The Sahara Desert Used To Be a Green Savannah and New Research Explains Why

We identified why North Africa greened approximately every 21,000 years over the past eight million years. It was caused by changes in the Earth’s orbital precession – the slight wobbling of the planet while rotating. This moves the Northern Hemisphere closer to the sun during the summer months.

from The Wire Science https://ift.tt/0jPJlBH

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'Pillar of Shame' removed in Hong Kong

Authorities removed the University of Hong Kong’s ‘Pillar of Shame’ statue late on Wednesday, dismantling one of the few such sites left in China that commemorate an iconic protest, as Beijing extends its influence in the region. The eight-meter-tall monument at the city-state’s oldest university had depicted a pile of twisted bodies and was the site of multiple vigils in memory of the victims of the infamous crackdown over 30 years ago in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The university had agreed to remove the statue earlier this year “based on the latest risk assessment and legal advice,” adding that officials are “very concerned about the potential safety issues resulting from the fragile statue.” Read more Why the West cannot leave Hong Kong alone “The PillarOfShame is removed, while memory lives. We must remember what happened on June 4th, 1989. TiananmenMassacre,” Nathan Law, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist who fled the region last year, wrote on Twitter. The statue’s re...

Ancient 140K-year-old ‘Dragon Man’ skull found hidden in Chinese well where it languished, abandoned, for decades

If legitimate, the new species, dubbed Homo longi, would be the most closely related known hominid to modern humans, filling in gaps between humanity and its Neanderthal ancestors as the search into mankind’s origins continues. Discovered in the Chinese city of Harbin, the skull retains some primitive features found in our distant ancestors, including a low brow and braincase plus a broad nose. However, it also shows some signs of more refined hominid characteristics, like flatter and more delicate cheekbones. The creature’s apparent mixture of more modern human traits and more Neanderthal-like characteristics has paleoanthropologists excited as it represents a potential step forward in the quest to find humanity’s less-distant predecessors, possibly representing an inflection point at which mankind veered off from its Neanderthal ancestors. Anterior and lateral views of the 'Harbin skull,' dubbed the 'Dragon Man,' which exhibits a mix of primitive and modern feature...

NASA deliberately created artificial glowing clouds in unusual weather control experiment

NASA recently unveiled a rather mesmerizing experiment, the Super Soaker mission, in which they fired a small rocket into the upper atmosphere which the agency then detonated to create artificial, glowing clouds… for science. High-flying clouds that shine in the darkness above the polar caps are known as polar mesospheric clouds, or PMCs. They are essentially swarms of ice crystals high in the atmosphere that catch sunlight in an unusual way. Research into these glowing clouds could yield important insights into the conditions of our atmosphere, a key component to maintaining life on Earth, as space traffic continues to gather pace. The members of the Super Soaker mission set out to create their own PMC at the worst possible time: January in the Arctic. This time of year is typically not conducive to PMC formation, meaning there wouldn’t be any interference from naturally occuring glowing clouds. © NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility The team launched a small, suborbital r...

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