This April, the hunt is on for researchers looking to confirm the continued existence of the presumed-extinct thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, following recent reports of sightings of the creature. The last known specimen died in captivity in 1936, at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. Countless sightings have been reported since, but to date none have been verified.
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Despite the uncertainty surrounding the coming revolution in artificial intelligence, there are those of us that prefer not to see the rise of the robots as the advance of an army of tyrannical exterminators or job-stealing drones, but rather a chance to make new friends from what most would consider to be an unlikely source.
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Two new studies have added new evidence to the theory that a major airburst from a meteor or comet occurred over North America, ushering in a 1,400-year cooling period called the Younger Dryas that occurred between the Pleistocene and the Holocene eras. The Younger Dryas saw the extinction of most of the large land mammals across North America, and also the end of the Clovis People, a Paleo-Indian culture. A charred layer of soil, found at roughly 50 Clovis sites across the continent, suggest a massive wildfire that raged continent-wide, possibly caused by such a massive meteor strike.
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As President Trump moved to unwind Obama-era regulations designed to bring the US into compliance with the Paris Climate Accord, ExxonMobil, long a climate change denier, urged him not to abandon the climate accord. The company sent a letter to Trump’s top energy policy aid describing the agreement as "an effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change." Johnson & Johnson, Nike and Intel have also, among many others, signed a statement in support of the Paris agreement. When campaigning, Trump promised that the Paris agreement would be "cancelled" within a hundre days. He has describe global warming science as a plot created by the Chinese in order to render US manufacturing non-competitive.read more