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Home / News / Tags / desert
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The linear dunes that have been observed on the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, have made astronomers wonder how they came to be since day one. A number of theories on their formation was proposed, some with no merit, and others that actually stand to reason even now. To these ideas, Louisiana State Uni... |
26 August 2009
08:43 GMT |
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Albert Yu-Min Lin, a young scientist from the University of California in San Diego, has high-set ambitions and plans to search for the tomb of Genghis Khan in the vastness of the Mongolian desert, as others have done before. Still, his type of search will not move a single grain of sand from its place, as it relies ... |
30 October 2008
09:39 GMT |
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The incredible amount of energy released by the Sun on a daily basis in the African deserts, if harnessed, could not only provide the whole African continent with electrical energy but might also be enough to power some parts of the European continent as well. Calculations show that the Sun produces about 1.5 barrels... |
6 June 2008
06:38 GMT |
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Today, Sahara is a huge desert area, with erratic dunes (ergs) and plains covered by rugged rocks (hamada), punctuated by mountains with heights of up to 3,400 m (11,000 ft), covering 8.8 million square kilometers (3.3 million square miles), a surface bigger than that of Australia. At great distances one from another... |
9 May 2008
05:03 GMT |
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At the beginning of the 17th century, a Berber tribe took refuge in a totally arid area in the heart of Sahara, 400 mi (640 km) south of Alger. The oued (temporary desert river) called Mzab, which irrigates the plateau and the dry valleys once a year, gave its name to the region and the people established here were c... |
11 April 2008
09:23 GMT |
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In the local Nama language, "Namib" means vast. Vastness, besides its age (20 million years), and the amount of precipitations (50 ml per year) define the Namib Desert (southwestern Africa). It stretches on a land stripe about 1,930 km (1,200 mi) long and 100-160 km (60-100 mi) wide, representing the coastal plain of... |
18 March 2008
09:53 GMT |
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1. World's largest desert is Sahara, covering most of northern Africa, from the Red Sea and the Mediterranean coasts to the outskirts of the Atlantic ocean. Sahara has an intermittent history of 3 million years. Erratic dunes (called ergs) can vary in height with 180 m (160 ft). The ergs may be punctuated by rug... |
11 March 2008
09:55 GMT |
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1.There are over 2,000 species of cacti, with various shapes and forms. Caldera cacti in southwestern US can overcome 20 m (66 ft) on height, while Rebutia cacti from Bolivia and Argentina are just several centimeters tall. Some cacti look like chandeliers or columns, others are flattened or oval, looking like ears (... |
8 February 2008
02:16 GMT |
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1. The bighorn sheep originates in Siberia. It reached North America 100,000 years ago. Sheep's genus, Ovis, has common origin with the goat's genus, Capra. 20,000 years ago, in the southern Rocky Mountains lived Ovis catclawensis, a ship 12-20 % longer than the bighorn (Ovis canadensis) and 50-70 % heavier... |
25 January 2008
16:54 GMT |
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In the scorching deserts of southern and eastern Africa and Arabia, where rainfall is a miracle, grows a jewel: the Desert-rose (Adenium obesum), also called Sabi Star or Kudu. It is closely related to the oleander from the Mediterranean area. With a delicate shape and contorted branches, this evergreen succulent shr... |
21 December 2007
06:25 GMT |
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Ancient cities were usually located on main rivers whose waters were a source of food and sometimes protection. But on the northwestern extremity of the Arabian Desert there was a city renowned for its lack of water: Petra. In the arid areas of the Middle East the caravan routes connected cities located at great dist... |
12 December 2007
08:38 GMT |
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1. Donkeys are, let's say, a desert horse or zebra. In fact, a zebra species from northwestern Africa, Grevy's zebra, is something intermediary between a donkey and a zebra, whereas a species of Asian wild ass from Tibet, kiang, is something intermediary between horses and donkeys. 2. In comparison to a hor... |
8 December 2007
09:09 GMT |
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With a length of 225 km (140 mi) and a width of 8-24 km (5-15 mi), the Death Valley, located in eastern California and western Nevada, is the driest, lowest and hottest land in North America. At Furnace Creek, the air temperature reached 57°C and that of the soil 94°C, with just 6°C under the water boiling point. Thi... |
1 December 2007
07:31 GMT |
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1. The oldest known camel is Protylopus, appeared 40-50 million years ago (Eocene) in North America. It had the size of a rabbit and lived in forests. Later, camels spread to the savanna and increased their size. In Oligocene, 35 million years ago, Poebrotherium had the size of a roe deer, but already resembled a cam... |
19 October 2007
15:56 GMT |
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This is a geographic accident located in the desert sands of the Kalahari (Botswana) like the mouth of a large river: a lot of streams and small lakes forming a wet labyrinth where you can see herds of buffaloes and elephants and lions stalking their prey. But the peculiarity of the Okavango is the way it dies. The r... |
14 September 2007
14:07 GMT |
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While you waste hundreds of liters of water daily, as it flows continuously through the faucet (the question is for how long will we be able to afford this?), others struggle for any water droplet they can get. In some desert lizards, their entire body surface turned into an engineering miracle, a type of water spong... |
21 August 2007
06:28 GMT |
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You may have heard about temporary snow hotels built in winter in some mountain resorts. But what about a ... salt hotel!? A snow hotel requires temperatures below zero; a salt hotel requires the (almost total) lack of rainfall. This weird and remote accommodation, built just from salt blocks, is located on the whit... |
26 July 2007
02:54 GMT |
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The Tuareg makes you think about freedom, power and the vastness of the desert; Wolkswagen found its inspiration in the qualities of the proud nation of the Sahara. The Berbers, together with the ancient Egyptians, are the oldest group which settled in North Africa, coming about 10,000 years ago from southwestern Asi... |
26 June 2007
16:16 GMT |
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This plant seems to be born from the imagination of the science fiction movie makers. Welwitschia mirabilis is just a snag with only two leaves and it has been called officially the most hideous plant on Earth at Chelsea Flower Show. This plant grows just on the dunes of Namibia's and Angola's Skeleton Coas... |
4 June 2007
09:26 GMT |
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The Atacama Desert is located in northern Chile and reaches a small part of southern Peru (South America), climbing up to 3,200 m (10,670 ft) altitude on an area of 181,300 square km (72,500 square mi). It spreads like a rather narrow stretch between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains over a distance of 960 km... |
23 May 2007
11:33 GMT |
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