Why the monarch butterfly migration may be endangered

The latest survey of monarch butterflies in Mexico shows numbers are way down from last year, and the lowest since measurements began 20 years ago.

Every year, the butterflies leave eastern Canada and the U.S. in late summer for a spectacular, 4,000-kilometre migration to overwinter in a small area northwest of Mexico City. The return trip, now underway, will take four generations for the monarchs to reach Canada.

In 1996-97, the monarch survey - which is now a joint project of Mexico's National Commission of Protected Areas, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Telcel, a Mexican company - reported 18.19 hectares occupied by monarch butterfly colonies, the largest ever recorded. The current survey in the Oyamel forest found the area was now only 1.19 hectares.

For Lincoln Brower, who teaches biology at Sweet Briar College in Virginia and is arguably the leading expert on the monarch butterfly, the insect's plight "is symbolic of what's going on in terms of environmental degradation everywhere."

Brower has been making research trips to Mexico since shortly after a Toronto scientist named Fred Urquhart discovered and documented the monarchs' magnificent migration in 1976.

The area in Mexico with colonies fluctuates over the years, but it certainly appears to be on a downward trajectory. Before the record low this winter, the median area for the years 1993-94 and 2003-2004 was 7.81 hectares, then down to 4.32 between 2004-5 and 2011-12.

Although it fluctuates from year to year, the monarch butterfly population overwintering in Mexico seems to be on a downward trend. (WWWF-Telcel-CONANP)

Brower says they may be facing a perfect storm of negative effects.

King of the herbicides

In Canada and the U.S., the monarchs face a huge challenge finding milkweed, which is the plant on which they lay their eggs and then the caterpillars feed. Brower says the widespread use of the herbicide glyphosate is now the critical threat to the monarchs' food supply.

Glyphosate was developed by the U.S. agricultural biotech company Monsanto, which they sold as Roundup, and its use took off once Monsanto's seeds, genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate, hit the market. Other herbicide manufacturers have helped make glyphosate the top-selling herbicide in the U.S.

"Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone That science may have staked the future on?"

—from Robert Frost, "Pod of the Milkweed," 1962

It brings to mind the lines of a Robert Frost poem from more than five decades ago:

"Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone / That science may have staked the future on?"

Butterfly enthusiast Craig Wilson of Texas A&M University has been tagging monarchs on their way to Mexico for the last five years, and his result last year portended the survey results in Mexico. Wilson's count in 2012 was down 60 per cent from 2011.

Wilson says the severe drought that hit Texas and other parts of the U.S. last year had a negative impact on milkweed and other plants that provide food for monarchs. As well, the monarch eggs on the milkweed often dried up because of the heat and drought.

And it's not just the milkweed's decline that directly impacts monarchs. At their adult stage, the insects need nectar that can come from all kinds of plants, especially wildflowers, which are also being decimated by glyphosate.

An umbrella and a blanket

It takes one generation of monarch butterflies to complete the migration to Mexico but three more generations to make it all the way to Canada. (Pablo Angeles/WWF-Telcel Alliance)

The World Wildlife Fund's Mexico director, Omar Vidal, says in a news release, "The conservation of monarch butterflies is a responsibility shared by Mexico, the US and Canada. By protecting its sanctuaries and practically eliminating large-scale deforestation, Mexico is doing its part. It is necessary that the US and Canada also do their part and protect the habitat of the monarch in their countries."

While the large-scale deforestation of the past has been virtually stopped, says Brower, logging that is fatal for the butterflies still takes place at higher elevations in the Oyamel forest, where the monarchs spend winters in Mexico. They favor the coniferous sacred fir tree for their colonies, which are largely inactive.

Brower says he has witnessed what he calls "predatory logging" in almost all of the last 35 years while researching the monarchs. That's when loggers fell one or two trees on one trip that, in total, could amount to about a hundred trees over the summer.

The butterflies form their colonies at high elevations, and "those trees provide the micro-climate for monarchs to survive," Brower explains. The trees provide shelter so the butterflies don't get wet as well as a blanket effect that moderates the temperatures inside the colonies.

Because of the high elevation, temperatures drop below freezing almost every night while the butterflies are there. If the butterflies get wet, their resistance to freezing drops way down.

"If you cut holes in the forest," Brower explains, the butterflies are both more likely to get wet and more likely to freeze. In addition, removing one tree also may expose the monarchs to too much sunlight, which can seriously shorten their lifespan.

Despite the threats, so far the monarchs are sticking with their current locations in Mexico. A few years ago, Brower worked with NASA to look for other colonies and they found none.

Eco-tourism risk

According to Brower, "hugely excessive numbers of tourists are visiting" the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

On Brower's last Mexico trip, in late February, he helped lead a visit by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and reports counting 24 large passenger buses in the visitor centre parking lot. Yet on a nearby trail, Brower spotted a sign stating a limit of 20 visitors at a time to the colony.

Without better management, Brower says ecotourism will overwhelm the butterflies.

