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| Introduction: Our Extreme Planet | |
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| Inside the Planet | |
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| Gallery | |
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| Getting the Drift: Earthquakes and volcanoes are bred in the subterranean zones where giant tectonic plates collide | |
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| Cracks in the Crust: When earthquakes fracture the planet, man's most substantial works can be erased in a heartbeat | |
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| Target: Faults Alarms: Scientists drill into the San Andreas Fault in California, hoping to learn to anticipate quakes | |
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| Smoke in the Water: On the silent, dark floors of the oceans, hot seams in the planet's crust breed strange life-forms | |
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| Portals of Fire: Volcanoes bring us explosive messages from the underworld, written in flames, ash and lava | |
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| Blast from the Past: Yellowstone Park sits on the remains of an ancient supervolcano-and it's due for an encore | |
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| Data Download | |
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| The Water Planet | |
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| Gallery | |
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| Waters of Woe: Tsunamis are stealth disasters: a single small ripple at sea can become a deadly wall of water on land | |
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| The Next Wave: Megatsunamis?: A scientist explores the calamitous effects if a comet were to land in an ocean | |
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| Here's That Rainy Day: Eagerly awaited, India's celebrated monsoons are among nature's most regular phenomena | |
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| Dust, the Destroyer: A slow, silent killer, drought squeezes the life from the land, then from the people who till it | |
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| Irresistible Force, Movable Objects: Nature offers few more destructive forces than masses of water in motion | |
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| From Ice to Water: The polar ice caps, which store mighty reserves of water, are melting. Should we be concerned? | |
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| Data Download | |
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| The Land Planet | |
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| Gallery | |
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| Torrents of Slime: Mudslides are highly efficient killing machines, as Colombians learned to their horror in 1985 | |
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| White Death: If the recipe for an avalanche is simple-snow, gravity and steep slopes-the results can be horrifying | |
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| Paradise Lost: Rain forests are earth's lungs and hothouses of blodiversity. Yet today they are increasingly imperiled | |
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| In the Line of Fire: Drought's flamboyant partner, wildfires are among nature's most unruly, unpredictable calamities | |
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| Genies of Grit: From America's Dust Bowl to the Sahara's haboobs, the planet's skin is too often gone with the wind | |
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| Data Download | |
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| Above the Planet | |
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| Gallery | |
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| Storms on Steroids: Bulking up on warm tropical waters, hurricanes breed high winds and deadly storm surges | |
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| It's A Twister!: Along Tornado Alley in the Midwest, roaring spirals of wind threaten lives, homes and farms | |
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| Fatal Splendor: Lightning is a natural high, a rushing discharge of energy-and the No. 2 weather killer in the U.S. | |
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| Beauty and the Blast: Most scientists agree: an impact with a comet killed the dinosaurs. Our turn may be next | |
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| Catching any Rays?: The sun brings life to our world, but when its surface erupts in giant flares, we feel the impact | |
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| Heat Wave: The argument is over: global warming is for real. But what we can do about it remains highly uncertain | |
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| Data Download | |
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| Index | |