Record attempt for RIB will be hard to Top

'The Gemini RIB has shown it can handle the rough at 20 knots or more'    Sandman PR    Click Here to view large photo A 110-kilometre dash from Sydney to Newcastle NSW will herald the start of a quest by two brothers to travel 9500 kilometres around Australia's coastline in a ‘rubber ducky’. Peter and Phillip Jenkins will leave from Sydney International Boat Show on August 1 in what’s billed as the Honda Over The Top Expedition, aiming to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer.  All going well, they’ll finish two months later in their home town of Perth.  Their boat, an 8.6-metre Gemini Pro RIB powered by twin Honda BF225 outboards, has been custom built for the event.  Skipper Peter Jenkins was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008 and thus wants the expedition to encourage men to book a check-up.  ‘I have always been active and healthy, so to hear that I had cancer at 61 was shocking,’ he said.  ‘I was lucky, I detected prostate cancer early and was able to receive treatment by the least invasive method, brachytherapy.’  After extensive sea trialling off the West Australian coast, their RIB has been refined to a point where both men are confident of success.  Peter Jenkins aims to raise awareness for cancer research -  Sandman PR   Click Here to view large photo ‘The boat has really been put through its paces in wild seas out to Rottnest Island, calm conditions on the Swan River and everything in between,’ Peter Jenkins said.  ‘Although the boat proved itself to handle rough conditions with ease, maintaining a speed of 23 knots in some very poor weather, we've had a taste of just how exhausting the expedition will be ... it certainly won't be a holiday!’  The twin Honda BF225s are linked to Furuno electronics, which enable them to accurately monitor fuel consumption. So far the average is less than two litres per nautical mile at speeds in excess of 23 knots.  A number of stopovers are planned, with the expedition aiming to raise $200,000 for Cancer Council Australia for research into effective prostate cancer detection and treatment.  Keep an eye out for news of fundraising events in your local area, or donate online at www.overthetop.com.au Click here for printer friendly version  Click here to send us feedback or comments about this story. If you want to send this story to a friend, please use link below http://www.sail-world.com/BoatingAndBoats/Record-attempt-for-RIB-will-be-hard-to-Top/86148  Click for further information on Related News Stories: 30 Mar 2011  Honda Over The Top Expedition to fight prostate cancer 15 Feb 2011  Honda outboard range BLASTs off 07 Dec 2010  Brig inflatables join New World Honda Marine 19 Nov 2010  Runaway Bay Marina hosts boating expo 15 Nov 2010  Low interest rate finance on Honda outboards 13 Oct 2010  Honda’s online advantage 21 Sep 2010  Leisure Marine goes sole Honda 04 Sep 2010  Honda RYA Youth RIB National Championship - Crunch time 28 Jul 2010  Honda Marine's National Dealer of the Year - Melbourne New World Honda 21 Jul 2010  Honda's enduring environmental commitment

SOLAR SHIP TURANOR update

Dear PlanetSolar friends,

Right now MS TÛRANOR PlanetSolar is approaching the capital of the Philippines, Manila. PlanetSolar has journeyed more than 3,000 miles of ocean, or about 5,000km, since its departure from Cairns in northeast Australia. From the time of her original departure from Monaco, MS TURANOR PlanetSolar has managed to cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and cover 35,000 km with just the sun’s energy.

The latest news is that PlanetSolar has been awarded a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest Atlantic crossing in a solar powered boat. MS TURNANOR PlanetSolar completed this record between Tired Caliper and Holy Martin, from October 22, 2010 to November 18, 2010, in 26 days, 19 hours and 10 minutes. The previous holder of this world record was our friends at Sun21. They managed to cross the ocean between Tired Caliper and the Martinique in 29 days.

