Quirks and Quarks - Summertime and the science isn’t always easy

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Summer is fieldwork time for many scientists. We talk to researchers who have been busy hiking on fresh lava, capturing thousands of ticks, shooing away moose from their study sites, and even spelunking for Neanderthals — all in the ever-important quest for data.

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Hi, I'm Bob McDonald. Welcome to Quarks and Quarks. Back in grade school, the first assignment of the year was often an essay, how I spent my summer vacation. Well, to kick off our new season, we're taking you to the field to hear how scientists spent their summers. So today you'll hear from a wildfire scientist with a who-done-it on his hands. His research plots in Newfoundland were destroyed over and over again, but then the culprits were caught on camera. And that's when we started to discover that it wasn't us just visiting these sites. There were black bears, caribou, moose, and their calves, rabbits, lynx, owls. All of these were captured on these pictures. And we'll trek through the mountainous terrain in Uzbekistan in search of the last Neanderthals. You know, when we have those moments, it's amazing. You know, it's like being in a time machine and going more. back. Plus, we'll stomp across lava fields in Hawaii, track an aggressive tree disease in the

Yukon, breed thousands of ticks in Nova Scotia, and we'll head to Montreal to take a detailed look at how scorching hot days affect our health. All this today as we launch a new season of Quarks and Quarks. To do research in the wilderness, scientists often have to contend with the quirks of nature. Sometimes that means weather delays or hiking long distances over rough terrain. Other times, like in our next story, that means having to deal with animals, destroying your research setup time after time year after year. That's the situation Dr. Lucas Bruho face this summer. He's a wildfire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service at the Atlantic Forestry Research Center in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Here he is.

I have a site that I specifically call the problem child. Because every time I went to that site, it was damaged in one way or another. And of course, this is the site where I have to walk through a field, walk through a forest, walk across a bog. It's one of the more challenging sites to get to, so all of that combined is just incredibly frustrating. There are a lot of questions and a lot of sleepless nights about how you're going to make this work, especially since it's something that you think is very important. Hi, my name is Lucas Pertho. I am a wildfire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service at the Atlantic Forestry Research Center. So wildfires in Atlantic Canada have historically been few and far between. Of course, all forests have the capacity to burn, and they have burned in the past.

But with climate change and continued warming and droughts, we see this change in fires on the landscape. So one of the fires that I have been studying for the last few years is the 2022 Central Fire Complex Burn, located just south of Grand Falls, Windsor, on the island of Newfoundland. As flames eat across central Newfoundland, people there have been told to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. The region is under a state of emergency. The threat? The worst wildfires in more than half a century. In around late August, there was a series of thunderstorms that went through the region.

And what's important to note here is that for a month prior, there had been a significant drought period, which, you know, for a wet, Maritime Province, this was quite concerning and really disrupted our understanding of how fires and people interact on the landscape within Atlantic Canada. I thought this was an excellent opportunity to understand how these forests are going to regrow after these record-breaking wildfires. But I also acknowledge the fact that climate change is going to be playing a factor in these post-fire landscapes. And we really need to have an idea not only to understand how forests regrow after fire, but also how they regrow in a world of climate change. And so I set out a manipulative seed and seedling experiment where I would walk out into the woods

and we would establish these plots where we would put down seed of black spruce, red pine, Eastern Larch, a very common species in this area, and then paired it with a manipulative temperature experiment where we essentially put little mini plexiglass greenhouses on the landscape that would raise the temperature anywhere from one to three degrees and do the exact same thing. So that was our climate change experiment. So in the summer of 2023, the following year, myself and my girlfriend, colleague Brandon went out and we hauled these greenhouses out to about 19 sites across the three different burns within that region.

There were many times walking through the woods where I asked myself why I was doing what I was doing and why I positioned those sites so far from the comfort of the truck. We like to visit these sites upwards of three to four. times a year to kind of have periodic check-ins. And upon arrival of some of our sites when we were checking in with them, the OTCs or the greenhouses had been completely obliterated. And by obliterated, I'm talking broken, smashed to smithereens. The temperature sensors had been removed out of the ground and taken in other areas that I didn't even know how they could have gotten there. A component of the research was actually to look at snow depth variability over the

course of the winter. And so we established time-lapse cameras that would take daily pictures every single day, but also they would capture any movement of anything at the sites. And that's when we started to discover that it wasn't us just visiting these sites. There were animals like Black Bears, Caribou, Moose, and their calves. rabbits, lynx, owls, all of these were captured on these pictures. And we started to realize that they were just as curious about these contraptions and potentially the research inside as we were. Going to the sites this summer, of course, three years into the experiment,

