June 30, 1908, 7:14 a.m., central Siberia—Semen Semenov, a local farmer, saw “the sky split in two. Fire appeared high and wide over the forest.... From ... where the fire was, came strong heat.... Then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few yards.... After that such noise came, as if . . . cannons were firing, the earth shook ...”
Such is the harrowing testimony of one of the closest eyewitnesses to what scientists call the Tunguska event , the largest impact of a cosmic body to occur on the earth during modern human history . Semenov experienced a raging conflagration some 65 kilometers (40 miles) from ground zero, but the effects of the blast rippled out far into northern Europe and Central Asia as well. Some people saw massive, silvery clouds and brilliant, colored sunsets on the horizon, whereas others witnessed luminescent skies at night—Londoners, for instance, could plainly read newsprint at midnight without artificial lights. Geophysical observatories placed the source of the anomalous seismic and pressure waves they had recorded in a remote section of Siberia. The epicenter lay close to the river Podkamennaya Tunguska, an uninhabited area of swampy taiga forest that stays frozen for eight or nine months of the year. Ever since the Tunguska event, scientists and lay enthusiasts alike have wondered what caused it. Although most observers generally accept that some kind of cosmic body, either an asteroid or a comet, exploded in the sky above Siberia , no one has yet found fragments of the object or any impact craters in the affected region. The mystery remains unsolved, but our research team, only the latest of a steady stream of investigators who have scoured the area, may be closing in on a discovery that will change our understanding of what happened that fateful morning.
If you still live with your parents, wear a zip-up cardigan over your collar and tie, have enamel badges in your lapel and don't get out much because you're too busy curating your collection of Star Trek memorabilia, it has been quite a week. While the rest of the country has been fussing over such trivia as Zim-babwe, you've been tabulating the latest activities of forces beyond our galaxy.
On Wednesday you awoke to a Sun exclusive from Shropshire: "A shaken soldier told last night how he saw 13 UFOs spinning in the skies above his military barracks." Not to be outdone, the Hastings Observer reported a woman's sighting of strange orange lights above the resort, and asked: "Are aliens the latest visitors to Hastings?" The following day, it was "orange orbs" over Liverpool, and The Sun's further report from Salop: "A mum who insists she was abducted by aliens on the A5 said yesterday, 'I knew they'd be back'."
Only the week before, according to the ever-vigilant Sun, a "flying saucer-shaped" object "attacked" a police helicopter over Cardiff. The story got so much coverage that, within days, hundreds of sightings were coming into the newspaper.
The true impact of an asteroid or comet crashing near the Chesapeake Bay 35 million years ago has been examined in detail for the first time. The analysis reveals the resilience of life in the aftermath of disaster.
The impact crater, which is buried under 400 to 1,200 feet (120 to 365 meters) of sand, silt and clay, spans twice the length of Manhattan. The sprawling depression helped create what would eventually become Chesapeake Bay. About 10,000 years ago, ice sheets began to melt and once-dry river valleys filled with water. The rivers of the Chesapeake region converged directly over the buried crater, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Gregory Gohn of the USGS and his colleagues analyzed samples from two deep holes drilled into the crater near its center.
Within seconds of the object's touchdown, rocks were flung high into the air. The force of the impact carved a colossal cavity and caused temperatures to skyrocket, turning brittle rocks into taffy. Then, material along the cavity's rim surged downhill into the bowl-shaped depression like an avalanche. The extreme heat, the researchers say, killed off most life . However, they found abundant microbes living today in the deepest parts of the crater. Some of the ancient bacteria would have survived the impact, the researchers say, because their little hideouts didn't feel the brunt of the heat. The rest of the abundant and newly discovered microbial life is thought to have recolonized the zapped area possibly tens of thousands of years following the impact when temperatures dropped to habitable levels.
As fuel prices soar, Alaskan officials announced the exploration of the state's volcanoes, saying they could be exploited to provide energy for thousands of homes.
'High prices and climate change are definitely creating a renaissance in geothermal interest'
Companies are being invited to lease the rights to explore geothermal resources beneath Mount Spurr, a snowcapped 11,070-foot volcano that most recently erupted in 1992 showering much of Anchorage with volcanic ash.
The state Division of Oil and Gas hopes the lease sale, due to go ahead in August, will be the first of many. It is also considering allowing exploration of the 4,134-foot Augustine Volcano, 171 miles southwest of Anchorage.
The move echoes a trend underway across much of the US as fuel prices, worries about dependence on foreign oil and climate change trigger a surge in geothermal projects, particularly in the West and along the Gulf Coast.
According to experts, America is only just waking up to the ancient power source lying beneath dozens of states that has the potential to supply as much as 25 percent of the nation's energy needs.
"High prices and climate change are definitely creating a renaissance in geothermal interest, particularly on a state and local level," said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.
"There really is a tremendous amount going on right now."