PlanetSolar has been on the way back home towards Monaco for a few weeks now. Wednesday July 5^thwas an important day for PlanetSolar, as we re-entered into the Northern Hemisphere. We left behind the winter, where we had traveled more than 10,000 miles, or 18,500 km, and emerged into the summer of the southern hemisphere at about 15:30. We crossed the equator near the Galapagos for the first time in January of this year. We are now 15,000km from Monaco and we have once again crossed over the equator to enter the northern hemisphere and leave the south pacific.

With the great success of our adventure, and the continuous growth as we go on, we had to reinforce our land crew at the Swiss offices in the Yverdon-harvest-Bains in the canton Waadt. We adjusted the office accommodations and expanded the team because there is more equipment that needs to be shipped further distances with the stops that PlanetSolar will make throughout Asia.

In a few days PlanetSolar arrives in Manila where we will have an opportunity to thank our partners from Presence Switzerland and SunPower with events coordinated with out expedition. In the beginning of August we will head out for Hong Kong and we plan to arrive by mid-August. This will be followed by a week of festivities and then we will take off again westward for Singapore.

You can track our adventures from Australia to the Philippines in the video that follows our moves from moment to moment.

Wishing you the best and see you soon with new adventures from PlanetSolar.
Raphaël Domjan, Founder & Co-Skipper
Immo Stroeher, Co-founder 

PS: Do not forget to buy your own PlanetSolar products and become part of the Expedition! Visit our E-Shop

6.1 magnitude earthquake shakes Alaska’s Aleutian Islands

 A 6.1 magnitude earthquake has struck Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, but no tsunami warning was issued.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake on Saturday was centered 604 miles southwest of Anchorage on the eastern part of the Aleutian Islands. It had a depth of 43 kilometers.

Sand Point police officer Nate Taylor says no damage was reported in his town, one of the closest communities to the epicenter.

The quake was felt as far as Cold Bay, about 25 miles northwest of King Cove.

The U.S. Geological Survey says a few items on shelves reportedly toppled or fell, but it received no reports of the quake causing damage.

