New Magazin Saleb Opinion

This sparkling burst of stars is Messier 75. It is a globular cluster: a spherical collection of stars bound together by gravity. Clusters like this orbit around galaxies and typically reside in their outer and less-crowded areas, gathering to form dense communities in the galactic suburbs. Hubble image of Messier 75, taken with the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys [Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Ferraro et al.] Messier 75 lies in our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), around 67,000 light-years away from Earth. The majority of the cluster's stars, about 400,000 in total, are found in its core; it is one of the most densely populated clusters ever found, with a phenomenal luminosity of some 180,000 times that of the Sun. No wonder it photographs so well! Discovered in 1780 by Pierre Méchain, Messier 75 was also observed by Charles Messier and added to his catalog later that year. This image of Messier 75 was captured by...

AlManar April 30, 2019 The ISIL Takfiri group’s elusive supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his first purported appearance in five years in a propaganda video released Monday, acknowledging ISIL’s defeat in the Syrian town of Baghouz while threatening “revenge” attacks. The world’s most wanted man was last seen in Mosul in 2014, announcing the birth of ISIL’s “caliphate” across swathes of Iraq and Syria, and appears to have outlived the proto-state. In the video released by ISIL’s Al-Furqan media arm, the man said to be Baghdadi referred to the months-long fight for ISIL’s final redoubt Baghouz, which ended in March. “The battle for Baghouz is over,” he said, sitting cross-legged on a cushion and addressing three men whose faces have been blurred. He referred to a string of ISIL defeats, including its onetime Iraqi capital Mosul and Sirte in Libya, but insisted the Takfiri terrorists had not “surrendered” territory. “God ordered us to wage ‘jihad.’ He did not order us to win,” h...

By Staff, MEE The US State Department designated Saudi Arabia as one of the world’s “worst violators” of religious freedoms, even as Riyadh remains one of Washington’s top allies in the region. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom [USCIRF] released its 2019 report on Monday listing Saudi Arabia in the tier one category of countries that implement severe violations of religious freedom. The annual report, released by the bipartisan organization created two decades ago, highlights the discrimination that Shia Muslims and Christians face in the country. “Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia continue to face discrimination in education, employment, and the judiciary, and lack access to senior positions in the government and military,” the 234-page report said. “As a matter of law, the Saudi government bans the public practice of non-Muslim faiths by citizens and expatriates alike. While the Saudi government has stated repeatedly that non-Muslims who are not converts from Isl...

The longevity of Earth's continents in the face of destructive tectonic activity is an essential geologic backdrop for the emergence of life on our planet. This stability depends on the underlying mantle attached to the landmasses. New research by a group of geoscientists from Carnegie, the Gemological Institute of America, and the University of Alberta demonstrates that diamonds can be used to reveal how a buoyant section of mantle beneath some of the continents became thick enough to provide long-term stability. A raw diamond from Sierra Leone with sulfur-containing mineral inclusions [Credit: Gemological Institute of America] "We've found a way to use traces of sulfur from ancient volcanoes that made its way into the mantle and eventually into diamonds to provide evidence for one particular process of continent building," explained Karen Smit of the Gemological Institute of America, lead author on the group's paper, which appears this week in Scie...

Most scientists agree that a "mass extinction" event is underway on Earth, with species disappearing hundreds of time quicker under the influence of human activity. Graphic on Earth's 'mass extinctions' during the last 500 years [Credit: Alain Bommenel/AFP] But this is not the first: over the last half-billion years there have been five major wipeouts in which well over half of living creatures disappeared within a geological blink of the eye. All told, more than 90 percent of organisms that have ever strode, swam, soared or slithered on Earth are now gone. Here are the biggest die-offs, each showing up in the fossil record at the boundary between two geological periods: Ordovician extinction When: about 445 million years ago Species lost: 60-70 percent Likely cause: Short but intense ice age Most life at this time was in the oceans. It is thought that the rapid, planet-wide formation of glaciers froze much of the world's water, ca...

There are two primary causes of global mean sea level rise - added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers, and the expansion of sea water as it warms. The melting of Antarctica's ice sheet is currently responsible for 20-25% of global sea level rise. But how much of a role will it play hundreds of years in the future? Thwaites Glacier [Credit: NASA/James Yungel] Scientists rely on precise numerical models to answer questions like this one. As the models used in predicting long-term sea level rise improve, so too do the projections derived from them. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have discovered a way to make current models more accurate. In doing so, they have also gotten one step closer to understanding what Antarctica's ice sheet - and the sea level rise that occurs as it melts - will look like centuries from now. "Unlike most current models, we included solid Earth processes - such as the elastic rebound...