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What is a role of Saharan dust on hurricanes? 🌪🌧 Hurricanes, including tropical cyclone rainfall (TCR), are among the most destructive weather phenomena on Earth. 🌡💧Traditionally, sea surface temperature or humidity in the atmosphere were considered as the main factor controlling hurricane precipitation. 🏜❗️Now, scientists believe that Sahara dust plays a leading role on hurricane formation over the ocean, which a…

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Could the Sahara be green again and will Africa finally need its “Great Green Wall”? 🟢 Africa’s “Great Green Wall” initiative was launched to hold back the Sahara from expanding southward. 🟢 This year, after an unusual influx of rain, scientists have compared satellite imagery on September 12, 2024 (⬆️upper image), versus the same day in 2023 (⬆️lower image), and have seen that the southern Sahara’s vegetation reac…

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When and why was the Sahara green? ✅ Records from ocean sediment show that the Green Sahara happens repeatedly in Earth's history. ✅ Sometime between 11,000 and 5,000 years ago, after the last ice age ended, about 9 mln square kilometers (3.5 mln square miles) of the modern Sahara Desert was a green place with lakes, where animals like elephants, hippos and antelopes feasted on thriving grasses and shrubs. ✅ The G…

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Who left Paleozoic “dumbbells”? All over the world, scientists find dumbbell-shaped fossils in rock outcrops that are called Bifungites and are not fossilized animals but burrows left in an extinct creature’s wake. ⬆️ Most are found in rocks from the Paleozoic era more than 300 million years ago. 🪱 Not long ago, Brazilian paleontologists, exploring the bed of the Sambito River in northeastern Brazil, found imprints…

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How does the brain store memories? 🧠 In the brain, the hippocampus region, crucial for learning and memory, records each event in three different forms or “copies”. These ‘”copies” are disseminated among different groups of neurons that arise at various stages during embryonic development. 1️⃣ The early-born neurons ensure the longevity of a memory creating a copy that, although initially weak, strengthens over ti…

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Where do the most genetically diverse people on Earth live? 🌍 The most genetically diverse people on Earth live in Africa. Geneticists have discovered more than 3 mln previously undescribed genetic variants among Africans. That diversity has fit well with the fossil evidence that the human species originated in Africa. It is known that when a new species, be it plant or animal, arises and spreads, genetic differen…

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How many phase changes of matter are there? 📌 A phase change or phase transition is a change between solid, liquid, gaseous, and sometimes plasma states of matter. 📌 The main factors that cause phase changes are changes in temperature and pressure. At the phase transition the two states of matter have identical free energies and are equally likely to exist. ❗️ There are 8️⃣ phase changes between solids, liquids, g…

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What are exotic states of matter that require special conditions? 📍 Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) is sometimes called the fifth state of matter. In Bose-Einstein condensate, atoms and ions stop behaving as separate particles and collapse into a single quantum state that can be described using a single wavefunction. This state of matter was verified experimentally in 1995 by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman. Bose-Einste…

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How are the main states of matter defined? 📍 Solid is a state of matter with a defined shape and volume. Atoms, ions, and molecules in a solid pack tightly together and may form crystals. 📍 Liquid is a state of matter with a defined volume, but no defined shape, as liquids take the shape of their container. Particles in a liquid have more energy than in a solid, so they are further apart and less organized (more ra…

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What is a state of matter? ✔️ Matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. It consists of subatomic particles, atoms, ions, and compounds. Sometimes these particles are tightly bound and close together, while other times particles are loosely connected and widely separated. ✔️ States of matter are forms in which matter exists, they describe the qualities displayed by matter. Basically, the state of matter o…

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How did a prehistoric bird use its teeth? When the first fossil of Longipteryx chaoyangensis was found in 2020, paleontologists thought its toothed beak suggested it ate fish. Scientists initially compared the ancient bird to the contemporary kingfisher because of its similarly-shaped skull and beak, and diet of small fish, but that resemblance turned out to be a red herring. A more recent look inside a specimen’s …

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How did the largest pterosaurs fly? Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates that evolved powered flight, but it has long been debated whether the largest pterosaurs could fly at all. Scientists were lucky to find in Jordan three-dimensionally preserved bones of two different large-bodied azhdarchoid pterosaur species. These rare fossils have enabled experts to hypothesize that not only could the largest pterosaurs ta…

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