Black iceberg spotted off Labrador could be result of an asteroid strike
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The picture first surfaced last month after a fish harvester from Carbonear, N.L., took a photo of it while fishing for shrimp last month.
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Hallur Antoniussen, 64, was working aboard the Saputi, a factory freezer trawler operated by the Qikiqtaaluk Fisheries Corporation, off the coast of Labrador in mid-May, when he spotted the black berg.
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'I have seen icebergs that are rolled, what they say have rolled in the beach with some rocks in it,' he told CBC Radio's Labrador Morning show. 'This one here is completely different. It's not only that he is all black. He is almost … in a diamond shape.'
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He took his picture from about six kilometres away, estimating the size of the visible portion at about three times that of a bungalow home. That would mean a submerged portion equal to about 27 more bungalows.
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'It's something you don't see very often, and a camera is not something I run around (with) when I'm working,' Antoniussen told the CBC. 'So I just ran to my room and took my phone and snapped this picture.'
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Comments peppered his Facebook post, suggesting that the colour was toxic gas trapped in ice, or perhaps a rare mineral. Once the photo began circulating more widely — news organizations in Britain, Israel, India, Italy and elsewhere have written about it — the theories grew wilder.
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A story Monday in Vice magazine opened with the headline: 'That Ominous Black Iceberg Probably Isn't a Sign From the Aliens,' clearly not willing to rule out extraterrestrials entirely.
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But the truth could actually be in a similar vein. Dr. Lev Tarasov, a Memorial University physicist and glacial earth systems modeller, told the CBC that the berg's hue likely came from the glacier from which it calved picking up rocks and dirt on its way to the sea.
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'There's parts of the ice that are actually flowing up to 20 kilometres per year, which would mean that … the ice is moving maybe a few metres every hour,' he said.
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They pick up rocks and dirt along the way. Some of that debris could have come from volcanic ash from an eruption in Greenland or Iceland. And some could have come from outer space.
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Back in 2018, scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks using ice-penetrating radar discovered a 31-kilometre impact crater in northwestern Greenland, formed by an asteroid strike. It would have been relatively recent in geological terms, perhaps 11,000 years ago, or as far back as a few million.
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7 hours ago
- CBC
City data suggests 'stark decline' of waterfowl on Toronto beaches during summer, expert says
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According to the data, lifeguards counted an average of 51 waterfowl per count across all beaches in 2008, compared with 14 in 2024. The most affected beaches include Sunnyside Beach, which went from an average of 100 waterfowl counted in 2008 to 17 in 2024, and Centre Island Beach, which went from 92 in 2008 to 15 in 2024. A spokesperson for Toronto Public Health said the reduction in birds was expected as the city has been trying to discourage their presence when the beaches are open for swimming, to minimize droppings. This involves corralling and relocating birds, enacting bylaws against the feeding of waterfowl and the use of dogs to drive them away. Fewer birds mean fewer droppings and less chance of E. coli in beach waters. But one expert says the data raises important questions about wildlife habitat and whether the reduced presence of birds on beaches means they're making homes elsewhere or if their population might be declining due to human activity. Questions about long-term impact According to Marc Cadotte, a biology professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough who has independently reviewed the data, the counts show a "stark decline" in the number of birds on waterfronts. If the city's deterrents are successful, Cadotte wonders whether they result in a loss of habitat for the birds. "Are they moving to other places in the city, or do these deterrents impact populations in the long-term? Wild animals consistently lose habitat with urbanization, and if we further drive them out of usable habitat, we are magnifying our impacts," he said. "This is more of a case of classic human-wildlife conflict, and the usual outcome is that wildlife lose." Asked about the possibility of population decline, Mahesh Patel, manager of health protection at Toronto Public Health said measuring the number of birds in an area can be challenging given their constant movement and that the data should be taken as a snapshot in time. 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Here's what you should know before you go He said other research points to Toronto still being a good place for waterfowl to migrate through during the winter and that counting them on beaches during the summer is not a good indicator of how they are doing. "The areas where there's going to be lifeguards probably aren't the best areas for waterfowl in Toronto anyway," Peck said. 'A sad side-effect' For Haroop Sandhu, a student living in Toronto and frequenter of Woodbine and Centre Island beaches, watching ducks is a main reason she goes to beaches. "I love wildlife, it's one of the most important parts of being at the beach," she said. "I feel like if [human activity] is the main reason then we can't really do anything about it because people are going to go to the beach, so it's a side-effect, but it's a sad side-effect." Bird watcher Vivian Li, who favours Sunnyside Beach, shared the same sentiment. "It's their home as well, and we need to share the space with them instead of chasing them off," she said. Cadotte says despite limitations to the data, it is still useful for describing conditions on beaches. "I would say that this type of data more than surpasses any questionable limits on the minimum amount of data. So I think that in terms of the number of observations, it's actually quite robust given comparable data sets," he said.
