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Was there ever a civilization on Mars that looked up through a telescope at the Earth? A new picture from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, which has been orbiting Mars since 1997, shows what they would have seen.

The image shows Earth in a “half-Earth” phase. The bright area at the top of the image of Earth is cloud cover over central and eastern North America. Below that, a darker area includes Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. Another bright feature is caused by clouds over South America. The image also shows our moon, as well as Jupiter, with 3 of its moons.
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Scientists now have evidence that Buddhists really are happier and calmer than other people. Tests on their brains show that the parts associated with good moods and positive feelings are more active, because of all the meditation they do. Researchers at University of California San Francisco say that the type of meditation done by Buddhists can change the amygdala, an area of the brain which controls fear memory, which is why Buddhists are less likely to be as shocked, surprised or angry as other people. Reseacher Paul Ekman says, “The most reasonable hypothesis is that there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek.”
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After the 1991 Gulf War, many U.S. soldiers came home with what came to be called Gulf War Syndrome. No cause for the debilitating condition has ever been proven, although guesses have included chemical weapons, smoke from burning oil wells, vaccinations and pesticides. Now researchers think it’s caused by uranium dust from U.S. weapons, because a group of Afghan civilians who have the same symptoms have “astonishing” levels of uranium in their urine.
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There’s still controversy over whether the 3.9 billion-year-old Martian meteorite ALH84001, found in Antarctica on December 1984, contains fossilized Martian bacteria. If it does, it’s possible that life came to Earth from Mars and that we are all, in effect, Martians. Some scientists think the fossils formed underwater, in shallow Martian seas, while others think they were caused by rain and came from our atmosphere here on Earth.
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