Earthquake Facts

1. The largest recorded earthquake in the United States was a magnitude 9.2 that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska on Good Friday, March 28, 1964 UTC.
2. The largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 (Mw) in Chile on May 22, 1960.
3. The earliest reported earthquake in California was felt in 1769 by the exploring expedition of Gaspar de Portola while the group was camping about 48 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Los Angeles.
4. Before electronics allowed recordings of large earthquakes, scientists built large spring-pendulum seismometers in an attempt to record the long-period motion produced by such quakes. The largest one weighed about 15 tons. There is a medium-sized one three stories high in Mexico City that is still in operation.
5. The average rate of motion across the San Andreas Fault Zone during the past 3 million years is 56 mm/yr (2 in/yr). This is about the same rate at which your fingernails grow. Assuming this rate continues, scientists project that Los Angeles and San Francisco will be adjacent to one another in approximately 15 million years.
6. The East African Rift System is a 50-60 km (31-37 miles) wide zone of active volcanics and faulting that extends north-south in eastern Africa for more than 3000 km (1864 miles) from Ethiopia in the north to Zambezi in the south. It is a rare example of an active continental rift zone, where a continental plate is attempting to split into two plates which are moving away from one another.
7. The first “pendulum seismoscope” to measure the shaking of the ground during an earthquake was developed in 1751, and it wasn’t until 1855 that faults were recognized as the source of earthquakes.
8. Moonquakes (“earthquakes” on the moon) do occur, but they happen less frequently and have smaller magnitudes than earthquakes on the Earth. It appears they are related to the tidal stresses associated with the varying distance between the Earth and Moon. They also occur at great depth, about halfway between the surface and the center of the moon.
9. Although both are sea waves, a tsunami and a tidal wave are two different unrelated phenomenona. A tidal wave is a shallow water wave caused by the gravitational interactions between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. A tsunami is a sea wave caused by an underwater earthquake or landslide (usually triggered by an earthquake) displacing the ocean water.
10. The hypocenter of an earthquake is the location beneath the earth’s surface where the rupture of the fault begins. The epicenter of an earthquake is the location directly above the hypocenter on the surface of the earth.
11. The world’s greatest land mountain range is the Himalaya-Karakoram. It countains 96 of the world’s 109 peaks of over 7,317m (24,000 ft). The longest range is the Andes of South America which is 7,564km (4700 mi) in length. Both were created bythe movement of tectonic plates.
12. It is estimated that there are 500,000 detectable earthquakes in the world each year. 100,000 of those can be felt, and 100 of them cause damage.
13. It is thought that more damage was done by the resulting fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake than by the earthquake itself.
14. A seiche (pronounced SAYSH) is what happens in the swimming pools of Californians during and after an earthquake. It is “an internal wave oscillating in a body of water” or, in other words, it is the sloshing of the water in your swimming pool, or any body of water, caused by the ground shaking in an earthquake. It may continue for a few moments or hours, long after the generating force is gone. A seiche can also be caused by wind or tides.
15. Each year the southern California area has about 10,000 earthquakes. Most of them are so small that they are not felt. Only several hundred are greater than magnitude 3.0, and only about 15-20 are greater than magnitude 4.0. If there is a large earthquake, however, the aftershock sequence will produce many more earthquakes of all magnitudes for many months.
16. The magnitude of an earthquake is a measured value of the earthquake size. The magnitude is the same no matter where you are, or how strong or weak the shaking was in various locations. The intensity of an earthquake is a measure of the shaking created by the earthquake, and this value does vary with location.
17. The Wasatch Range, with its outstanding ski areas, runs North-South through Utah, and like all mountain ranges it was produced by a series of earthquakes. The 386 km (240-mile)-long Wasatch Fault is made up of several segments, each capable of producing up to a M7.5 earthquake. During the past 6,000 years, there has been a M6.5+ about once every 350 years, and it has been about 350 years since the last powerful earthquake, which was on the Nephi segment.
18. There is no such thing as “earthquake weather”. Statistically, there is an equal distribution of earthquakes in cold weather, hot weather, rainy weather, etc. Furthermore, there is no physical way that the weather could affect the forces several miles beneath the surface of the earth. The changes in barometric pressure in the atmosphere are very small compared to the forces in the crust, and the effect of the barometric pressure does not reach beneath the soil.
19. From 1975-1995 there were only four states that did not have any earthquakes. They were: Florida, Iowa, North Dakota, and Wisconsin.
20. The core of the earth was the first internal structural element to be identified. In 1906 R.D. Oldham discovered it from his studies of earthquake records. The inner core is solid, and the outer core is liquid and so does not transmit the shear wave energy released during an earthquake.
21. The swimming pool at the University of Arizona in Tucson lost water from sloshing (seiche) caused by the 1985 M8.1 Michoacan, Mexico earthquake 2000 km (1240 miles) away.
22. Earthquakes occur in the central portion of the United States too! Some very powerful earthquakes occurred along the New Madrid fault in theMississippi Valley in 1811-1812. Because of the crustal structure in the Central US which efficiently propagates seismic energy, shaking from earthquakes in this part of the country are felt at a much greater distance from the epicenters than similar size quakes in the Western US.
23. Most earthquakes occur at depths of less than 80 km (50 miles) from the Earth’s surface.
24. The San Andreas fault is NOT a single, continuous fault, but rather is actually a fault zone made up of many segments. Movement may occur along any of the many fault segments along the zone at any time. The San Andreas fault system is more that 1300 km (800 miles) long, and in some spots is as much as 16 km (10 miles) deep.
25. The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1556 in central China. It struck a region where most people lived in caves carved from soft rock. These dwellings collapsed during the earthquake, killing an estimated 830,000 people. In 1976 another deadly earthquake struck in Tangshan, China, where more than 250,000 people were killed.
26. Florida and North Dakota have the smallest number of earthquakes in the United States.
27. The deepest earthquakes typically occur at plate boundaries where the Earth”s crust is being subducted into the Earth’s mantle. These occur as deep as 750 km (400 miles) below the surface.
28. Alaska is the most earthquake-prone state and one of the most seismically active regions in the world. Alaska experiences a magnitude 7 earthquake almost every year, and a magnitude 8 or greater earthquake on average every 14 years.
29. The majority of the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur along plate boundaries such as the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate. One of the most active plate boundaries where earthquakes and eruptions are frequent, for example, is around the massive Pacific Plate commonly referred to as the Pacific Ring of Fire.
30. The earliest recorded evidence of an earthquake has been traced back to 1831 BC in the Shandong province of China, but there is a fairly complete record starting in 780 BC during the Zhou Dynasty in China.
31. It was recognized as early as 350 BC by the Greek scientist Aristotle thatsoft ground shakes more than hard rock in an earthquake.
32. The cause of earthquakes was stated correctly in 1760 by British engineer John Michell, one of the first fathers of seismology, in a memoir where he wrote that earthquakes and the waves of energy that they make are caused by “shifting masses of rock miles below the surface”.
33. In 1663 the European settlers experienced their first earthquake in America.
34. Human beings can detect sounds in the frequency range 20-20,000 Hertz. If a P wave refracts out of the rock surface into the air, and it has a frequency in the audible range, it will be heard as a rumble. Most earthquake waves have a frequency of less than 20 Hz, so the waves themselves are usually not heard. Most of the rumbling noise heard during an earthquake is the building and its contents moving.
35. When the Chilean earthquake occurred in 1960, seismographs recorded seismic waves that traveled all around the Earth. These seismic waves shook the entire earth for many days! This phenomenon is called the free oscillation of the Earth.
36. The interior of Antarctica has icequakes which, although they are much smaller, are perhaps more frequent than earthquakes in Antarctica. The icequakes are similar to earthquakes, but occur within the ice sheet itself instead of the land underneath the ice. Some of our polar observers have told us they can hear the icequakes and see them on the South Pole seismograph station, but they are much too small to be seen on enough stations to obtain a location.

