It has been said that the human race knows more about certain distant galaxies than it does about the ground that lies beneath its very feet. In fact, while it took the famous Voyager 1 satellite 26 years to exit our Solar System (relaying measurements to Earth from 16.5 billion km away), it took about the same amount of time for humanity to penetrate a mere 12 km into the Earth’s surface.
The Russians dug a nine-inch diameter hole 7.5 miles under the ground just to see what was there-until the Earth’s crust started melting their equipment. You can’t dig a hole to China, but Russia and the U.S. came close. Starting in the 1970s, the superpowers started to drill a hole deep into the Earth’s crust. The USSR’s effort, the Kola super deep Borehole, is now the deepest hole on Earth. “Well to hell” reaches 7.5 miles underground and took 24 years to accomplish. They wanted to go deeper, but temperatures hotter than 350 °F compromised equipment.
There were scientific purposes to this challenge in addition to bragging rights. Researchers were baffled by the presence of liquid water miles below the surface. They believe this is from hydrogen and oxygen atoms being squeezed out of rock layers. They also found fossilized plankton, a whopping 2 billion years old. Despite being 4,000 miles short of hitting the Earth’s core, the borehole was capped in 1994. Japan wants to take Russia’s title with a new drilling project set to kick off in 2030. It aims to dive 3.7 miles under the ocean’s floor into the Earth’s liquid mantle layer.
A FITNESS INFLUENCER who makes up to $25,000 a month through her online challenges is helping women to grow their glutes during the pandemic. Morgan Dawson, who boasts 396,000 followers on Instagram, became a fitness coach after overcoming her own tumultuous relationship with her body. Growing up as an aspiring model, she says she would face pressure to be thin and as a result developed unhealthy eating and exercise habits. She told Truly: “I would go to castings and be next to other models and they would be half my size. So I would starve, starve, starve, trying to lose weight.” Now, she uses her platform and experience as a personal coach to help women to embrace their curves and build their dream bodies. “My online presence - I’m extremely energetic, one minute I’ll be showing people my favourite books to read and the next minute I’ll be twerking.” When COVID-19 shut down the gyms, Morgan used her online presence to offer home workouts and challenges. Off the back of the success of this, she has now launched her own workout equipment brand called Squat Tough.
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What is this crazy concrete UFO doing on a mountaintop? It is not an unidentified flying object that was left with its parking brake on in the heart of the Balkan Mountains. It is a mysterious historical monument, called Buzludzha. It is three hours drive from Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital city, on potholed roads. The perplexing structure can be seen for miles, inspiring anxious excitement in those who lay eyes upon it for the first time. On a 230 feet high tower behind the saucer is a red star, the symbol for communism.
Completed in 1981, it is the largest communist structure in Bulgaria. It is 4,698 feet up the Buzludzha peak at the end of the Central Balkan Mountains. It was built to commemorate the creation of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Construction began in 1974 with a cost of $35 million of today’s dollars. They blasted 9 feet of rock off the mountain’s peak to create the platform for the monument. The inside of this historical national treasure are 5,500 square feet of glass mosaics. Armed guards sit outside to ward off curious explorers, making getting inside incredibly difficult.
When communism fell in 1989, the building was abandoned. Since then, much of the building has been vandalizes, with most of the mosaics defaced. The modern Bulgarian government has work underway to repair and de-politicize the building, in the hopes of it regaining its former glory one day in a post-communist world.
While hundreds of abandoned communist memorials are scattered all over the Balkans, few hold quite as much intrigue as the Buzludzha monument.
Are plants capable of learning and retaining information? Studies are showing that some members of the kingdom plantae may have a memory.
Be careful how you treat plants - some of them might remember what you've done to them.
A recent study by ecologist Monica Galiano showed that plants may have memory and the ability to learn. Scientists have also discovered that plants have abilities usually only seen in animals. Galiano studied the Mimosa pudica, a very interesting plant that folds its leaves when touched. After several minutes, its leaves return to their unfolded "calm" state.
She tried to "scare" her test plants by dropping them to see if their leaves reacted the same way. The plants' leaves curled up as usual, but only for the first few rounds of the test. Over the course of one day, Galiano dropped the test plants for a total of 60 times, and as you can probably guess - they stopped reacting to the fall.
According to standards applied to animals by scientists, Mimosa pudica was showing the ability to learn.
Scientists have shown that cell clusters in plant embryos act like brain cells, telling the embryo to grow. Other plants react to situations and their surroundings, and are using that information to decide how to develop. Researchers are hoping if they can assess how plants do this they may one day be "trainable", thus making severe conditions like drought one less thing future farmers will have to worry about.