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Science has discovered hell

Hell has an address: 55 Cancri-e is the first alien planet to have some of its surface features directly observed. And it’s no tropical paradise.

For some time 55 Cancri-e has been considered “strange.” Some felt it may be made of diamond. Others suggested it was covered in exotic fluids.

So an international team of astronomers headed up by the University of Cambridge has examined data captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope about this 40 light-year-distant “super-Earth.”

Harvard University Unveils Plans for Its Science and Engineering Center — By John Gendall | Architectural Digest

“Once a quaint academic village on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard, like so many other research universities, has transformed itself into a vast 21st-century institution whose significant landholdings are developed on a larger, urban scale. Part of this evolution has involved an expansion across the Charles, into the Allston area of Boston.”

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Relatively slow greenhouse injections triggered ancient hothouse — By Eric Hand | Science

“There is a cautionary tale buried in Earth’s past. Some 56 million years ago, about 10 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct, a massive amount of carbon surged into the atmosphere, triggering a rise in temperature of 5°C. Scientists often look to the so-called Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) as an analog for today’s rising temperatures, because the magnitude of that ancient carbon injection is thought to be comparable to what humans will release if fossil fuel emissions continue unabated for a few more centuries.”

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