El Dorado, the legendary city of gold, did exist and was even evangelized by Jesuit missionaries, according to Mario Polia, an archeologist at Lima University in Peru.
The mythical city was called Paititi by the Incas and El Dorado by the Spaniards, is believed to have been the last place of refuge for the Incas when they fled with their treasures from the advancing Spanish conquerors in 1532.
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A French company will build 40,000 taxis that run on nothing but air for use in Mexico City, the most polluted city on Earth. Guy Negre, a former designer of engines for Formula 1 cars and lightweight aircraft, has been working on his ?zero pollution? design for almost 10 years. The engine gets its power from 80 gallons of air, compressed to 300 times atmospheric pressure. Negre says tests indicate that it can run for 120 miles in an urban environment, at a speed of 30 mph, and it can reach a top speed of up to 60 mph.
To recharging the car, the driver would stop at an ?air pumping? station, where the tanks would be refilled. The stop would take less than five minutes.
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Professor Mark Meier of the University of Colorado says scientists have seriously underestimated the rise in sea levels that will occur this century. His team came to this conclusion by examining the rate at which glaciers and ice caps are melting because of rising temperatures on Earth.
They say these areas to be retreating far faster than previously thought, and the run-off waters will lift the height of the oceans well above that recently predicted by the UN?s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. ?The glacier wastage at the moment is unprecedented,? Meier says. ?In some glaciers, like the South Cascade Glacier in Washington that I have studied for years, we know that the present rate of melting is greater than it ever has been for the last 5,000 years.?
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One day, a giant wave, 425 feet high, traveling 125 mph, could crash into Sydney, Australia, wipe out the beaches of California or drench the golf courses of northeast Scotland. Mega-tsunamis have happened in the past, and no coastline in the world is safe, says Edward Bryant of Wollongong University in Australia.
He has found signs that giant waves swept over Australia, California and the Scottish coastline in the past and believes it could happen again. ?I believe St. Andrews golf course [in Scotland] is a tsunami deposit,? says Bryant.
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