Word: giant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hurtling through the atmosphere at nearly 70 km per sec. (150,000 m.p.h.), the giant comet struck with catastrophic force, punching a hole some 40 km (25 miles) deep through the earth's crust and into the mantle. The violence of the collision 65 million years ago completely vaporized the 8-km-wide (5 miles) comet and blasted out a tremendous crater. Huge rocks, hurled high into the + air, rained down for hundreds of kilometers. A great fireball rose above the atmosphere, carrying with it vast amounts of pulverized debris...
...gray clay. At dozens of sites around the world, that clay has been found in a thin boundary layer between the rock of the Tertiary period and the formations of the late Cretaceous period, which ended 65 million years ago. In the Cretaceous rock lie the fossil remains of giant dinosaurs and a profusion of other species. But in the Tertiary formations, just above the clay, no trace exists of the dinosaurs or many of the other Cretaceous species...
...hours, they got their answer. Nearby Mount Pinatubo, after sleeping quietly for more than 600 years, suddenly erupted in a series of explosions that shot plumes of steam and ash as much as 30 km (20 miles) into the sky. Debris rained down on surrounding villages, and a giant mushroom cloud was visible 100 km (60 miles) away in Manila...
...number of eruptions these days is not abnormal, but human populations near the fiery mountains have been growing rapidly. Never before have the volcanoes posed such a serious threat. Some volcanologists believe, for example, that Mount Fuji has entered an active phase, raising the specter of a giant eruption only 100 km (62 miles) from Tokyo...
...from the earth's interior, transmutes the lower edge of the oceanic plate into magma. Thick with silica, this type of magma tends to solidify near the surface, forming domes and plugs that seal off the channels through which the magma rises. Such blockages turn a volcano into a giant pressure cooker. At a certain point, when the surrounding rock is no longer strong enough to hold the expanding magma, the mountain blows apart...