Innovation Anthology #161: President and Founder
Meteor showers like the Perseids offer a dazzling display in the night sky.
But sometimes those rocks roaming through our solar system touch down with great impact, leaving their mark – like the giant crater at Sudbury.
One scientist who studies craters and the geology of their impact is Dr. John Spray.
With help from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, he established the Planetary and Space Science Centre at the University of New Brunswick.
I asked Dr. Spray if some of those meteors in the night sky could ever originate from Planet Earth?
DR. JOHN SPRAY: Absolutely, because planets exchange material by the impact process. They also blast off material that is lofted off the surface. And these fragments can reach escape velocity and leave that planetary body. And then they get into space and they hang around there. They’re subject to the vagaries of the gravitational fields of other planets.. So if they wander around long enough, they get sucked into a planet’s gravity field, they’ll land on the surface. So undoubtedly there will be pieces of Sudbury on the moon and I expect Sudbury on Mars…So we exchange planetary materials. And then some scientists have extended that further to say we exchange life by the same process.
Thanks today to the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Learn more at InnovationAnthology.com I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
Neil Camarta,
Field Upgrading, Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
Sponsor
Canada Foundation for Innovation
The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is an independent corporation created by the Government of Canada to fund research infrastructure—state-of-the-art equipment, laboratories, databases, and the buildings necessary to conduct research. The CFI’s mandate is to strengthen the capacity of Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and non-profit research institutions to carry out world-class research and technology development that benefits Canadians.
Since its creation in 1997, CFI investments in research infrastructure have lead to breakthroughs in areas such as health, natural resources, information and communications technology, energy, and the environment.
La Fondation canadienne pour l’innovation (FCI) est un organisme autonome créé par le gouvernement du Canada pour financer l’infrastructure de recherche—l’équipement de pointe, les laboratoires, les bases de données de même que les bâtiments nécessaires pour mener des travaux de recherche. Le mandat de la FCI est de renforcer la capacité des universités, des collèges et des hôpitaux de recherche, de même que des établissements de recherche à but non lucratif du Canada de mener des projets de recherche et de développement technologique de calibre mondial qui produisent des retombées pour les Canadiens.
Depuis la création de la FCI en 1997, les investissements qu’elle a faits dans l’infrastructure ont mené à des percées dans des domaines tels que la santé, les ressources naturelles, les technologies de l’information et des communications, l’énergie et l’environnement.
Program Date: 2008-08-19