In
today’s troubled and dangerous world we need to pause to appreciate
and support widespread world co-operation. How gratifying to see so
many research groups freely sharing their findings, implying humanity
is one. Far too many for one blog, so let us start with Canada’s
37,610,646 people - 0.48% of the world total.
Back
in 1972 Canada and Russia faced off in the world’s hockey summit.
Vladislav Tretyak, the famed Russian goalie who propelled his team to
one goal shy of a tie and is now a member of the Duma, and is
co-chair of the Canada-Russia Parliamentary Friendship Group. His
partnerships in Canada and the USA are many and valuable.
The
largest Canadian science outlet, The Canadian Science Publishing,
produces annually some 2,300 research articles in 24 journals
distributed to 125 countries.
In
2013 a study ranked Canada 4th after the USA, UK. and
Germany in science research but a laggard in exploiting its
achievements. Since 2016 the Canadian government has invested $10
billion in assisting science research, yet in 2018 it slipped to 7th
place mainly by being outspent. The rise in university science
students from the USA and Europe due to the anti-science stance of
the Trump administration and Bexit will take years to make an
impact. But, progress is well underway, yet still inadequate to
defeat climate change:
Perimeter
Institute for Theoretical Physics: We do need to take notice and
admire the amazing leap from embryo to a science research powerhouse
in 20 years. Perimeter Institute (PI) was founded in 1999 in
Waterloo, Ontario, with a $100 million grant by Mike Lazaridis,
founder of Research in Motion that made the Blackberry wireless
handheld devices. In 2005 the province of Ontario’s Ministry of
Research and Innovation initiated a $50 million commitment, then in
2008 Lazaridis added $50 million.
PI’s
mission is to do pure physics research with few restraints in
buildings designed by physicists for physicists. Research areas
include: Condensed Matter, Cosmology, Mathematical Physics, Particle
Physics, Quantum Fields, Strings, Quantum Foundations, Quantum
Gravity, Quantum Information, and Strong Gravity.
Directors:
The first director, Howard Burton, 1999-2007, initiated a popular
monthly public lecture series, an international summer school, a
teachers’ workshop, and numerous student and teacher seminars.
After leaving PI he created Ideas Roadshow.
To
replace him, Lazaridis lured a high profile Cambridge professor, Neil
Turok, director of their Centre for Theoretical Cosmology. In 2003
he founded The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences that has
spread from South Africa to Senegal, Cameroon, Ghana, Tanzania, and
Rwanda.
Stephan
Hawking and Turok were friends who worked together. Excited at the
promise of PI, Hawking endorsed Turok’s move. He visited PI twice,
was joyfully involved, and gave his name to a new building, The
Stephen Hawking Centre. Hawking and Turok believed that the universe
cries out for simple, principled explanations and that PI was the
ideal setting to pursue answers.
Turok
led PI to become a research powerhouse in physics with over 150
resident researchers and 1,000 visiting scholars. In June 2018 he
was appointed to The Order of Canada. He resigned the directorship
in February 2018 to concentrate on research at PI.
A
worldwide search for a successor chose Robert Myers, a Canadian
already a PI researcher who was world renowned for his work on Black
Holes, String Theory, and Quantum Entanglements. Myers argues it is
vitally important that we do daring research into uncharted places.,
such as:
The
PI Quantum Intelligence Lab (PIQuIL) (pronounced
pickle) integrates academic and industry research while focusing on
pure science. They use Artificial Intelligence to
help design the next generation of quantum materials and
computers.
Canadian
Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) In
2007 astronomers found a faint
pulse from a distant galaxy that emitted more energy in milliseconds
as our Sun does in 80 years. The
hunt for more Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) detected 25 in 10 years. The
new Chime, located in the
Okanagan Valley of British
Columbia with
some 50 scientists from PI, the Universities of British Columbia,
Toronto, and McGill, and the National Research Council became
involved in 2017.
