Predicting the end of oil has proven tricky and often controversial, but Kuwaiti scientists now say that global oil production will peak in 2014.

Their work represents an updated version of the famous Hubbert model, which correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil reserves would peak within 20 years. Many researchers have since tried using the model to predict when worldwide oil production might peak.

Some have said production already peaked. One earlier model by Swedish researchers suggested that oil would peak sometime between 2008 and 2018. And other researchers have argued there are decades to go before oil production goes into irreversible decline. The only thing they all agree on: Oil is a finite and very valuable resource. 

Sailors often whisper of monster waves when ships sink mysteriously but, until now, no one quite believed them.

As part of a project called MaxWave - which was set up to test the rumours - two Esa satellites surveyed the oceans.

During a three week period they detected 10 giant waves, all of which were over 25m (81ft) high.

Strange disappearances

Over the last two decades more than 200 super-carriers - cargo ships over 200m long - have been lost at sea. Eyewitness reports suggest many were sunk by high and violent walls of water that rose up out of calm seas.

But for years these tales of towering beasts were written off as fantasy; and many marine scientists clung to statistical models stating monstrous deviations from the normal sea state occur once every 1,000 years.

Cary Fowler - who heads the trust that oversees the seed collection, which is 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the North Pole, said the facility now houses at least one-third of the world's crop seeds.

"In my lifetime, I don't think we'll go over 1.5 million. I'd be rather surprised if we go over a million," Fowler told The Associated Press. "At that point, we'd have all the diversity in the world ... and the most secure samples." (MSNBC)

In comparison to previous years, the number of casualties from natural disasters in 2010, which is already well above 200,000, is outside the norm. Yet as in other disastrous years, the high toll this year is due largely to a single event.

Over the decade from 2000 to the end of 2009, the yearly average was 78,000, according to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR). For the 1990s, the average was 43,000, and the 1980s was 75,000. Disaster experts say the rise in tragedy is at least partly due to increases in urban populations. Last year was below the decadal average with 10,416 natural disaster-related deaths, according to the ISDR, with most resulting from a 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Sumatra, Indonesia on Sept. 30. (LIVESCIENCE)

"It's time to get ready," Michelann Ooten of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said Tuesday as she surveyed damage from a storm that destroyed five homes and tore the roofs off several others in Hammon.

The nation typically will see 70-100 tornadoes by early March, but only 42 had been reported until Monday night's Oklahoma tornado. There was only one tornado nationwide during February.

"No one would argue that we're going to see a pretty good increase in the number of severe storms," said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist with the national Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. "But each year's a little different. The number, magnitude, number of days are all very tentative at this point."

1. Earth has been more seismologically active in the past 15 years or so, says Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science & Technology. Not all seismologist agree, however.

2. San Francisco is moving toward Los Angeles at the rate of about 2 inches per year — the same pace as the growth of your fingernails — as the two sides of the San Andreas fault slip past one another. The cities will meet in several million years. However, this north-south movement also means that despite fears, California won't fall into the sea.

3. March is not earthquake month, despite what some people believe. True, on March 28, 1964, Prince William Sound, Alaska, experienced a 9.2 magnitude event — one of the biggest ever. It killed 125 people and caused $311 million in property damages. And on March 9, 1957, the Andreanof Islands, Alaska, felt a 9.1 temblor. But the next three biggest U.S. earthquakes occurred in February, November, and December. The devastating major earthquake in Chile of 2010 struck on Feb. 27. And the huge 9.3 temblor that spawned the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 occurred on Dec. 26. (Finish Reading : LiveScience.com)

The massive earthquake that struck near Maule in Chile, moved the entire city of Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west, experts have revealed.

The destructive event, which measured a magnitude of 8.8, also shifted other parts of South America as far apart as the Falkland Islands and Fortaleza, Brazil.

A graphic created by the Central and Southern Andes GPS Project. It shows the displacement in centimetres of the area surrounding the Chile earthquake epicentre. Concepcion moved the furthest at 303.9cm

Scientists measured the impact of the February 27 earthquake by comparing precise GPS locations from before the event to those 10 days later.

These revealed Chile's capital, Santiago, moved about 11 inches to the southwest. Even Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, which is 800miles from the epicentre, moved an inch.

The earthquake is believed to be the fifth most powerful since seismic measurements began.

It even knocked Earth a little off its axis. Nasa's Dr Richard Gross calculated the tremors moved the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced by about three inches. It even shortened the length of the day by about one-millionth of a second. (DailyMail UK)

Turkey's crisis center said about 100 other people were injured in the quake, which hit at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) in Elazig province, about 340 miles (550 kilometers) east of Ankara, the capital.

The earthquake, which caught many people as they slept, was centered near the village of Basyurt and followed by more than 50 aftershocks, the strongest measuring 5.5 and 5.3, the Kandilli seismology center said. (YAHOO )

The mini-cyclone which smashed into the regional capital with winds of up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour was an event which had likely not been seen since early last century, Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Kevin Parkyn said.

Some believe they were killed off by massive volcanoes , others that they were a victim of prehistoric climate change.

Now a major study claims to have conclusive proof that dinosaurs were wiped out within weeks of an asteroid the size of the Isle of Wight slamming into the Earth.

Researchers say the impact sent a vast flume of dust into the atmosphere 65 million years ago, unleashed a torrent of powerful earthquakes and triggered forest fires across North America, blocking out the sun and wiping out half of all species.

The panel of 41 international experts - including British researchers from Cambridge, Imperial College and the University of London - looked at 20 years of research to settle the long-running debate about what killed the dinosaurs.

The mass extinction event also wiped out the bird-like pterosaurs and the large marine reptiles - clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth.

Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hot spot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, British Columbia, the kind of damage that has shattered Chile.

The fault has been dormant for more than 300 years, but when it awakens - today or decades from now - the consequences could be devastating.

Recent computer simulations of a hypothetical magnitude-9 quake found that shaking could last two to five minutes - strong enough to potentially cause poorly constructed buildings from British Columbia to Northern California to collapse and severely damage highways and bridges.

Such a quake also would send powerful tsunami waves rushing to shore in minutes. While big cities such as Portland and Seattle would be protected from severe flooding, low-lying seaside communities may not be as lucky.

The earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday may have shifted the Earth's axis and created shorter days, according to scientists at Nasa. Richard Gross, a geophysicist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the 8.8 magnitude quake could have moved the Earth's axis by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8cm) – enough to shorten a day by about 1.26 microseconds.

A large quake can shift huge amounts of rock and alter the distribution of mass on the planet. When that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates, which determines the length of a day.

"The length of the day should have got shorter by 1.26 microseconds," Gross told the Bloomberg news agency. "The axis about which the Earth's mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds."

Gross previously used the technique to estimate the shift caused by the 2004 Sumatran quake that caused the Indian Ocean tsunami. That 9.1 magnitude quake shifted the Earth's axis by 2.3 milliarcseconds and shortened a day by 6.8 microseconds.