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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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| KILLER TSUNAMIS IF ASTEROID HITS EARTH IN 2880 |
| An asteroid headed for Earth in 2880 could - if it collides - trigger massive tsunami waves that would drown many coastal areas, U.S. scientists have calculated. |
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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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| THREAT TO EARTH FROM SUPERNOVA BLAST FALLS |
| The likelihood of a supernova explosion that would strip off the Earth's protective ozone layer for decades and imperil life has been reduced to a remote threat, according to new calculations by American astrophysicists. |
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| COSMIC RAYS LINKED TO GLOBAL WARMING |
| Researchers studying global warming have often been confounded by the differences between observed increases in surface-level temperatures and unchanging low-atmosphere temperatures. Because of this discrepancy, some have argued that global warming is unproven, suggesting instead that true warming should show uniformly elevated temperatures from the surface through the atmosphere. Researchers have proposed a theory that changes in cloud cover could help explain the puzzling phenomenon, but none-until now-have come up with an argument that could account for the varying heat profiles. |
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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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| THE SUN'S CHILLY IMPACT ON EARTH |
| A new NASA computer climate model reinforces the long-standing theory that low solar activity could have changed the atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere from the 1400s to the 1700s and triggered a "Little Ice Age" in several regions including North America and Europe. Changes in the sun's energy was one of the biggest factors influencing climate change during this period, but have since been superceded by greenhouse gases due to the industrial revolution. |
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| DINO-METEOR CAUSED WORLDWIDE DEVASTATION |
| New evidence shows that the meteor that hit the Earth 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs caused destruction on a global scale. Previous evidence has been limited to North America. |
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