I was prepared for some damage to occur. And I always like to say if five or less have been damaged, that's to be expected. And 11 of the 19 were damaged. The sinking feeling that you feel when something that you've worked so hard for is not working out. And trying to pivot in your brain while still doing the research is very heavy. and going from one site that's broken to the next site that's broken, the sinking feeling gets lower and lower. And then you go to a site that's not broken,

and then you go to five that are. But there are some quite lovely pictures that are captured when you see the amount of joy that potentially a black bear is experiencing by actually sitting in a greenhouse and playing with that plastic and taking that temperature sensor and moving it beyond where I thought it would go. In addition, we think about the quintessential Newfoundland Moose, who is very curious, images of them either all four of their legs, like standing fully within the greenhouse,

not breaking a single thing, which is very impressive, or just reaching in and walking over, destroying everything in their path. Or, for example, a new calf actually sleeping and using the OTC as a backrest. We're starting to really dive into the details of the data that we've collected. Interestingly enough, seedling height growth. So those seedlings that we planted was much higher, significantly higher, in the OTCs, than in the regular control plots. So this is saying that potentially a warmer climate might be more super.

especially in Atlantic Canada for seedling height growth. However, the survival of those seedlings was lower in the OTCs. So there's kind of like this inverse relationship that maybe these warmer environments are great for height growth, but over the long term, we might be seeing a decrease in the amount of survivorship because of this heat. There have been sections of the data that have been unusable, right? We can go back and rebuild the OTCs and continue on with the experiment, noting full well that maybe over the course of the entire three years, there are going to be periods that didn't. So that has been kind of like a caveat, you know, something that we acknowledge within the science. But there are so many research questions that I've started to discover

through not only by getting out on these landscapes and seeing various components of the ecosystem, but also through those photos. You know, maybe there's a research question on, I like the idea of like return to burn. So who are the animals that are visiting these sites, as well as how often are they visiting the sites, depending on what year it is after the burn? Thinking about how much food is available in year one compared to year three. Those are all super interesting questions to me. I'll say at the end of the day, yes, the research gets damaged.

to some capacity. But we're in nature. This is their habitat. We are only visitors to this spot. Dr. Lucas Bruho is a wildfire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service at the Atlantic Forestry Research Center in Fredericton, New Brunswick. 40 years ago, Canadians didn't have to worry much about ticks

and the diseases they carry. Our winters were just too cold for them to survive. But thanks to our warming climate, you can find about 40 different kinds of ticks in Canada, including black-legged ticks, the ones that spread Lyme disease. And while most of us do our best to avoid ticks, Dr. Nicoletta Feroni is not one of them. She and her team have been out collecting them and breeding them too. Dr. Ferroni is a biochemist at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and the director of the Canadian TIC Research and Innovation Center.

Hello and welcome to our show. Hello, Bob. Thanks for having me. First of all, tell me about ticks. All I know is that they're really small and they bite. Like, what are they? Tics are no insect. They are arthropods. They can be defined as occurrence.

They cause many diseases because they carry pathogens. But they are quite fascinating if we think about their ecology, their behavior, their evolution. They are almost totally blind, so they rely very much on olfaction to find a host and to get a successful blood meal. Wow. When you say olfaction, you mean they smell their way around?

Yes, they smell the way around and they have a very unique organ that is found only in acerines, like mites and spiders, which is called the halers organs. and it's located basically on their front legs. In fact, ticks, when they are hunting for a potential host, they like to climb on tall grasses and weigh their legs in the air,

try to capture any smell that can direct them towards a potential, you know, host. Wow, that's amazing. So how have ticks spread so rapidly in Canada? I would say the changing in the climate and also the, So the different fluctuation of the wildlife population really create the perfect condition of the tick densities to increase. We know we can get Lyme disease from the bite of a black-legged tick. What other illnesses can they carry?

They have the ability to carry different pathogens, bacteria. They can also carry the pathogen that causes anaplasmosis, which is a new emerging diseases that unfortunately we are seeing the incrementing cases in Canada, specifically in Nova Scotia and Ontario, but also they can carry protozoa, and this is, for example, Babesia, and this type of pathogen needs to be treated differently than using the regular antibiotic treatment. But they can also carry viruses.

We have the example of the poison virus, and they can also... causes some allergy reaction, such as the alpha-gal syndrome, which is an allergic reaction to mammalian product. So they are a nasty creature. Wow, no kidding for something so small. Now, you've been busy this summer setting up the Canadian Tick Research Center. How has it been going so far? We have set it up the lab. We bought all the equipment necessary for the pathogen testing. We have created a biocontrol area, we call it a containment room where we can safely keep the ticks inside to avoid any possible escape and creating a reeling facility that is ethically sustainable. How many ticks are you going to be breathing?

