[URL="https://www.foxnews.com/science/mars-insight-lander-shows-off-first-image-from-mars"]Mars InSight Lander shows off first image from Mars[/URL]

I sure hope that the lens cover is to be removed by the lander itself. I could only imagine the embarrassment if someone on Earth were supposed to remove it before it took off...

[QUOTE=rogue;501015][URL="https://www.foxnews.com/science/mars-insight-lander-shows-off-first-image-from-
mars"]Mars InSight Lander shows off first image from Mars[/URL]
[/QUOTE]

I clicked and it when to about:blank, url copied used a break rule, finally got to the story.

[QUOTE=science_man_88;501016]I clicked and it when to about:blank, url copied used a break rule, finally got to the story.[/QUOTE]
Fixed it.

[QUOTE=rogue;501015][URL="https://www.foxnews.com/science/mars-insight-lander-shows-off-first-image-from-mars"]Mars InSight Lander shows off first image from Mars[/URL]

I sure hope that the lens cover is to be removed by the lander itself. I could only imagine the embarrassment if someone on Earth were supposed to remove it before it took off...[/QUOTE]

At the post-landing news conference they discussed this picture. Yes, it will be removed by the lander as they knew the cap would collect dust from the retro rockets used in the final braking.

[url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032050-300-an-audacious-new-plan-will-make-all-science-free-can-it-work/]An audacious new plan will make all science free. Can it work?[/url] | New Scientist

In fittingly ironic fashion, the above [i]New Scientist[/i] article about bringing down the paywalls surrounding scientific publishing is itself behind a paywall - after a few teaser opening paragraphs, we get "To continue reading this premium article, subscribe for unlimited access."

[QUOTE=ewmayer;500307][url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/14/impact-crater-19-miles-wide-found-beneath-greenland-glacier]Impact crater 19 miles wide found beneath Greenland glacier[/url][/QUOTE]

There is a very good study done by a German author (I forgot the author's name and title of the book) regarding the legend of Noah's ark. It's a small red book that exists in one of our two local University libraries and I don't remember which. The book describes various cultures around the world that had recorded viewing approximately seven lights in the sky (meteors) during the Neolithic era and the story of the great flood that was handed down through the generations referencing that timeline. The book is very well researched and provided the most plausible explanation of that legend for me. If there exist several other craters with that signature then that would indeed be something.

I'll try to find that book and link it to this post.

Here it is:

Heinrich P. Koch, The Diluvian Impact: The Great Flood Catastrophe 10,000 Years Ago as the Consequence of a Comet's Impact.
There are many such published stories most of which are liberally infused with religious metaphors, this book is not one of those.

Here is a partial quote from the only review I could find (on Amazon):

" The main short coming of the book is its the failure to trust the accuracy of the most reliable of all flood accounts, the bible. The theory put forward by the author is that 10,000 years ago the earth was hit by a number of comet fragments which triggered huge waves and other destructive events that are what is behind many of the flood or cataclysm myths nearly all ancient cultures tell of. The book does not support a global deluge, but does present evidence supporting a recent world wide disaster. The book is interesting in that it is written by someone who doesn't believe in the flood or the bible, and yet feels the evidence overwhelmingly points towards a recent world wide disaster ..."

A flood and a mega-tsunami aren't the same thing.

The [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis"]Black Sea deluge hypothesis[/URL] seems like a better explanation of ancient flood accounts.

[QUOTE=GP2;501176]A flood and a mega-tsunami aren't the same thing.

The [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis"]Black Sea deluge hypothesis[/URL] seems like a better explanation of ancient flood accounts.[/QUOTE]

I don't think Noah's flood or a meteoric tsunami account for the [url=https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2014/05/06/ancient-hunting-camp-found-beneath-lake-huron/]9,000 year-old caribou hunt site now under Lake Huron[/url]. IIRC there's another such site under another of the Great Lakes.

In addition to glacial melting, the presence of the huge mass of ice depressed the landscape; and its disappearance has allowed it to rebound.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;500307][URL="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/14/impact-crater-19-miles-wide-found-beneath-greenland-glacier"]Impact crater 19 miles wide found beneath Greenland glacier[/URL] | The Guardian
[/QUOTE]
Wow, let's go hunting for diamonds! There must be a lot there! I wish for a crater like that in my backyard :razz:

[url=https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/we-found-rocks-in-a-hopeless-place/576967/]2.4-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools Found in Algeria[/url] - The Atlantic
[quote]The tools are so old that they couldn’t possibly have been made by Homo sapiens, and with no hominin bones from the site, it’s unclear which species created the objects. Still, “it’s extremely provocative evidence,” says Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist from the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study. The artifacts suggest that hominins were in North Africa, carving up animal meat, at least 600,000 years earlier than previously thought. More importantly, they suggest that the Oldowan culture—the earliest well-accepted stone technology—either spread from East Africa to the north very quickly or originated in different parts of Africa independently.“It highlights North Africa, and the Sahara in particular, as a major region of importance in the evolutionary processes leading to our own species,” Scerri says. “Sahnouni and his colleagues have been working in that area for many years, and I really salute their persistence.”[/quote]
But the logic behind a key claim by the lead researcher strikes me as bizarre:
[quote]There are two ways of interpreting these dates, Sahnouni says. First, it’s possible that the same hominins who made the East African Oldowan tools 2.6 million years ago rapidly spread to the northwest, covering more than 3,000 miles in about 150,000 years. To Sahnouni, that seems unlikely. “It’s not like they just decided to get to the north and started walking,” he says. The intervening land “wasn’t easy to go through, and they would have had to look for food and resources. That takes time.”

The explanation he favors is that early stone tools, and perhaps even the hominins who made them, evolved independently in different parts of Africa—in the east, northwest, and perhaps elsewhere. There’s other evidence for this. For example, the oldest known hominin is 7 million years old, and was found in Chad, about 1,900 miles west of the rich finds in East Africa. “That was a turning point in rethinking the origin of humans in only East Africa,” says Sahnouni, who is confident that work in other parts of Africa will upend the narrative even further.[/quote]
3,000 miles ... 'That takes time'. Would 150,000 years qualify as 'sufficient time' in the intended sense? That's around 10,000 generations, i.e. - noting that of course people don't diffuse in a regular way like this - the technology would need to advance north a mere half-kilometer each generation, on average. More realistically, since the Sahara as we know it today is a more recent phenomenon, you needed just a single determined group of prehumans to make the trek during that huge time period, through a landscape which may not have been easy but which was much more benign than it is today for most of that period. That doesn't strike me as unlikely, especially given other well-know feats of colonization of harsh environments by prehistoric humans. Greenland eskimos, anyone?