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Time of India
4 days ago
- Science
- Time of India
‘Gold arrived on our planet as Earth was forming 4.5 billion years ago — it holds an extraordinary history'
Jun Korenaga Jun Korenaga is Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Yale University . He tells Srijana Mitra Das at TE about how gold got to Earth: It's a little surprising to connect to Jun Korenaga , not least because the scientist is sitting against the backdrop of a planetary surface that could be — but doesn't have to be — Mars. Speaking with purple rock and feathery clouds in a sunless sky behind him, Korenaga explains the origins of gold — and Earth. 'My work focuses on estimating early Earth's history. In the last few years, I've worked on the Hadean Eon which was about 4.5 billion years ago — this is the most mysterious part of our planet's history because we don't have a rock record for it. I work on the theoretical side and try to reconstruct what early Earth looked like.' Gold is part of early Earth's story, although in unexpected ways. A symbol of stability now, gold had quite a dramatic past. Supernovae or cataclysmic stellar explosions and star collisions occurred in the universe. The extreme pressure of such imploding stars was so high, subatomic protons and electrons got pushed into their core — these formed neutrons. Rapid neutron capture by iron then created heavy elements like uranium, lead, silver and gold. Interestingly, this process occurred very, very swiftly — and then, these elements were expelled into space. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like News For Jack Nicholson, 87, He Has Been Confirmed To Be... Reportingly Undo (Photos: Getty images) Thus, metals like gold and platinum arrived on Earth while our planet was still forming. Korenaga explains, 'About 4.5 billion years ago, Earth was hit by a Mars-sized rock and the moon formed as the debris from this collision went into an Earth-orbiting disk. More bombardment followed — there were plenty of leftover rocks orbiting the sun as well and several fell on young Earth. The landing of these objects is known as 'late accretion', comprising about the last 1% of planetary growth. In this period, some of the rocks which fell on Earth had metallic components like gold.' Importantly, gold and platinum are among highly siderophile elements (HSEs) — these are metals with an extremely strong affinity for iron. Korenaga smiles slightly and says, 'Now, if Earth was created with no funny twists in its story, we actually wouldn't have any gold on our planet's surface because, sticking to iron, this was heavy and should have gone straight down into the core which we cannot access. But we do have gold on the surface, which shows that part of Earth's mantle can retain metallic components.' Korenaga's research, conducted with Simone Marchi , posits the notion that there is a thin or 'transient' part of the mantle where shallow areas melt away and a deeper region stays solid. This part could hold falling metallic components and reach them to the mantle. In the simulations the scientists conducted, as a rock crashed onto Earth, it hit a localised liquid magma ocean where heavy metals sank to the bottom. As these reached the partially molten area underneath, the metal would start sinking further down — then, the molten mantle solidified, capturing the metal there. But how did this re-emerge to the part of Earth's surface humans could access? As Korenaga says, 'The part of the mantle which contains this metallic component is heavier and more chemically dense than the rest — to bring it up, you have to offset that density by being hotter than normal as hotter materials usually have lower density. Thus, thermal currents from Earth's core outweighed that compositional density and made these materials move up from the solid mantle to Earth's surface.' This process is called 'mantle convection', when hot mantle material rises as colder material sinks. Earth's mantle is almost totally solid — yet, over long geologic periods, it acts like a pliable material which can mix and move things within it. Those include the HSEs — like gold — which came to Earth from massive collisions billions of years ago and then reached the planet's surface through these enormous, yet intricate internal processes. Is gold found on other planets as well? Korenaga says, 'Gold is found on the moon — but its abundance there is much lower than on Earth. It is found on Mars too. Of course, we don't have direct samples from Mars but we have so-called Martian meteorites. These are found on Earth but because of their isotopic features, they are traced back to Mars. Analysing these rocks shows us the presence of highly siderophile elements there — again though, the abundance of these, like gold and platinum, is much lower than on Earth.' Do siderophiles contain a larger story of the formation of our solar system — and universe? Korenaga comments, 'We understand