“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.”
Read more Is it time for a new Noah’s Arc? A few facts about global sea level rise
We have always been interested in what lives and grows around us. This desire to understand the world is one of our most admirable qualities and, at the same time, basic science in its purest form. It was, no doubt, this kind of science that paved the way for the development of civilization.
Christmas looks quite similar in most Polish homes. Christmas dishes may vary from region to region, and so may local customs, but on the whole, there are more similarities between us Poles than there are differences. Outside our country’s geographical borders, there are two more places where Christmas is celebrated the Polish way. What are these places? The permanent Polish research stations in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
Equipped with central heating, air-conditioning, fridges, clothes and home insulation, we’ve grown used to the fact that technology makes us independent of outside conditions, enabling us to live in the least welcoming corners of the globe throughout the year. The ongoing technological advancement expands the natural tolerance ranges of the Homo sapiens, making our innate limitations increasingly irrelevant and giving us the confidence to brave even the bitter cold of Antarctica. Thanks to technology, the only continent where no indigenous civilization has ever emerged is now home for scientists who study the region from the comfort of Antarctic research stations.
Read more The warm and the cold: how humans have adapted to polar conditions
Looking at Poland cleared of quaternary sediments, we can notice some topographic variety only in the southern part of the country. The rest is nothing but a vast boggy plain, which replaced what had once been extensive shallow seas and inland lakes. And so we should be grateful to ice sheets for leaving us a land covered with a wide assortment of sediments and rich in magnificent landscape features.
The Arctic calls for a redefinition. It no longer resembles what it used to be a century ago. Apart from its geographical location and geopolitical situation, it is practically a whole new entity. The question arises, therefore, whether we should give it a new name or revise what the original one stands for.