A monarch butterfly, has been tagged by students from Fannin Elementary School in Bryan, Texas, Nov. 6, 2012, while on its migration to Mexico. The students first close their wings, remove them from the butterfly net then glue the hole-punch sized tag to a wing. The glue is not toxic and the tag doesn't upset the centre of gravity. (Craig Wilson/USDA and Texas A&M)

Brower says that unless something is done about the various threats to the monarchs' survival, the migration will be diminished or "we may lose the migration altogether." It's not an extinction issue, at least, due to the monarch's widespread distribution, which includes the South Pacific and Australia.

To replace the milkweed, Craig Wilson is overseeing a program to plant milkweed, with local farmer's cooperative stores providing potted plants for free. He would like to see a feeding corridor from Texas to Canada for the monarchs.

He has also helped set up four butterfly garden waystations around elementary schools in his part of Texas.

Brower would like to see more of these programs, which help to some extent, but also because they get people engaged.

Brower also says that damaged areas of the Oyamel forest may recover.

"An area that's been seriously horse-logged is coming back under its own steam and if it's left alone for 10 or 15 years, it will recover to the point where the butterflies can survive pretty handily in that area."

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Stores ditch cash registers for new technology

Ka-ching! The cash register may be on its final sale.

Stores across the country are ditching the old-fashioned, clunky machines and having salespeople — and even shoppers themselves — ring up sales on smartphones and tablet computers.

Barneys New York, a luxury retailer, this year plans to use iPads or iPod Touch devices for credit and debit card purchases in seven of its nearly two dozen regular-price stores. Urban Outfitters, a teen clothing chain, ordered its last traditional register last fall and plans to go completely mobile one day. And Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is testing a "Scan & Go" app that lets customers scan their items as they shop.

"The traditional cash register is heading toward obsolescence," said Danielle Vitale, chief operating officer of Barneys New York.

End of an era

That the cash register is getting the boot is no surprise. The writing has been on the wall for a long time for the iconic machine, which was created in the late 1800s. The register was essential in nearly every retail location by 1915, but it now seems outdated in a world in which smartphones and tablets increasingly are replacing everything from books to ATMs to cameras.

Stores like smartphones and tablets because they take up less floor space than registers and free up cashiers to help customers instead of being tethered to one spot. They also are cheaper: For instance, iPads with accessories like credit card readers can cost a store $1,500, compared with $4,000 for a register. And Americans increasingly want the same speedy service in physical stores that they get from shopping online.

"Consumers want the retailer to bring the register to them," said Lori Schafer, executive adviser at SAS Institute Inc., which creates software for major retailers.

J.C. Penney, a mid-price department-store chain, said the response by customers has been great since it started rolling out iPod Touch devices late last year in its 1,100 stores. The goal is to have one in the hands of every salesperson by May. The company said that about a quarter of purchases at its stores nationwide now come from an iPod Touch.

On a recent Thursday afternoon at a Penney store in the Manhattan borough of New York City, Debbie Guastella, 55, marveled after a saleswoman rang up three shirts she was buying on an iPod Touch.

"I think it's great," said Guastella, who lives in Huntington, N.Y. "The faster the better."

Mobile retailing

It's been a long fall for the cash register, which innovated retail as we know it. The first register was invented following the Civil War by a little known saloon owner. Before then, most store owners were in the dark about whether or not they were making a profit, and many suffered since it was easy for sales clerks to steal from the cash drawer unnoticed. But by 1915, cash registers were ubiquitous in stores across the country, with more than 1.5 million sold by then.

More recently, stores have been looking for ways to modernize checkout. Since 2003, self-checkout areas that enable customers to scan and bag their own merchandise have become commonplace in grocery and other stores. But recently, there's been a push to go a step further: Stores now are taking their cue from the success of Apple Inc., the nation's most profitable retailer, which went to mobile checkout in its stores in 2006.

Take upscale handbag maker Coach, which is using iPod Touch devices at half of its 189 factory outlet stores. The company also is testing them in a handful of its 350 regular stores.

The move has enabled Coach to start slimming down its registers to the size of small podiums, leaving extra space that is equivalent to three days of product and a display table for the average store, said Francine Della Badia, Coach's executive vice-president of merchandising.

Badia, who says the additional space will be used for new shoe salons and other purposes, said most importantly, the mobile devices allow store staff to build "a more intimate connection with the customer."

Some retailers have decided to go completely mobile. Urban Outfitters, which operates more than 400 stores under its namesake brand, Anthropologie and Free People, announced in late September that all sales eventually will be rung up on iPods and iPads on swivels located at counters. The company didn't give a timeframe for when it would go completely mobile.

Urban Outfitters had given iPod Touch devices to its sales staff two years ago and the move has been very well received by shoppers, said Calvin Hollinger, the company's chief information officer in his address to investors.

Nordstrom, an upscale department-store chain that's considered within the retail industry to be the gold standard in customer service, also plans to get rid of registers altogether.

