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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has announced their plans for colonizing Mars, of which includes plans for permanent ‘Earth Independent’ settlements that would be capable of operating for extended missions with little or no material support needed from Earth.

Their report, entitled ‘Journey to Mars’, outlines NASA’s 3-stage plan for developing the path for the long-term colonization of Mars, with the goal of landing a human presence there sometime in the 2030s.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released average global temperature data for the month of August, which shows that it was the hottest August on record, and also the hottest month of 2015. This also marks this year’s summer as the hottest on record, and puts 2015 in line to be the hottest year on record.

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Despite a year of record-breaking temperatures, there is one region of the globe, in the North Atlantic Ocean just south of Greenland, where the temperature remains below average.

This phenomenon is being called the "Atlantic Blob," is structurally similar to its Pacific Blob counterpart, which is instead experiencing abnormally high temperatures, feeding the El Niño cycle that is currently under way there. The Atlantic blob is believed to be caused by the flow of cold water from melting glaciers in Greenland, the melt of which is being exacerbated by above-average temperatures.
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