Researchers Just Found a Giant Cache of Water Underneath California
http://gizmodo.com/researchers-just-foun...1782680684
EXCERPT: Last year, researchers estimated that California had lost 63 trillion gallons of water over the course of 18 months of drought. Now, a huge reservoir of underground water—three times bigger than engineers thought—has been found under California. But it still won’t solve the state’s drought troubles.
Researchers from Stanford University announced their find in a paper today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Up until now, estimates of the amount of water beneath California’s Central Valley were less than a thousand cubic kilometers. Now, researchers say the reservoir contains 2,700 cubic kilometers of usable water, or approximately 713 trillion gallons. That’s several times what the state has reportedly lost. So why won’t it solve California’s drought woes? Part of the problem is where it was found....
Ancient Mars Was Even More Earth-Like Than We Imagined
http://gizmodo.com/ancient-mars-was-even...1782680758
EXCERPT: New findings from NASA’s Curiosity Rover provide evidence that significant amounts of oxygen once permeated the atmosphere of ancient Mars. The Red Planet, it would seem, was more Earth-like than we thought.
Using the ChemCam instrument atop Curiosity, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have discovered high levels of manganese oxides in Martian rocks. The rover made the discovery in mineral-filled cracks in sandstones in the Kimberley region of Gale crater. The presence of this chemical element suggests that high levels of free-floating oxygen once existed on Mars, and that in addition to having a warmer climate and lakes of liquid water, this planet was once quite Earth-like in terms of its chemical composition....
http://gizmodo.com/researchers-just-foun...1782680684
EXCERPT: Last year, researchers estimated that California had lost 63 trillion gallons of water over the course of 18 months of drought. Now, a huge reservoir of underground water—three times bigger than engineers thought—has been found under California. But it still won’t solve the state’s drought troubles.
Researchers from Stanford University announced their find in a paper today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Up until now, estimates of the amount of water beneath California’s Central Valley were less than a thousand cubic kilometers. Now, researchers say the reservoir contains 2,700 cubic kilometers of usable water, or approximately 713 trillion gallons. That’s several times what the state has reportedly lost. So why won’t it solve California’s drought woes? Part of the problem is where it was found....
Ancient Mars Was Even More Earth-Like Than We Imagined
http://gizmodo.com/ancient-mars-was-even...1782680758
EXCERPT: New findings from NASA’s Curiosity Rover provide evidence that significant amounts of oxygen once permeated the atmosphere of ancient Mars. The Red Planet, it would seem, was more Earth-like than we thought.
Using the ChemCam instrument atop Curiosity, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have discovered high levels of manganese oxides in Martian rocks. The rover made the discovery in mineral-filled cracks in sandstones in the Kimberley region of Gale crater. The presence of this chemical element suggests that high levels of free-floating oxygen once existed on Mars, and that in addition to having a warmer climate and lakes of liquid water, this planet was once quite Earth-like in terms of its chemical composition....