Irish marine expedition to map new ecosystem

IRISH SCIENTISTS are about to embark on one of the most challenging research expeditions undertaken by the State’s research ship, Celtic Explorer .

National Geographic has booked berths on the ship to record the expedition, led by Dr Andy Wheeler of University College Cork, and involving marine scientists from NUI Galway, the Geological Survey of Ireland and the University of Southampton. The ship is due to leave Galway docks today.

The 25-day voyage 1,000 miles (1,610km) west of Ireland intends to venture into Jules Verne territory by mapping an entire new ecosystem on the Atlantic sea floor.

The biological structure was first detected by British scientists three years ago, in an area some 3,000m (9,800ft) below the surface at a latitude of 45 degrees north.

The new ecosystem is located on the mid-Atlantic ridge, a 16,000km-long mountain range extending from the Arctic to southern Africa, about halfway between Iceland and the Azores.

Hydrothermal vents are fissures or cracks in the Earth’s surface, usually found in volcanically active areas at sea, or on land in places like Yellowstone National Park in North America.

BBC’s Blue Planet illustrated how enormous volumes of sea water pumping through the ocean floor are enriched with minerals from volcanic sources.

The chimneys or “black smokers” that the vents create teem with life and these complex communities thrive on the chemosynthesis provided by the chemicals dissolved in vent fluids. The chemosynthetic environment involves bacteria which develop a food chain independent of sunlight.

The mission has two objectives: deployment of Holland 1 , the Celtic Explorer ’s remotely operated vehicle, to film the hydrothermal system; and a separate examination of the cold-water coral Moira Mound reefs already designated as a special area of conservation on the Porcupine Seabight.

National Geographic intends to have a team on board to record the mission for its Oceanus television series, scheduled for broadcast in 2012.