The company handed out iPod Touch devices to its staff at its 117 department stores nationwide in 2011. And by late last year, it did the same for its 110 Nordstrom Rack stores that sell lower-priced merchandise. Nordstrom, which already has removed some of the registers at its Rack stores, said it aims to phase out registers by next year.

Colin Johnson, a Nordstrom spokeswoman, said it's too early to draw any conclusions on how mobile checkout has influenced buying, but the company is learning about which technologies work best.

"We see the future as essentially mobile," Johnson said. "We don't see departments in our store as being defined by a big clunky cash register."

Not every retailer is quick to ditch registers, though. After all, there are still logistics to figure out. For instance, no retailer yet is accepting cash payments on mobile devices. But if they start to do so, where will they put the cash that would normally go into a register?

Hands-off

Additionally, sales staff walking around stores armed with mobile devices could turn off shoppers who would prefer to be left alone in aisles. To remedy that, some retailers are training their salespeople on when to approach shoppers — and when not to.

For its part, Wal-Mart is putting checkout in the hands of the shoppers themselves.

The retailer is testing its "Scan & Go" app, which can be used on Apple devices such as iPads, in more than 200 of its more than 4,000 stores nationwide.

The app, which is aimed at reducing long checkout lines, requires that shoppers pay at self-checkout areas. So as it tests the app, Wal-Mart also is expanding the number of self-checkout areas in its stores.

"Our goal is to give choices to all of our customers however they want to shop," said Gibu Thomas, senior vice-president of mobile and digital initiatives at Wal-Mart's global e-commerce division."

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South Korea misidentifies China as cyberattack origin

In an embarrassing twist to a coordinated cyberattack on six major South Korean companies this week, investigators said Friday they wrongly identified a Chinese internet protocol address as the source.

A joint team of government and private experts still maintains that hackers abroad were likely to blame, and many analysts suspect North Korea. But the error raises questions about investigators' ability to track down the source of an attack that shut down 32,000 computers Wednesday and exposed big internet security holes in one of the world's most wired, tech-savvy countries.

South Korean investigators said Thursday that a malicious code that spread through the server of one of the hackers' targets, Nonghyup Bank, was traced to an IP address in China. Even then it was clear that the attack could have originated elsewhere because hackers can easily manipulate such data.

But the state-run Korea Communications Commission said Friday that the IP address actually belonged to a computer at the bank. The IP address was used only for the company's internal network and happened to be identical to a public Chinese address.

"We were careless in our efforts to double-check and triple-check," KCC official Lee Seung-won told reporters. He blamed the error on investigators' rush to give the public details on the search for a culprit.

'Ridiculous' blunder

Yonhap news agency, in an analysis Friday, called the blunder "ridiculous" and said the announcement is certain to undermine government credibility.

Yonhap criticized officials for failing to dispel public anxiety in a country where people's lives are closely interwoven with services provided by media and financial institutions.

An initial assumption that the attack came from abroad may have made investigators jump to conclusions, said Lee Kyung-ho, a cybersecurity expert at Seoul's Korea University.

"They rushed," he said. "They should've investigated by checking the facts step by step."

The investigation will take weeks. Investigators have said the attacks appeared to come from "a single organization" and suspect the hackers were from outside the country. Lee Seung-won, the KCC official, discounted the possibility that the attack could have come from within South Korea, but he didn't elaborate.

Lee Kyung-ho and many other South Korean experts suspect North Korea is behind the attack on broadcasters YTN, MBC and KBS, as well as Nonghyup and two other banks.

While there are many possible explanations, he said, including a homegrown hacker, the culprits are most likely to be North Koreans angry over ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills. Lee said Pyongyang is well aware that an attack on financial institutions and media companies would create lots of publicity and turmoil in South Korea's vibrantly capitalistic society.

North Korea has issued many threats against the South and the U.S. in recent days, but by Friday it had yet to mention the South Korean computer crashes in state-run media.

South Korean officials say they have no proof of Pyongyang's involvement. The country is preparing to deal with more possible attacks, presidential spokesman Yoon Chang-jung told reporters earlier Friday. He didn't elaborate.

North Korea a leading suspect

Determining who's behind a digital attack is often difficult, but North Korea is a leading suspect for several reasons.

It has unleashed a torrent of threats against Seoul and Washington since punishing UN sanctions were imposed for Pyongyang's Feb. 12 nuclear test. It calls ongoing routine U.S.-South Korean military drills a threat to its existence. Pyongyang also threatened revenge after blaming Seoul and Washington for a separate internet shutdown that disrupted its own network last week.

Seoul alleges six previous cyberattacks by North Korea on South Korean targets since 2009.

Wednesday's cyberattack did not affect South Korea's government, military or infrastructure, and there were no initial reports that customers' bank records were compromised. But it disabled cash machines and disrupted commerce.

All three of the banks that were hit were back online and operating regularly Friday. It could be next week before the broadcasters' systems have fully recovered, though they said their programming was never affected.

