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At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction — toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface. The explanation is obvious to...

The storm was nothing special. Its waves rocked the Norwegian Dawn just enough so that bartenders on the cruise ship turned to the usual palliative — free drinks. Ten, off the coast of Georgia, early on Saturday, April 16, 2005, a giant, seven-story wave appeared out of nowhere. It crashed into the bow, sent deck chairs flying, smashed windows, raced as high as the 10th deck, flooded 62 cabins, injured 4 passengers and sowed widespread fear and panic. “The ship was like a cork in a bathtub,” recalled Celestine Mcelhatton, a passenger who, along with 2,000 others, eventually made it...

A "freak wave" more than 70 feet high slammed a luxury cruise ship steaming for New York yesterday, flooding cabins, injuring passengers and forcing the liner to stop for emergency repairs. The Norwegian Dawn, an opulent ocean liner almost 1,000 feet long, limped into Charleston, S.C., yesterday afternoon after it hit vicious seas in an overnight storm off Florida - then was creamed by the rogue wave after dawn. "[My room] was destroyed by stuff getting thrown all over the place," passenger James Fraley, of Keansburg, N.J., told NBC News before embarking on the 12-hour drive home because he didn't...

GERMAN scientists claim to have explained the mystery behind so-called monster waves - the term given by oceanographers for near-vertical breaking seas up to 120ft high. Such seas are thought to have sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships without trace during the past two decades. Often dismissed as sailors' yarns, monster waves have terrified seafarers for centuries and provided the raw material for countless novels and films including Sebastian Junger's recent best-seller The Perfect Storm. Yet until now scientists and oceanographers had been unable to determine exactly what formed such gigantic "one-off" seas that are capable of breaking ...

GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally at The Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in Davenport, IA on Saturday, December 5, 2015 at 2:00 PM CST. Watch the live stream and replay of the event below.

While the eyes of the world are on ISIS, Russia is creating weapons unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Plans for a giant self-propelled nuclear torpedo that can create a giant tsunami more than 1,000 feet tall were recently "leaked by mistake" by the Russian media. Apparently the warheads on these torpedos are designed to create so much radiation "that everything living will be killed" - including those that try to survive the attack by hiding in underground shelters. These "robotic mini-submarines" would have a range of up to 10,000 kilometers and would be able to evade all...

On 16 September 2015, an 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck the coast of central Chile, triggering tsunami warnings and coastal evacuations. Lasting three minutes, this powerful earthquake occurred along the boundary of the Nazca and South American tectonic plates. By combining Sentinel-1A radar scans from 24 August and 17 September, the rainbow-coloured patterns in the image show how the surface has shifted as a result of the quake. ‘Interferograms' such as these allow scientists to quantify ground movement. By counting the ‘fringes', it is estimated that the earthquake caused a displacement of 1.4 m along the viewing direction of the radar...

Waves the size of the Chrysler building may seem like they belong in a movie trailer, but scientists have recently found that megatsunamis are all too real. Scientists say that 73,000 years ago, a large flank (or slope) from the volcanic island Fogo in the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Africa fell into the ocean and triggered a tsunami that could – quite literally – move mountains. “You’re displacing a huge mass, which must generate movement of water,” Ricardo Ramalho, the lead researcher behind the study, told The Washington Post. “And in the case of volcanic flank collapses...

Geologists think that the eastern slope of Fogo volcano crashed into the sea some 65,000 to 124,000 years ago, leaving a giant scar where a new volcano can be seen growing in this satellite image. Credit: NASA ========================================================================================================================================= Scientists working off west Africa in the Cape Verde Islands have found evidence that the sudden collapse of a volcano there tens of thousands of years ago generated an ocean tsunami that dwarfed anything ever seen by humans. The researchers say an 800-foot wave engulfed an island more than 30 miles away. The study could revive a simmering controversy over whether sudden...