NUIG biologist Patrick Collins, who has worked on a number of similar projects to study hydrothermal vent fauna, describes it as the “most technically challenging marine research ever undertaken by Ireland”.

It is only 30 years since hydrothermal vents were first discovered in the eastern Pacific. Moreover, some 500 new faunal species have been recorded in six biogeographical provinces charted to date.

As part of the expedition, secondary school students were invited to design their own deep sea creature and describe its habitat, diet, life and evolutionary history. The winner, who will be announced in September after the ship returns, may have one of the new species at the vents named after him or her.

Working with expedition chief scientist Dr Wheeler and Mr Collins will be Dr Bramley Murton, principal scientific officer at Southampton’s National Oceanography Centre; Prof John Gamble, a UCC geology professor and expert in volcanology; Dr Jens Carlsson, senior research fellow at UCC and adjunct assistant professor at Duke University marine laboratory in north Carolina; and Prof John Benzie, UCC professor of marine molecular biodiversity.

Also participating will be Dr Jon Copley, a Southampton University lecturer who has studied the structure and dynamics of chemosynthetic communities; Prof Tom Cross of UCC, a marine biologist whose major research interests are in molecular genetics and fish culture; and Dr Boris Dorschel, UCC marine geologist with a specific expertise in cold water carbonate mounds.

Paraguan expedition abandoned

The Natural History Museum has finally bowed to the inevitable and abandoned plans for its controversial field trip to study wildlife in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay.

The Chaco, known as the green hell, covers a vast area of dry virtually impenetrable forest straddling the borders of Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay. It is one of the least hospitable but most biologically diverse places on earth and home to thousands of plant and and animal species previously unknown to science.

The expedition - the biggest mounted by the Museum's ecologists for 50 years - had hoped to document much of that diversity, but ran into difficulties last year when human rights activists protested that the researchers might stumble across previously uncontacted tribes.

The project was put on hold in November when the Ministry for the Environment in Paraguay announced it planned to hold further talks with representatives of the indigenous Ayoreo people - a process of engagement the museum fully endorsed.

But as the months have dragged by the Museum has had to think again, and in a statement issued today the interim director of science, Professor Phil Rainbow, reluctantly conceded defeat.

"The Museum remains keen to explore the biodiversity of Paraguay with our Paraguayan partners, but cannot hold last year's funds indefinitely. The Natural History Museum has now had to reallocate the funding reserved for the project and we plan to invest the funds in other fieldwork."

It's a bitter blow for the museum, and for the plants and animals of the Gran Chaco, which is threatened by illegal logging and forest clearance for agriculture.

Professor Rainbow added, "We believe that a survey to scientifically record the richness and diversity of the animals and plants in this remote region is fundamental to the future management of this fragile habitat."

Fermilab Collider’s ‘Last Smash’ May Have Found Unknown Particle

Slated to be shuttered indefinitely (or sold for parts) later this year, the nation’s largest particle collider — the Tevatron – may have detected traces of a previously unknown specie of particle that could potentially alter Quantum Theory.

Located at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) at the University of Chicago in Batavia, IL, the Tevatron has been pivotal in finding evidence of several particles* formerly only predicted by Quantum Theory. These discoveries have buttressed the validity of what’s known as the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the second most powerful particle collider in the world, just behind the Large Hadron Coliider (LHC) located at CERN in Switzerland.

There has been a slight hope that before the collider was finally shut down it might uncover evidence of the mighty Higgs Boson — the so-called “god particle” that that confers mass onto most other particles in the quantum universe.

But in what may be a quantum “last hurrah”, with a twist, one of the collider’s two detectors has recently detected a mysterious signal that, so far, neither The Standard Model, nor the collaborating team of physicists pouring over the data, can explain. All that they can say, so far, is that it is definitely not the Higgs.

