Mass extinctions are phenomena that kept repeating even before humans had a chance to screw up the planet (not that we’re helping the situation now). There are five that stand out from the rest, known as the “big five,” including the fall of the dinosaurs and beginning with the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction, or LOME. While it doesn’t seem as dramatic as the last gasps of T. rex, it could tell us how close we are to devastation now, unless we turn things around.
Some 445 million years ago, when Earth was mostly covered in water, about 85% of marine species vanished. Why was a mystery until researchers Alexandre Pohl of UC Riverside, Zunli Lu of Syracuse University, and their colleagues investigated isotopes in rocks that were once submerged in water. They found that global cooling in the deep sea disrupted the entire ecosystem. Led by Pohl, the team recently published a study in Nature Geoscience.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
