AFP UK

Participants speak beside a whale picture during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Montreal, Quebec

Creating a new global fund for biodiversity — a core demand of developing countries at UN talks in Montreal — “would take years” and be less effective than reforming existing financial mechanisms, Canada’s environment minister said Tuesday.

Ottawa’s position reflects the consensus among developed nations on the thorny issue, which has emerged as a key sticking point in negotiations to hammer out a new global pact for nature at the meeting, known as COP15. 

Delegates from around the world have gathered for the December 7-19 summit aiming to secure a new deal: a 10-year framework aimed at saving Earth’s forests, oceans and species before it’s too late. 

Draft targets include a cornerstone pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and seas by 2030, eliminating harmful fishing and agriculture subsidies and tackling invasive species and reducing pesticides.

Dozens of countries, led by Brazil, India, Indonesia and African nations, are demanding financial subsidies of at least $100 billion a year until 2030, or one percent of global GDP, to protect ecosystems. The current figure is around $10 billion annually.

“The countries of the North understand that ambition must be accompanied by financial resources,” Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault said at a press conference held halfway through the talks.

But “my concern is that the creation of new funding could take years, and during those years, countries in the South wouldn’t be receiving any money from that fund,” he added.

He recalled the Global Environment Facility, currently the main multilateral mechanism for biodiversity, took seven years to create. Donors have pledged $5.3 billion to this fund for its current cycle, 2022-2026.

“So I think it would be better to use existing funds” while pursuing reforms that would make money more accessible, he said.

“On the other hand, we have to agree on the fact that it cannot only be public money,” said Guilbeault, stressing that private and philanthropic contributions must come into play, as well as multilateral lenders such as the World Bank and IMF.

“We all need to push harder this week,” he concluded, after the first week of talks ended in stalemate.

– Yawning funding gap –

The divide between developed and developing nations on the issue of creating a new biodiversity fund mirrors a similar debate during recent UN climate talks in Egypt on creating a “loss and damages” fund for the most climate-vulnerable nations — though that demand was eventually met.

Given this precedent, Basile van Havre, co-chair of one of COP15’s working groups, did not rule out a similar decision for biodiversity. 

“The landscape or the context now is a lot more favorable,” he told AFP, acknowledging growing political momentum for such a move.

Whatever the final mechanism, the gap in expectations over resource mobilization that would allow lower income nations to hold up their side of the biodiversity deal remains a sore spot.

“The EU says it hears the needs of the Global South and the Africa Group, and recognizes that current finances are not enough. So what is the hold up?” said Greenpeace policy advisory Anna Ogniewska.

DR Congo

Around a hundred people died on Tuesday as the worst floods in years battered DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa following an all-night downpour, according to state television.

Major roads in the centre of Kinshasa, a city of some 15 million people, were submerged for hours, and a key supply route was cut off.

State television said that around 100 people had died in the floods, as the government announced a three-day period of national mourning.

Earlier, city police chief General Sylvano Kasongo had told AFP the provisional toll was at least 55 dead, concentrated especially on hillside locations where there had been landslips.

An AFP reporter saw the bodies of nine members of the same family — including young children — who had died after the collapse of their home in the Binza Delvaux district.

“We were woken up at around 4:00 am (0300 GMT) by water entering the house,” a relative said.

“We drained the water out, and thinking that there was no more danger we went back indoors to sleep — we were soaked,” he said.

The family went back to bed and “just afterwards the wall collapsed”.

Located on the Congo River, Kinshasa has seen a huge population influx in recent years.

Many dwellings are shanty houses built on flood-prone slopes and the city suffers from inadequate drainage and sewerage. 

A major landslide occurred in the hilly district of Mont-Ngafula, smothering National Highway 1, a key supply route linking the capital with Matadi, a port further down the Congo River and a crucial outlet to the Atlantic Ocean.

Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde told reporters at the scene that around 20 people there had died when “homes were swept away”.

Searches are continuing for survivors, he said.

The highway should be reopened to small vehicles within the next day, but it could take “three or four days” for trucks, the prime minister said.

