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15 deserts that are worth crossing the world to see
From the world's oldest sand seas to surreal salt flats, these 15 deserts offer landscapes, cultures, and ecological wonders found nowhere else on earth
"OLDEST" · 총 69건
필터 보기현재 지수
50.3
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 87,708건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.2(균형)입니다. 긍정 4,364건(5.0%)·중립 81,197건(92.6%)·부정 2,147건(2.4%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 14.7(중도 균형)입니다.
From the world's oldest sand seas to surreal salt flats, these 15 deserts offer landscapes, cultures, and ecological wonders found nowhere else on earth
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“LOOK at that thing, dude. My gosh. There’s a whole fleet of them. They’re all going against the wind … look at that thing. It’s rotating.” While this may sound like a scene from a sci-fi film, these were the voices of US Navy aviators reacting to an object detected by military sensors, in footage later known as Gimbal. The Pentagon formally released that video, along with two others, in 2020, confirming that they showed what it described as unidentified aerial phenomena. In May 2026, the Pentagon began releasing more declassified UAP material in batches through the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, known as PURSUE — hundreds of files and more than 50 videos, including historical records of “green orbs”, “discs” and “fireballs”, as well as newer military-linked footage. This, in its simplest form, is known as the unidentified anomalous phenomena. ‘UAP’ is the modern bureaucratic term for what the world once called Unidentified Flying Objects, UFOs. The shift in language is deliberate. UFO came carrying decades of cultural baggage: flying saucers, little green men, crashed discs, secret hangars, conspiracy radio and late-night documentaries. The term ‘UAP’ gives the state a way to talk about the mystery without surrendering to the mythology. But the public does not hear it that way. For UAP enthusiasts, an object trained pilots cannot identify, detected by military systems, moving against the wind or rotating in unusual ways, is not a neutral bureaucratic category. It is the oldest question in a new form: are we alone? And, perhaps, for good reason. The existence of UAPs does not automatically mean they are alien. It means they are unresolved. For decades, the question of UFOs, now UAPs, was made ridiculous before it was examined. The official history of UFO inquiry is full of this contradiction. Governments investigated sightings because they could not ignore them, but often spoke about them as if only the foolish would take them seriously. The infamous ‘Project Blue Book’, the US Air Force’s programme to study and debunk UFOs, became the symbol of this uneasy posture: investigate the unknown, but reassure the public that nothing extraordinary is happening, all the while hundreds of those sightings or cases remained ‘unexplained’. This is the strange irony of the alien question. Hollywood has spent more than half a century making extraterrestrial life profitable. We are culturally fluent in fictional aliens, yet when real pilots, soldiers, radar operators or civilians describe something strange in the sky, the same culture suddenly becomes embarrassed. With all of the newly declassified files, that ridicule is now becoming harder to sustain. Yet as UAPs have moved from the margins into congressional hearings, official reports and military disclosure, the official position has remained cautious. The Pentagon has released videos and records, while its All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, continues to examine cases. Nasa, too, has entered the conversation, arguing for better data, better sensors and less stigma. Yet both remain careful: they acknowledge that some cases are unresolved, while Nasa’s independent study team has stated that there is no conclusive evidence in peer-reviewed scientific literature suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAPs, and that many cases remain difficult to resolve because the data is often incomplete, inconsistent or not collected scientifically. This is where the debate often polarises. One side treats every unexplained sighting as evidence of alien visitation. The other treats every mention of aliens as foolish claims. But both positions are oversimplified. The more honest position is harder. UAPs exist in the limited but important sense that there are sightings, sensor records, and official cases that remain unidentified. That does not automatically mean they are alien. It means they are unresolved. The difference matters. There is a ladder of probability. At the bottom are ordinary explanations: aircraft, balloons, birds, drones, satellites, debris, weather effects, optical illusions, camera artefacts and sensor errors. Many UAP cases eventually fall here. A distant object may appear impossibly fast because of camera angle; a sensor may misread distance; a pilot may misjudge size or speed. A classified aircraft may be unknown to the observer but not to the state. Higher up are more troubling possibilities: advanced surveillance systems, experimental military technology, unknown atmospheric phenomena, or limits in our sensors and perception. Only then does one arrive at the most dramatic explanation: non-human technology. That explanation is not impossible. It is simply not yet proven. The strongest argument for taking UAPs seriously is not that they prove aliens. It is that serious institutions now admit that some cases cannot be fully explained with the data available. That alone is significant. This is also why the release of Pentagon files should not be mistaken for an admission of first contact. A government disclosure is not the cinematic moment where the state finally confesses that visitors have arrived. It is more likely controlled transparency: a response to congressional pressure, public mistrust, national security uncertainty, and decades of secrecy. The alien question survives because both sides have something to explain. The believers must explain why there is still no public, verifiable physical evidence of extraterrestrial technology. The sceptics must explain why trained observers, military systems, and official institutions keep encountering cases that cannot be dismissed as fantasy. Between those two failures is where the real mystery lives. So, the million-dollar question: are we really alone? The universe is too vast for certainty to belong only to sceptics. It would be arrogant to assume life emerged only once, on one small planet, around one ordinary star. But it would also be careless to turn every unknown light in the sky into a visitor from another world. Even as a lifelong ‘believer’ and a UAP enthusiast who has consumed everything from official press conferences to Netflix documentaries on the subject, I suspect first contact may not arrive as a Spielberg-style landing on Earth. It may come more quietly: from one of Nasa’s missions to Europa, hidden in the chemistry of an ocean beneath ice. The writer is the founder of Media Matters for Democracy. Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2026
First HoldCo Plc (“FirstHoldCo” or “the Group”), the parent company of Nigeria’s oldest and one of its most systemically important financial institutions, FirstBank, has secured shareholders’ approval at its 14th Annual General Meeting (AGM) held on 29 May 2026 ... The post FirstHoldCo Secures Shareholder Approval for N1 Trillion Capital appeared first on Vanguard News.
