Word: planetful
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...even been found inside of rocks. Antarctic life, however, has always been a more complex matter. Antarctica was once a warmer, wetter land than it is now, but continental migration pushed it from place to place, leaving it - for the current epoch at least - at the bottom of the planet, where it became little more than a frozen desert. Its valleys are some of the driest places on the Earth, receiving less than 4 inches of precipitation per year. Species that thrived when Antarctica was green would have been entirely wiped out, unless they could adapt - and fast. (See pictures...
...Mikucki refers to the subglacial pond as "a unique sort of time capsule from a period in Earth's history," but it also has lessons for scientists studying Mars, an entire planet that is in many ways a time capsule too. Mars, like Antarctica, was once warm and wet, but the slow loss of its atmosphere also meant the loss of much of its moisture and surface heat. Still, the place was warm and wet long enough for life to have taken hold - life that would have then had to retreat into underground water deposits and make the same kind...
Nowhere is this bilateral relationship more apparent than in Tijuana, the busiest border crossing on the planet. A giant launching pad for migrants, center for U.S.-owned assembly plants and strategic front in the drug trade, the city of 1.6 million has long enjoyed the best and worst of living next door to the U.S. colossus. However, that relationship has soured in recent months with news of a bloody cartel turf war that has scared many Americans away from even stepping foot in Tijuana. (See pictures of Mexico's war on drugs...
...would own a clunker in the first place. "Either this program won't make them buy, or they're just poor," says Wolkonowicz. But a cash-for-clunkers deal with tough enough fuel standards would at least be a way to throw Detroit another lifeline without sinking the planet - even as Washington seeds longer-term demand for more-efficient vehicles. The key, like any used car contact, is to check the fine print...
...argues that our ice sheets may be far more vulnerable than we believe, and that it may be a matter of decades before cities like New York are turned into swampland. Scientists led by Paul Blanchon of the National Autonomous University of Mexico examined sea-level fluctuations during the planet's last inter-ice age warm period, about 121,000 years ago, and found that the water rose as much as 10 ft. (3 m) in a matter of decades thanks to melting ice sheets. That conclusion indicates that, in the current interglacial period, we could well be facing rapidly...