The streets in the up-market government district of Gombe, which houses ministries and embassies and is usually spared the problems affecting other areas of Kinshasa such as inadequate waste disposal and power supplies, were also inundated.

– ‘Disaster’ –

In November 2019, around 40 people in Kinshasa died in floods and landslides.

Mont-Ngafula was one of the worst-hit areas, but a local resident said the flooding this time was even worse.

“We’ve never seen a flood here on this scale,” said Blanchard Mvubu, who lives in the Mont-Ngafula neighbourhood of CPA Mushie.

“I was asleep and I could feel water in the house… it’s a disaster — we’ve lost all our possessions in the house, nothing could be saved.”

He added: “People are building big houses and that blocks up the drains. The water can’t move freely and that’s what causes the floods.”

Another man, who gave his name as Freddy, said everything in his home was under water — “shoes, food stocks, clothes. Everything is lost, there’s nothing to be saved.”

Close by, a young man was asking for 500 Congolese francs (24 US cents) from passers-by to carry them on his back across the submerged street.

Another man, who identified himself as a teacher, was walking barefoot in the water, holding a pair of shoes in one hand and a plastic bag containing documents in the other.

“I’ve got no other choice,” he said. “I have to give schoolchildren an exam.”

Landslides triggered by heavy rainfall and badly planned urban development are common in Mont-Ngafula.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva says more financing is needed for a new fund helping low-income countries tackle climate change

A new fund helping low-income countries tackle the impacts of climate change already has around $40 billion worth of commitments, but this is “nothing in comparison with the needs,” IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said Tuesday.

Several countries have won loan deals from the International Monetary Fund’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), but global leaders are urging that more be done to aid nations grappling with the costly fallout from climate change.

“If we do nothing to move financing… by 2030, 66 percent of carbon emissions will come from the developing world,” Georgieva said in an interview with AFP.

“If we want to succeed in our fight against climate change, it is paramount to move financing to where it would make a difference,” she added, on the sidelines of a panel discussion on the RST.

For now, the three countries that have crossed the finish line with RST financing are Costa Rica, Barbados and Rwanda, while a deal with Bangladesh is headed for further approval.

“The interest is very significant from both low-income countries and vulnerable middle-income countries, especially small island states,” Georgieva said.

She added that the IMF expects more members to commit resources “so we don’t end up having to ration support for countries.”

At the panel in Washington, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said long-term capital is needed for many issues, adding that debt sustainability metrics could be revisited.

“Every dollar of debt is not equivalent. A dollar of debt to build a school does not give me the same rate of return as quickly as a dollar of debt to build a geothermal facility,” she said.

World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also stressed at the event the importance of supply chains when it comes to building resilience in developing countries.

“Supply chains for certain products are highly concentrated. Eighty percent of vaccines are exported from 10 countries,” she said, adding that similar situations may apply to items like solar panels and chips.

“Why can’t we… diversify manufacturing… so we have supply chains that are global, and diversified, and more resilient?” Okonjo-Iweala said.

The US National Ignition Facility, the interior of which is seen here in July 2008, has achieved a fusion reaction that produces more energy than was put into it

US researchers have finally surpassed an important milestone for nuclear fusion technology: getting more energy out than was put in.

The US Department of Energy announced on Tuesday that it had made a historic breakthrough with what some consider to be the energy of the future.

Here is an update on how nuclear fusion — which produces no greenhouse gases and leaves little waste — works, what projects are underway and estimates on when they could be completed:

– Energy of the stars –

Fusion differs from fission, the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.

In fact, fusion is the process that powers the sun.

Two light hydrogen atoms, when they collide at very high speeds, fuse together into one heavier element, helium, releasing energy in the process.

“Controlling the power source of the stars is the greatest technological challenge humanity has ever undertaken,” tweeted physicist Arthur Turrell, author of “The Star Builders.”

– Two distinct methods –

Producing fusion reactions on Earth is only possible by heating matter to extremely high temperatures — over 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit).

“So we have to find ways to isolate this extremely hot matter from anything that could cool it down. This is the problem of containment,” Erik Lefebvre, project leader at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), told AFP.

