Desogen: Martin-Logan Buy

Remote and rugged
eigenlayer
A more organic way to see this coast is by the multi-day coastal ferry, the long-running Sarfaq Ittuk, of the Arctic Umiaq Line. It’s less corporate than the modern cruise ships and travelers get to meet Inuit commuters. Greenland is pricey. Lettuce in a local community store might cost $10, but this coastal voyage won’t break the bank.

The hot ticket currently for exploring Greenland’s wilder side is to head to the east coast facing Europe. It’s raw and sees far fewer tourists, with a harshly dramatic coastline of fjords where icebergs drift south. There are no roads and the scattered population of just over 3,500 people inhabit a coastline roughly the distance from New York to Denver.

A growing number of small expedition vessels probe this remote coast for its frosted scenery and wildlife. Increasingly popular is the world’s largest fjord system of Scoresby Sound with its sharp-fanged mountains and hanging valleys choked by glaciers. Sailing north is the prosaically named North East Greenland National Park, fabulous for spotting wildlife on the tundra.

Travelers come to see polar bears which, during the northern hemisphere’s summer, move closer to land as the sea-ice melts. There are also musk oxen, great flocks of migrating geese, Arctic foxes and walrus.
Some of these animals are fair game for the local communities. Perhaps Greenland’s most interesting cultural visit is to a village that will take longer to learn how to pronounce than actually walk around — Ittoqqortoormiit. Five hundred miles north of its neighboring settlement, the 345 locals are frozen in for nine months of the year. Ships sail in to meet them during the brief summer melt between June and August.

Locked in by ice, they’ve retained traditional habits.

“My parents hunt nearly all their food,” said Mette Barselajsen, who owns Ittoqqortoormiit’s only guesthouse. “They prefer the old ways, burying it in the ground to ferment and preserve it. Just one muskox can bring 440 pounds of meat.”

Curiosity has maintained pristine pieces of the Cumberland sample in a “doggy bag” so that the team could have the rover revisit it later, even miles away from the site where it was collected. The team developed and tested innovative methods in its lab on Earth before sending messages to the rover to try experiments on the sample.
changelly exchange
In a quest to see whether amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, existed in the sample, the team instructed the rover to heat up the sample twice within SAM’s oven. When it measured the mass of the molecules released during heating, there weren’t any amino acids, but they found something entirely unexpected.

An intriguing detection
The team was surprised to detect small amounts of decane, undecane and dodecane, so it had to conduct a reverse experiment on Earth to determine whether these organic compounds were the remnants of the fatty acids undecanoic acid, dodecanoic acid and tridecanoic acid, respectively.

The scientists mixed undecanoic acid into a clay similar to what exists on Mars and heated it up in a way that mimicked conditions within SAM’s oven. The undecanoic acid released decane, just like what Curiosity detected.

Each fatty acid remnant detected by Curiosity was made with a long chain of 11 to 13 carbon atoms. Previous molecules detected on Mars were smaller, meaning their atomic weight was less than the molecules found in the new study, and simpler.
“It’s notable that non-biological processes typically make shorter fatty acids, with less than 12 carbons,” said study coauthor Dr. Amy Williams, associate professor of geology at the University of Florida and assistant director of the Astraeus Space Institute, in an email. “Larger and more complex molecules are likely what are required for an origin of life, if it ever occurred on Mars.”

Siham Haleem, a private tour guide for 15 years, says that Doha now has many world-class, modern museums — the National Museum of Qatar being a firm personal favorite. And yet he says that visiting Sheikh Faisal’s museum should still be on everybody’s to-do list.
simpleswap
“For those eager to learn about Qatar’s — and the region’s — heritage and beyond, the museum is an ideal destination,” he says. “Personally, I’m captivated by the car collection, the fossils, and especially the Syrian house, painstakingly transported and reassembled piece by piece.”

Stephanie Y. Martinez, a Mexican-American student mobility manager at Texas A&M University in Qatar likes the museum so much she includes it on all of her itineraries for students visiting from the main campus in Texas.

“The guided tours are very detailed, and the collections found at the museum have great variety and so many stories to unfold,” she says. “Truly, the museum has something to pique everyone’s interest. My favorites are the cars and the furniture exhibits showcasing wood and mother-of-pearl details. Definitely one of my favorite museums in Qatar, every time I visit I learn something new.”

Raynor Abreu, from India, also had praise for the unusual and immense collection.

“Each item has its own story, making the visit even more interesting,” he says. “It’s also impressive to know that Sheikh Faisal started collecting these unique pieces when he was very young. Knowing this makes the museum even more special, as it reflects his lifelong passion for history and culture.”

It takes time and dedication to truly examine the many collections within the museum — especially since most of them are simply on display without explanation.

Eclectic it may be, but it’s hard to fault the determination of Sheikh Faisal, who has brought together items that tell the story of Qatar and the Middle East.

