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About 35 million years ago, when dinosaurs were already extinct but the Appalachian Mountains were still covered in tropical rain forests, an asteroid more than a mile wide, moving at supersonic speed, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off North America.

Traveling at about 70,000 miles per hour, the asteroid or comet dove through several hundred feet of water and several thousand feet of mud and sediment. Billions of tons of ocean water were propelled into the air as high as 30 miles and vaporized. Millions of tons of debris and rocks were ejected into the atmosphere. The collision incinerated everything along the East Coast, triggered gigantic tsunamis, and destroyed marine life in the surrounding area.
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An newly-evolved species has a much better chance of surviving for a long time if it first appears right after a mass extinction. University of Cincinnati geologist Arnold Miller has found that the trend holds true no matter what was the ultimate cause of each mass extinction. New species were more widespread and fared better over the long run.

Miller used a database of marine fossils to examine longevity trends throughout the Phanerozoic era of the last 540 million years. In four separate cases, he found that creatures that first appeared following mass extinctions survived for longer periods of time than those that appeared at other times.
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Britain?s foot and mouth epidemic may have been caused by a cloud of infected dust blown from the Sahara, according to scientists. They have linked the outbreak to a massive cloud of sand that swirled out of northern Africa several days before the disease was first reported.

Dr. Dale Griffin, of the U.S. Geological Survey, says, ?Satellite images show a dust cloud moving over the Atlantic and reaching Britain on February 13th. One week later, foot and mouth broke out in the UK. Given that the disease?s incubation period is seven days, that is one heck of a coincidence.?
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Osama bin Laden?s detailed plans for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs were found in one of its Kabul headquarters. The partly burned documents were left in a hastily abandoned safe house. Written in Arabic, German, Urdu and English, the notes give detailed designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. They include descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction.

Nuclear experts say the design suggests that bin Laden may be working on a fission device, similar to Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. However, they emphasize that it is extremely difficult to build.
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