Here’s Why the Rift Valley May Not Be the Exclusive Cradle of Humankind
The idea that the East African Rift System (EARS) is the exclusive cradle of humankind may be outdated. While much of our knowledge about early humans stems from fossils found in this region, this narrative is shaped by the fact that fossils only survive in specific conditions, such as those found in sedimentary basins like the Great Rift Valley. This narrow focus overlooks the likelihood that early humans lived in many other areas across Africa, where fossils may not have been preserved.
The Rift Valley: A Fragment of a Larger Puzzle
The Great Rift Valley, particularly sites like Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, has produced significant discoveries, such as the remains of Paranthropus boisei and Homo habilis, extinct hominid species belonging to the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa respectively, about 2.5 to 1.15 million years ago. However, the Rift covers less than one percent of the African continent. Given that early humans likely roamed much wider areas, our understanding of human evolution is based on a fragment of the available evidence. Modern mammals, for example, occupy much larger habitats, suggesting that early humans did too.
Missing Pieces in the Evolutionary Puzzle
Research indicates that focusing solely on the Rift Valley may lead to an incomplete understanding of early human diversity. Studies of African primates show variations in size and morphology across different regions, variations that would be missed if we only looked at the Rift Valley. The same might hold true for early hominins, whose remains outside the Rift have not been found or have been lost over time. This raises questions about how representative the Rift Valley fossils are of early human evolution.
Conclusion: Expanding the Search Beyond the Rift
In conclusion, the focus on the Rift Valley has shaped our understanding of human evolution, but it’s important to recognize that early humans likely lived in a broader range of environments across Africa. This realization prompts a reevaluation of the Rift Valley’s role as the singular “Cradle of Humankind” and highlights the need to search beyond this region to fill in the gaps in the human story.
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In a groundbreaking experiment, gold has defied the expectations that it was still solid even after being heated above the standard temperature. With the help of rapid laser bursts, the scientists could superheat gold beyond the entropy catastrophe, which is a theoretical boundary at which solids need to melt due to extreme heat. To the surprise, the gold was in the structure temporarily, and then it led to the rethinking of how matter behaves when provided with intense conditions. Such a rare phenomenon is known as superheating, where the heating happens so fast that atoms don’t get enough time to reorganise themselves into a liquid.
Gold Withstands the Entropy Catastrophe: What Is Superheating?
As per Science Alert, the atomic structure of gold resisted melting and absorbed the heat quickly, even faster than the response of its atoms. Scientists performed this study at 19,000 Kelvin, and gold remained solid for 2 picoseconds, which is enough to challenge the theory of physics.
Conventionally, the physicist believed that solids could not survive heat more than three times their melting point. This experiment, although pushed gold to 14 times the threshold, with the help of advanced techniques, which involved X-ray reflections to track the heat absorption accurately. The findings suggest that the materials can resist melting beyond the previously known boundaries; however, only for brief moments, which are difficult to even imagine.
Could Other Solids Resist Melting Like Gold? What This Means for Future Research
The results found by the scientists don’t change the law of thermodynamics. However, they suggest that such laws cannot be completely applied in ultra-fast reactions, and atoms cannot move or rearrange in this much time. Most importantly, gold had no place to go, and this let it remain solid even after heating to unexpected temperatures.
This unlocks the new possibilities fr understanding the extreme situations, from the impact of asteroids to the nuclear reactors. Scientists now wonder if other solids could also show the same tolerance, and rule out the current model of melting points, which need to be known altogether. Science must revisit the question asked by one scientist that how hot can you make something before melting?
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Astronomers have found a vast, never-before-noticed reservoir of stellar material, hundreds of light-years across, lurking in a cold, dark, starless swath of our galaxy. It’s dubbed the Midpoint Cloud and was identified using the Green Bank Telescope; it appears to channel dense clouds of material into the heart of our galaxy. It harbours active regions filled with dense dust lanes and star formation possibilities. These lanes could be bringing twisted matter into the galaxy’s central bar, shaping how stars form in this extreme environment and offering a rare snapshot of the first stages of a galaxy’s evolution.
Newly Found Midpoint Cloud May Be Key to Star Formation in the Milky Way’s Core
As per the study, researchers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory confirmed the size and shape of the GMC based on mass, density, and movement. The gassy chaos in the cloud mirrors the caustic turmoil at the galactic centre, yielding measurements from a faint object that says something about an energetic event 200 light-years distant. That could be a link from the field-like tranquillity of our own Milky Way’s disk to the mayhem of its core.
Perhaps analogously to gas channels, a thick dust lane in the Midpoint cloud could supply the central stellar bar fragment with fresh gas, again supporting an interpretation that star formation is inhibited in this region by the strong gravitational potential. But regions like the Midpoint could collect such thick gas, spurring the birth of new stars.
The team classified Knot E as a compact gas clump whose material has been eroded by both star radiation and a maser, or microwave emission, within a cloud. A shell-like feature suggests earlier supernova explosions, like those the deaths of massive stars in the region might have initiated.
The Midpoint cloud Larry Morgan, of the Green Bank Observatory, discovered is a valuable clue in our knowledge of how galaxies evolve and form stars near their centers. The finding could give scientists a way to learn how matter flows inward across the cosmos, one hidden cloud at a time.
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