planetary formation in terms of silicate rocks and iron which makes up most of the core. Iron is a major element while silicate rocks are made of silicon, oxygen, magnesium, iron, etc. Highly siderophile elements exist in very small abundances — their presence by itself doesn't drive any major planetary formation processes but they stick with iron and by measuring such trace elements, we can study more details of planetary formation.' These abundances thus help us decipher the paths planets once took. The Golden Moon: This too has gold on it THE GOLDEN MOON: This too has gold on it Given its incredible history — arriving on Earth 4.5 billion years ago, seeping deep into its mantle, pushed to the top by extraordinary forces operating from within our planet — how should we think of gold the next time we see it? Korenaga replies, 'Gold is, of course, widely available as jewellery and other items from shops but when we look at it, we should actually think about its extraordinary origins — we shouldn't take gold for granted. Its presence helps us understand crucial details of the very existence of this metallic Earth and the formation of its unique atmosphere which is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen — why did our planet develop in this way? A simple everyday item like gold can hold big answers to that.' Korenaga concludes by remarking, 'Of course, my work explains why Earth's mantle has some amount of gold or platinum at the surface level but for humans to access pure gold, you need a concentrated form in a mine,' He adds, with a scientist's exactness, 'It is extremely inefficient otherwise to extract gold from rocks — but to understand the formation of gold mines, you need deeper knowledge about very local processes. And that is another story.'
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Big Dunc - From Barlinnie hell to Goodison heaven
As the sunshine beats through the window in a studio by the River Clyde, Duncan Ferguson is talking about the darkness in his early life. Barlinnie Prison, where he spent 44 days and nights, is six miles away and 30 years in the distance, but right now, as he discusses the opening chapters of his autobiography, he's back there. The sights and sounds and smells - they don't go away. They stay. Forever, you sense. Ferguson's life story - the recently published Big Dunc - couldn't begin anywhere else. Rangers vs Raith Rovers, Ibrox, 1994. John McStay, a 'headbutt' while on probation for some fracas at a taxi rank and then a jail sentence in its wake. "Hell," as he calls it. Tom English: You were 23 when you went inside. Reading what you witnessed, I cannot believe that they sent you to a place like that. Duncan Ferguson: I'd locked it away until I started to do the book. It all comes flooding back. I couldn't do that time now. I don't think I could cope. Back then, it was frightening. Sometimes you look back and you think, how did you get through it? How did you actually get through that? Because you're on your own. There's nobody backing you up, there's nobody helping you. TE: You say there was also a bit of excitement involved. DF: I was upset. I was worried. I was frightened. Of course I was. But I was also a wee bit excited to see what the nick was like. Because I was young and stupid. You've seen the movies, haven't you? You've seen movies of prisons and you think, what's it like to be in there? So there was a wee bit of that, maybe not excitement, but certainly I was intrigued to what was actually going to happen in there. TE: How long did that last? DF: Not long. Because I realised it was hell. TE: You describe your first night inside - the lights go out and the voices in the dark. DF: Sitting at the end of that bed. Everything echoed. They're screaming at you. 'You're going to get cut in the morning'. That's what happened. They pinpoint where you are. It was like they were focusing on me. You're worried sick. You've got to face that in the morning. I never slept a wink all night. I was terrified. I'm going to walk out on this landing in the morning and you think someone's going to stick a knife in you. TE: You ended up working in the kitchen? DF: The hospital wing. You've got designated jobs. The first few days, I'd slop out on the wing. There was a block in the middle of the prison and there were about 12 cells in there for inmates who were getting cut or slashed or harming themselves. The paedophiles and that. Some of them get kept in there. It wasn't too bad, because you're away from the main population during the day. TE: And in there you were asked to go and counsel a young boy. DF: I can't remember his name, but he tried to take his own life. He'd come over to the hospital wing. The guards had found out that he'd played for the Rangers as a kid. They asked me to go and speak to him. TE: You were only a kid yourself. DF: You think you're a man, don't you? I thought I was a man. I've got everything boxed-off. I was just a baby. I had to go and speak to the