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1) The Triassic Period: The History and Legacy of the Geologic Era that Witnessed the Rise of Dinosaurs
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Scientists have long attempted to understand Earth's past, and in service to that effort, they have divided the world's history into eons, eras, periods, epochs and ages. For example, the current eon is called the Phanerozoic, which means "visible life. " This is the eon in which multi-cellular life has evolved and thrived. Before this, life was microscopic (single cell). The Phanerozoic eon is divided into 3 eras - Paleozoic ("old life"), Mesozoic...
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Naturally, as technological advances and the creation of flying aircraft became realities, the sighting of UFOs increased, as did the interest in potential contact with aliens. While incidents like the one at Roswell led to conspiracies and a craze among those who insisted the government was hiding proof of extraterrestrials’ existence, governments across the world were actually secretly studying UFO sightings by the mid-20th century.
By the end...
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The question of man's place in the extended universe has been pondered by every known culture since the beginning of recorded history. Lacking the means to prove otherwise, discussions of an alternative to Earth's solitary existence have remained conceptual. The ongoing debate is spurred by the appearance of unexplainable phenomena through the centuries in the atmosphere and the space beyond. Naturally, as technological advances and the creation of...
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By the time the Hubble telescope reached orbit, it was already the world's most famous telescope, but it was also the most scorned. The telescope cost nearly two billion dollars more to complete than anticipated, and to make matters worse, the first images it sent back were skewed. However, within about a year of fixing it, the telescope captured images of a major event in the solar system.
In July 1994, the telescope provided a firsthand observation...
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Today the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 "winning" the Race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the Solar System. Moreover, the notion that America...
6) Planet X Hypothesis: The History and Legacy of the Theory that the Solar System has a Hidden Plan
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Naturally, as technological advances and the creation of flying aircraft became realities, the sighting of UFOs increased, as did the interest in potential contact with aliens. While incidents like the one at Roswell led to conspiracies and a craze among those who insisted the government was hiding proof of extraterrestrials' existence, governments across the world were actually secretly studying UFO sightings by the mid-20th century.
Given all of...
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While modern technology has helped astronomers view the furthest reaches of the Solar System, it has also allowed scientists to start discovering planets orbiting distant stars. To make it easier to assess the relative mass and size of the new planets being discovered, scientists give these measurements as multiples of those properties for either Jupiter or Earth. In other words, if the planet is the same mass as Jupiter, then this measure would be...
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Nearly 500 years after the Spanish conquered their mighty empire, the Aztecs are often remembered today for their major capital, Tenochtitlan, as well as being fierce conquerors of the Valley of Mexico who often engaged in human sacrifice rituals. Unlike the Maya, the Aztecs are not widely viewed or remembered with nuance, in part because their own leader burned extant Aztec writings and rewrote a mythologized history explaining his empire's dominance...
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Even at a distance, the acrid stench of asphalt and sulfur singes the hairs of people's nostrils, and when the blustering winds subside, the potent miasma lingers in the air. To the untrained eye, the La Brea Tar Pits seem to be nothing more than simply pools of thick, viscous black sludge, its obsidian-like surface bestrewn with an assortment of autumn leaves and dirt. Gooey methane bubbles spurt up periodically, shattering the glassy veneer of the...
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Although Apollo 11's successful mission to the Moon is seen as the culmination of the Space Race, and the Apollo program remains NASA's most famous, one of the space agency's most successful endeavors came a few years later. In fact, the Pioneer program was the most diversified sequence of any of NASA's programs, and though they're now remembered for being among the first probes in history to reach the Outer Solar System, the elaborate planning changed...
11) Paleozoic Era: The History of the Geologic and Evolutionary Changes that Began Over 500 Million Year
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The current view of science is that Earth is around 4.6 billion years old, and the first 4 billion years of its development are known as the Precambrian period. For the first billion years or so, there was no life in Earth. Then the first single-celled life-forms, early bacteria and algae, began to emerge. It's unclear where they came from or even if they originated on this planet at all, but this gradual development continued until around four billion...
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When people look up into the night sky, the stars seem fixed and immutable, as unchanging as the darkness of space itself, but the truth is that stars are born, live and die in a never-ending cycle of creation and annihilation. These cycles stretch over such vast spans of time that, to short-lived humans, they seem to last forever. No one knows just how many stars there are, but their number is almost beyond comprehension. When people look up into...
13) Majestic 12: The History and Conspiracy Theories Surrounding the Federal Government's Investigatigat
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When people think about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), they tend to think of flying discs piloted by gray beings with large heads and enormous eyes. They tend to think that these sightings only started relatively recently and that belief in UFOs is some sort of modern religion brought on, perhaps, by the very justifiable fears of a nuclear age. But a study of the phenomenon quickly reveals that people have been seeing UFOs since the beginning...
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In the list of popular American geological oddities and attractions, one sizeable phenomenon remains surprisingly unfamiliar to the average citizen. This may be due in part to its remote desert location, but perception of the Salton Sea in southern California is also laden with environmental concerns and is in a constant state of flux. The extensive body of inland saltwater hides a glorious commercial past and has served as an important wildlife preserve...
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On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Program's 35th mission, but this was no ordinary mission. In its payload bay, Discovery was carrying the Hubble Space Telescope, with the objective of putting the telescope into orbit.
By the time the Hubble telescope reached orbit, it was already the world's most famous telescope, but it was also the most scorned. The telescope cost nearly...
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Naturally, as technological advances and the creation of flying aircraft became realities, the sighting of UFOs increased, as did the interest in potential contact with aliens. While incidents like the one at Roswell led to conspiracies and a craze among those who insisted the government was hiding proof of extraterrestrials' existence, governments across the world were actually secretly studying UFO sightings by the mid-20th century. Given all of...
17) Gunpowder and the Printing Press: The History and Legacy of the Inventions that Modernized Europe
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In addition to the wheelbarrow, the seismograph, the waterwheel, deep drilling, suspension bridges, and ship rudders, among countless other life-changing contraptions, the Chinese developed what were later dubbed the "Four Great Inventions of China." Two of those were gunpowder and printing, which both spread through South Asia and the Middle East before making it to Europe.
For a time, gunpowder was a mere curiosity, but its destructive power and...
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Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century, and the Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today, but of all the world's civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people. In the past decade especially, there has been a renewed focus on the Mayans, whose advanced calendar led many to speculate...
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For the Maya, astronomy was not a purely scientific pursuit, but intimately linked to religious, mythological, and ideological elements that were of the highest importance. The celestial realm held a sacred nature, as did the many gods and goddesses that dwelt there, so for all Mesoamerican cultures, astronomy was a fundamental part of their everyday lives. Thus, astronomy was present in their calendars, religion, and even agriculture, and in close...
20) Charles Babbage and Alan Turing: The Lives and Careers of the English Mathematicians Who Revolutioni
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Today, the world is in the midst of the transformative and ever-developing Digital Age, otherwise referred to as the "Age of Information." It has been an unprecedented, remarkable, and explosive era marked by social media and computer-generated imagery (and with it, deep fakes), among other novel, previously unimaginable concepts. The bulky monitors and blocky towers of personal computers and laptops, which were once upon a time considered fashionable,...
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