According to National Geographic, the coldest place on Earth is the East Antarctic Ice Sheet with temperatures as low as minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature reading was taken during the polar winter and is the lowest temperature ever recorded on the Earth. Russia’s Vostok Weather Station previously held the record for the lowest recorded temperature. However, that record has […]
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Historic drought: Broiling heat baked much of the U.S. heartland this week, as the nation’s worst drought in more than 50 years devastated corn, soy, and other vital crops. More than 1,000 counties in 26 states have been declared natural disaster areas and 38 percent of the nation’s corn crop is in danger of withering in the field, the U.S. […]
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Vast reserves of freshwater have been discovered beneath the seabed of continental shelves off Australia, China, North America, and South Africa—a potentially valuable resource for coastal cities needing to alleviate water shortages or combat drought. The finding comes from a new analysis of seafloor water studies conducted for oil and gas exploration purposes. The total volume of these untapped reserves […]
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Earthquakes are the result shifting plates in the crust of Earth. When there is frictional stress building of the plates it causes failure at a fault line an earthquake happens. The shaking of the ground happens when the energy is released, and waves radiate. Research has found that they predict where major seismic activity may happen, but they cannot forecast […]
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These nations have been dismissed as underdogs and weaklings. But like budding superheroes, they’ve been sitting on hidden talents. And now they’re about to fly. 1. FINLAND SUPERPOWER: INVINCIBLE TEACHERS If you’re a kid in Finland, you don’t start school until you’re 7 years old. There’s almost no homework until you’re a teenager. You don’t wear a uniform, you can […]
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The largest solar storm since 2005 swept across the planet this week, forcing airlines to reroute flights and disrupting communications from global positioning satellites. This spontaneous blast of solar radiation may have affected power grids and high-frequency radio communications in the northern latitudes, said the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center. A number of airlines, which route some U.S.-Asia flights over […]
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Winter in Antarctica, it is dark all of the time. In the Antarctic summer, (between January and March, when there is plenty of daylight—twenty-four hours a day! In September, the Sun rises, and then doesn’t set again until March. Why does Antarctica have six whole months of darkness in the winter and six whole months of lightness in the summer? […]
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People always wonder how the moon was made. The birth of the planets 4.5 billion years ago was extremely violent. They grew to full size by absorbing rival planet embryos in a series of titanic collisions—one of which probably gave Earth its moon (below). The moon’s large size, low density, and other features suggest that it emerged from an explosion […]
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