boy and he was in a bad way. He told me a wee bit of his story. He was a good football player and it never quite happened for him. He got released. He ended up on drugs. I hope he's doing well now. I still think about the boy sometimes. As Ferguson recounts his spats in his early life, all the fighting and the endless grief, you ask him what he would say to his teenage self if he could sit him down now and talk to him. DF: Don't drink. That would be the first thing I'd say to myself. A lot of trouble in my life has been through booze. We were young. We'd come off the estates. Everybody drunk. If I wasn't drunk when these incidents happened, I might have walked away. TE: Your upbringing. You describe yourself as a stupid, daft laddie. But then you also say, I see myself as shy. Nobody really knows me. You look at the pages and stories you tell in your book, it doesn't look like the life of a shy young man. DF: To this day, I have no friends. Good friends. I was a loner. At school, I was on my own with my ball. I took my ball to school. I never mixed. I walked my dog. I had my ferrets. I wasn't a mixer. I never mixed with my team-mates. I had some friends, but not a lot. I was a bit shy. I'm coming out of my shell a wee bit now. TE: You're shy, but you were fond of a night out. Again, it goes back to the drinking. These fights at taxi ranks. This abusive guy who's on the crutches. DF: I can't remember him on a crutch. He swung at me a wee bit. I was daft. I was drunk. You're chasing girls. I was 16 or 17. Stirling's a small place. I became a target. I was Duncan Ferguson, the football player. Look at the way he walks. Look at the way he's drinking that beer. Look at the way he's dancing. He thinks he's gallus. People were approaching me. TE: I'll read you a quote from the book, after some sort of incident. The police came to see you. "I was laid out on the sofa, rotten, stinking drunk, buck naked, aside for a pink hat that someone had given me earlier. I had lipstick on, an earring and a silk glove." Now that's a picture. DF: I can't remember the police coming. I was on the couch, gone. That's right. It was one of those crazy nights. I got young player of the year for Dundee United. We went into Anstruther. Not a pretty sight. I'm sure it wasn't a pretty sight for the police when they came to have a look at me. TE: Your parents at this time, they must have been worried sick about you. Is there guilt there? DF: Absolutely. My mum and dad, I put them through it. That phone rings in the morning. Somebody knocks on the door. I put my mum and dad through hell. TE: You're a dad now and you can put yourself in their shoes. DF: Yeah, they must have been worried sick. The police were starting to knock on the door all the time. Headlines everywhere. Journalists outside the house regularly. The press were a bit naughty, but I gave them plenty of ammunition. I must have put my mum and dad through hell. When Ferguson left Tannadice and joined Rangers for £4m, the move was the measure of his dreams. He was a Rangers boy. He revered the manager, Walter Smith. He idolised the iconic striker, Ally McCoist. The whole thing became a nightmare. Wild living, not enough game-time, scrutiny, trouble, minders, claustrophobia. And then he went for McStay. Smith sat him down and told him he had to leave Glasgow for his own good. Sentencing was coming - Barlinnie not far away - but in the meantime he needed a new start. He went to Everton for a three-month loan that became a love affair. TE: When Walter said you had to go, how did you feel? DF: I cried my eyes out when he said it. I'd let him down. He was telling me I was coming back after the loan and I'm sure he was genuine at the time. But I cried. I'd failed. I was drinking heavier. I was out of control. TE: The book is so honest. It's a terrific read. You weren't at Everton long and you got done for drink driving. DF: That's right. On my own. Middle of the city centre. Saturday night. What do you do? I went for a drink, stupidly. We've got a game on the Monday against Liverpool and I'm out on a Saturday night. Nuts. TE: This was Joe Royle's first match as Everton manager? DF: Yeah and I'm in the police station, 3am Sunday. Liverpool on Monday. The star striker's in the nick. TE: There's a good end to that story. DF: Yeah, they let me out. TE: Well, yeah, but you scored? DF: Of course. That's me, isn't it? That's me. No preparation. In the jail. Get out and the rest is history. I battered them. Second half particularly. Guilt. That's what I was running on. Guilt. TE: And you win the FA Cup? You scored 73 goals in 273 games for Everton across two spells spanning a decade. They love you down there. How long did it take for you to realise Everton - this is the place for me? DF: About a week. Once I was in that city, I wasn't coming back. I had no minders. Nobody was targeting me. They knew me, but it wasn't the Rangers-Celtic thing, was it? There's no sectarianism. I felt free. And I was fitter. And