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Climate change contrarians have come up with all kinds of explanations to prove that humans aren’t responsible for global warming, ranging from changes in solar activity to natural cycles in Earth’s own wobbly climate system.

One of the increasingly popular reasons given by them was cosmic rays, which contains highly energetic particles from outer space sources that are constantly bombarding our planet.

Since long, scientists have considered this argument to be baseless, and now, a latest study has further focused on this point and has proved it right.

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have reported that changes in amount of cosmic rays hitting Earth could affect temperatures only in the short term, and not in long term.

According to German researchers, many regions in Europe, Russia and the United States have been facing longer heat waves due to weakened summer winds. The researchers said that climate change has been weakening the summer winds that bring in cool ocean air.

On Thursday, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said in a report in the journal Science that Arctic region has been warming rapidly and it is disturbing air streams in ways. Due to that, Europe, Russia and the US have been facing longer heat waves. In 2010, hot weather in Russia devastated crop harvests and had caused wildfires.

Here’s good news for sky gazers as they will be able to get a glimpse of a solar eclipse on Friday, March 20th. As per astronomy experts, solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves directly between the sun and the earth.

Friday’s solar eclipse will darken the skies as the moon is expected to block approximately 86% of the sun’s light.

The eclipse will start at around 8:23 am and will last only for few minutes, said experts. However, it will be visible at the maximum partial eclipse at 9:31 am and will end by 10:41 am.

Solar eclipse are either observed as a total solar eclipse or a partial eclipse, this depends on the place where the moon’s shadow hits a small point of earth.

Two pretzels discovered during a digging operation on the banks of the Danube in the German city of Regensburg seem to be more than 300 years old, said archeologists. The pretzels are not exactly similar to the doughy product available in the state's famous beer halls today.

The pretzel fragments were put in display at the Regensburg Historical Museum this week on Thursday, said Dorothee Ott, spokeswoman for the Bavarian Office for Historical Conservation.

According to Ott, the reason behind the survival of the pretzels and other baked goods for the centuries was severe burning. They were believed to have been discarded from a bakery that was once on the site, said archeologists.

Researchers in China have developed the world’s first liquid metal robot, which has the ability to change shape and power itself.

“The soft machine looks rather intelligent and [can] deform itself according to the space it voyages in, just like [the] Terminator does from the science-fiction film”, affirmed Jing Liu from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

Liu said that the motor is made up of a gallium alloy called galinstan. Gallium has the melting point of 29.76 degrees Celsius. When gallium is combined with tin and indium having proportions of 68.5% gallium, 21.5% indium and 10% tin then the combination results into galinstan.

According to a report by King County health officials, use of e-cigarette among the county teens has witnessed an increase in the recent years. Adding to the report, the use of marijuana has remained about the same during the period, the health officials stated.

About 22% of high-school seniors have accepted that they used electronic cigarettes last year. The figure is up from only 3% in 2012. Over 14% of 10th-graders reported that they had consumed e-cigarettes in 2014, up from just 2% in 2012.

As per officials at Public Health - Seattle & King County, the figures are results of the biennial Healthy Youth Survey, which had included over 13,000 young people of the county. As per the reports, the rise is due to assumption that the device is safer than cigarettes.