A design flaw in Britain's nuclear arsenal means that warheads could set off a chain reaction "like popcorn" if they were accidentally dropped, according to Ministry of Defence documents. More than 1,700 warheads are affected by the problem which would cause them to explode one after another, an effect known as "popcorning."
A typical Trident nuclear missile contains three to six warheads, and some submarines carry up to 24 missiles, meaning the potential for disaster could be huge. Defence companies try to prevent accidental explosions of warheads by designing them to be "singlepoint safe" which means that a sudden knock at a single point should not detonate the plutonium core.
The typical scenario would see the weapon being dropped from a crane while being loaded on or off a submarine.
The puzzle of why the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars look so different may now have been solved.
Mars' crust is thicker in the southern hemisphere, and magnetic anomalies are found in the south but not the north.
New studies in Nature magazine suggest that a massive space rock smashing into the planet could have created an abrupt disparity between the two halves.
This asteroid would have been close to the size of Earth's moon and hit Mars' northern regions, scientists say.
According to one group of researchers, the rock struck with an energy equivalent to one million billion atomic bombs like the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.
Mars' northern hemisphere is an enormous lowland basin which might once have held a mighty ocean.
Fire crews joined aircraft from neighboring states Tuesday to battle hundreds of lightning-caused wildfires across Northern California.
One of the fires started by weekend thunderstorms had already blackened more than 10,000 acres—nearly 16 square miles—in a rural area of Lake County, about 120 miles north of San Francisco. No homes had been destroyed, but officials said voluntary evacuations were in place for residents of 36 homes.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was told late Sunday evening that the state had 520 fires, and he found it "quite shocking" that by Monday morning the number had risen above 700. Moments later, a top state fire official standing at Schwarzenegger's side offered a grim update. The figure was actually 842 fires, said Del Walters, assistant regional chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. All but a couple were in the northern part of the state. "This is an unprecedented lightning storm in California, that it lasted as long as it did, 5,000 to 6,000 lightning strikes," Walters said. "We are finding fires all the time."
Thousands of people in the Netherlands say they expect the world to end in 2012, and many say they are taking precautions to prepare for the apocalypse.
The Dutch-language de Volkskrant newspaper said it spoke to thousands of believers in the impending end of civilization, and while theories on the supposed catastrophe varied, most tied the 2012 date to the end of the Mayan calendar, Radio Netherlands reported Monday.
De Volkskrant said many of those interviewed are stocking up on emergency supplies, including life rafts and other equipment. Some who spoke to the newspaper were optimistic about the end of civilization.
"You know, maybe it's really not that bad that the Netherlands will be destroyed," Petra Faile said. "I don't like it here anymore. Take immigration, for example. They keep letting people in. And then we have to build more houses, which makes the Netherlands even heavier. The country will sink even lower, which will make the flooding worse."
Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment, a report has concluded.
The document addresses fears that the Large Hadron Collider is so energetic, it could have unforeseen consequences.
Critics are worried that mini-black holes made at the soon-to-open facility on the French-Swiss border might threaten the Earth's very existence.
But the report, issued the European Organization for Nuclear Research, says there is "no conceivable danger". The organization - known better by its French acronym, Cern - will operate the collider underground in a 27km-long tunnel near Geneva.
This Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a powerful and complicated machine, which will smash together protons at super-fast speeds in a bid to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
Councils have been urged to stop using controversial surveillance powers for "trivial" offences.
Bosses have been warned by the head of the Local Government Association (LGA) that they risk alienating the public for so-called snooping.
They may also be stripped of the right to use spying methods.
But Sir Simon Milton defended councils that used surveillance to tackle fly tippers, rogue traders and tax and benefit fraudsters.
There has been growing anger about the methods used by councils to probe minor crimes, such as dog fouling.
The powers were introduced under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act as part of the Government's anti-terror drive but it is claimed some councils are abusing the powers.
Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.
Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.
Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
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The building blocks of genes have been found in a meteorite, raising the prospect of life originating with the aid of extraterrestrial molecules that came from space more than 3.6 billion years ago.
Scientists have found that the meteorite contains complex organic chemicals which can be used to make self-replicating molecules that are the essential genetic ingredient of all known lifeforms – DNA and RNA.
Although organic molecules such as sugars and amino acids have been found in meteorites before, it is the first time scientists have found evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial compounds that can be used to make genes. The two substances are called uracil and xanthine and they are the precursors of the building-block molecules, known as nucleobases, that help store and transmit genetic information from one generation to the next – one of the vital signs of life.
Scientists found the two building blocks during analysis of a meteorite that fell near the Australian town of Murchison on 28 September 1969. The Murchison meteorite had already been shown to contain sugars and phosphates, two other essential ingredients of DNA and RNA.
Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could our society actually be heading towards collapse? According to many of the world's top scientists, the answer is yes, unless we take action now.