An image showing 6 quarks, 6 leptons and the interacting particles, according to the Standard Model

While scanning the aftermath of certain proton – anti-proton collisions inside the machine’s CDF detector, physicists (Aaltonen et al) noticed a strange “blip” that could be explained by (positing) a previously unknown particle. If validated, this would be the first time that a particle was discovered that had not been intentionally sought after.

Specifically, the physicists were looking at the invariant mass distribution following a series of collisions in which a large particle called a W boson, and one even heavier, unknown particle, were produced. The observed distribution of the putative, unknown particle (measured in terms of its energy-mass content) was in excess of 120 – 160 GeV/c² (that’s 160 billion electron volts).

According to the report** published ahead of print earlier this month, “This mass range is not described by current theoretical predictions within the statistical and systematic uncertainties.”

Of course, there is a chance that the detector’ s results are in error, but, if the results are validated, there is only a tiny chance that it’s just a statistical aberration. The “gold standard” in particle physics for statistical validation is referred to as ’5-Sigma’ (5 standard deviations) which, if achieved, would mean that the the results are real.

Aerial photo of the Tevatron at Fermilab, which resembles a figure eight. The main accelerator is the ring above; the one below (about one-third the diameter, despite appearances) is for preliminary acceleration, beam cooling and storage, etc.

Meanwhile, Aaltonen’s team continues to study the properties of this unaccounted for “excess” and will be using the Tevatron’s other detector, the DZero, to try and duplicate the results. Results are expected soon.

As reported here on PS earlier this year, the famed “atom smasher” is falling victim to cost-cutting measures that are roiling “big science” budgets these days. My previous post on the collider actually garnered a rather touching homage (comment) to the mighty Tevatron — so dear is it to the hearts and minds of particle physics fans.

Let’s hope that the mystery is solved before the great atom smasher’s demise — or better, that the mysterious new particle offers justification for keeping the Tevatron alive just a bit longer.

Just a few months ago, no one could have guess at this development.

Sometimes the Universe throws a curve ball at you (or, a curve particle, in this case).

For more reading, check out Sci Am’s ‘U.S. Collider Offers Physicists a Glimpse of a Possible New Particle’

* For example, the last particle discovered by the Tevatron was the tau neutrino, in 2000

** The preliminary report Invariant Mass Distribution…

Top Image: (Higgs Boson) Lucas Taylor, CERN

Chart: (Standard Model of Particle Physics) MissMJ ; CC – By 3.0

Fermilab: DOE

Source: Planetsave (http://s.tt/12tmx

Robot explores where no human dares: The final rest of the Franklin expedition

This summer, a torpedo-shaped robot will try to do what 160 years of navy expeditions, RCMP search parties and eagle-eyed Northern hunters could not.

In August, when the Arctic ice is thinnest, a small icebreaker filled with Parks Canada archaeologists will make its third attempt to find the Erebus and Terror, the long-lost vessels of the Franklin expedition, a doomed 1845 voyage to find the Northwest Passage. While underwater searches in 2008 and 2010 relied largely on sonar, this year researchers will be bringing along an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle to “dramatically increase the size of the search area.”

“This is the year I hope we will solve one of the great mysteries in the history of Arctic exploration,” said federal environment minister Peter Kent in an announcement last week.

Ever since 128 well-trained English explorers disappeared seemingly off the face of the earth, the fate of the Franklin Expedition has been an obsession for generations of Arctic searchers. In the latter half of the 19th century, the British sent 38 ships in search of Sir John Franklin, whom they considered a hero. His bust was mounted in Westminster Abbey, his statue was installed in Downtown London and his name was affixed to straits, districts and bays throughout the Canadian North. The explorer’s name still adorns public schools in Calgary, Vancouver and Yellowknife.

Retired RCMP Constable Bill Pringle has his own theories about the final resting place of the Erebus and Terror. In 1974, while posted to what is now Taloyoak, Nunavut, Mr. Pringle was sent to King William Island with a team of 11 others to comb the land for Franklin-era relics.