In 1987, Richard Greenhill, a British photographer who was fascinated by (but had no actual training in) robotics, decided he wanted to build a life-size humanoid that could do useful things, like carrying luggage. He was working at a startup called Intergalactic Robots, but he couldn’t convince anyone there to build such a machine, so he set about building one himself, in his attic. To help with his project, he organized a weekly get-together of a dozen or so like-minded folks. Every Wednesday night, his wife, Sally, would make a big pot of spaghetti, and the group would tinker with components scavenged from old printers and picked up from junkyards. They called themselves the Shadow Group. They eventually constructed several different robots, but their main project was the two-legged Shadow Walker. In 1987, photographer Richard Greenhill organized a weekly gathering of DIY enthusiasts to work on projects in his attic, including the Shadow Walker. Richard Greenhill and David Buckley Greenhill’s friend David Buckley, a robotics and animatronics expert he’d met at Intergalactic, sketched out a rough design based on medical textbooks of human bone structure and muscle movement. The robot’s skeleton, made of maple, was greatly simplified—only one bone in the lower leg and a single wide toe on each foot. The ankle’s double-axis design allowed for two degrees of movement. The knee had no complicating kneecap. Greenhill didn’t want the robot to use motors, so its movement was controlled using compressed air to extend and contract 28 “air-muscles”—his version of a McKibben muscle, invented in the 1950s to mimic musculature with pneumatics. The muscles were connected to the bones across eight joints (hips, knees, ankles, toes), which provided 12 degrees of freedom. RELATED: The Short, Strange Life of the First Friendly Robot The robot’s headless torso held the control valves, electronics, and computer interfaces. It stood 168 centimeters tall and 46 cm wide and weighed about 38 kilograms. The group managed to get the robot to stand up reliably and balance itself; it could even regain its center if pushed a little. But walking turned out to be more of a challenge. Rich Walker joined the group as a teenager and began writing software to get the robot to stand. He was particularly interested in using neural networks to solve balancing problems, although he ran into a number of hardware obstacles, including the unreliability of the sensors and the valves, and the robot’s overall fragility. Over time, Walker and the team developed a standard library of routines to control the robot. Walker wrote a detailed description of the Shadow Walker in 1999, which is available on David Buckley’s website. The 1st International Robot Olympics By the time the Shadow Group began developing Shadow Walker, engineers in academia and industry had been working on robotics for several decades. The world’s first industrial robot, the Unimate, debuted in 1961, and in 1967 Donald Michie and others began building a series of Freddy robots to investigate machine intelligence. The IEEE created its first dedicated robotics organization in 1984 when it established the IEEE Robotics and Automation Council, which became the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in 1987. Also in 1987, the nonprofit International Federation of Robotics was established to promote research, development, use, and cooperation in the field of robotics. As Shadow Walker pushed the limits for a DIY humanoid robot, industrial humanoids were also gaining ground. In 1986, Honda began working on its experimental (E-series) and later the prototype (P-series) humanoid robots, finally unveiling the P2 in 1996. The P2 stood 183 cm tall and weighed 210 kg. It was the first humanoid capable of stable, autonomous walking. This work eventually led to the development of the groundbreaking ASIMO. Greenhill’s friend, roboticist David Buckley, consulted medical textbooks to create Shadow Walker’s humanoid design.Richard Greenhill and David Buckley In the late 1980s, the public was both fascinated and horrified by the potential of robots. Businesses saw robots as a way to increase productivity, while workers worried they would take their jobs. Children viewed them as wondrous toys, while people with disabilities embraced them as tools of liberation. Military experts hoped robots would fight wars without endangering human soldiers, while politicians pondered if robots might eventually get to vote. Philosophers thought robots could challenge our notions of intelligence (and stupidity), while the religious struggled with concerns about the human race in a robot-dominated future. Shadow Walker’s simplified anatomy included only one bone in the lower leg and a single wide toe on each foot.Science Museum Group Peter Mowforth, cofounder of the Turing Institute in Glasgow, noted these disparate visions for robots when he announced the 1st International Robot Olympics, to be held in 27 and 28 September 1990 and hosted by the Turing Institute and the University of Strathclyde. The Olympics would round up the world’s best robots and showcase them head-to-head. Mowforth himself