This summer marks 50 years since NASA dispatched the Apollo 16 astronauts to Sudbury for field training ahead of their trip to the moon.
Commander John Young and pilot Charles Duke, whose spacecraft would launch from Cape Canaveral less than a year later on April 16, 1972, teamed up with experts from Inco to study Sudbury’s impact crater and its unique geological structures.
NASA hoped that the field training, which took place from July 7 to 9, 1971, would prepare the astronauts for lunar surface experiments.
It turns out, the excursion didn’t prepare them as much as they’d hoped.
“We were very interested, at the time, in trying to work up the geology of the moon. The great debate in the literature prior to our first moon landing was how much of the moon was formed by volcanic activity and how much of it was formed by impact structures,” said Michael Dence.
“That’s a question that goes back 400 years to Galileo. There was a lot of literature about that. That was the reason, in a sense, for my being employed by the government. There was this question of whether anything on Earth resembles the moon, and if so, how we could identify it.”
Dence, who is now considered an international expert in the subject, was one of the pioneers in the study of asteroid impact craters like the one in Sudbury.
He helped build what was called the Earth Physics branch of the Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources (now Natural Resources Canada) to study impact structures on Earth.
When Dence first immigrated to Canada from Australia, he worked as a field geologist for Falconbridge Nickel Mines (now Glencore) in Sudbury. He was also part of the team of geologists who worked with the Apollo 16 crew.
“One of the biggest things to emphasize is that, regardless of their backgrounds, the astronauts got very little out of this training except for maybe an excursion or a break from their routines,” said Dence.
“Because it turns out that the moon is covered with dust which has been building up for three billion years, so the idea of seeing fresh rock or any sort of rock was never really discovered by any of them.”
By the time of the Apollo excursions in the 1970s, Dence said that it was well-established that the Sudbury structure is “the deeply eroded remnants of an impact” that is roughly 1.84 billion years old.
“The rocks that are displayed on the surface are a good cross-section of many of the details of what an impact structure looks like, and it had the convenience of being easy to get at,” he said.
“You could walk around and see what we were talking about. That never applied on the moon, but nonetheless, it gave them an education in what a large, ancient impact can look like.”
As part of his research, Dence was studying the distinctive features of impacts that left imprints on the rocks that could be mainly identified under a microscope.
When astronauts retrieved lunar samples, these same features, described as very distinctive structures where the crystal structure had been partly obliterated by the shock of the impact, were identifiable.
“The one thing in Sudbury, which led to the recognition of it being an impact structure, was a peculiar thing that could be observed in the rocks. These fractures, which we call shatter cones, are sort of conical-shaped structures which appear on the surface of rocks when they are properly exposed,” he said.
It was the discovery of shatter cones in Sudbury by an oceanographer named Robert Dietz that led to it being declared an impact crater.
“He made a sort of hobby of looking for shatter cone structures around the world, and he had been successful in suggesting to the South Africans that a very large structure known as the Vredefort crater was the result of an impact,” he said.
“A year or two later, he decided to look at Sudbury. He went there and talked to the locals. Rocks that people had walked over for 70 years of geologists working in Sudbury, and they never recognized the existence of shatter cones. Once their eyes were tuned in to what to look for, it took only a week.”
The point of an impact, said Dence, is that it generates an immensely strong pulse of energy. The pressure is comparable to that of the centre of the Earth.
It lasts but a second or two, but it’s enough to melt rock at the highest temperatures and to develop these peculiar structures.
“The thing about the melting aspect of it is you have the outline of the Sudbury structure and in the rock, it has an igneous texture. It has the texture of a lava,” he said.
“That outlines the entire structure of Sudbury. That is entirely caused by the impact pressure being at a melting point, at the time. In other words, the projectile, which in this case was probably 15 km or so across, melted tens of thousands of cubic kilometres of rock in an instant.”
Of his experience working with the Apollo 16 crew, Dence said it was a pleasant experience and the crew members were “real characters.”
“Young was a very straightforward, outspoken sort of guy. He told me he had no liking at all for the official drink of astronauts – Tang,” he said.
“He really didn’t relish the idea of having to drink Tang for a week. He was also a really good astronaut. I certainly enjoyed the time I had with them, and I certainly could see their dedication.”
Dence and the Apollo 16 crew – and later the Apollo 17 crew that came up north a year later – were ultimately lucky to have had the chance to explore the Sudbury impact crater as it was in the 1970s.
“Most of that area has now been overgrown very considerably. It is now woods, and it’s very difficult to work out exactly where we went with the astronauts,” he said.
“The rehabilitation of the Sudbury landscape has gone that far – after 50 years, most of it is lost in the woods.”
Colleen Romaniuk is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter at The Sudbury Star. The initiative is made possible through funding from the federal government.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