The idea is starting with 1,000, 2,000 ticks, but the idea it's growing up to 10,000. in the next five years. 10,000? Yes. Wow. What are you planning to do with 10,000 ticks? So we plan to breed black lead ticks and American dog ticks, which can be used for research purposes and can be sold to other researchers in Canada

and abroad for performing experiment and doing research on ticks and learning more about ticks. Well, how did Canadian scientists get enough ticks to study before you built the center? The only reliable source of ticks is in Oklahoma at the Oklahoma State University. But you can imagine that these ticks are coming from colonies that they were raised and they grew in a different environment and different climate conditions that are not really reflecting what we have here in Canada without our. ticks. Oh, I see. How much does a tick cost if you need to buy it from the U.S.?

One adult of lack of tick costs the five U.S. dollars at the moment. Yes, plus shipping fees. That can add up. Five bucks a tick. Yeah, it can be expensive. How do you collect the ticks for your colony in the first place? Where did you get them? We basically use pieces of white cloth and we drag those cloth on the grass and we walk for 7, 10 meters, and then we flip the cloth and we collect the ticks because they can get attached to that. And we usually go on parks, on trails, inside the vegetation, the bushes, and sometimes we collect even 500 ticks in just one hour. And then we bring them in the lab, and usually those ticks, these are wild ticks,

needs to be treated, we give them a bath to clean them from any fungal infection or any external pathogen that they can affect them. And we breed them and usually through the breeding process, we expose them to antibiotics, so they are cleared out from any pathogen and thorn. You're giving new meaning to a picnic now when I put a blanket on the grass. Exactly. Holy cow. Once you get the ticks in the laboratory, how do you feed them to keep them alive? We use an artificial feeding system where we basically use cow blood that we purchased from a Canadian company.

We have created basically an artificial membrane that reproduce human skin or animal skin that is basically in contact with the blood. and the tick are set it up on the other side, and with their mouth part, they will pierce through this membrane so they can access to the blood. When they are fully engorged, they will detach and drop, and they will start to lay eggs. And how many eggs do you get from a tick? Between 2 to 3,000.

2 to 3,000, from each tick? Yes. Wow. Do you have some advice on what people can do today to protect themselves from ticks when they're outside? Of course, it's always a good practice to wear proper repellent products. It's also a very good practice to wear proper clothing. And do always your tick check after you come back home.

Dr. Poloni, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Dr. Nicoletta Feroni is a biochemist at Acadia University and director of the Canadian Tick Research and Innovation Center. This past summer, biologists from Wilford-Lorea University traveled to the Yukon and Northwest Territories. They helicoptered into forests and brave bugs to investigate a fungus that's been attacking aspen trees there. It's called aspen running canker disease, and the researchers

first came across it unexpectedly when they were studying caribou habitats. Aspen is a fairly important species, not maybe so much to humans in the north, but definitely to animals. So aspen, especially when it's young and shorter to the ground, can be a source of nutrition for a lot of species. I believe hares eat it. Moose definitely eat it. And so it is part of the bigger ecosystem.

Aspen is the most widespread species in North America. But still, even small impacts to how well a species is doing its health. even its abundance can have cascading effects throughout the ecosystem. Hi, I'm Colin Bonner, and I'm a postdoctoral fellow in the Forest Ecology Research Group at Wilfred Laurier University, working with Professor Jennifer Bolzer. And this summer, I was working throughout the Central Yukon between Dawson City and CarMax and Mayo and Ross River. And then I also did a brief stint in Northwest Territories.

So right now I'm working on a project in Central Yukon called the Firescar Project. And it was kind of a big collaborative effort with the Yukon government and some First Nations to look at how Caribou habitats recovering after fires. Caribou require really old stands for lichen growth, which is their main winter forge. And as fires increase in frequency, there's less of these old growth stands available with really big biomass of lichen to sustain caribou in the winter. And we had this collaborator on the project named Jill Johnstone, and she is from the University of Alaska Fairbanks,

and she had recently attended a workshop there where they were discussing this new tree pathogen that they're seeing in Alaska that's causing a lot of mortality in Alaska on trees. Oh, there's one over there. There's been certainly a lot of recent mortality out here, and it's consistent with the canker because you see how they're in the subdominant canopy,