I was getting minutes. TE: Why does this club mean so much to you? DF: The fans took to me. There was never any trouble off the pitch, only the drink driving offence. They needed somebody like me at the club. The team wasn't very good. They had a good tradition of big Scottish number nines. I fitted that mould. TE: They could see the honesty. DF: I was aggressive. The fans liked that. They wanted somebody to get stuck in for them. It all turned for me then. You're playing against Liverpool, Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. You're playing against some serious teams. It brought the best out of me. I still love the city. I still live down there. It's a great place to be. TE: Striker, captain and then manager. That must have been cosmic for you? DF: What a feeling. It was an incredible moment in my life and my career. One that I'll never forget. I'd captained the team, I'd scored a lot of goals for the club and then to manage them. So I've done it all there, really. TE: You worked under Carlo Ancelotti at Everton and speak glowingly about him. DF: I was on my mate's boat in Croatia, right? And Carlo's in the vicinity on his own boat. He's on the phone. "I'm coming to see you." "OK, no problem, Carlo." I gave him the coordinates and he's coming out of the horizon in this big boat. He paid a right few quid for it. I could see him waving. As he's getting closer and closer, his boat is getting smaller. Our boat was about four times bigger than his. He spent his week on my mate's boat. His boat got left. It was really funny, like. A great fella. We just bonded. It's not hard to understand the reasons why Ferguson brought a madly premature end to his Scotland career. Everything goes back to the fateful McStay incident. The Scottish FA handed down a 12-match ban before his court case ever came around. He felt they sat as judge, jury and executioner. When he came out of Barlinnie, they went after him again, trying to force through that suspension even though he had done time in prison and was now at Everton. He thought it was a vindictive pursuit while reminding you that he went to jail for the McStay confrontation and "I didn't even get a yellow card". TE: You quit Scotland in December 1994. You say, "I fell out of love with Scotland. I felt bitter. I felt the Scottish press had done me in, so I chucked it". DF: I should have played. There's a massive regret. I should have played. I pulled out a lot of squads. Craig Brown, God bless him, protected me. He just said I was injured. I told him I didn't want to go and play for Scotland anymore. He said, "You're crazy man!" My heart wasn't in it. I went back a couple of times. I didn't like it. TE: You went back for Austria 96 and Estonia 97, but that was it. Stubborn? DF: My God. I wish I could go back, but you can't, can you? You're a young man. You're daft. You just don't listen. I was on my honeymoon in the Bahamas during the 1998 World Cup. We played Brazil, didn't we? I should have been kicking off the ball. Daft. I was in my prime then as well. They asked me every year for 14 years to go back. Bertie Vogts came to Everton. I brushed by him. Didn't even take him into a wee room, sit him down and listen to his spiel. There was more, of course. More on his early years, more on his Dundee United boss Jim McLean - who fined him so heavily once that Ferguson's pay packet was minus £10 - more on Barlinnie, Rangers, Everton, Newcastle, his financial bankruptcy, his stints in management and his desire to have another go. He's 53 and looking well. Is he happy? "No, not 100% happy, no. I don't think any of us are totally happy. I'm in a good place. You know, I've been in a lot worse place. I've been looking down the back of sofas for a few quid, you know what I mean? "So I'm not there. And I'm healthy. I'm off the booze. I suppose I'm happy as the next man. My dream is to be a manager at the top. That's what I want. And when that happens, I'll be a real happy man." If you are affected by the issues in this article, help and support is available at BBC Action Line
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
TE Connectivity CEO to present at Bernstein's Strategic Decisions Conference
GALWAY, Ireland , May 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Terrence Curtin, chief executive officer of TE Connectivity (NYSE: TEL), a global leader in connectors and sensors, will present at Bernstein's 41st annual Strategic Decisions Conference on Thursday, May 29, at 8 a.m. EDT at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. The event will be streamed live via webcast and will be available for replay on the investor portion of TE's website at About TE ConnectivityTE Connectivity plc (NYSE: TEL) is a global industrial technology leader creating a safer, sustainable, productive, and connected future. Our broad range of connectivity and sensor solutions enable the distribution of power, signal and data to advance next-generation transportation, energy networks, automated factories, data centers, medical technology and more. With more than 85,000 employees, including 9,000 engineers, working alongside customers in approximately 130 countries, TE ensures that EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS. Learn more at and on LinkedIn, Facebook, WeChat, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE TE Connectivity plc Sign in to access your portfolio
