
CNN
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It appears in satellite pictures like great blotches of blue and green ink; swirling, spreading, sinking into parchment paper.
In Australia’s arid center, those blotches represent a new inland sea, born from a deluge that has traveled hundreds of miles through the veins of a giant, parched continent.
The rare event is now breathing life into the desert, bringing mammals, birds and tourists to the heart of the Australian outback.
“Imponderable” is how ecologist Richard Kingsford of the University of New South Wales describes the possibilities for scientific discovery offered by the rise of this sudden oasis in one of the world’s…