so they would be experiencing a lot. lot of light competition. So Aspen Running Canker is a, it's a tree canker. So usually these are considered diseases that infect injured or already dying trees. Aspen Running Canker kind of immediately seemed unique in how fast it kills a tree. So it shows up in the tree as this bright orange linear feature that goes up and down the tree. And so the reason it's called a running canker is because it appears to run down the tree from top to bottom very quickly. And then as it's spreads horizontally across the trunk of the tree, it starts to also leave behind this band of black dead tissue because the tree is just dying so fast. Other fungal

pathogens on Aspen usually kill it in maybe five to ten years, but Aspen running canker can kill them within a season. It actually is quite interesting to look at because you see when you wet the trees, Aspen is covered in this white fluffy powder that's considered a natural sunscreen. When you wet the tree, you can see through that powder and kind of rub it off. And you see this bright green tissue, which is the healthy photosynthetic aspen tissue. And then you will see a very stark contrast with this bright orange diseased layer and then this black necrotic tissue that's already dead. Okay. This one, this one certainly has that orangey tinge. And yeah, if we, if we spray it down here. Right. I can see a little bit of a ridge further up this,

them there. Yeah. I think this one definitely has it. A lot of down stems here. But look, see, look at that. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it looks like maybe that one succumb to, uh, to Aspen running canker. Yep. I think so he's got some, let some ongoing mortality in here. And so it's, it's very easy to identify this very straight line of colors. Um, and all you have to do is wet the Aspen. It's also very easy to find right after rain for the same reason. And so we thought, okay, we're going to do this. We're going to incorporate this into the rest of our research. But the thing is, the rest of our research is randomly going to sites. And so when we're randomly looking, we really don't find much Aspen Running Kinker at all. We find it in much less than 1% of trees. That said, when we go to our

sites, we also developed this protocol where we were like, okay, we discovered that Aspen Running Kanker is not that common in Yukon, at least not yet. But if we go out and look for it at our our sites, how often do we find it? And then we find it more regularly. So we got our helicopter time. We were all very excited to get into helicopter and fly out to try and look for these Aspen Running Canker far from human activity. I would say the biggest challenge of our fieldwork or the biggest inconvenience. We're not hiking on trails, which is what you imagine when you go into the mountains. We are going directly towards a point to randomly place in the woods. And so that means whatever is in our way, we kind of have to go through. In the Yukon, a lot of these

north-facing slopes are so wet that they have this really thick moss layer. And so you're hiking uphill through really thick moss. And it feels like you're hiking uphill through soft snow. Aspen is considered by some to be a fire-resistant species. Some even call it the like the asbestos of the forest. Crown fires spreading through a conifer stand will actually stop at an aspen stand, which is really important because it's these crown fires that contribute a lot to wildfire severity. and spread. And the reason for that is that it does have these really moist leaves. It also has a lot of

water in its bark tissue, in part because its bark tissue is very active. It's very fleshy. And it may be good at preventing fires because it's so moist. So actually, white horse is building a big ring of aspen trees around it in order to help stop future fires that may encroach on the community. That's something that's being done in other places as well. If a lot of those aspen do start to die, then they become dead standing wood. And as Jen said to me, you know, Aspen Burns just as well as anything else when it's dry. That was Dr. Colin Bonner, a postdoctoral research fellow at Wilford-Glorea University. You also heard from biologist Dr. Jennifer Balzer and plant ecologist Dr. Jill Johnston. I'm Bob McDonald and you're listening to Quarks and Quarks on CBC Radio 1 and streaming live

on the CBC News app. Just go to the local tab and press play wherever you are. Coming up later in the program, we're off to Hawaii to learn more about the moon? Sometimes, like, I can kind of close my eyes in a picture that I'm standing in the middle of a Martian or a lunar desert, obviously with like a breathable air. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled. After all the awkwardness, disasters, and family drama, Mark Critch is finally graduating. Maybe it's about not settling for the way things are, but maybe it's about not settling for the way things are, but maybe. in your own way. No, I suppose jobs.

And to move forward, he must hold on to what matters most. Don't give up on your dreams. Say goodbye to a Canadian comedy we've grown up with. Son of a critch, the final season. Stream now on CBC Jam. This summer was a real scorcher, with high temperatures breaking records across Canada and around the world. Extreme heat can be harmful to our health and even deadly.

This is true, especially for older people and people with disabilities, like 74-year-old Montreal resident, Hazel Kennedy. I've always struggled with heat, but more as I got older because of the asthma, because I can't breathe with the heat, so I don't go outside either much. With the humidity, you're in more pain, so therefore your blood pressure rises. Exactly what heat does to the body and how is still not well understood. And while Health Canada recommends an upper indoor temperature limit of 26 degrees Celsius, that number itself is based on limited evidence.