Time of India
03-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
‘Tectonics pushed up the Himalayas — they brought monsoons, creating the Indus 50 million years ago'
Peter Clift Part of Peter Clift's research is based 66 million years ago — but the geologist conveys an excitement which makes you feel his subject emerged just yesterday. In fact, it didn't, as Clift explains, 'I'm interested in the Indus river, when it was born and how it developed. Recently, I've studied the evolution of the river over the last 10,000 years,' — a blink in the eye of geophysical time — 'To see how it may have interacted with human societies. More broadly, I'm interested in the Indus as a way to look at evolving environment and climate in South Asia.' Fifty Shades of Blue How old is the river after whom our very civilisation is named, TE asks? Clift outlines, 'The Indus seems to have been formed when the Indian continent collided with mainland Asia — it's probably at least 50 million years old. The big eastern tributaries in Punjab joined the mainstream coming out of Tibet and flowing through Ladakh around then. But there's some discussion about how much material also came from the East — in particular, there's a question about the Yamuna.' Clift pauses here, like he's unveiling a detective story. He says, 'Now, 50,000 years ago, the Yamuna, which flows east into the Ganges today, was flowing west into the Indus. We think that stopped about 20,000 years ago. But it used to join the Sutlej and Beas once.' The Yamuna wasn't the only enigmatic river. Clift says, ' Rivers are constantly evolving and meandering, maybe not a lot but with implications for the people they interact with. Rivers also interact with geophysical entities — the Thar desert moved a little bit east and west through time. That pushed some rivers to the west — when the Thar moved, so did the Sutlej.' The Elements Cloud: Indus, hill and cloud There are further forces at play. TE asks Clift about how South Asia's tectonic landscape shaped the Indus — and vice versa. He replies, 'It's a chicken and egg story. Essentially, when India and mainland Asia collided, the first large mountains formed — they attracted rainfall. Those early rains allowed the Indus to form. That was also a trigger for making the Jhelum, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas. As the monsoon grew stronger, those got bigger. There's a feedback effect then — these rivers cut into the mountains. When they scooped out rock and sediment, high peaks rose and became even taller. So, there's a virtuous circle between rainfall and tectonic activity — tectonic activity makes the Himalayas, Karakoram and the Tibetan plateau. Those strengthen the monsoon — as the Himalayas go up, the monsoon grows stronger and the rivers get bigger.' Times Evoke Fascinatingly, these rivers are intricately linked to erosion. Clift elaborates, 'The greater Himalayas are made of deep buried rocks, brought to the surface by shallower rocks being eroded away. This is why there are high mountains on the south side of the Tibetan plateau but not on the north side. There are no mountains like these in the Tarim Basin in western China — that's because it doesn't rain there and the monsoons cause the erosion. There's even a feedback here,' he points out, 'As you smash up Himalayan rocks into small sand grains, they break down into clay material which is washed into the Indian Ocean. As the Himalayas are so big, there's a lot of sediment. This process of breaking down these minerals removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So, erosion by the big Himalayan river systems, including the Indus, is possibly one reason Earth grew cooler.' Did this combination, red earth to falling rain, as it were, also shape the ecologies of the Indus? 'Oh, yes,' replies Clift, 'That certainly influenced animal life, especially fish and the famous dolphins that live in the Indus and Ganges. Ecology in South Asia is more strongly linked to rain than rivers. About eight million years ago, the monsoon got weaker — with a strong shift in ecology. It changed from forests to a lot more grassland and drier conditions in northwest India and Pakistan.' Indus Dolphin: Echolocating in the swirl As the Indus shifted shape, how did its civilisation manage? Clift answers, 'The Harappans had phases of activity, and then, just around 4,000 years ago, the population mostly moved away from the cities they had built along the Indus. There's been some argument about whether that was caused by the monsoon becoming weaker. I myself have been