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Chinese internet address involved in S. Korea cyberattack

A Chinese internet address was the source of a cyberattack on one company hit in a massive network shutdown that affected 32,000 computers at six banks and media companies in South Korea, initial findings indicated Thursday.

It's too early to assign blame — internet addresses can easily be manipulated and the investigation could take weeks — but suspicion for Wednesday's shutdown quickly fell on North Korea, which has threatened Seoul and Washington with attack in recent days because of anger over UN sanctions imposed for its Feb. 12 nuclear test.

South Korean regulators said they believe the attacks came from a "single organization," but they've still not finished investigating what happened at the other companies.

Experts say hackers often attack via computers in other countries to hide their identities. South Korea has previously accused North Korean hackers of using Chinese addresses to infect their networks.

"We do know that North Korea does route attacks through Chinese servers because that's the only way they can communicate with South Korea," Timothy Junio, a cybersecurity fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, said. "It's not surprising there's a Chinese IP address involved."

Seoul believes North Korea runs an internet warfare unit aimed at hacking U.S. and South Korean government and military networks to gather information and disrupt service.

The attack Wednesday caused computer networks at major banks and top TV broadcasters to crash simultaneously. It paralyzed bank machines across the country and raised fears that this heavily internet-dependent society was vulnerable. On Thursday, only one of the attacked banks, Shinhan, was fully online, officials said.

Investigation ongoing

A Chinese address created the malicious code in the server of Nonghyup bank, according to an initial analysis by the state-run Korea Communications Commission, South Korea's telecom regulator.

Disconnected computer monitors are seen at a visitors center of Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) headquarters in Seoul. (Kim Jae-Hwan/AFP/Getty Images)

KCC spokesman Cho Kyeong-sik said investigators are analyzing the log-in records and the malicious code collected from the infected servers and computers. It could take at least four to five days for the infected computers to recover fully, he said. Experts say the entire investigation could take weeks.

South Korean regulators have also distributed vaccine software to government offices, banks, hospitals and other institutions to prevent more outages.

In an indication of the high tension on the Korean Peninsula, South Korean media reported that North Korea sounded air-raid warnings in radio broadcasts Thursday morning as part of military drills.

The network paralysis took place just days after North Korea accused South Korea and the U.S. of staging a cyberattack that shut down its websites for two days last week. Loxley Pacific, the Thailand-based internet service provider, confirmed the North Korean outage but did not say what caused it. South Korea denied the allegation.

The attack may have also extended to the United States. Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the U.S.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said he discovered early Wednesday that their website had been hacked. They have yet to establish who was behind it but strongly suspect it came from North Korea.

Several of the committee's publications, including lengthy reports with satellite imagery of North Korean prison camps, had been removed, along with biographies of their staff and board, and their policy recommendations to the Obama administration.

The South Korean shutdown did not affect government agencies or sensitive targets such as power plants or transportation systems, and there were no immediate reports that bank customers' records were compromised, but the disruption froze part of the country's commerce.

Some customers were unable to use the debit or credit cards that many rely on more than cash. At one Starbucks in downtown Seoul, customers were asked to pay for their coffee in cash, and lines formed outside disabled bank machines.

Broadcasters KBS and MBC still didn't have full computer use on Thursday, but the shutdown did not affect TV broadcasts.

The YTN cable news channel also said the company's internal computer network was paralyzed. Footage showed workers staring at blank computer screens.

KBS employees said they watched helplessly as files stored on their computers began disappearing.

Last year, North Korea threatened to attack several news companies, including KBC and MBC, over their reports critical of children's' festivals in the North.

'This needs to be a wake-up call'

"If it plays out that this was a state-sponsored attack, that's pretty bald faced and definitely an escalation in the tensions between the two countries," said James Barnett, former chief of public safety and homeland security for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

An ominous question is what other businesses, in South Korea or elsewhere, may also be in the sights of the attacker, said Barnett, who heads the cybersecurity practice at Washington law firm Venable.

"This needs to be a wake-up call," he said. "This can happen anywhere."

An official at the South's Korea Communications Commission said investigators speculate that malicious code was spread from company servers that send automatic updates of security software and virus patches.

The shutdown raised worries about the overall vulnerability to attacks in South Korea, a world leader in broadband and mobile internet access. Previous hacking attacks at private companies compromised millions of people's personal data. Past malware attacks also disabled access to government agency websites and destroyed files in personal computers.

Seoul blames North Korean hackers for several cyberattacks in recent years. Pyongyang has either denied or ignored those charges. Hackers operating from IP addresses in China have also been blamed.

In 2011, computer security software maker McAfee Inc. said North Korea or its sympathizers likely were responsible for a cyberattack against South Korean government and banking websites earlier that year. The analysis also said North Korea appeared to be linked to a massive computer-based attack in 2009 that brought down U.S. government Internet sites. Pyongyang denied involvement.

"North Korea has almost certainly done similar attacks before," Junio said. "Part of why this wasn't more consequential is probably because South Korea took the first major incident seriously and deployed a bunch of organizational and technical innovations to reduce response time during future North Korea attacks."