Which is why this summer Hazel is taking part in a multi-year research study to track in fine detail how those scorching hot days can impact the body. I figured it would be good to know what's going on, you know? This project is part of a growing body of research looking into heat and health. led by physiologist Dr. Daniel Gagnon, a researcher with the Montreal Heart Institute. Dr. Gagnon, welcome to our program. Thank you for having me. Tell me about this research project you're working on with Hazel.

What is it that you're doing? So essentially it's a three-year project where we're trying to determine indoor temperatures when the body's physiological responses, but also our perceptual responses, start to change. And the reason why we're doing that is because usually when the body's physiological responses or perceptual responses start to change, it kind of precedes more serious consequences that could lead to health problems when it's hot. What sort of people do you have taking part? So right now we're recruiting mostly older adults. So on average so far, the mean age is approximately 70 years who live in social housing units that. that are managed by the Office Municipal of Abitations de Morial.

And the reason why we recruit that population is because it's generally considered a group or segment of the population that's vulnerable to the effects of heat on health. And also because we have a very good working relationship with the office who expressed interest in this research and who's been very, very helpful to help us essentially recruit people and promote the project within their residents. Well, here's Hazel describing what kind of information she's giving you for this project. Okay, when you wake up in the morning, you check the color of your urine, and then you weigh yourself, and then we take our blood pressure, we take our temperature, and we also ask questions in the morning,

like, how do you feel? Are you too warm, too cold? And in the morning, you'll say if you had a poor night or a good night, And then you do it three times a day. Now, that's a lot of data. What can this information tell you? Yes. So it's a very demanding project for the participants, and we feel very, very fortunate to have, you know, participants who are interested and involved

and really motivated to get through this. So we really wanted to try and capture as much information as we could, which I think is really what makes our project unique relative to what other projects have done in the past. So what we try to do is really capture obviously the indoor environmental conditions, so temperature, humidity, things like that. But we really want to combine that or pair that with as many physiological and perceptual responses as possible.

And the reason for that is maybe if we only focus on a select set of measurements, we may not see subtle changes as a function of, you know, differences in indoor temperature. But if we can capture a wider range of responses, we might be able to pick up on more subtle things that have been relatively understudied previously in previous research. Oh, I see. So you're trying to set the parameters here. Here are the boundaries where people are going to be affected and set the limits. Exactly. And for good reason, there's been a lot of focus in the heat and health research space on things like hospital admissions or mortality. But that's what I consider mostly the tip of the iceberg in terms of heat impacts. Obviously, before people get there, they probably don't feel very well.

It probably affects their daily activities. And obviously, that presents challenges. And that's hopefully one barrier that we want to overcome and provide some initial evidence on how heat affects people more on a daily basis before there's, you know, more serious health outcomes like ending up in the hospital or dying. Well, what are some of these subtle effects that heat can have on people that we don't hear about? Well, the first thing is we just, we're uncomfortable. So if it's, we've all experienced it, but we're uncomfortable in our home, doing our activities. Maybe we don't sleep very well. So it can affect obviously multiple facets of our lives, including, for example, sleep quality and duration,

our mental health, our mental well-being. And then it can progress to, let's say, subtle physiological change. So maybe our heart beats a little bit faster, it beats a little bit harder. Maybe we're just a little bit dehydrated, but that accumulates over several days, and that could cause a health problem. And maybe our blood pressure is also affected. So we're really trying to capture a little bit of all of that. Well, are there ways to adapt to the heat so that we don't experience these adverse health effects? Well, absolutely.

So we know that the body has a tremendous ability. to adapt the heat exposure. The only problem is that we need to expose ourselves to a considerable amount of heat and on a regular basis. So, for example, we just completed a project where we asked older adults, so mean age was approximately 70 years of age

to take hot baths seven consecutive days for one hour and a half each time. And the temperature of the water was 41 degrees Celsius, so almost like a hot jacuzzi. and what we saw is that the older adults were able to adapt to heat exposure just as well as younger adults. So let's say approximately 30 years of age. So it really showed that even with older or more advanced age, the body still retains its ability to adapt. But we don't know what the minimum stimulus is and whether we can do it in a more practical way that would be accessible to a lot of people.

