Word: crater
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Streaked by lightning, a black and white plume soared high above the cloud cover around the peak. Scientists who rushed to the mountain discovered that a crater 200 ft. wide by 250 ft. long had opened near the mountain's northern crest. Three hundred loggers working on the slopes, 50 forest rangers and their families and 60 residents of the tiny village of Spirit Lake (pop. 100), located at 3,200 ft., were evacuated. One defiant oldtimer, Harry Truman, 83, operator of the Mount St. Helens Lodge less than two miles from the crater, said he would stick...
...explanation. After six years of investigation, researchers at the Institute of Geochemistry and Mineral Physics in Kiev have concluded that the blast was caused by something less exotic: a meteorite. Many scientists in the past refused to accept the meteorite theory because there is no trace of any impact crater at the center of the destruction, in the isolated Tunguska area, about 950 km (590 miles) north of Irkutsk...
Then why did it not leave a crater? Anders explains that if the meteorite was of the stony type, rather than one made up mostly of iron, it could not have withstood the enormous forces created by its fiery plunge through the atmosphere. It would have exploded before impact, scattering particles over a wide region. The explosion would have produced a fireball and intense shock waves that battered everything on the ground below. Where did the meteorite originate? Slovak Astronomer Lubar Krésak has suggested that it was a chunk of Comet Encke, a periodic visitor to the earth...
...island is dominated by The Hills and The Quill, volcanic cones, now extinct. Climbing to the peak of The Quill (1,800 ft.) with a verdant rain forest in its crater is a not too strenuous 80-min. hike. An old Dutch command post, Fort Oranjestad, built on French foundations in 1636, is a neat little 16-cannon salute to colonial glories. This and several other of the island's 17 original forts are on a walking tour laid out by Statia's energetic historical foundation. One of the best beaches is on Tumble Down Dick Bay, apparently...
...megaton detonation in Boston, he said, would form a crater 300 feet deep and a half mile wide. More than two million people would be killed instantly; another five million or more would die later from injuries and radiation. And with roughly 17,000 survivors in need of care per doctor, Hiatt said effective medical treatment would be impossible...