The simplest approach is often the best, whether you’re talking about writing a news story, building an airplane or, in the case of one of this week’s discoveries, turning the desert into color. green.
Embankment, an ancient and low-tech construction technique, is having a profound impact on the degraded land in two different places.
In Tanzania, farmers use bunds – barriers that at their most basic level, simply mound – yes Pick the arid, overgrown and eroded land has turned green. Barriers keep water from flowing over the ground and allow it to penetrate the earth.
Similar techniques are restoring peatlands, wetland landscapes have large carbon reserves in soil, in Northern Ireland, has the potential to improve the quality of drinking water there.
Dig this
Lost cities can have a powerful appeal to the imagination, and archaeologists working in Iraqi Kurdistan believe they may have located a city.
Excavations of the 2,000-year-old fortress in the Zagros Mountains revealed fortifications nearly 2.5 miles (4 km) long, two smaller settlements, rock carvings and a religious complex.
The city is known only because of the small details found in rare coins, but archaeologists have carefully pieced together the clues found during their digging at the ancient site.
Wild Kingdom
The Patagonian Ice Dragon is what scientists call an extreme species, or a creature that can live in extreme environments.
In the universe
Black holes are powerful cosmic phenomena, but they do not emit any light. This means finding one can take several years of detective work for astronomers.
Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy, the newly discovered space object is at least 9 times the mass of our sun. Called VFTS 243, it orbits a hot, blue star 25 times the mass of the sun, making it part of a binary system.
The astronomers said they were confident their discovery was watertight.
Dino-light
The prints in the restaurant yard belong to two species of sauropods – the plant-eating dinosaurs known for long neck and tail, according to paleontologist Lida Xing of China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, who was exposed to the diner.
In this case, he got lucky. The restaurant owner fenced the area to prevent people from stepping on the pit and possibly built a shed to protect them.
Marvel
Enjoy these out-of-this-world readings:
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