That's crazy. You want to adapt to the heat, expose yourself to more heat. Yeah, exactly. And we, so it's just like, you know, if we want to be physically fit, well, we need to physically train. So if we want our body to better deal with heat exposure, we do need to expose ourselves. Wow. Well, once you do get results from this project, what do you hope happens with this data? Well, we will obviously analyze everything and report back to Health Canada, which is actually funding this study. and what I hope is that it can help guide their recommendations that are existing, so whether it's a refinement or just supporting maybe the recommendations that are in place right now are just fine and hopefully it will reinforce it.

And I think also, well, unfortunately, we're going to face more and more severe heat conditions in the coming years. So I think we need guidance now to help protect those populations who are most vulnerable to health impacts, to hopefully minimize those impacts going forward. Dr. Gagnon, thank you so much for your time. It's my pleasure anytime. Dr. Daniel Gagnon is a physiologist at the Montreal Heart Institute, an associate professor at the School of Kinesiology and Exercise Science at Universite de Montreal.

Earlier this year, the Artemis II crew, including Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, took a trip around the moon. It was the first time humans left our planet's low Earth orbit since 1972. Getting humans out to space, let alone to explore other planets and moons for scientific purposes, is a complicated, challenging affair, to say the least. So we have satellites scanning celestial bodies to collect information about them. But how do we make sense of all of that data? Well, for that, researchers have to scour the far reaches of our planet to find the closest analogs to whatever they find in space,

to do something called ground-truthing. And for two scientists from Western University this summer meant stomping around on lava fields in Hawaii to learn more about the moon. Here's planetary geologist, Dr. Catherine Neish, and Ph.D. student Sashank Vanga, to tell us about it. So Shank and I were, you know, just landing in Kona got a message from our colleague that Kilauea was erupting that day. So I've been to a lot of volcanoes in my life and I very rarely have seen a volcano erupt.

And I guess that's a good thing, right? You don't want to get, you know, hurt by an active lava flow. But the lava in Hawaii, I like to call it lava you can run away from. It's not that hazardous. It's pretty slow moving. You can kind of easily predict where it is. So if you're going to see an active lava flow, Hawaii is one of the best places to see it. And we didn't get out there until the next day and it had already stopped.

So I've still yet to see it really actively erupting volcano. Hi, my name is Catherine Niche. I'm a professor of Earth Sciences at Western University. I'm a planetary geologist, which means I study the geology of other planets primarily. Now, unlike being an Earth geologist, you can't just go into the field and pick up rocks and poke around with your rock hammer. That's very expensive, very risky. The only place we've ever sent humans is the moon. So we really rely on what we call remote sensing imagery,

images taken by satellites and telescopes of these other planets. And then we have to make inferences about the geology that's happening there, which, you know, can be difficult to do. Three, two, one, main engine ignition, and lift off of the Atlas 5 rocket with LRO-ELFROS. So the lunar reconnaissance orbiter is a NASA mission, which has been an orbit around the moon since 2009. So we're up to 17 years now. And I've been involved with the mission since it began.

One of my first projects when I first started working on LRO, I discovered these amazing impact melt flows that we see all over the moon. So these are formed when an asteroid strikes the moon. It actually melts the surface and form something that looks an awful lot like a lava flow flowing out from the rim of the traitor. And so I was fascinated by these impact melt flows, and I've been trying to understand their properties ever since. And one way to do that is to look at lava flows on Earth. We don't have any impact melt flows on Earth. Really, they get destroyed very rapidly through erosion. So the best analog we have are these fresh lava flows like we see in Hawaii. Because it has some of the freshes lava flows on Earth, indeed, the day before we got there was forming new lava. This is brand new

fresh lava. And why that's important is because when we look at other planets, they're not subject to the same sort of erosional processes we see on Earth. So they're not nearly as degraded as the sorts of features we see on Earth. So we want to get the freshest, most pristine examples of lava on Earth in order to understand what's going on other planets. And Hawaii has that in spades. So by understanding their roughness properties and how they tie back to radar images, that helps us understand the roughness properties of these impact melt flows on the moon using the radar data taken by LRO. Hi, my name is Sashank Bunga.

I'm a fourth year PhD student with Catherine Niche at Western University as well. And I study LIDAR and Radar Remote Sensing. So we use different kinds of instruments to study places on Earth that are similar to other planets we call planetary analogs and other planets themselves. Well, Sashonk is currently involved with a grant I have with the Canadian Space Agency. But the real reason I wanted him to come is because he's our lab's LIDAR expert. So I have a backpack LIDAR system, and he's the one who's the real expert at operating and processing the data from that instrument. So Lidar stands for light detection and ranging.