Sarah Bayley, from the UK, says she visited the museum recently with her family, including 16 and 19-year-old teenagers, and was won over by its sheer eccentricity.

“Amazing. Loved it. It is a crazy place.”

Arctic auroras
ethena
For getting around during winter, the Inuit here nowadays prefer snowmobiles, although they still keep their sled dogs. During winter they’ll offer intrepid visitors, wrapped up warm against the deep-freeze temperatures, dog-sledding jaunts. These can last either an hour or be part of expeditions over several days, sometimes with the added experience of learning how to build an igloo. Sisimiut on the west coast and Tasilaq in the southeast are active winter centers for dog sledding.

Winter’s most stellar attraction, though, is northern lights watching. With little urban light pollution, Greenland is a dark canvas for spectacular displays, and aurora borealis-watching vacations are becoming more popular.

Staying outdoors, Greenland is developing a reputation among adventure enthusiasts: from long-distance skiing expeditions and heliskiing on the icecap to hiking the 100-mile-long Arctic Circle Trail from Kangerslussuaq, where firearms need to be carried for warning shots in case of polar bear encounters.

Life is definitely changing here. The climate crisis is eating away at its icecap and Greenland may well end up as a pawn in a game of geopolitical chess. But for now, the bright glare of international attention should shine a favorable light on one of the wildest travel destinations on Earth.

Travel writer Mark Stratton is an Arctic specialist who has traveled to Greenland six times and counting. He’s marveled at the aurora borealis, sailed to Disko Island, dog-sledded with the Inuit, and once got stuck in an icefloe.

While the Cumberland sample may contain longer chains of fatty acids, SAM is not designed to detect them. But SAM’s ability to spot these larger molecules suggests it could detect similar chemical signatures of past life on Mars if they’re present, Williams said.
convex finance
“Curiosity is not a life detection mission,” Freissinet said. “Curiosity is a habitability detection mission to know if all the conditions were right … for life to evolve. Having these results, it’s really at the edge of the capabilities of Curiosity, and it’s even maybe better than what we had expected from this mission.”

Before sending missions to Mars, scientists didn’t think organic molecules would be found on the red planet because of the intensity of radiation Mars has long endured, Glavin said.
Curiosity won’t return to Yellowknife Bay during its mission, but there are still pristine pieces of the Cumberland sample aboard. Next, the team wants to design a new experiment to see what it can detect. If the team can identify similar long-chain molecules, it would mark another step forward that might help researchers determine their origins, Freissinet said.

“That’s the most precious sample we have on board … waiting for us to run the perfect experiment on it,” she said. “It holds secrets, and we need to decipher the secrets.”

Briony Horgan, coinvestigator on the Perseverance rover mission and professor of planetary science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, called the detection “a big win for the whole team.” Horgan was not involved the study.
“This detection really confirms our hopes that sediments laid down in ancient watery environments on Mars could preserve a treasure trove of organic molecules that can tell us about everything from prebiotic processes and pathways for the origin of life, to potential biosignatures from ancient organisms,” Horgan said.

Dr. Ben K.D. Pearce, assistant professor in Purdue’s department of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences and leader of the Laboratory for Origins and Astrobiology Research, called the findings “arguably the most exciting organic detection to date on Mars.” Pearce did not participate in the research.

Why there’s a huge collection of vintage cars stored in the middle of the desert
base bridge
Back at the turn of the 21st century, Qatar was a country with few cultural attractions to keep visitors and residents entertained. Yet the Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani Museum — known as the FBQ Museum — was a place that most people visited as an alternative to the then-still rather ramshackle National Museum of Qatar.

You had to make an appointment, and drive out into the desert, getting lost a few times along the way, but then you were welcomed to the lush Al Samriya Farm with a cup of tea and some cake. The highlight was being allowed into a space crammed full with shelves and vitrines holding all sorts of eclectic artifacts from swords to coins — with the odd car and carriage standing in the grounds.

It wasn’t necessarily the kind of museum you’d find elsewhere in the world, but it was definitely a sight that needed seeing.

Today, it has grown and now claims to be one of the world’s largest private museums. It holds over 30,000 items, including a fleet of traditional dhow sailboats, and countless carpets. There’s also an entire house that once stood in Damascus, Syria.

There are archaeological finds dating to the Jurassic age, ancient copies of the Quran, a section that details the importance of pearling within Qatar’s history, and jewelry dating to the 17th century.

There are also items from 2022’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar including replica trophies, balls used in the games, entry passes, football jerseys and even shelves full of slightly creepy dolls and children’s plush animals.

Some of the more disturbing exhibits include various items of Third Reich paraphernalia in the wartime room, and, strangely enough, several showcases of birds’ legs with marking rings on them. Basically, whatever you can think of, you have a very good chance of finding it here.

Rumor even has it that behind a locked door is a room filled with the late Princess Diana’s dresses and other memorabilia, accessible only to a select few visitors. Another door hides a room, no longer open to the public, filled with collectibles of the late Saddam Hussein.