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| Sandia supercomputers offer new explanation of Tunguska disaster |
| The stunning amount of forest devastation at Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid only a fraction as large as previously published estimates, Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer simulations suggest. |
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| DEVASTATING ANCIENT METEOR IMPACT OFF AUSTRALIA? |
| A massive dent hidden under the seabed off the north west coast of Australia could be evidence of a meteor impact responsible for the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, scientists say. |
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| METEORITE TOO EARLY TO KILL DINOSAURS |
| An ancient meteorite collision that created a vast crater off the coast of Mexico may not have triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to an international team of scientists. |
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| UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ARCHAEOLOGIST, COLLEAGUES HOT ON THE TRAIL OF ANCIENT PERSIAN WARSHIPS |
| An international research team including a University of Colorado at Boulder professor has mounted a deep-water search off the northern coast of Greece in search of a fleet of Persian warships presumed lost in a massive ocean storm in 492 B.C. |
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| GIANT BUBBLES COULD SINK SHIPS, SAY MATHS EXPERTS |
| Methane bubbles from the sea floor could be responsible for the mysterious sinking of ships in areas like the Bermuda Triangle and the North Sea, new Australian research confirms. |
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| BENDS MAY BE CULPRIT IN WHALE STRANDINGS |
| Gas filled bubbles discovered in the damaged tissues of stranded whales provide new evidence that military sonar can give whales the bends.
An international team of scientists led by Dr P. D. Jepson of the Zoological Society of London report their findings in today’s issue of the journal Nature. |
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| WHALING MAY HAVE DECIMATED SEALS, SEA LIONS |
| Crashes in seal, sea lion and sea otter populations in some parts of the world may have occurred because intense commercial whaling forced killer whales to turn to new prey for food, a new U.S. study suggests. |
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| METHANE ERUPTION BLAMED FOR MASS EXTINCTION |
| A massive explosion of colourless, odourless natural gas erupting from the ocean depths may have caused the worst mass extinction in the Earth's history some 251 million years ago, according to U.S. geologists. |
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| ANCIENT SUPERFLOOD BROUGHT CLIMATE CHAOS |
| A catastrophic 'superflood' following the rupture of a massive glacier-dammed lake in Canada at the end of the Ice Age probably plunged the world into centuries of climatic chaos. |
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| DEEP CARBON COULD TRIGGER MASS EXTINCTION |
| A vast reservoir of carbon is stashed beneath the Earth's crust and could be released by a major volcanic eruption, unleashing a mass extinction of the kind that last occurred 200 million years ago, German geologists report. |
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| DINOSAURS DOOMED EVEN BEFORE IMPACT: SCIENTISTS |
| The dinosaurs were probably heading for extinction even before an asteroid strike wiped them out 65 million years ago, argue New Zealand scientists. |
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| ANCIENT DUNG REVEALS A PICTURE OF THE PAST |
| The successful dating of the most ancient genetic material yet may allow scientists to use preserved DNA from sources such as mammoth dung to help paint a picture of past environments. |
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| FACT OR FICTION: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER AN ASTEROID COLLIDES WITH EARTH? |
| While Hollywood's film industry has explored the possibility of a catastrophic asteroid or comet colliding with the Earth, off screen there are no plans in place for civil defense in case an unexpected impact occurs, no international agreements on how to respond if a threatening asteroid is found, and no current studies of deflection technology. Although the annual probability of a large impact is extremely small, the consequences would be so great that it is necessary to understand and establish realistic societal goals, scientists said today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting. |
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| DINOSAURS EXPERIENCED CLIMATE CHANGES BEFORE K-T COLLISION |
| Climate change had little to do with the demise of the dinosaurs, but the last million years before their extinction had a complex pattern of warming and cooling events that are important to our understanding of the end of their reign, according to geologists. |
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| GHOSTLY ASTEROIDS CLUE TO MISSING MATTER |
| Astronomers have lost thousands of comets. A University of Melbourne physicist thinks they may still be there, just invisible and some of them potentially on a collision course with Earth.
Dr Robert Foot suggests that many of the missing comets could be made of an exotic material called 'mirror matter', a new type of invisible matter that a small group of physicists believe could be the elusive 'dark matter'. Dark matter is considered the cosmic scaffolding that makes up most of the universe, but nobody can identify it. |
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| NEW STUDY SHEDS LIGHT ON FROG MALFORMATIONS |
| The emergence of mutant frogs with extra arms and legs may smack of a low-budget sci-fi script. But it is a reality, and a new study provides more evidence that ultraviolet radiation could be responsible. The findings are reported in three consecutive papers in the July 1 print issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. |
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| NEW WAVE SUPERCOMPUTERS CATCH BIG WAVES |
| The new wave in computing - super-fast machines churning out three-dimensional models viewable in high-tech, immersive theaters - may teach us more about the big waves that sometimes threaten people who live near the seashore. |
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| WHY THE BIG ANIMALS WENT DOWN IN THE PLEISTOCENE-WAS IT JUST THE CLIMATE? |
| There wasn't anything special about the climate changes that ended the Pleistocene. They were similar to previous climate changes as recorded in deep sea cores. So what tipped the scale and caused the extinction? |
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