What happened to the Aral Sea? The Soviet Union diverted the rivers that fed it in the 1960s and it has almost completely dried up. The Aral Sea was located between Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south. It formed between 23 and 2.3 million years ago. It was a fairly shallow lake, […]
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What is St. Elmo’s fire? It is a glowing region that appears around tall structures, the masts of old ships, or the wings of aircraft. It is a plasma made by a corona discharge from the structure. St. Elmo’s fire looks like a blue or violet fire that has engulfed the tip of whatever structure
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Why is there such a difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic? There are several reasons. Some of them are the climate, their history, their languages, their population densities, and their governments. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are both on the island of Hispaniola, which is an island between Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba. It
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Why is there a plastic island in the Pacific Ocean? Because of the amount of plastic waste we throw into the sea and because of the point where ocean currents converge. There are plastic islands in all of the oceans on Earth, not just the Pacific. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch just happens to be
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When did Britain become an island? It was connected to continental Europe by a land bridge that was destroyed 450,000 years ago. Some of the land bridge returned and that was submerged under the sea in about 6100 BC. If sea levels were a little lower than they are now, a lot more land would
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How thick is the atmosphere? The atmosphere is generally considered to be 10,000 km thick. Our atmosphere is made up of gas. It is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and one percent other gases. Those other gases are argon, carbon dioxide, helium, neon, methane, krypton, and hydrogen. There is water vapor as well, which is a
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Why does it rain in a rainforest? Tropical rainforests cause rain when water is released by the trees, but temperate rainforests form where there is a lot of natural rain. There are tropical rainforests and temperature rainforests. Tropical rainforests form in very hot places, just to the north and the south of the equator. Temperate
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How have sea levels changed over time? Over the last 542 million years they have varied from 130 m lower than their level today to a theoretical 300 m higher than they are today. It is theoretical because the continents move around a lot, and it is difficult to find evidence for where the seas
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Do other planets have tectonic plates? In our Solar System, Earth is the only planet with tectonic plates, but in other solar systems there will probably be planets the same as ours. Out of all the planets in the Solar System, Earth is the only one with tectonic plates. Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter are
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What is a jungle? It is generally an area of dense forest in a tropical climate. Many people think a rainforest is a jungle but they are different because a rainforest is a specific ecosystem, and a jungle is a description of an overgrown and tangled forest. The word “jungle” has come into English from
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