The team dropped marked fuel cans into the water near where the Erebus and Terror were believed to have last been sighted. A few years later, one of the gas cans was discovered more than 100 kilometers away on the western edge of the Boothia Peninsula. On nearby Matty Island, says Mr. Pringle, Inuit legend also tells of a mast that once stuck out of the water. Mr. Pringle tried to marshall additional expeditions, but RCMP headquarters turned him down. In the attic of his Carcross, Yukon home, Mr. Pringle still keeps a heavily marked map detailing his lifetime of Franklin research.

For years, the Canadian government was content to sit back while foreign explorers and filmmakers combed the Northwest Passage for Franklin’s ships. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper ramped up his “use it or lose it” campaign for the North, finding the Erebus and Terror suddenly rose to the top of government agendas. “It will reinforce Canada’s sovereign claims on not just the passage, but on all of the Arctic lands and waters in the North,” says Mr. Kent.

Franklin searchers thought they had a breakthrough last year, when two Inuit brothers in Gjoa Haven came forward with a wooden box they said contained logs from the Franklin expedition. But the box had belonged to Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, not Franklin. Furthermore, it was already well-known to archaeologists. Nevertheless, Franklin-hungry camera crews snapped up the news. “Purported Franklin Expedition records found,” read a CBC North dispatch.

National Post Graphics

A map of the expedition's trek. Click the image to enlarge

Similar fanfare greeted the 2010 discovery of the HMS Investigator, a ship that sunk in the Western Arctic in 1853 while searching for the Franklin Expedition. Unlike the Erebus and Terror, however, the HMS Investigator was never really missing.

“You can’t really call it a discovery — or even a re-discovery,” says Aaron Spitzer, a Yellowknife-based writer. The final co-ordinates of the ship were well-recorded, and having sunk in a shallow bay, it was unlikely to have drifted too far. As with dozens of immaculately preserved sternwheelers and WWII bombers scattered throughout the Arctic, archaeologists had simply never bothered to look for the Investigator. In 2010, a Parks Canada crew in an inflatable boat found the vessel within 15 minutes of leaving the dock.

The aim of the Franklin Expedition was to find a sea route through the Northwest Passage. The expedition’s 128 crew members would sail to Alaska, take a left turn to the Pacific Ocean and then sail triumphantly back to England with the co-ordinates for a new route to the Orient. Expedition commander Sir John Franklin, a 59-year-old Royal Navy officer who had fought at the Battle of Trafalgar, had pulled off risky Arctic voyages before ­— and this time he had two ships equipped with heated rooms and state-of-the-art steam engines.

Less than halfway through the passage, however, the ships became mired in ice near what is now Gjoa Haven, Nunavut.

After two brutal years on the ice ­— which Franklin would not survive — the remaining crew members loaded their dwindling supplies on to sleds and attempted to escape the arctic on foot. Living almost exclusively on canned food contaminated with lead, researchers speculate the crew was beginning to go mad from lead poisoning. The party kept to the coast of King William Island, leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. The expedition’s last survivors, numbering only 30 or 40, would ultimately succumb to starvation and disease in a pebbly cove a little more than 200 kilometres southeast of their stranded vessels.

Rescue expeditions would discover King William Island strewn with the bones and provisions of Franklin’s men. One of the expedition’s eeriest relics was a ship’s boat that the men had painstakingly hauled across the ice stuffed with seemingly useless implements such as hair brushes, chocolate and gold watches. Standing guard over the bizarre treasure was a well-clothed skeleton still clutching a loaded rifle in each hand. Chillingly, many of the bones discovered on King William Island carried deep knife marks — the telltale signs of cannibalism.?

The Franklin Expedition is “a classic tale of British misadventure,” says Mr. Spitzer. “The Royal Navy, with too many men and opulently stocked ships, goes sailing into their doom because they refuse to eat or dress like the Inuit,” he says. Indeed, well-fed Inuit hunters would be the last humans to see Franklin’s ragged men alive. “Looked at through a lens of 170 years, Franklin’s a bit of a boob,” says Mr. Spitzer.