South Korea has created a National Cybersecurity Center, a national monitoring sector and a Cyber Command modeled after the U.S. Cyber Command. Junio said South Korea's major antivirus firms also play a large role in stopping hacking attacks.

The shutdown comes amid rising rhetoric and threats of attack from Pyongyang over UN sanctions imposed for its December long-range rocket launch and February nuclear test. Washington also expanded sanctions against North Korea this month in a bid to cripple the government's ability to develop its nuclear program.

North Korea has threatened revenge for the sanctions and for ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills, which the allies describe as routine but which Pyongyang says are rehearsals for invasion.

Last week, North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea warned South Korea's "reptile media" that the North was prepared to conduct a "sophisticated strike" on Seoul.

Lim Jong-in, dean of Korea University's Graduate School of Information Security, said North Korea was probably responsible for Wednesday's attack.

"Hackers attack media companies usually because of a political desire to cause confusion in society," he said. "Political attacks on South Korea come from North Koreans."

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Experimental Lakes scientists kept in dark on facility's future

Scientists with ongoing projects at the Experimental Lakes Area in northern Ontario had to contact the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to find out they would not be allowed to work at the facility this summer.

Principal researchers on a mercury contamination study in the area initiated and arranged a conference call with David Gillis, director general of the Ecosystem Science Directorate at DFO.

The scientists say they had only heard about the cancellation of the 2013 field season through rumours, gossip and the media but nothing officially from the DFO. They were confused about why the government would mothball the facility for the summer when DFO only gives up control on Sept. 1.

"I don't feel that the people who have dedicated themselves to working out there [in the Experimental Lakes Area] for years and years and who have huge investments in their research activities, I don't feel that they are being treated with the respect that they deserve," said Dr. Carol Kelly a scientist with the METAALICUS (Mercury Experiment to Assess Atmospheric Loadings in Canada and the U.S.) project.

METAALICUS is a joint project between Canadian and American government and university scientists that began in 2000. The scientists are studying the effects of mercury deposited from air pollution. Results from the study led the U.S. government to change mercury emissions regulations for coal-fired power plants.

'If you're not interested in making any regulations then ELA would not be useful to you.'—Dr. Carol Kelly

Because METAALICUS has been at the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) for so long, scientists store a good deal of equipment at the facility. Dr. Cindy Gilmour of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland has many large instruments there and asked Gillis what would happen to them. Gillis asked for a list of inventory.

Gilmour also asked about the future of the ELA a number of times during the conference call. Gillis told her the situation was "complex."

"I'm worried that by not answering our questions about what will happen to the station and by asking for inventory that these are signs that DFO is perhaps preparing for the eventuality of demolishing the station," Gilmour told CBC News.

Beyond her worry, Gilmour was particularly frustrated by DFO's lack of transparency about the future of the ELA.

One of the 58 lakes that make up the Experimental Lakes Area in northern Ontario. (Lindsay Furtado/Trent University)

"If they're negotiating in good faith to turn the station over to another operator, why not be transparent about what they are going to do there this summer," she asked.

A spokesman for DFO said the department has been clear the federal government will no longer operate the ELA facility as of March 31.

"The department continues to prepare the facility for a third-party operator or the decommissioning of the site pending negotiations with third parties and the Province of Ontario," Frank Stanek told CBC News in an email Thursday. "The department continues to work with scientists to ensure they have the opportunity to retrieve any items."

Stanek also pointed to other recent research investments by the department, adding, "science continues to be the backbone of Fisheries and Oceans Canada."

But Kelly believes the decision to shutter ELA is ideologically motivated. She said the unique whole-ecosystem experiments at the facility give very precise answers to vexing and complicated environmental questions.

Kelly said the Conservative government prefers vague answers that allow them to question scientific findings. That, she said, makes it easier to advance their resource development agenda.

"If you're not interested in making any regulations, then ELA would not be useful to you," Kelly said.

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Universe is older than we thought, Planck telescope reveals

New results from looking at the split-second after the Big Bang indicate the universe is 80 million years older than previously thought, but core concepts in physics about the cosmos — how it began, what it's made of and where it's going — seem to be on the right track.

The findings released Thursday bolster a key theory called inflation, which says the universe burst from subatomic size to its now-observable expanse in a fraction of a second. The new observations from the European Space Agency's $900 million Planck space probe appear to reinforce some predictions made decades ago solely on the basis of mathematical concepts.

"We've uncovered a fundamental truth of the universe," said George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge who announced the Planck satellite mapping result in Paris. "There's less stuff that we don't understand by a tiny amount."

"It's a big pat on the back for our understanding of the universe," California Institute of Technology physicist Sean Carroll, who was not involved in the project, told The Associated Press. "In terms of describing the current universe, I think we have a right to say we're on the right track."

The Big Bang — the most comprehensive theory of the universe's beginning — says the visible portion of the universe was smaller than an atom when, in a split second, it exploded, cooled and expanded faster than the speed of light.