Massive earthquake rocks Chile; Tsunami alert issued for Hawaii

A powerful earthquake has hit central Chile, causing buildings to sway in the capital Santiago. The 7.9-magnitude tremor centred off the coast, about 153 miles (246km) north-west of the capital. Chilean officials said it measured 7.2. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center warned that "widespread hazardous tsunami waves are possible". There were no immediate reports of damage, Chile's emergency office was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Sergio Frau suspects Plato was writing about a tidal wave on Sardinia... Writer and journalist Sergio Frau is another. After researching the island for a decade, Frau suspects a mysterious disaster that devastated Sardinia 3,200 years ago was in fact a tidal wave, which boosts the theory that Sardinia and Atlantis are one and the same, reports the Guardian. Stefano Tinti, an expert on tidal waves who recently visited the island with Frau along with a dozen other experts, says 350 tidal waves have occurred in the Mediterranean over the last 2,500 years and one might explain why all of...

Rocks with step-like cuttings, a wall and carved blocks found under the sea in the southern coast near the heritage site of Mahabalipuram are believed to be evidence of an early settlement or a port. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) came across the remains while recently conducting excavations underwater at the site in Tamil Nadu. "Mahabalipuram is a historical place. We started detailed excavation 500 metres from the shore in the sea and recently came across different types of rocks which indicate human activity. We have also found a wall running from the shore into the sea," Alok Tripathy,...

Clues to missing pagodas found AKSHAYA MUKUL TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SATURDAY, JULY 06, 2002 11:49:09 PM ] NEW DELHI: Submerged structures found off the coast of Mahabalipuram in the Bay of Bengal could well solve the mystery of seven pagodas dating back to the Pallava Period (7th Century AD). The Archaeological Survey of India’s Underwater Archaeology Wing (UAW) has discovered three walls and a number of carved architectural members of ancient temples running north to south and east to west. Also found are seven big submerged rocks 500 metres off shore. According to UAW in-charge Alok Tripathi, who undertook...

MAHABALIPURAM, India (AP) -- Archaeologists have begun underwater excavations of what is believed to be an ancient city and parts of a temple uncovered by the tsunami off the coast of a centuries-old pilgrimage town. Three rocky structures with elaborate carvings of animals have emerged near the coastal town of Mahabalipuram, which was battered by the Dec. 26 tsunami. As the waves receded, the force of the water removed sand deposits that had covered the structures, which appear to belong to a port city built in the seventh century, said T. Satyamurthy, a senior archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of...

Port Royal was called "the richest and wickedest city in the world" or "the Sodom of the New World." Suddenly, JUNE 7, 1692, an earthquake and tsunami sank Port Royal under the sea, followed by violent aftershocks...

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake has struck 194 kilometres off Japan's coast, according to United States Geological Survey (USGS), but there were no immediate reports of damage, public broadcaster NHK said. The quake, which hit off Japan's Bonin Islands, reportedly rocked buildings in Tokyo as it built in intensity about 8:30pm local time (9:30pm AEST). The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said: "There is no tsunami threat because the earthquake is located too deep inside the earth." The USGS reported the epicentre was approximately 874 kilometres south of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean, while the Japan Meteorological Agency said the earthquake had...

Admit it, there's nothing more fun than sitting in a dark theatre, munching on a bucket of buttery popcorn, and watching the Earth get demolished. In the latest round of catastrophic flicks, California is destroyed as the famous San Andreas Fault unleashes unimaginable (and unrealistic) devastation across the state. The new film, San Andreas, depicts the rupture of an unknown fault near the Hoover Dam in Nevada, which gets the destructive ball rolling by setting off powerful earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault. And although earthquakes are nothing new to Californians, and pose serious threats along the famous fault, Hollywood...

In 1989, Edward Bryant climbed a point on the southeast coast of his native Australia with a colleague and found an odd jumble of boulders well above the surf. A big wave, he thought, maybe a tsunami from an earthquake, must have tossed them up there. Over the next few years, however, the University of Wollongong geologist explored hundreds of miles of coast and found more signs of wave action, hundreds of feet above the water--too high for any quake-spawned surge. An astonishing hypothesis of devastation from outer space formed in his mind. It gathered some praise, along with many...

The earthquake fault cuts through the heart of Ventura's quaint downtown, past the ornate hilltop City Hall and historic Spanish-era mission before heading into the Pacific Ocean.. For decades, some seismic experts believed the Ventura fault posed only a moderate threat and was incapable of producing a major temblor. But research in recent years shows that the fault is extremely dangerous, capable of producing an earthquake as large as magnitude 8 as well as severe tsunamis that until now experts didn't believe were possible from a Southern California quake. Such a big earthquake on the fault estimated to occur every...