Nine Days That Shook the World
(Top Posts - Science - 033101)

Some of the workings of our natural world follow.

Excerpts/links from disaster articles/compilation by
New Scientist magazine, originally posted in 1999
during the "pre-millennium scare" period in the months
leading up to that supposedly providentially significant
transition to the year 2000:

Introduction
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/disaster.jsp
"WHILE most people see the end of the millennium
as an excuse for a global party, a handful of doomsayers
think differently. They're predicting not just worldwide
computer meltdown, but everything from the resurgence
of AIDS and the Ebola virus to the coming of the anti-
Christ.

... For New Scientist's first millennium special, and in
the spirit of reassurance, we have put together a gallery
of our favourite catastrophes."

Firebirth (4.5 billion years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/firebirth.jsp
"The Moon was forged in a giant collision that ripped
the iron from its heart. WHEN AN ASTEROID 10
kilometres wide slammed into the Earth 65 million
years ago, it punched out a crater as big as Belgium,
darkened the atmosphere with debris and wiped out
the dinosaurs. Yet on a planetary scale that collision
was a mere love-peck. For a real cataclysm, you must
go back 4.5 billion years, to the splash that made the
Moon. ..."

Gas Attack (2.5 billion years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/gasattack.jsp
"Flooding the atmosphere with toxic fumes is one way
to wipe out your competitors. WARRIOR RACE?
Forget it. When it comes to poisoning the planet and
butchering neighbours, humans can't hold a candle to
our one-celled ancestors. Some 2.5 billion years ago,
bacteria waged chemical warfare on their fellow beings,
wiped out most of them and transformed the Earth.
You and I are still living off the proceeds: without that
act of unparalleled genocide, none of us--and nothing
like us--would exist."

Secret Strike (590 million years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/secretstri.jsp
"The biggest meteor impacts leave the biggest scars,
but you have to know where to look. LAKE ACRA-
MAN in South Australia is Armageddon for the purist.
No other meteorite impact on Earth has stamped the
surrounding rocks with such an abiding, unequivocal
record of collision, quake, wind, fire and tsunami. ..."

Meltdown (250 million years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/meltdown.jsp
"It was a searing sea of murderous lava and it was
unstoppable. FORGET THE DINOSAURS. To the
true devotee of destruction there's only one mass
extinction worth talking about. Four times as ancient
as its overhyped rival, the die-off that ended the Per-
mian period was also much more devastating. Two
hundred and fifty million years ago, it wiped out up
to 95 per cent of the species living at the time. And
no one knows how. ..."

} editorial note, added 033101 - Since this article was
} written, new evidence has revealed ...
}
} Friday, 23 February, 2001, 10:56 GMT
} Asteroid 'destroyed life 250m years ago'
} http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1184000/1184556.stm
} Excerpt: "Earth's biggest mass extinction 251 million
} years ago was triggered by a collision with a comet
} or asteroid, US scientists say. They have reached this
} conclusion by looking at atoms from a star trapped
} inside molecular cages of carbon. ... Researchers
} believe the impact and rapid extinction occurred
} simultaneously with some of the most extensive
} volcanic activity the world has ever seen - enough
} lava to cover the entire planet to a depth of three
} metres (10ft) oozed out of the ground in Siberia in
} less than one million years. ..."

Vanished (5.8 million years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/vanished.jsp
"Who pulled the plug on the Mediterranean? And
could it happen again? CANNES. MONTE CARLO.
St Tropez. Magic names, all--and much of the en-
chantment comes rom the cerulean water that laps
their shores. But what if somebody pulled the plug?
Suppose the Mediterranean Sea were to vanish,
leaving behind an expanse of salt desert the size of
India. Hard to imagine? It happened. ..."

Landslide (1 million years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/landslide.jsp
"... the Koolau volcano, whose volcanic deposits
make up half the island, split right down the middle,
and the mountain's northeast face began cascading
into the sea. Slabs of rock bigger than football pitches
tumbled into the water by the thousand. Hundreds of
blocks the size of small towns followed. One--the size
of New York City--finally came to rest 100 kilometres
from shore. When the dust settled, a tenth of the island
was gone. But worse was to come. ..."

Damburst (15,000 years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/damburst.jsp
"The marauding megafloods at the end of the ice age
were nasty, brutal and short. AFTER THE ICE came
the deluge. As warmth began to return to the Earth
15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, giant
floods of glacial meltwater engulfed North America
and Eurasia. And not wimpy Mississippi-scale floods,
either: just one of them could equal the combined flow
of all the planet's rivers. ..."

Killer Quake (300 years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/killerquak.jsp
"Beneath a drowned forest on Washington's coast,
an innocent fault line could turn violent at any moment. ...
ON A WINTER'S NIGHT in 1700, one of the great
earthquakes of this millennium jolted the American
Pacific Northwest. ..."

Boom! (185 years ago)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/disaster/boom.jsp
"Vesuvius was just a firecracker compared with the
mighty Tambora. ... The explosion of Tambora was
consigned not so much to history as to oblivion. It
took another 160 years before scientists began to
appreciate the gargantuan scale of what had hap-
pened on the night of 10 April 1815. Nothing like
it has happened for the past ten thousand years.
Think of another volcanic eruption--Vesuvius, Krak-
atoa, Mount Saint Helens--all were damp squibs
next to Tambora. ..."