It's kind of like radar and sonar. So the concept is very similar as in you send pulses of something out. In the case of LIDAR and radar, you send light. LIDAR particularly emits infrared light, the light that our eyes cannot typically see. And the latter measures the time it takes for the pulses to leave the instrument, hit an object and come back, which is a fraction of a second or even smaller, and use that to measure how far away an object is, to centimeter or a millimeter precision. In this particular case, the LIDAR is situated on a backpack.

It doesn't look like a hiking backpack. It's a little odd looking. It has this metallic frame with a bunch of sci-fi-looking things. and on top, there's a sensor that spins hundreds of times per minute and all the while shooting these invisible laser pulses. It's a little awkward to wear. It's about, I'd say, maybe around 20 kilos with the ladder instrument on top of it. It's certainly not the easiest thing to walk with, but it gives us incredible data and it allows me to travel to incredible places. So I'm not going to complain about that.

So in Hawaii, we made three stops where we took the ladder out. So the idea was to get very detailed scans of different types of lava flows. I'm sort of the preparatory person and the takedown person. So when he's ready to go, I'll help him get the backpack on. It's kind of awkward to get on by yourself. So try to be there for support. And then I take pictures of him when he's walking around to kind of get a sense for the landscape. But also, you know, it's just fun to take pictures of other people.

The ideal path to take with any lighter, whether it's drone-based or pedestrian base, is what's called a lawnmower pattern. So you're doing swats of back and forth, but in reality, that's not quite possible on unpaved terrain. So this time, we did loops. So in order to get as much coverage as possible, we walked in as much of a circular pattern as possible. So we started or ended in the same location. So wearing the backpack ladder, which is a bit top-heavy, is kind of like, you know, giving a piggy your back ride to a toddler. And it's unpaved terrain, so there's a lot of undulations. It's going up and down.

Sometimes you're walking on inclines, all the while trying to like try not to fall off, not just because you don't want to hurt yourself, but the instrument is also very expensive and sensitive. So that's always on the back of your mind. Yeah, it's, you can't really take long strides. Sometimes you have to watch your step, especially on like, you know, more rugged or rough lava-fellers. close. It's not easy to like take your steps without thinking. You have to like, you know, think before every step. Otherwise, you can end up hurting yourself, which is not a good thing. Well, yeah, now the real science begins, I guess you could say. So there's a lot of steps that happen after the fieldwork ends. First of all, you have to process the data. And then, you know,

the data analysis can take several years as well, trying to really get into the nitty gritty of the data and trying to figure out what it can tell you. And then, you know, once we have the data, then you can do the fun work of trying to, you know, pull out the pieces that will help you better understand the moon and compare it to the radar data we have of the moon and the Earth. And it's often very different from what you'd expect when you're looking at just a plan view image from, say, an orbiter. I've been very surprised in going to places that I hadn't seen before. You know, you make inferences based on what you see from these images, but sometimes you're wrong. Often you're wrong. And so you really do have to go there and poke around and see

what's there for yourself. Yeah, so there's this proverb that goes, tell me and I forget, teach me all remember, and involve me and I'll learn. So I think field work really involves me. Sometimes, like, you know, I can kind of close my eyes and, like, in a picture that I'm standing in the middle of a Martian or a lunar desert, obviously with like a breathable air. And it's where all the learning you do in the classroom through textbooks and courses really clicks. Dr. Catherine Niche is a professor of Earth Sciences at Western University, and Sajunk Bunga is a fourth-year PhD student also at Western University. What ever happened to the Neanderthals when they went extinct 40,000 years ago? It might surprise you to find out we don't have a good answer for that question, but there is a team of international archaeologists trying to figure it out, including a geo-archologist from a

from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. The researchers are casting a wide net across Eurasia, from Iberia to Siberia, to locations where Neanderthals were previously found to have lived. Their goal is to piece together what ultimately led to the demise of our distant ancestors, the Neanderthals. Dr. Francesco Berna is a georeologist at Simon Fraser University and the University of Siena in Italy, where he's from.

He's been getting his hands dirty this summer, digging for clues in the search for the last Neanderthals in his home country of Italy, as well as in Uzbekistan, and now in Kyrgyzstan. Hello, and welcome to our summer science special. Hello, Bob. Thank you for having me. First of all, what kind of evidence are you looking for to figure out what happened to the last Neanderthals?

