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Chris Payne is an oceanographic technician at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences. He helps people accomplish their research successfully both in the field and the lab. In addition to maintaining a wide variety of oceanographic and lab equipment, he also maintains the departmental workboat and helps teach the yearly Methods in Oceanography Field Course. He holds a BSC. in Biology from the University of Ottawa and an MSC. in Biology from McGill University. Prior to coming to UBC, Chris held technical roles at McGill University, l’Université de Montréal and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Original story from UBC Science.

This weekend, samples collected from the Bennu asteroid successfully touched down in the Utah Test and Training Range—a milestone for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission and partners at the Canadian Space Agency. UBC has already made major contributions to the mission – a team including UBC planetary scientist Dr. Catherine Johnson used data from the Canadian-designed OSIRIS-REx laser altimeter to help select a safe sampling site. 

Now, after evaluation, a portion of that material—potentially dating back to the birth of the solar system roughly 4.5 billion years ago—will be delivered to UBC’s Pacific Centre for Isotopic and Geochemical Research (PCIGR) for analysis. Dr. Dominique Weis, director of the facility, discusses the challenges of providing high-precision, low-level isotopic and geochemical analysis of rock and dust samples from what’s been described as a rubble pile of an asteroid.

To prepare for the arrival of the samples, your lab has been running test analyses on representative meteorites of a composition expected to be close to that of Bennu. What’s involved in that?

"Working on Bennu asteroid samples will be the first time our lab will handle and analyze pristine extraterrestrial material—samples that have come straight from space."

Our team is skilled in performing low-level, high-precision geochemical analyses. This involves careful sample handling to avoid contamination, sample preparation using various chemical techniques, and analysis using state-of-the-art and very sensitive mass spectrometers.

Working on Bennu asteroid samples will be the first time our lab will handle and analyze pristine extraterrestrial material—samples that have come straight from space, not meteorites that have fallen through Earth’s atmosphere, landed on the surface, and been chemically and physically altered.

In close consultation with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), we’ve spent the last year optimizing our instruments and practising on representative samples from meteorites (Murchison and Allende) that fell to Earth. These meteorites are closest in composition to what we expect from Bennu. Using these practice samples, our team has devised methods on how best to process the pristine Bennu samples and analyze them for their chemical composition. That allows us to tweak our methods until we have a set procedure that we’re confident in using once the Bennu samples arrive. CSA funding and support has been crucial, as have test meteorite samples provided by the Smithsonian Institution.

PCIGR handles a wide range of terrestrial samples—from honey to volcanic rocks to mineral deposits. Why is PCIGR one of the few Canadian facilities well-positioned to handle these asteroid bits?

To understand a system, whether it’s finding out what’s in our honey, reading the history of volcanic rocks or dating a billion-year-old mineral, we have to characterize their elemental and isotopic compositions. More often than not, just minute quantities of elements and isotopes can define and differentiate one system from another. We’re talking about concentrations in the parts per million to parts per billion – a part per billion is equivalent to one drop of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Our instruments are that sensitive. All this is part of the reason UBC funds PCIGR as a shared research platform, accessible to the wider community for geochemical and geochronological analyses.

With Bennu, asteroid specialists have some idea of what to expect regarding its composition. And we’ve gained some practice with the test meteorite samples. But no one can be fully sure what to expect. Only two other asteroids (Ryugu and Itokawa) have been sampled directly from space, in very minute quantities. Based on this experience, the international research community will conduct as many types of analyses on Bennu samples as possible. The project lead, Dr. Dante Lauretta (University of Arizona) has tasked PCIGR to analyze the samples for low-level elemental concentrations using some highly sensitive instruments, as well as major element compositions. The work will push some of our techniques to levels of precision, reproducibility and chemical detection that we haven’t reached before.

Your lab is focusing on trace and major element analysis of the Bennu samples. What are we hoping to learn, and do you foresee any surprises?

We’ll get powdered samples and subject them to a chemical procedure to reduce them into a liquid solution—the typical format our mass spectrometers can handle. During the preparation, we’ll be processing standard reference materials in parallel with the Bennu samples. Standard reference materials have a known chemical composition that will ensure quality control of our processing and analytical procedures. Because we’re dealing with major and trace elements that are in minute concentrations, we have to be careful about contamination. This means processing the asteroid samples and reference materials in a clean-lab environment. The air in our clean lab and fume hoods respectively has only 1,000 or 100 particles of less than 0.5 microns in diameter per cubic foot. A human hair is about 50 microns in diameter. So, we’re talking about a really clean environment!           

