Life got bigger in two, million-fold leaps

Sea floor records ancient Earth

A sliver of four-billion-year-old sea floor has offered a glimpse into the inner workings of an adolescent Earth. The baked and twisted rocks, now part of Greenland, show the earliest evidence of plate tectonics, colossal movements of the planet's outer shell. Until now, researchers were unable to say when the process, which explains how oceans and continents form, began. The unique find, described in the journal Science, shows the movements started soon after the planet formed. &quo...

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Climate change and phenomena

Anthony North: We are facing dangers, today, from global warming. This essay is not going to argue whether this is man-made or a natural cycle as such, but is to suggest another avenue of research – into the relationship between climate and paranormal experience.Many researchers, including myself, have suggested that an environment can have an effect upon the mind. But does the present climate change offer a possibility of testing the hypothesis in action?Gaia: The idea that the Earth is a form ...

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Study explains rainforest similarities

Celebrated in Buddhist temples and cultivated for its wood and cottony fibers, the kapok tree now is upsetting an idea that biologists have clung to for decades: the notion that African and South American rainforests are similar because the continents were connected 96 million years ago. Research by University of Michigan evolutionary ecologist Christopher Dick and colleagues shows that kapok---and perhaps other rainforest--trees colonized Africa after the continents split when the trees' se...

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Did comets cause killer cold spell ?

Tiny diamonds sprinkled across North America suggest a "swarm" of comets hit the Earth around 13,000 years ago, kicking up enough disruption to send the planet into a cold spell and drive mammoths and other creatures into extinction, scientists reported on Friday.They suggest an event that wouldtranscend anything Biblical -- a series of blinding explosions in the atmosphere equivalent to thousands of atomic bombs, the researchers said.The so-called nanodiamonds are made underhigh-temperature, hi...

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Ancient tsunami 'hit New York'

A huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval. Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region in 300BC. It may ...

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Prehistoric jungles laughed at global warming

Evidence has been found to suggest that giant creatures such as the massive one-tonne titanoboa snake would have thrived in hot jungles millions of years ago with temperatures significantlywarmer than those seen today."Fossil boffins say that dense triple-canopyrainforests, home among other things to gigantic one-tonne boa constrictors, flourished millions of years ago in temperatures 3-5°C warmer than those seen today - as hot...

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Massive ice chunks break up in Antarctica

An ice shelf in western Antarctica is breaking up with huge ice chunks crumbling away and an area over 1300 square miles in danger of breaking off completely in the next few weeks."Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf inthe western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said Wednesday, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice - an area larger than Rhode Island - was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks. . "...

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Prepare for another ten scorching years

Temperature records will be repeatedly shattered over the next few years, say researchers behind the first rigorous look at how global climate will change during the next decade. The prediction comes from an innovative technique that combines the approaches used by weather forecasters, who typically look a few days ahead, and climate modellers, who produce projections that run up to the end of the century. The result is a model that can project as far as 2015, filling in a long-standing gap in c...

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Animal Language

One of the ways most animals communicate is with sound, they may neigh, bark, purr or quack; we speak.  These auditory messages convey meaning for the species concerned.  We understand words, horses understand neighs, dogs understand barks and so on.   Quacks don?t correspond with words, neighs mean little to cats, but what is universal is body language.  Animals can understand the body language of their species and of others.  They usually recognize a...

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Global warming could change Earths tilt

It is thought that global warming could cause the Earth"s axis to tilt significantly within the next hundred years, with the rebound from melting ice sheets and the rise in sea levels both contributing to changes in the planet"s tilt."Warming oceans could cause Earth"s axis to tilt in the comingcentury, a new study suggests. . The effect was previously thought to be negligible, but researchers now say the shift will be lar...

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