Personally, I work mainly on pilo-environmental evidence, so like paleoclimatic proxies, paleo-sedimentological proxies. And the rest of the team is looking at material culture, proxies, like different type of stone tools. And another part of the team, they will look at genetics and human remains, if we'll ever find some. So, in other words, you're looking at the environment, the past environment, that, Neanderthals lived in. Yes, particularly we are focusing on the last 60,000 to 40,000 years ago when Neanderthals start to disappear and their landscape was replaced by modern humans. So a lot of modeling based on genetic data and environmental data show that Central Asia

must have been an area where Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. interacted. And so refining the chronologies of these interactions and the spatial distribution of the two species, so the latest Neanderthals and the early sapiens, will definitely allow us to better understand what led to the Neanderthal's demise and what led to the success of homo sapiens. Now, I know we don't know exactly why the Neanderthals disappear, but what are some of the theories, some of the ideas of what happened to them? There is several hypotheses that the Neanderthals had a demographic issue within the Neanderthals

population, which was smaller in numbers, but also apparently had a lower genetic diversity compared to modern humans. So eventually they kind of died out. Other hypotheses, you know, were claiming some kind of major environmental stressor. Like, for instance, there is around 42,000 years ago, there is a significant drop for a few centuries of the magnetic field that allowed a bombardment of the cosmic rays. on Earth, and so that caused damage to the population.

And then we have also the hypothesis of mega eruptions that cool down the earth in a very, you know, severe way. And so there are different hypotheses. Well, that's quite a list of possibilities for the extinction of the Neanderthals. Now, what kind of caves did the Neanderthals choose to live in? So what is it interesting in Uzbekistan's These caves are pretty high up, so that's the peculiarity there that we need to look at high elevation.

Why do you think the Neanderthals chose caves that are so high up? We don't know, but, you know, that's what we're trying to find out. Of course, you know, the landscape 40 to 60,000 years ago was significant in the difference. So the valleys were less deep. we know that some side of the valleys are lifting, some are subsiding, so we're trying to reconstruct exactly what kind of environment was there, but what we can say maybe because they are high elevation, they're cool and dry, that's why the remains are better preserved there.

So once you finally arrive at a cave, what are you looking for? What do you find there? We look at the opening, we look at the aspects, bits of work where they're facing to how much, you know, the terrace in front of it, how thick the deposit is. Some of this deposit are really, really deep before you get to Neanderthal's stone tools that we know Neanderthals used to use to nap stones and make their tools. So that's like our marker.

And then once we find, if we find a stone tool, and these layers, or we are looking for either human remains that can be assigned anatomically to Neanderthals or almost sapiens, or what we're trying to do now, which is to extract ancient DNA from the sediments, and then trying to see if we have sequences that can be assigned to Neanderthals or sapiens, or when we are in Central Asia, also another group called Denisovans that were persons in Siberia and some part of Asia with Neanderthals.

Well, take me inside one of these caves where you know the Neanderthals lived. How homey is it? What's it like in there? Normally where we found Neanderthals, they are no very deep caves. I mean, they are deep caves, but Neanderthals would leave just outside and in the entrance.

And they're pretty omey. Now, the difficult part is that, as I say, Neanderthal's deposit are pretty deep compared to the current level of the floor of the cave. So you have to imagine that the cave was half empty and possibly was much larger and was projecting, you know, more outside. So normally are beautiful places. And personally, I think they were choosing these places near, you know, water stream, but also water sources that were kind of permanent.

Wow. So there was, it was a room with a view. They could see out if they were up on a cliff. Absolutely. There are some Neanderthal caves here in Italy that, their prime view, prime location, right on the shore. But you have to know that, you know, basically at that time, the shore probably was kilometers away

because of the rebound of the sea level, right? What's it like for you to stand in a cave knowing that 60, 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals lived there? Oh, for me, it's hard to describe, but, you know, when we have those moments, it's amazing. You know, it's like being in a time machine and going back, you know, 40 or 60,000, even more sometimes. Actually, in one K, we probably find something that is 140,000, so much older. So it's fantastic, but it's really not what we are looking for.

But it still must be amazing when you hold a stone. tool in your hand that someone used all that time ago to make dinner and you have it in your hands. It's like shaking hands with somebody from the past. Exactly. It's like touching, you know, humanities. It's not there anymore. Dr. Berna, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Bob. It was a pleasure. Dr. Francesco Berna is a professor of geo-archiology at Simon Fraser University and the University of Sienna. Well, that's it for our summer science special. If you'd like to get in touch with us,

our email is quirks at cbc.ca. Our web page is cbc.ca.ca slash quirks, where you can check out our past episodes and find out more information about the research we covered in the show. You can also follow our podcast, get us on SiriusXM, or download the CBC Listen app.

It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Quarks and Quarks is produced by Sonia Biting, Rosie Fernandez, and Amanda Bukowitz. Our senior producer is Hannah Hoag. I'm Bob McDonald. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.