This September, in Earth 2100, a dramatic ABC News 2-hour broadcast, the greatest minds across the globe will join together in a countdown to the year 2100 to tell us what we must do to survive the next century … And what may happen if we don't. The time to act is now, says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute.
"The 21st century is going to be the century which determine[s] whether we live or die as a sustainable species," Gleick said. "As populations grow, as our use of resources grows, I think we get closer and closer to that edge." Experts say that extreme changes in climate, combined with dwindling resources, famine, war and disease have the potential to create a post-apocalyptic world in less than a hundred years.
The study was carried out over the course of a decade
Rising water from the Cedar River forced the evacuation of a downtown hospital Friday after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 400 city blocks were under water.
Cedar Rapids was the hardest-hit city in Iowa, where Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties as state disaster areas and nine rivers were at or above historic flood levels. Elsewhere in the upper Midwest, rivers and streams tipping their banks forced evacuations, closed roads, and even threatened drinking water.
The hospital's 176 patients, including about 30 patients in a nursing home facility at the hospital, were being evacuated to other hospitals in the region. The evacuation started late Thursday night and continued Friday morning in the city of 124,000 residents.
A space telescope built to observe the most violent events in the universe has been given the all-clear to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida today.
Nasa's Glast mission will scour the universe for gamma rays, which are released by supermassive black holes, merging neutron stars and streams of hot gas that hurtle through space at tremendous speeds.
The $690m space observatory will take pictures of the gamma ray universe, shedding light on mysteries such as the source of cosmic rays and how black holes can accelerate immense jets of material to nearly the speed of light.
The US space agency has set a launch window for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (Glast) between 16.45 and 18.40 BST (11.45am and 1.40pm EDT), but said there was a 40% chance that bad weather would delay the mission.
ilitary crews joined desperate sandbagging operations Monday as Indiana streams flooded to record levels, while the East Coast turned into a steam bath with temperatures simmering toward the century mark.
Nine deaths were blamed on stormy weekend weather, most in the Midwest. Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle declared an emergency for 29 counties and President Bush late Sunday declared a major disaster in 29 Indiana counties. Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said nearly a third of his state's 99 counties need federal help.
Rivers in the Midwest swelled with the runoff from heavy weekend rainfall, topped by the 11 inches that fell Saturday in Indiana, and reservoirs overflowed their dams in Wisconsin.
"This thing came on fast with such a radical deluge of water that people were describing going from a feeling of security to waist-deep water in a matter or 15 or 20 minutes," said Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who canceled a trade mission to Japan.
The calendar may say spring but the temperatures in the East definitely say summer.
Heat advisories were posted Monday from the Carolinas to Connecticut, with temperatures expected to hit 100 from Georgia to New York, the National Weather Service said.
In the New York City area, the National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning and predicts 100-degree weather Monday that could feel five degrees sweatier with the humidity.
Nuclear war will begin next Thursday, June 12, or sooner, according to the latest prediction of self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, the founder of a religious sect in Abilene, Texas.
"It could be turned loose before then," Hawkins told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast tonight. "You're going to see this very soon, really soon," he said.
Hundreds of truck trailers have been loaded with food and water on the group's 44-acre compound, in preparation for the coming war.
Unfortunately for Hawkins, it is not the first time he predicted the outbreak of nuclear war. Most recently, Hawkins set Sept. 12, 2006 as the beginning of the end. His followers produced an on-line video with a countdown to doomsday.
In Kenya, hundreds of his followers actually hid in basement bomb shelters and donned gas masks on the date. They went home in humiliation when there was no war.
Wicked weekend storms pounded the country from the Midwest to the East Coast, forcing hundreds of people to flee flooded communities, spawning tornadoes that tore up houses and killing at least eight people.
Rescuers in boats continued to pluck people from rising waters in Indiana on Sunday, a day after more than 10 inches of rain deluged much of the state.
In Iowa, pumps and thousands of sandbags were sent to the Iowa City area, where officials fear a reservoir could top a spillway and flood the city of about 63,000 by Tuesday.
The Indiana flooding killed at least one person, a man who drowned in his vehicle about 50 miles south of Indianapolis, said John Erickson, a spokesman for the state Department of Homeland Security. Another person was reported missing after falling off a boat about 30 miles southwest of Indianapolis.
A catastrophic water shortage could prove an even bigger threat to mankind this century than soaring food prices and the relentless exhaustion of energy reserves, according to a panel of global experts at the Goldman Sachs "Top Five Risks" conference.
Nicholas (Lord) Stern, author of the Government's Stern Review on the economics of climate change, warned that underground aquifers could run dry at the same time as melting glaciers play havoc with fresh supplies of usable water.
"The glaciers on the Himalayas are retreating, and they are the sponge that holds the water back in the rainy season. We're facing the risk of extreme run-off, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it," he said.
"A few hundred square miles of the Himalayas are the source for all the major rivers of Asia - the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze - where 3bn people live. That's almost half the world's population," he said.
