New study shows how long-necked plesiosaurs swam

Written by MIHAI ANDREI

We might have to rethink the classic idea of a plesiosaur swimming with a bent neck. Pernille V. Troelsen, a Ph.D. student at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, simulated plesiosaur locomotion with 3D models and found that it would have been much easier for them to swim with a straight neck, and that’s likely how they moved around.

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Breaking: Fatal Courtroom Act Ruins Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann

Written by John O'Sullivan

Penn State climate scientist, Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann commits contempt of court in the ‘climate science trial of the century.’ Prominent alarmist shockingly defies judge and refuses to surrender data for open court examination. Only possible outcome: Mann’s humiliation, defeat and likely criminal investigation in the U.S.

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Why Roman concrete still stands strong while modern formula decays

Written by University of Utah

ROMACONS drilling at a marine structure in Portus Cosanus, Tuscany, 2003. Drilling is by permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia per la Toscana.

Around A.D. 79, Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote in his Naturalis Historia that concrete structures in harbors, exposed to the constant assault of the saltwater waves, become “a single stone mass, impregnable to the waves and every day stronger.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. While modern marine concrete structures crumble within decades, 2,000-year-old Roman piers and breakwaters endure to this day and are stronger now than when they were first constructed.

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Geologic forces fueling West Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf Cracks

Written by James Kamis

Geological heat flow is fueling bottom melting and associated cracks across West Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf, having little to do with man-made global warming. Significant amounts of high-quality data and relevant geological observations support this revelation, given historical and current geological mapping efforts done in Antarctica.

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Stephen Hawking Flies off the Scientific Reservation

Written by Dr. Roy Spencer

I can understand when pop-scientists like Bill Nye spout scientific silliness. But complete nonsense coming from Stephen Hawking? Really?

In this video, Stephen Hawking claims that Trump withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Accord could lead to the Earth being pushed past a tipping point, with Venus-like 250 deg. C temperatures and sulfuric acid rain.

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At 12,000 feet, humans did the unimaginable

Written by Kate Seamons

Researchers call it one of the “last frontiers of human colonization”: very high elevations where the oxygen is sparse and the temperatures are icy. Now research out of the Andean highlands of South America suggests the humans who braved such conditions more than 7,000 years ago did so in an impressive manner—year-round.

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Juno Shatters Scientists’ Jupiter Theories In Just 365 Days

Written by Emma Grey Ellis

LAST JULY 4TH, NASA’s Juno spacecraft slowed its record-breaking pace just enough to get caught in the pull of Jupiter‘s gravity. (The timing, according to NASA, was just a very patriotic coincidence.) Either way, Independence Day 2016 was the last time the Juno mission pumped its brakes. In the year since the 66-foot solar-powered craft has given scientists more and weirder Jupiter data than they ever thought possible.

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