One method is to “confine” the fusion reaction with magnets.

In a huge donut-shaped reactor, light hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium) are heated until they reach the state of plasma, a very low density gas.

Magnets confine the swirling plasma gas, preventing it from coming into contact with the chamber’s walls, while the atoms collide and begin fusing.

This is the type of reactor used in the major international project known as ITER, currently under construction in France, as well as the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, England.

A second method is inertial confinement fusion, in which high energy lasers are directed simultaneously into a thimble-sized cylinder containing the hydrogen.

This is the technique used by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California who were behind Tuesday’s announcement.

Inertial confinement is used to demonstrate the physical principles of fusion, while magnetic confinement seeks to mimic future industrial-scale reactors.

– State of research –

For decades, scientists had attempted to achieve what is known as “net energy gain” — in which more energy is produced by the fusion reaction than it takes to activate it.

LLNL director Kim Budil cautioned that much remains to be done before it can be commercially viable.

“There are very significant hurdles, not just in the science but in technology,” Budil said. “A few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant.”

To get there, researchers must first increase the efficiency of the lasers and reproduce the experiment more frequently. 

– Fusion’s benefits –

The NIF’s success has sparked great excitement in the scientific community, which is hoping the technology could be a game-changer for global energy production.

Unlike fission, fusion carries no risk of nuclear accidents.

“If a few lasers are missing and they don’t go off at the right time, or if the confinement of the plasma by the magnetic field… is not perfect,” the reaction will simply stop, Lefebvre says.

Nuclear fusion also produces much less radioactive waste than current power plants, and above all, emits no greenhouse gases.

“It is an energy source that is totally carbon-free, generates very little waste, and is intrinsically extremely safe,” according to Lefebvre, who says fusion could be “a future solution for the world’s energy problems.”

Regardless of Tuesday’s announcement, however, the technology is still a far way off from producing energy on an industrial scale, and cannot therefore be relied on as an immediate solution to the climate crisis.

Back to sleep: the giant Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii has finished erupting after a weeks-long display that delighted scientists and tourists

The world’s largest volcano, which has offered a spectacular weeks-long show in its first eruption for almost four decades, has gone quiet, scientists in Hawaii said Tuesday.

At the height of the flare-up, Mauna Loa spewed fountains of lava 200 feet (60 meters) into the sky, and sent rivers of molten rock gushing down its sides, wowing vulcanologists and helicopter-riding tourists.

Huge fissures on the volcano, which makes up the bulk of Hawaii’s Big Island, vented tons of gas, and sprayed slivers of volcanic glass — known as Pele’s Hair.

But on Tuesday, experts at the US Geological Survey said the show was largely over.

“Mauna Loa is no longer erupting,” an update said.

“Lava supply to the fissure 3 vent on the Northeast Rift Zone ceased on December 10 and sulfur dioxide emissions have decreased to near pre-eruption background levels.

“Volcanic tremor and earthquakes associated with the eruption are greatly diminished.”

But such is the volume — and intense heat — of the viscous rock that issued from the Earth’s belly, that hot spots could remain visible for weeks.

“Spots of incandescence may remain near the vent, along channels, and at the flow front for days or weeks as the lava flows cool,” the scientists said.

“However, eruptive activity is not expected to return based on past eruptive behavior.”

– ‘Long Mountain’ –

The biggest volcano on Earth by volume, Mauna Loa, whose name means “Long Mountain,” is larger than the rest of the Hawaiian islands combined.

The volcano’s submarine flanks stretch for miles to an ocean floor that is in turn depressed by Mauna Loa’s great mass — making its summit some 11 miles above its base, according to the USGS. 

One of six active volcanoes on the Hawaiian islands, Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843.

Before this one, its most recent eruption, in 1984, lasted 22 days.

Kilauea, a volcano on the southeastern flank of Mauna Loa, erupted almost continuously between 1983 and 2019, and a minor eruption there has been ongoing for months.

DR Congo

At least 55 people died on Tuesday as the worst floods in years battered DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa following an all-night downpour, according to an official toll.

Major roads in the centre of Kinshasa, a city of some 15 million people, were submerged for hours, and a key supply route was cut off.