thought all of the competing visions of robots were overblown. Steeped in machine learning research and robotics development, he knew firsthand the limitations of the state of the art: Robots rarely worked as intended, easily broke down, and glitched over seemingly trivial problems. He envisioned the Robot Olympics as a testbed to assess what the latest generation of robots could and could not do. At the 1990 Robot Olympics, held in Glasgow, Shadow Walker wore pants to conceal its pneumatic “air-muscles” from competitors.Adam Hart-Davis/Science Source The call for participation was wide open. Instead of having predetermined categories of competition, the organizers opted to see who applied to compete and then group them based on their claimed capabilities. In addition to picking the winners of individual events, the judges would select an overall Olympic champion based on the quality of the hardware, the sophistication of behavior, and novelty. Other prizes were given for young competitors, technologies that showed commercial potential, and design. In the end, more than 50 robots were entered, from a mix of universities, industry, and hobbyist groups from Canada, France, India, Japan, Mexico, the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia. There were plenty of disappointments. Trolleyman, a golf-cart-like wheeled robot, suffered a power failure while carrying the opening Olympic torch through the streets of Glasgow. The pile rug in the arena tripped up many robots that had been trained only on flat, smooth floors. David Buckley later concluded that the events were too difficult, and that the Olympics didn’t push development forward. Of course, there were winners. In a surprise triumph for vintage technology, the fully mechanical 19th-century Japanese Archer from the Museum of Automata in York, England, won gold in javelin, beating out competitors more than 100 years its junior. The overall Olympic Champion was Yamabico, Shoji Suzuki’s entry from the University of Tsukuba, in Japan, which won bronze in obstacle avoidance and gold in wall following, but was disqualified in the talking category for not speaking English. The Shadow Group had high hopes for Shadow Walker. Unfortunately, though, it failed to take a step, and the biped race was won by the Cardiff University Biped. Shadow Walker now resides in the collections of the Science Museum in London. The Legacy of Shadow Walker In 1997, a paying customer in search of a robotic leg compelled the Shadow Group to get serious and become a registered company. Shadow Robot is now Britain’s oldest robotics company. Rich Walker, who had left the Shadow Group to earn a B.A. in mathematics and a diploma in computer science at the University of Cambridge, joined Shadow Robot in 1999 as technical director. Today he’s the director of the company. Shadow Robot specializes in durable robot hands rather than walking robots. But the focus on hands is also a legacy of the Shadow Group. Walker remembers that the Shadow Group’s first humanoid hand in the late 1990s was impressive simply for being able to pick up a pint of beer (a smooth-sided, thin-walled glass). Today, Shadow Robot’s hands are testbeds for dexterity. Gone are the pneumatic muscles, replaced by actuators that move each finger with precision. The classic model contains 20 motors, allowing for abductive and adductive movement with 24 degrees of freedom. Shadow Walker’s operator wore a data suit that captured his movements and allowed the robot to copy them.Richard Greenhill In a recent blog post, Sejal Parsotomo, senior marketing executive at Shadow Robot, wrote that while humanoid robots are great for public relations, specialized dexterity is key for success: A robot that can walk into your factory may be impressive, but a robot that can reliably manipulate objects is transformative. In its struggles to take more than a few steps, the Shadow Walker showed the inherent difficulty that robots had in mastering even low-level skills. In August 2025, Beijing hosted the World Humanoid Robot Games. Competing in sports such as gymnastics, soccer, and track events, as well as more “useful” tasks like hotel cleaning and sorting medicine, these robots could literally have run circles around the competitors in the first Robot Olympics 35 years earlier. And yet, there is still so much work needed in order for robots to navigate the human-built environment. Despite the astonishing progress, we’re still not all that close to actually useful humanoid robots. Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology. An abridged version of this article appears in the June 2026 print issue as “Learning to Walk.” References Richard Greenhill gives an overview of his life and the founding of the Shadow Group in a post on Shadow Robot’s corporate website. David Buckley has a compilation of resources on the Shadow Biped Walker, including specifications from the 1999 iteration and a brochure from the 1st International Robot Olympics. There is coverage of the Robot Olympics worthy of a gossip sheet in La Repubblica and lovely footage of the competition in this TV-am interview of Peter Mowforth by Lorraine Kelly.