More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
While scientists from the University of Waterloo were examining a 2.5-billion-year-old ruby, they discovered a rare find: evidence of ancient life.
Their clue was the carbon residue, or graphite, recently found encased inside of some of the oldest gemstones in the world.
“The graphite inside this ruby is really unique. It’s the first time we’ve seen evidence of ancient life in ruby-bearing rocks,” Chris Yakymchuk, lead researcher and University of Waterloo professor, said in a press release.
Some of the oldest ruby deposits in the world are in Greenland. This is where the team discovered a ruby sample which contained graphite -- a mineral made of pure carbon.
Analysis of the material found the graphite in the ruby showed remnants of early life, potentially long-dead cyanobacteria.
The graphite was found in rocks dating back 2.5 billion years ago in an era when there wasn’t a lot of oxygen in the atmosphere and the the majority of life was microorganisms and algae films, the team said.
Yakymchuk’s team recently published their finding in November edition of the peer-reviewed journal Ore Geology Reviews, with the journal Chemical Geology publishing their earlier findings in June.
Yakymchuk’s team was initially studying the stones’ geology to better understand what conditions are needed to form rubies.
“The presence of graphite also gives us more clues to determine how rubies formed at this location, something that is impossible to do directly based on a ruby’s colour and chemical composition,” Yakymchuk said in the release.
But just because graphite was found initially didn’t necessarily mean it was life.
To find out for sure, Yakymchuk’s team analyzed a property called isotopic composition, which measures the relative amounts of different carbon atoms. More than 98 per cent of all carbon have a mass of 12 atomic mass units (carbon-12). But sometimes, the carbon atoms are heavier, having a mass of 13 or 14 atomic mass units.
“Living matter preferentially consists of the lighter carbon atoms because they take less energy to incorporate into cells,” Yakymchuk said in the release.
“Based on the increased amount of carbon-12 in this graphite, we concluded that the carbon atoms were once ancient life, most likely dead microorganisms such as cyanobacteria.”
The team also determined that the very presence of graphite not only indicated early life, but allowed for the ruby to exist.
It turns out that the graphite changed the chemistry of the surrounding rocks, which allowed for ruby growth. Without the graphite itself, Yakymchuk’s team says it would have been impossible for the rubies to have formed.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.