City police chief General Sylvano Kasongo gave a provisional toll of at least 55 dead in a statement to AFP, concentrated especially on hillside locations where there had been landslips.

An AFP reporter saw the bodies of nine members of the same family — including young children — who had died after the collapse of their home in the Binza Delvaux district.

“We were woken up at around 4:00 am (0300 GMT) by water entering the house,” a relative said.

“We drained the water out, and thinking that there was no more danger we went back indoors to sleep — we were soaked,” he said.

The family went back to bed and “just afterwards the wall collapsed”.

Located on the Congo River, Kinshasa has seen a huge population influx in recent years.

Many dwellings are shanty houses built on flood-prone slopes and the city suffers from inadequate drainage and sewerage. 

A major landslide occurred in the hilly district of Mont-Ngafula, smothering National Highway 1, a key supply route linking the capital with Matadi, a port further down the Congo River and a crucial outlet to the Atlantic Ocean.

Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde told reporters at the scene that around 20 people there had died when “homes were swept away”.

Searches are continuing for survivors, he said.

The highway should be reopened to small vehicles within the next day, but it could take “three or four days” for trucks, the prime minister said.

The streets in the up-market government district of Gombe, which houses ministries and embassies and is usually spared from problems affecting other areas of Kinshasa such as inadequate waste disposal and power supplies, were also inundated.

– ‘Disaster’ –

In November 2019, around 40 people in Kinshasa died in floods and landslides.

Mont-Ngafula was one of the worst-hit areas, but a local resident said the flooding this time was even worse.

“We’ve never seen a flood here on this scale,” said Blanchard Mvubu, who lives in the Mont-Ngafula neighbourhood of CPA Mushie.

“I was asleep and I could feel water in the house… it’s a disaster — we’ve lost all our possessions in the house, nothing could be saved.”

He added: “People are building big houses and that blocks up the drains. The water can’t move freely and that’s what causes the floods.”

Another man, who gave his name as Freddy, said everything in his home was under water — “shoes, food stocks, clothes. Everything is lost, there’s nothing to be saved.”

Close by, a young man was asking for 500 Congolese francs (24 US cents) from passers-by to carry them on his back across the submerged street.

Another man, who identified himself as a teacher, was walking barefoot in the water, holding a pair of shoes in one hand and a plastic bag containing documents in the other.

“I’ve got no other choice,” he said. “I have to give schoolchildren an exam.”

Landslides triggered by heavy rainfall and badly planned urban development are common in Mont-Ngafula.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announces a major scientific breakthrough in nuclear fusion

US researchers announced a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough on Tuesday, hailing a “landmark achievement” in the quest for a source of unlimited, clean power and an end to reliance on fossil fuels.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) said it had used the world’s largest laser to create, for the first time, a fusion reaction that replicated the process that powers the sun and generated more energy than it took to produce -– a goal pursued by scientists for decades.

Nuclear fusion has been touted by its supporters as a clean, abundant and safe source of energy that could eventually allow humanity to break its dependence on coal, crude oil, natural gas and other hydrocarbons driving a global climate crisis.

The US Department of Energy described the achievement of fusion ignition as a “major scientific breakthrough” that will lead to “advancements in national defense and the future of clean power.”

However, there is still a long way to go before fusion is viable on an industrial scale, providing power to homes and businesses.

“There are very significant hurdles, not just in the science but in technology,” Kim Budil, the LLNL director, said at a press conference.

“A few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant,” she said.

The LLNL, which is based in California, said a team at its National Ignition Facility had achieved what is known as “net energy gain” in an experiment this month, producing more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it.

“They shot a bunch of lasers at a pellet of fuel and more energy was released from that fusion ignition than the energy of the lasers,” explained White House science advisor Arati Prabhakar.

– More developments needed –

For the experiment, researchers at LLNL used 192 ultra-powerful lasers to deliver 2.05 megajoules of energy to a tiny capsule smaller than a pea containing isotopes of hydrogen.

It produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output.

While the result was a net energy gain, 300 megajoules of energy was needed from the electrical grid to power the lasers.