The Planck space probe looked back at the afterglow of the Big Bang, and those results have now added about 80 million years to the universe's age, putting it at 13.81 billion years old.

The probe, named for the German physicist Max Planck, the originator of quantum physics, also found that the cosmos is expanding a bit slower than originally thought, has a little less of that mysterious dark energy than astronomers had figured and has a tad more normal matter. But scientists say those are small changes in calculations about the universe, whose numbers are so massive.

'A treasure trove of spectacular data'

Officials at NASA, which also was part of the experiment, said the Planck probe has provided a deeper understanding of the intricate history of the universe and its complex composition.

Krzysztof Gorski, a Planck scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, said in a statement that the new results "are giving astronomers a treasure trove of spectacular data, and bringing forth a deeper understanding of the properties and history of the universe."

The Planck space telescope, launched in 2009, has spent 15 ½ months mapping the sky, examining so-called "light" fossils and sound echoes from the Big Bang by looking at background radiation in the cosmos. The spacecraft is expected to keep transmitting data until late 2013, when it runs out of cooling fluid.

Scientists not involved in the project said the results were comparable on a universal scale to the announcement earlier this month by a different European physics group on a subatomic level — with the finding of the Higgs boson particle that explains mass in the universe.

The $900-million Planck telescope, launched in 2009, is shown in this artist's conception. (C. Carreau/European Space Agency)"What a wonderful triumph of the mathematical approach to describing nature," said Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist who was not part of the new Planck research. "It's an amazing story of discovery."

"The precision is breathtaking," Greene said in an email Thursday after the announcement. "The satellite is measuring temperature variations in space — which arose from processes that took place almost 14 billion years ago — to one part in a million. Amazing."

Efstathiou marveled at how the Planck data was such "an extremely good match" to the theory of rapid inflation in the split-second after the Big Bang.

Inflation tries to explain some nagging problems left over from the Big Bang, which formed the universe in a sudden burst. Other space probes have shown that the geometry of the universe is predominantly flat, but the Big Bang said it should curve with time. Another problem was that opposite ends of space are so far apart that they could never have been near each other under the normal laws of physics, but early cosmic microwave background measurements show they must have been in contact.

So a few physicists more than 30 years ago came up with a theory to explain this: Inflation. That says the universe swelled tremendously, going "from subatomic size to something as large as the observable universe in a fraction of a second," Greene said.

Planck shows that inflation is proving to be the best explanation for what happened just after the Big Bang, but that doesn't mean it is the right theory or that it even comes close to resolving all the outstanding problems in the theory, Efstathiou said.

There was an odd spike in some of the Planck temperature data that hinted at a preferred direction or axis that seemed to fit nicely with the angle of our solar system, which shouldn't be, he said.

Nobel Prize prospect

But overall, Planck's results touched on mysteries of the universe that have already garnered scientists three different Nobel prizes. Twice before scientists studying cosmic background radiation have won a Nobel Prize — in 1978 and 2006 — and other work on dark energy won the Nobel in 2011.

At the press conference, Efstathiou said the pioneers of inflation theory should start thinking about their own Nobel prizes. Two of those theorists — Paul Steinhardt of Princeton and Andreas Albrecht of University of California Davis — said before the announcement that they were sort of hoping that their inflation theory would not be bolstered.

That's because taking inflation a step further leads to a sticky situation: An infinite number of universes.

To make inflation work, that split-second of expansion may not stop elsewhere like it does in the observable universe, Albrecht and Steinhardt said. That means there are places where expansion is zooming fast, with an infinite number of universes that stretch to infinity, they said.

Steinhardt dismissed any talk of a Nobel.

"This is about how humans figure out how the universe works and where it's going," Steinhardt said Thursday. "And it's kind of a raucous time at the moment."

Efstathiou said the Planck results ultimately could give rise to entirely new fields of physics — and some unresolvable oddities in explaining the cosmos.

"You can get very, very strange answers to problems when you start thinking about what different observers might see in different universes," he said.

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Experimental Lakes closure risks federally funded research

A scientist with an $800,000 federal grant will not be able to conduct his research due to the shuttering of the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in northern Ontario.

Dr. Chris Metcalfe, who was set to contaminate a lake with nanosilver and document its effects on the lake's ecosystem, will have to put his experiment on hold. The grant for Metcalfe, of Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., came from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, a branch of the federal Department of Industry.

"We're currently investing billions if not trillions of dollars in the development of various nano-materials. Why not take a look also at what the potential impacts might be on the environment?" Metcalfe asked.

Trent University students conduct controlled experiments with nanosilver at the Experimental Lakes Area last summer. (Lindsay Furtado photo)

He has already conducted some laboratory experiments and controlled studies in lake water. Nanosilver, an antibacterial technology made up of microscopic silver particles, is added to fabrics used in clothing to kill odours caused by sweating.

This summer's experiment was meant to use a whole lake, and the ELA is the only facility in the world where it is possible to do that. ELA experiments have been instrumental in the study of acid rain and the effects of laundry detergents on fresh water.

