Two new studies have been released that illustrate that the dry Martian lakebed that is currently being explored by NASA’s Curiosity rover was home to a habitable environment for over 700 million years, and possibly for well over a billion years.
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The massive crack running through Antarctica’s fourth-largest ice shelf dramatically accelerated its growth last month, extending over 11 miles in just six days. According to the UK-based Project Midas research group, the 110 kilometer (68 mile) long chasm extended an additional 17 km (11 miles) between May 25 and May 31.
The crack’s course has also suddenly turned seaward, with only 13 km (8 miles) remaining before the ice front calves off. Provided the ice front stays intact after calving, the resulting iceberg would account for more than ten percent of Larsen C’s area, a 5,000 square kilometer (1,150 sq mi) island of ice 350 meters (1,150 feet) thick, approximately the size of the state of Delaware. A berg that size would be one of the largest on record.
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President Donald J. Trump has announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the accord forged by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015, with its 195 signatory countries pledging to cut carbon emissions in a effort to limit global warming to no more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. Trump says that he plans to halt payments into the Green Climate Fund, and re-negotiate the United States’ place in the agreement, claiming that the deal, as it stands, was specifically made to disadvantage the American economy.
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A new experiment has been proposed by a theoretical physicist that is intended to determine if the human mind is actually bound by the laws of physics, or if it ignores measurable reality and follows its own rules altogether — and in doing so, indicating that the human mind could very well have the potential to use free will to overcome physics itself.
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