“Our calculations suggest that it’s possible with a laser system at scale to achieve hundreds of megajoules of yield,” Budil said.

“So there is a pathway to a target that produces enough yield, but we’re very distant from that right now.”

Nuclear power plants around the world currently use fission — the splitting of a heavy atom’s nucleus — to produce energy.

Fusion on the other hand combines two light hydrogen atoms to form one heavier helium atom, releasing a large amount of energy in the process.

That’s the process that occurs inside stars, including our sun.

On Earth, fusion reactions can be provoked by heating hydrogen to extreme temperatures inside specialized devices.

Like fission, fusion is carbon-free during operation, but has many more advantages: it poses no risk of nuclear disaster and produces much less radioactive waste.

Other nuclear fusion projects are also in development around the world, including the major international project known as ITER, which is currently under construction in France.

Instead of lasers, ITER will use a technique known as magnetic confinement, containing a swirling mass of fusing hydrogen plasma within a massive donut-shaped chamber.

DR Congo

At least 55 people died on Tuesday as the worst floods in years battered DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa following an all-night downpour, according to an official toll.

Major roads in the centre of Kinshasa, a city of some 15 million people, were submerged for hours, and a key supply route was cut off.

City police chief General Sylvano Kasongo, in a statement to AFP, gave a provisional toll of at least 55 dead, concentrated especially on hillside locations where there had been landslips.

An AFP reporter saw the bodies of nine members of a family who had died after the collapse of their home in the Binza Delvaux district.

“We were woken up at around 4:00 a.m. by water entering the house,” a relative said.

“We drained the water out, and thinking that there was no more danger we went back indoors to sleep — we were soaked,” he said.

The family went back to bed and “just afterwards the wall collapsed”.

Located on the Congo River, Kinshasa has seen a huge population influx in recent years.

Many dwellings are shanty houses built on flood-prone slopes and the city suffers from inadequate drainage and sewerage. 

A major landslide occurred in the hilly district of Mont-Ngafula, smothering National Highway 1, a key supply route linking the capital with Matadi, a port further down the Congo River and a crucial outlet to the Atlantic Ocean.

Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde told reporters at the scene that around 20 people there had died when “homes were swept away”.

Searches are continuing for survivors, he said.

The highway should be reopened to small vehicles within the next day, but it could take “three or four days” for trucks, the prime minister said.

The streets in the up-market government district of Gombe, which houses ministries and embassies, were also inundated.

– ‘Disaster’ –

In November 2019, around 40 people in Kinshasa died in floods and landslides. 

Mont-Ngafula was one of the worst-hit areas, but a local resident said the flooding this time was even worse.

“We’ve never seen a flood here on this scale,” said Blanchard Mvubu, who lives in the Mont-Ngafula neighbourhood of CPA Mushie.

“I was asleep and I could feel water in the house… it’s a disaster — we’ve lost all our possessions in the house, nothing could be saved.”

He added: “People are building big houses and that blocks up the drains. The water can’t move freely and that’s what causes the floods.”

Another man, who gave his name as Freddy, said everything in his home was under water — “shoes, food stocks, clothes. Everything is lost, there’s nothing to be saved.”

Close by, a young man was asking 500 Congolese francs (24 cents) from passers-by to carry them on his back across the submerged street.

Another man, who identified himself as a teacher, was walking barefoot in the water, holding a pair of shoes in one hand and a plastic bag containing documents in the other.

“I’ve got no other choice,” he said. “I have to give schoolchildren an exam.”

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announces a major scientific breakthrough in nuclear fusion

US researchers announced a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough on Tuesday, hailing a “landmark achievement” in the quest for a source of unlimited, clean power and an end to reliance on fossil fuels.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California said an experiment it conducted this month “produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it.”

The US Department of Energy described the achievement of fusion ignition as a “major scientific breakthrough” that will lead to “advancements in national defense and the future of clean power.”

LLNL director Kim Budil described it as “is one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity.”

Scientists have been working for decades to develop nuclear fusion — touted by its supporters as a clean, abundant and safe source of energy that could eventually allow humanity to break its dependence on the fossil fuels driving a global climate crisis.