"I think what will happen is that there will still be questions about whether nano-materials —and specifically nanosilver —are potentially harmful to the environment or not," Metcalfe said, adding that will put Canadian regulatory agencies at a disadvantage when making rules for the use and development of nano-materials.

Supporters' optimism fading

"The whole issue defies logic," said Britt Hall, director of the Save the ELA Coalition and a biogeochemistry professor at the University of Regina. Her main frustration is dealing with what she calls "the ideology" behind the decision.

The closure of the Experimental Lakes Area freshwater research facility means federally funded research into the environment impact of nanosilver won't go ahead. (Lindsay Furtado photo)

"It appears as if the government is really just wanting to close the Experimental Lakes Area regardless of the type of impacts that are going to happen either financially or scientifically," she said.

"It does seem almost nasty that they decided to do this now."

Optimism in her group is fading, she added, pointing to the recent confusing story of five cabins at ELA. Initially, it was reported they were being taken down. Now, it seems they are just being renovated.

The government defended its decision to mothball the ELA, despite putting some of its own grant money at risk.

"Our government has put $8 billion … into science and technology here in Canada since 2006 — since the Conservative government took power," Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear told CBC News. He said the money went to new laboratory infrastructure, including state-of-the-art equipment that can be used by all scientists, as well as fellowships and scholarships.

Asked why the government is not able to leave facility open while it searches for another operator, Goodyear replied, "Well, then we'd be having this interview next year, as well. We need to act on these things rapidly."

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South Korean computer networks crash at banks, media

Computer networks at major South Korean banks and top TV broadcasters crashed simultaneously Wednesday, paralyzing bank machines across the country and prompting speculation of a cyberattack by North Korea.

Screens went blank at 2 p.m. local time, the state-run Korea Information Security Agency said, and more than seven hours later some systems were still down.

Police and South Korean officials couldn't immediately determine responsibility and North Korea's state media made no immediate comments on the shutdown. But some experts suspected a cyberattack orchestrated by Pyongyang. The rivals have exchanged threats amid joint U.S.-South Korean military drills and in the wake of UN sanctions meant to punish North Korea over its nuclear test last month.

The network paralysis took place just days after North Korea accused South Korea and the U.S. of staging a cyberattack that shut down its websites for two days last week. Loxley Pacific, the Thailand-based internet service provider, confirmed the North Korean outage but did not say what caused it.

'Hackers left indications in computer files that mean this could be the first of many attacks.'—Kwon Seok-chul, cybersecurity expert

The South Korean shutdown did not affect government agencies or potential targets such as power plants or transportation systems, and there were no immediate reports that bank customers' records were compromised, but the disruption froze part of the country's commerce.

Some customers were unable to use the debit or credit cards that many rely on more than cash. At one Starbucks in downtown Seoul, customers were asked to pay for their coffee in cash, and lines formed outside disabled bank machines.

Shinhan Bank, a major South Korean lender, reported a two-hour system shutdown, including online banking and automated teller machines. It said networks later came back online and that banking was back to normal. Shinhan said no customer records or accounts were compromised.

Another big bank, Nonghyup, said its system eventually came back online. Officials didn't answer a call seeking details on the safety of customer records. Jeju Bank said some of its branches also reported network shutdowns.

Broadcasters KBS and MBC said their computers went down at 2 p.m., but that the shutdown did not affect TV broadcasts. Computers were still down about seven hours after the shutdown began, according to the state-run Korea Communications Commission, South Korea's telecom regulator.

The YTN cable news channel also said the company's internal computer network was paralyzed. Footage showed workers staring at blank computer screens.

KBS employees said they watched helplessly as files stored on their computers began disappearing.

North Korea had threatened news companies

Last year, North Korea threatened to attack several news companies, including KBC and MBC, over their reports critical of children's festivals in the North.

'Destroy the enemies without mercy so that not a single man can survive to sign a document of surrender when a battle starts.'—Kim Jong-un, North Korean leader

"It's got to be a hacking attack," said Lim Jong-in, dean of Korea University's Graduate School of Information Security. "Such simultaneous shutdowns cannot be caused by technical glitches."

The Korea Information Security Agency had reported that an image of skulls and a hacking claim had popped up on some of the computers that shut down, but later said those who reported the skulls did not work for the five companies whose computers suffered massive outages. KISA was investigating the skull images as well.

An official at the Korea Communications Commission said investigators speculate that malicious code was spread from company servers that send automatic updates of security software and virus patches.

LG Uplus Corp., which provides network services for the companies that suffered outages, saw no signs of a cyberattack on its networks, company spokesman Lee Jung-hwan said.

The South Korean military raised its cyberattack readiness level but saw no signs of cyberattacks on its networks, the Defence Ministry said.

No government computers were affected, officials said. President Park Geun-hye called for quick efforts to get systems back online, according to her spokeswoman, Kim Haing.