interested in whether some of this might have been caused by movements of the rivers. One of the tributaries of the Indus is the Ghaggar-Hakra, which now pieces out in the Thar desert. There were Indus Valley sites close to this channel. We wondered if maybe these people sustained themselves in a desert, given a nice water supply from a small river? If you live by a big river and it keeps flooding, that makes your life hard, but a smaller river is simpler to control and easier to grow crops next to. That could have been something the Indus Valley civilisation used. Of course,' Clift adds, just as you settle comfortably into the thought of a happy little Harappan farming community, 'As the climate got drier, the Ghaggar no longer held enough and communities were left with no water.' Town & Gown Were there crops which survived such ebbs and flows? Clift replies, 'There were certainly more drought-tolerant crops like millets. Farmers across Asia always adapted. Rice is very water-intensive, wheat, a little less, hence millets were likely a more sustainable choice. There are lessons here as with global warming, the monsoon could grow stormier and crops will need to be rethought.' Readers write Finally, TE asks what sources Clift uses to study the Indus, born millions of years ago? 'I've worked with marine sediment cores from the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. We collected a long record offshore Mumbai with a consortium of countries. I also have shorter cores, like one kilometre deep under the ocean floor. I'm working on sediment from the continental margin offshore the Indus river mouth now. We also work onshore, drilling into the floodplain to collect sediment pores, etc.' Clift chuckles, 'Sometimes you can use things which other people have dug — we've had good luck with quarries where people made bricks. There, the mining company had dug a pit and we didn't have to drill. We could just go right in.' Perhaps 'dive in' would be quite accurate as well.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
TE Connectivity reports significant progress toward long-term sustainability goals
GALWAY, Ireland, April 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- TE Connectivity, a world leader in connectors and sensors, has reduced Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 80% between September 2020 and October 2024, outperforming its goal of a 70% reduction. This milestone is one example of the company's significant progress toward its long-term sustainability ambitions, detailed today in its annual One Connected World corporate responsibility report. "Our corporate responsibility ambitions align with the expectations of our global customers and guide TE's efforts across emissions reduction, innovation and inclusion. Our team has made significant strides toward these goals," said CEO Terrence Curtin. "As we look ahead, our teams around the world continue to focus on energy efficiency in our operations, delivering product designs that are less carbon-intensive, and defining clear expectations for our supply chain partners, while providing cost-competitive solutions to our customers. We will continue to work toward a future focused on performance and sustainability." In FY2024, TE reduced its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 30% year over year. Other highlights of its progress in the last year include: 87% renewable electricity use globally (up 7% since last year), exceeding TE's goal of 80% by 2025 14% reduction in Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions since 2022, toward a goal of 30% reduction by 2032 More than 5 million individuals impacted through philanthropic STEM programs since 2020, toward a goal of 10 million by 2030 Reduced total recordable incident rate to 0.12, a record low, toward a goal of a zero-incident workplace 80% of TE sites had one or fewer recordable injuries 61% had zero injuries TE also set a new zero waste to landfill goal. The company aims to divert at least 98% of all operational waste from landfill or incineration through prevention, reuse, recycling or energy recovery by FY2029. Twenty-eight TE sites have already been identified as zero waste to landfill sites. Visit to view the full One Connected World report. About TE ConnectivityTE Connectivity (NYSE: TEL) is a global industrial technology leader creating a safer, sustainable, productive, and connected future. Our broad range of connectivity and sensor solutions enable the distribution of power, signal and data to advance next-generation transportation, energy networks, automated factories, data centers, medical technology and more. With more than 85,000 employees, including 9,000 engineers, working alongside customers in approximately 130 countries, TE ensures that EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS. Learn more at and on LinkedIn, Facebook, WeChat, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE TE Connectivity plc Sign in to access your portfolio