Bennu’s constituent materials haven’t undergone significant chemical changes over the past 4.5 billion years. So, finding out what Bennu is made of will give us a window into the early solar system and what gave rise to how our solar system turned out to be. We don’t know what to expect once we start analyzing the samples. We hope to be pleasantly surprised by learning something that we hadn’t expected!

Credit: UBC Science https://science.ubc.ca/news/bits-bennu-asteroid-arrive-ubc

Read & listen more about this story:

• On The Coast with Gloria Macarenko - How UBC will study samples of asteroid Bennu
• A tiny sample from a multibillion-year-old asteroid could hold clues to the early solar system, says scientist
• First hint of asteroid sample promises ‘lifetime of work’ for Canadian scientists

Chances are you are reading this article on a device powered by The Western Interconnected Grid or the “Western Interconnection”. This major electrical transmission network supplies over 80 million people, throughout British Columbia, Alberta, the western United States, and part of Baja Mexico. In the West, fire is one of the primary threats to the infrastructure that supports this power grid. Adapting to increasing fire risks associated with climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing western North America. 

The Weather Forecast Research Team, headed by Earth Oceans and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Roland Stull, aims to estimate ‘Probable Max Fire Threat (PMFT) to Future Electric Supply and Transmission’. The team will create and employ numerical weather prediction and climate model downscaling to predict and mitigate potential fire risks. Their work is part of a larger initiative, ‘The US-Canada Center on Climate-Resilient Western Interconnected Grid’, co-lead by the University of Utah and the University of Calgary. This ambitious and critical project has just received a total of $8.75M from the National Science Foundation and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Global Centers Initiative. 

The six Canadian Research teams funded by the Global Centers Initiative are all tackling essential research questions to address climate related challenges and concerns. Click here to read more about the Weather Forecast Research Team and the work they are doing to facilitate climate-adapted infrastructure. 

Meet Dr. Laura Lukes, assistant professor of Earth Oceans and Atmospheric Sciences who is merging her interests in psychology and geology to advance teaching and learning experiences for the upcoming generation of geoscientists. 

Dr. Lukes’ work, recently featured on the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Science page, focuses on creating and identifying transformative learning experiences, the kind that prompt students to begin viewing themselves as scientists, rather than ‘individuals interested in science’. To that end, Dr. Lukes has developed projects to expand inclusive field opportunities and self-regulated experiential learning (e.g. museum exhibits). A large part of her work also focuses on creating space for collaboration between academics and indigenous community members to incorporate and acknowledge diverse ‘ways of knowing’ into science curricula. Ultimately, by enhancing an interdisciplinary approach to teaching geosciences, Dr. Lukes hopes to equip developing geoscientists with the tools necessary to tackle the varied Earth challenges our future generations face. 

Click here to see Dr. Lukes’ interview with the Faculty of Science.

Read the UBC Science article here: New rivers in the North? Scientists identify how the dissection of Arctic landscapes is changing with accelerating climate change

New research co-led by Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia shows that amplified global warming in the Canadian High Arctic drove a profound shift in the structure of a river network carved into a permafrost landscape in only 60 years. Documenting a powerful interplay among climate change, the freeze-thaw dynamics of polygonal ground and the delivery of surface water by floods, snow and ice melting, the team developed a new view of the physical controls governing the speed and pattern of river channel development in these fragile landscapes.

“Interconnected physical processes can deepen river channels and expand river networks, creating more surface area for heat exchange, which can increase local rates of permafrost thaw,” says study co-author Mark Jellinek, Professor of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric sciences at the University of British Columbia. “These cascading effects can enhance the release of greenhouse gases in the Arctic as organic soil carbon thaws and the permafrost retreats.”

Learn about the study here: High Arctic channel incision modulated by climate change and the emergence of polygonal ground

EOAS Professor Catherine Johnson and five UBC researchers have been elected to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). This achievement adds to the recognition received by over 60 UBC Science researchers by the RSC since 2000. The RSC acknowledges distinguished Canadians from various fields, including the arts, humanities, sciences, and public life.

Dr. Johnson's research focuses on geophysical investigations of terrestrial planets, moons, and small celestial bodies in our solar system. Her work covers magnetic fields, lithospheric structure, tectonic, magmatic, and thermal evolution of various celestial bodies, including Mercury, Mars, Earth, the Moon, Venus, Mars, and the Moon. Her lab utilizes data from samples, observatories, and satellites to study the interior structure and history of these bodies and understand how internal and external processes shape their evolution.

UBC Science Royal Society of Canada fellows [https://science.ubc.ca/research/awards].