The shutdown raised worries about the overall vulnerability to attacks in South Korea, a world leader in broadband and mobile internet access. Previous hacking attacks at private companies compromised millions of people's personal data. Past malware attacks also disabled access to government agency websites and destroyed files in personal computers.

Seoul believes North Korea runs an Internet warfare unit aimed at hacking U.S. and South Korean government and military networks to gather information and disrupt service.

Seoul blames North Korean hackers for several cyberattacks in recent years. Pyongyang has either denied or ignored those charges. Hackers operating from IP addresses in China have also been blamed.

In 2011, computer security software maker McAfee Inc. said North Korea or its sympathizers likely were responsible for a cyberattack against South Korean government and banking websites earlier that year. The analysis also said North Korea appeared to be linked to a 2009 massive computer-based attack that brought down U.S. government internet sites. Pyongyang denied involvement.

Rising rhetoric over sanctions

The shutdown comes amid rising rhetoric and threats of attack from Pyongyang over the UN sanctions. Washington also expanded sanctions against North Korea this month in a bid to cripple the government's ability to develop its nuclear program.

North Korea has threatened revenge for the sanctions and for ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills, which the allies describe as routine but which Pyongyang says are rehearsals for invasion.

On Wednesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected military drills in which drone planes hit targets and rockets shot down mock enemy cruise missiles. Kim told officers the North should "destroy the enemies without mercy so that not a single man can survive to sign a document of surrender when a battle starts," according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Last week, North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea warned South Korea's "reptile media" that the North was prepared to conduct a "sophisticated strike" on Seoul.

North Korea also has claimed cyberattacks by the U.S. and South Korea. The North's official Korean Central News Agency accused the countries of expanding an aggressive stance against Pyongyang into cyberspace with "intensive and persistent virus attacks."

South Korea denied the allegation and the U.S. military declined to comment.

Lim said he believes hackers in China were likely culprits in the outage in Pyongyang, but that North Korea was probably responsible for Wednesday's attack.

"Hackers attack media companies usually because of a political desire to cause confusion in society," he said. "Political attacks on South Korea come from North Koreans."

Orchestrating the mass shutdown of the networks of major companies would have taken at least one to six months of planning and co-ordination, said Kwon Seok-chul, chief executive officer of Seoul-based cybersecurity firm Cuvepia Inc.

Kwon, who analyzed personal computers at one of the three broadcasters shut down Wednesday, said he hasn't yet seen signs that the malware was distributed by North Korea.

"But hackers left indications in computer files that mean this could be the first of many attacks," he said.

Lim said tracking the source of the outage would take months.

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Blackberry co-founders start $100M quantum tech fund

Blackberry co-founders Mike Laziridis and Doug Fregin are teaming up again to establish a $100 million dollar private fund that will nurture Canada's fledgling quantum computing industry.

In a news release Wednesday night, the pair said they believe the fund will lead to the creation of new jobs and industries and help establish Waterloo as "Canada's Quantum Valley."

Dubbed Quantum Valley Investments, the new fund hopes to harness the existing developments and breakthroughs that have already been discovered over the past 12 years in Waterloo in order to give the region a global leader in the field.

Research in quantum computing — where the aim is to develop computer technology based on quantum theory — is still relatively nascent. Research in the field could make computers exponentially more powerful than they already are.

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Google introduces internet-only Chromebooks to Canada

For consumers who find they really only use a computer to get online and not much else, Google now has the Chromebook, a brand of internet-only computers officially introduced in Canada on Tuesday.

Chromebooks look like standard laptops but don't come loaded with a version of Windows or a Mac operating system. They run on Google's Chrome OS, a streamlined platform with the web browser as the main attraction.

They're being pushed as a low-cost device — they start at about $250 — for users who spend most of their time on a computer using the internet, and therefore don't need the processing power to run full-blown software applications. They can connect to the web via Wi-Fi or mobile networks.

Stripping away the convoluted operating system and setting things up so users can jump right into the web makes the experience simpler and faster, said Google's Caesar Sengupta, product management director.

"The whole idea is basically to have a computing experience that's extremely simple, that's very stable, very secure, and sort of just gets out of your way," Sengupta said.

Chromebooks turn on quickly like mobile devices — although they still take a few seconds to boot up after being shut down. There's a store with a selection of simple programs and games to access, and web-based applications — such as the Google Docs suite to create documents and spreadsheets — run smoothly within the Chrome browser and store files online. Consumers who have been frustrated with the limitations of tablets, and miss a keyboard, may find Chromebooks are more suitable substitutes for a full-blown laptop. Asus, HP and Samsung all plan to release Chromebooks in Canada.

While some users will be uncomfortable with the concept of an internet-only machine — although you can use some apps while offline — Google saw a growing demand for it.

"Users today, particularly the younger generation, are very web savvy ... the current generation of people or kids are very used to having stuff in the cloud, they prefer that model," said Sengupta.

"For many people they won't move completely (to the Chromebook concept) but it's a fantastic second computer.... But from our point of view we absolutely feel this is where modern-day usage is heading, this is where users are heading, so that's what we're building towards."

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