In Victorian England, the unfortunate commander was elevated to the status of a mythical hero. When explorers returned with evidence of cannibalism, they were viciously silenced. In a 1854 essay, novelist Charles Dickens claimed that “by nature,” Englishmen do not eat humans.

Britain's richest man to build giant Arctic iron ore mine

Britain's richest man is planning a giant new opencast mine 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle in a bid to extract a potential $23bn (£14bn) worth of iron ore.

The "mega-mine" – which includes a 150km railway line and two new ports – is believed to be the largest mineral extraction project in the Arctic and highlights the huge commercial potential of the far north as global warming makes industrial development in the region easier.

The billionaire steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who is behind the project, wants to exploit a commodity whose value has doubled due to soaring demand from China and India.

But the wildlife group WWF, describes the planned mine as a "game changer" and a test case that could affect all future industrialisation of the far north. "It is certainly ... of a scale that would be massive anywhere in the world," said Martin von Mirbach, a director of the Arctic programme at WWF in Canada. WWF is demanding the company proceeds with extreme caution.

Documents seen by the Guardian show that Mittal's company, the world's biggest steel-making group, ArcelorMittal, admits the operations will be undertaken in an area inhabited by unique wildlife including polar bear, narwhal and walrus.

The company has just spent nearly $600m (£373m) alongside a US private equity firm buying Baffinland Iron Mines, to seize control and develop the Mary river deposits in the Nunavut region of the Canadian Arctic.

Mittal has already outlined an ambitious plan to use more than 2,000 workers to build 24 bridges, stretches of road, warehouses, fuel depots, landfills and an airstrip as well as the docks at Milne Inlet and Steensby.

The railway alone will take four years to construct and will need its own roads and quarries for iron ore, which the company says is "an essential commodity for ongoing growth and development of our society" particularly the developing economies of China and India.

The project will also provide jobs for locals and increased revenues for the local government of Nunavut while contributing to "strengthening Canada's sovereignty in the north".

But an environmental impact statement prepared for Baffinland Iron Mines accepts the area is home to terrestrial mammals including caribou, Arctic fox and hare.

The statement outlines how marine mammals are also found in abundance in the region including polar bears, narwhals, beluga whales and blowhead whales while migratory birds include snow geese, rough-legged hawks and gyro-falcons.

The operators say they will work hard to prevent contamination from sewage, wastewater and explosive equipment-washing but they admit: "building sections of the railway into the edge of several lakes will be unavoidable … some fish habitat will be lost."

It also says "accidental kills of caribou could occur as a result of project activity" and that "small numbers of ringed seal mortalities could occur as a result of icebreaking activity."

The company admits any large diesel spill "would have significant environmental effects" but says this kind of event is unlikely. Baffinland also argues it will pay more than $2.8bn in taxes to the government of Nunavut over 21 years and that it will spend $1.7bn on labour.

A spokesperson for ArcellorMittal said that the project is currently in the environmental assessment process during which NGOs, governments and individuals are invited to review the plans.

"Included in the environmental impact statement (EIS) are detailed management, mitigation, and monitoring plans, which will allow for potential impacts to be minimised. All aspects of the project, through construction, operation and closure will be evaluated and will adhere to the conditions established for the project through this process," the spokesperson said.

WWF says it is up to the local Inuit to decide whether the project goes ahead but the wildlife group wants to help ensure the plans are developed in the most sensitive way.

"This is a test case on the potential for carrying out large-scale industrial development in the Canadian Arctic in an appropriate way. We would like to see better information about a project whose scale would be massive wherever it was in the world," said von Mirbach.

"The biggest impact will be from shipping with a ship every 32 hours, year-round. This might not be much off Norway but here with an average of between 0-10 ships a year, it's significant. It is hard to know what impact it will have on narwals and walruses," he added.