Chime
has
4 fixed half cylinder
wide-angle telescopes that sweep the skies as the earth turns. They
collect daily a million
gigabytes of data, far too much to save to disk. Researcher Kevin
Smith’s team developed algorithms that
ran a hundred times faster than believed possible. The FRB search
went from a crawl to a gallop that made the cover of Nature
in 2019 with 13 FRB
discoveries followed by another larger batch including 8
repeaters,
TRIUMF,
a joint venture of 7
universities, is Canada’s
national lab for nuclear and particle physics and
related sciences. It is located on
the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Founded in 1968, it attained
the world’s largest cyclotron in 1976 and included nuclear medical
research. It has a staff of 500 with 1,000 annual international
researchers.
Women:
PI continues to advance the
participation of women in advanced science.
It invites annually some 30
women holding
masters degrees to attend a month-long course exploring PI
opportunities and offering supervised PhD courses. In
March it hosts 200 high school girls to describe careers in science.
It explains the difficulties and rewards, emphasizing that failures
can be expected but are
tools for learning and
successes. In
fact one of the women advising these students was a straight A
student when she ventured into science, believing herself a failure
when her efforts earned only Ds. Persevering, she is now a top
scientist.
The
International Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP)
started in 2003 with 20 Canadian students, later adding 20
international ones.
Field trips have included SNOLAB in
Sudbury, Ontario.
The
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, 2
km down in an
arm of the working Creighton
nickle mine is the world’s deepest science research lab. It’s
staff of over 100 concentrates on neutrino
and dark matter research. It
is a 10-hour day for 8 hours of science research. First the ultra
clean room must be checked for air quality, then
workers take a 5-minute elevator ride down to the arm, to
walk 1.5 km to the room, scrubbing mine dust from their clothing
before showering
and
dressing in clean coveralls
before entering the work room.
A
new $30 million dark matter research
facility is
planned in the next 2 years
and a $150
million one in 4 years with the United States collaborating.
Marine
Research: With
long coastlines bordering the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific oceans,
Canada provides data on a wide variety of oceanography research
topics. In
2007 The University of Victoria initiated Ocean
Networks Canada
that
runs the
NEPTUNE
and VENUS undersea
projects
as
well as smaller offshore observatories at Cambridge Bay, Campbell
River, Kitamaat, and Digby Island. NEPTUNE
(Northeast
Pacific
Undersea Networked Experiment), based
in Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island,
covers
the small
250,000
sqkm
Juan de Fuca tectonic plate that
is plunging under the huge North Atlantic plate at 3 inches a year.
VENUS
(Victoria
Experimental Network Undersea) is
based
at
3 locations along the Salish Sea (SW BC and NW Washington State).
Over
850 km of seafloor cables send
over 200 gigabytes of data daily from
over 2,000 sensors.
This
is freely available to researchers.
The
Institute of Ocean Services,
Sydney, BC, is one of nine major research centres operated by Oceans
and Fisheries Canada.
14
Canadian Arctic Research Stations (showing
the startup year):
Canadian
High Arctic Research Station (CHARS): Designed
and built with Inuit participation has
a modern 4,800 sqmetre
main building in Cambridge Bay, Victoria Island, 2019.
Churchill Northern Studies,
Churchill, Manitoba, 1976, Atmosphere Watch Observatory, Alert, NE
Ellesemere Island. 1986, Flashline Mars Arctic
Research Station, Devon
Island, Nunavut, 2001, Igloolik Research
Centre, Igloolik, Nunavut, 1975, Iqualuit Research Centre, Iqaluit,
1978, Kluane Lake Research, Kluane Lake, Yukon, 1961, McGill
Arctic Research Station, Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut, 1960, Polar
Environment
Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), Eureka, Nunavut, 1993,
Resolute Nunavut Station, Resolute, Nunavut, 1947,
Tundra Ecosystem Research Station, (TERS). Darling Lake, NWT, 1994,
Ward Hunt Island Observatory Research, Ward Island, Nunavut, 1957,
Western Arctic Research Centre, Inuvik, NWT, 1964,
Whapmagoostui, Quebec, 1971,
And
also a disgrace:
Mould
Bay, Prince Patrick Island, weather station in 1948 was one of a
network of high Arctic weather stations
built by Canada and the United States. The
US ended its participation in 1972. It
was abandoned in 1997 and the decision to close it came in 2002. $8
million was allocated to a
clean up that met delays.
