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We know that dark matter constitutes 85 per cent of all the matter in the Universe, but we do not know of what it is made. Among the many dark matter candidates proposed, WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) occupy a special place. The moment of truth has now come for WIMPs: either we will discover them in the next five to ten years, or we will witness their inevitable decline.
China has tremendous climatic and ecological diversity, so the impacts of climate change on natural and managed systems might likewise be expected to be diverse. Yet so far systematic studies have been rare. Here, the impacts of historical and future climate change on water resources and agriculture in China are assessed. Despite clear trends in climate, the overall impacts are overshadowed by natural variability and uncertainties in crop responses and projected climate, especially precipitation.
For 350 years after Galileo's discoveries, ground-based telescopes and theoretical modelling furnished everything known about the Sun's planetary retinue. Over the past five decades, data from spacecraft sent to all the planets and some of their satellites have shown the diversity of Solar System bodies. Many planets and satellites have changed substantially since their birth, and violent events punctuate their histories.
Global climate and the atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide are correlated over recent glacial cycles, with lower partial pressure of carbon dioxide during ice ages, but the causes of the changes in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide are unknown. Here the authors review the evidence in support of the hypothesis that the Southern Ocean is an important driver of glacial/interglacial changes in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide.
The relativistic Big Bang theory is a good description of our expanding Universe. But — as discussed in this review article — a still better theory would describe a mechanism by which matter is more rapidly gathered into galaxies and groups of galaxies, better fitting the observations.