Math: physics without units

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Why lush is so expensive

Please remember that Lush is a fair trade company. This means that all they pay ALL of their workers a livable amount, and don’t take advantage of workers and harvesters in third world countries like many brands do. They test none of their products on animals as well.

Please keep these things in mind! Just know there is a reason that they cannot sell their bath bombs for 99 cents each. Doing so would mean that hard workers are being under paid.

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50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered in New York and opened in limited release on April 3, 1968.

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I have had to go full Jersey on some creeps before 

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Today’s Google doodle honors the inventor of the marine chronometer, which solved the problem of calculating longitude at sea. 

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The Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, April 28, 1945

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Minimum Wage should be indexed to 2% of a city’s median rent.

And here’s why:

Housing costs are the single biggest financial burden facing Americans today.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development define being cost-burdened as spending more than a third of your income on rent. By that definition, over half of the households in this country are cost-burdened. Source

If we want people to be able to afford to live in cities and not get priced out, we have to make a two pronged approach. One is to build houses towards all incomes and price ranges, not just luxury condos. And the other is a robust wage floor so people can actually afford to live.

Fight for 15 is doing an amazing job and I love them, but we have to realize that is quite a few places, $15/hr still isn’t enough to live on.

Which is where the 2% comes in. It allows a minimum wage that is flexible with regards to the costs of living.

And it wasn’t plucked out of thin air either:

Rent should be a third of a persons income, or to restate the equation: income should be three times a person’s rent.

And since a full time job is 8 hrs a day / 40 hrs a week / 160 hrs a month.

So when you do the math, the ideal hourly minimum wage as a percentage of rent works out to around 1.875%, which for ease of calculation is 2%.

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Men about The Shape of Water: Its so unrealistic, no woman would ever fall in love with a fish monster when there are real men around!

Actual women: I would sell every man on earth to have a fish monster boyfriend.

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I can’t believe how upset some people are because somebody drew a woman with leg hair and a post-baby pudge, my goddess

Morrigan - “Moist”

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“The creeping murderer, the octopus … pretending now to be a bit of weed, now a rock … runs lightly on the tips of its arms.”  Source: National Geographic