By 2008 most of the clean-up money was missing. In
2017 the 2-storey building was assessed unrepairable.
But,
then, we have Alert on the NE coast of Ellesmere Island:
The
world’s most northern inhabited community, closer to Moscow than
Ottawa by 80 miles or 150
km. First settled in April
1950 as a weather station,
the RCAF moved in to
build a wireless station in
1957 to enjoy Russian
broadcasts. In 1958 control
was transferred to the Army. With the addition of RCN the name
became in 1968 Canadian
Forces Station Alert. After
the 11 Sep 2001 attacks
funding was increased and the RCAF resumed command.
In 2008 maintenance was given to private contractors.
The
first woman arrived in 1980, the
first female commanding officer was Major
Cowan in 1996, the first
female station warrant officer in 2017.
The
peak population was about
250. The 2016 census
reported 62. Automation and budget
cuts reduced human residents.
Universities:
Worldwide, universities are
great at sharing students, faculty, and data.
Canadian
Universities: Of the world’s
1,250 research universities, Canada
has 96
with 1.8 million students. Four
rank in the top 100 and 9 in
the top 300. Among the 36
nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), Canada ranks first in the percentage of people holding
university degrees. Canada
actively encourages worldwide university students, both to study in
Canada and to stay after graduation. In 2018, 10,950 did stay The
Federal government has contributed $148 million
over 5 years to help fund recruitment that
provides 170,000 jobs. In
2018 there were 572,415 (8%)
of
the student total. 2019
welcomed
700,000.
About
84% of foreign students
select universities in
Ontario,
British Columbia,
and Quebec while other
provinces have earned strong adherents. For instance: In 2017
Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova
Scotia had
3,000 from 115 countries,
Memorial University, St.
John’s, Newfoundland with 4 satellite campuses
ranks first
in Canada for student satisfaction, attracting in
2019 3,200 students from
over 90 countries who
account for one third of its graduates.
Climate Change and Energy:
Canada
is blessed with reliable and diverse sources of energy:
oil,
natural gas, hydroelectricity, coal, nuclear (uranium), solar, wind,
tidal and biomass. Canada
is the
world’s
5th
largest energy
producer
and the 8th
largest consumer. Frictions
are present as areas like Alberta and Newfoundland who rely on
fossil fuel profits have to contend with regulations imposed by
environmentalists eager to speed
climate remedies.
Both
sides are using science to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions.
The
Bank of Canada has inaugurated long-term studies on how to meet
economic and environmental goals and stay within the 2015 Paris
Agreement goal of limiting climate increases to the 1.5 - 2.0 Celsius
range. World temperature has already increased 1 degree caused by
greenhouse gases released mainly by the industrialized world with
great harm to the non-industrial world.
Canada
has committed $2.65 billion for 2020-21 to help poorer nations fight
it and has combined this with enhancing the role of women in
agriculture, in reforestation, in designing and making cooking
utensils that reduce greenhouse emissions, and in business ventures.
Canada
has benefited in that its growing season has increased 2 weeks and
moved 80 miles north in 50 years, permitting agriculture to increase,
but costs have so far outweighed benefits. For instance fossil fuels
that were trucked in over ice roads over frozen permafrost to remote
locations have to be flown in at great expense. Devastating fires,
floods, soil erosion, refugee increases are all due to melting
permafrost with its huge methane release. Land use must adapt
quickly.
Wind
Farms: Some 300 wind farms
provide 6% of Canada’s energy. The first one was built in Alberta
in 1993. Now every province has them. Only
Nunavut and Northwest Territories do not.
They require batteries to store power, kill over 300,000 birds
annually, are noisy and to many unsightly. So,
research is ongoing.
The Struggle:
Life
on this planet has always been a mix of heaven, hell, and purgatory
with much of the latter two of our own making, mainly from those who
worship the God of Greed. This
time survival for all dictates co-operation. Make it so!
Ye
Olde Scribe, George
Great informative blog!
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
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