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Discovery of a 5,200 year old soft-bodied plant frozen in glacial ice in Peru reveals evidence of a massive and long-lasting climate change that happened amazingly quickly. In order for the plant to have been quick-frozen rather than killed by frost, it must have been covered by a massive snowfall that took place over just a few hours. Since then, the plant has remained frozen and has not been thawed, meaning that once this snowfall took place, no melt occurred for over five thousand years, until now. Is this evidence of a past Superstorm? Scientists are working to understand the mechanism behind what is being called an “astounding” finding.read more

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We drink bottled water because it’s “safe,” but some of it actually makes people sick. Researchers say that up to 6,000 campylobacter food poisoning infections a year in the U.K. can be traced to bottled water. This bacteria causes diarrhea and stomach aches.

Chris Bunting writes in the Independent that scientists interviewed 213 campylobacter patients and 1,144 other people who had stomach problems but were not infected by campylobacter. They discovered that the symptoms were caused by bottled water in 12% of the cases. The only worse foods were salad (21%) and chicken (31%).
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Opium production in Afghanistan is on the rise and is turning that nation back into a country run by drug lords, the way it was before the Taliban took over. UN drug agency director Antonio Maria Costa says the country is falling into the hands of “drug cartels or narco-terrorists.” This means that drug wars will escalate here in the U.S. as well.

The Taliban may have provided a haven for Osama bin-Laden and drastically curtailed women’s rights, but they also forced many farmers to stop growing opium. However, since their other crops didn’t bring them nearly as much money, farmers returned to opium growing as soon as they could and production rose to around 3,600 metric tons last year.
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Scientists are trying to figure out if life came from space. This theory would be strengthened if we found evidence that there is?or ever was?life on Mars. When we sent a Viking lander there to do tests, the results were inconclusive. Now we’ve found soil in one of the oldest and driest deserts in the world?the Atacama Desert in Chile?that’s a close match to the red soil of Mars. It may help us figure out if there’s life on Mars.
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