20 hours ago
Moving to a more walkable city pays off for health, scientists find
People who moved to a walking friendly city walked more, and at the brisk pace favoured to improve health and prevent disease, a new natural experiment shows. Walkable cities allow you to access more amenities on foot for daily life, like going to school or work, buying ingredients to make dinner or heading to the park to play. But that's not available to everyone, given many cities and suburbs in Canada and the U.S. have been designed to emphasize transit by car, urban planners say. Teasing out cause from effect — whether walkable cities lead people to move more or if people who like to walk tend to live in more pedestrian-friendly cities — is important to nail down because it could help encourage more investment in safe sidewalks and zoning to encourage physical activity, medical researchers say. To find out, Tim Althoff, a computer science professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, used data from a step-tracking app to compare daily steps of more than 5,400 people who moved between major U.S. cities. In short, we found that your city can help make you healthier, Althoff said. The design of your city impacts how much you walk and as a result, your health. Paul Sharma of Peel Public Health says the region is working to improve the walkability of Mississauga and Brampton's sprawling neighbourhoods. Photo: CBC / Craig Chivers Althoff and his co-authors said in this week's issue of the journal Nature (new window) that moving from a less walkable city to a more walkable one adds about 1,100 steps a day on average. It's something the computer scientist has seen first-hand. I grew up in a rural area in Germany, Althoff said. I've lived in California and now in Seattle. Personally, I'm a really big fan of public transit, but I also, for instance, intentionally move to a neighborhood where it would be close to a bus stop. Canadian and international guidelines recommend adults get 150 minutes or more a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week. The researchers found people who lived in more walkable cities were about twice as likely to accumulate those steps. Dr. Laura Rosella, a professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, said several high-quality Canadian (new window) studies point to decreased risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and prediabetes as well as mental health benefits from more walkable cities. Enlarge image (new window) Pedestrians walking in Old Montreal on a sunny day. The city has slowly increased the walkability of the Plateau neighbourhood, an urban planner says. Photo: Radio-Canada / Charles Contant We spend lots of money on the health care system, Rosella. This [walkability] is something that literally we could make small tweaks that could have a huge difference. To apply the findings in Canada's climate, Rosella said, policy makers would also need to take into account safety considerations, like clearing snow and ice on sidewalks. Benefits of mixed density Ahmed El-Geneidy, a professor in urban planning at McGill University, said it takes about 15 years to gradually make changes to neighbourhoods and change the culture so people walk around cities more. The whole idea is that you need to build high density beside the single family homes, El-Geneidy said. That's how areas like Montreal's Plateau neighbourhood encouraged people to walk to more destinations, like grocery shops, he said. WATCH | Urban renewal for Edmonton residents: Paul Sharma, director of chronic disease and injury prevention at Peel Public Health, said Mississauga and Brampton's sprawling suburban neighbourhoods are sedentary places. Residents tend to have longer commutes compared to elsewhere in Ontario, according to the region's data. To design more walkable communities, Peel officials say they're working on factors like increasing density, proximity to services, and making wider sidewalks with better lighting and shade. This is where public health and local planners need to work closely together to improve the health of the residents, Sharma said. At a playground in Calgary's Crestmount residential neighbourhood, Jarek Soltys said the family chose the location to be close to the mountains and walking paths, where they get steps in for enjoyment, but not transportation for errands. When we moved here seven years ago there really wasn't anything here at all, not even a convenience store so we knew we would be driving places, Soltys said. That is the reality of the suburbs in a big city. Amina Zafar (new window) · CBC News · Journalist Amina Zafar covers medical sciences and health care for CBC. She contributes to CBC Health's Second Opinion, which won silver for best editorial newsletter at the 2024 Digital Publishing Awards. She holds an undergraduate degree in environmental science and a master's in journalism. With files from CBC's Alison Northcott and Melanie Glanz
CBC
2 days ago
- CBC
A UFO? A plane? What was that bright white object flying over Quebec Tuesday night?
If you thought aliens might be visiting, you may be disappointed to learn it was actually a rocket called Ariane 6 that streaked across Quebec's night sky on Aug. 12. It launched from French Guiana just after 9:37 p.m. E.T., carrying a satellite into space.
