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Loss of eyes in the sky hurts science on the ground
In a clean room at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California sits the next great hope of the United States’ Earth-monitoring program. About the size of a minibus, it is covered in gold foil, riddled with electrical wires, and very clean. This $1.5-billion satellite is state-of-the-art, carrying five advanced instruments to measure everything from […]
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Tools tell a more complicated tale of the origin of the human genus
The first animals that could arguably be called “human” made the evolutionary scene a little less than 2 million years ago. These aren’t folks you’d mistake for modern-day Homo sapiens, or even the GEICO caveman. But they were clearly distinct from their more apelike predecessors. They had bigger brains, for one thing, and walked fully […]
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In ancient Southwest droughts, a warning of dry times to come
Anything but lush, the U.S. Southwest has been especially parched lately. About a decade ago a cycle of droughts began; the latest one has dried much of the region to a degree that meteorologists expect only twice a century. But look back a millennium or more, and you’ll find signs that today’s conditions are not […]
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