The LLNL said a team at its National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history on December 5, achieving what is known as “scientific energy breakeven.”

“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said.

– More developments needed –

Nuclear power plants around the world currently use fission — the splitting of a heavy atom’s nucleus — to produce energy.

Fusion on the other hand combines two light hydrogen atoms to form one heavier helium atom, releasing a large amount of energy in the process.

That’s the process that occurs inside stars, including our sun.

On Earth, fusion reactions can be provoked by heating hydrogen to extreme temperatures inside specialized devices.

Researchers at the LLNL use the massive National Ignition Facility — 192 ultra-powerful lasers all pointed into a thimble-sized cylinder filled with hydrogen.

Like fission, fusion is carbon-free during operation, but has many more advantages: it poses no risk of nuclear disaster and produces much less radioactive waste.

However, there is still a long way to go before fusion is viable on an industrial scale.

“Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power homes and businesses,” LLNL said.

Other nuclear fusion projects are also in development around the world, including the major international project known as ITER, which is currently under construction in France.

Instead of lasers, ITER will use a technique known as magnetic confinement, containing a swirling mass of fusing hydrogen plasma within a massive donut-shaped chamber.

NASA's Perseverance rover looks out on the surface of Mars, where dust devils sweep across the arid surface

The sound of a dust devil on Mars was recorded for the first time as the eye of the whirlwind swept over the top of NASA’s Perseverance rover, a new study said Tuesday. 

“We hit the jackpot” when the rover’s microphone picked up the noise made by the dust devil overhead, the study’s lead author Naomi Murdoch told AFP.

The researchers hope the recording will help to better understand the weather and climate on Mars, including how its arid surface and thin atmosphere may once have supported life.

Common across Mars, dust devils are short-lived whirlwinds loaded with dust that form when there is a major difference between ground and air temperatures.

They are a common feature in the Jezero crater, where the Perseverance rover has been operational since February 2021 — but it had never before managed to record audio of one of them.

By chance on September 27, 2021, a dust devil 118 metres (390 feet) high and 25 metres wide passed directly over the rover.

This time the microphone on the rover’s SuperCam — which previously recorded the first ever audio from the Martian surface — managed to catch the muffled, whirring sounds of the dust devil.

“We hear the wind associated with the dust devil, the moment it arrives, then nothing because we are in the eye of the vortex,” said Murdoch, a planetary researcher at France’s ISAE-SUPAERO space research institute, where the SuperCam’s microphone was designed.

Then the sound returns “when the microphone passes through the second wall” of the dust devil, she added.

– A dust devil mystery –

The impact of the dust made “tac tac tac” sounds which will let researchers count the number of particles to study the whirlwind’s structure and behaviour, she said.

It could also help solve a mystery that has puzzled scientists. On some parts of Mars, “whirlwinds pass by sucking up dust, cleaning the solar panels of rovers along the way,” Murdoch said.

But in other areas, the whirlwinds move by without kicking up much dust. “They’re just moving air,” Murdoch said, adding that “we don’t know why”.

For example, the solar panels of NASA’s InSight lander are “covered in dust” because it is located at a spot where it cannot take advantage of these natural vacuum cleaners, she said.

Understanding why this happens could help scientists build a model of dust devils so they might predict where the whirlwinds might strike next. 

It could even shed light on the great dust storms that sweep across the planet, famously depicted in the 2015 science-fiction film “The Martian”, starring Matt Damon. However Murdoch noted that the violence of the dust storms shown in the film was “unrealistic”.

Sylvestre Maurice, a planetary scientist and co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications, said that analysing Martian dust makes it possible to “explore the interactions” between the ground and the extremely thin atmosphere.

The atmosphere was much thicker billions of years ago, which allowed for the presence of life-sustaining liquid water, said Maurice, who also works on the SuperCam.

“You might think that studying the Martian climate today is unrelated to the search for traces of life from billions of years ago,” he said.

“But it is all part of a whole, because the history of Mars is one of extreme climate change from a humid, hot planet to a completely arid and cold planet.”