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An old water flea
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chain. It was also safe to explore and map plumes from five explosions that started out the extensive mineral resources that with a ground level atomic bomb in 1949. lay within the test areas, thus unlocking a As material from these plumes came key to economic development. down, hot spots were created, and one of the towns, where soft While the impact on locals was being A 450 million year old Crustacean, complete with fossilized exposure was measured ignored, the Soviet military authorities parts, has been found in Herefordshire. at 1.6 of the was evacuated. There are One grays, scientists were well aware of the dangers, and different measurements involved in the discovery, Prof David Siveter from the University for radioactivity, but one gray would produce the Mukash Burkitbayev made the wry the 5mm long fossil so special of Leicester, said that what made commentthat it is a were always equivalent of the soft is not that tests previously un-named species, but thatone joule of energy per kilogram, and two would keep a 100 watt conducted when the wind was blowing eyes and the antennae can parts have been preserved so well that towards China. The Chinese who had a be made out. test site close to the border, simplyflata, belongs to the same group The fossil, named Nasunaris waited until the wind turned before setting of descendants are common as water-fleas and shrimps. Their their own dirty bombs. today in lakes and oceans, and geologists often use the fossils as indicators of past climates. Although there is little in the official record, some details are known about two towns that image exposed to radioactive soft parts and eyes. Image: Internal were of the fossil showing the David J. Siveter, Derek E. G. Briggs, Derek J. Siveter and Mark D. Sutton. bulb going for a few seconds. That might not seem a lot, but two grays would cause sickness and hair loss, and four would be lethal. With the levels recorded from these two towns, there must have been a significant increase in cancers, but who was going to put this on record? In one of the towns no one had seen a medical doctor in three years, and there was just one vet. While no one knows how many people died or became ill as a result of these tests, there is some comfort in the knowledge that this man-made blight belongs to the past. The mushroom cloud rising from a explosion at the test site in 1949.
Bedrock of history
JERUSALEM’s fate was determined by the underlying geology. At the annual Geological Society of America meeting last October, Michael Bramnik from Illinois University explained that underground passageways in the karst limestone enabled King David to take the city. Water was drawn from the Spring of Gihon, which lay just outside the city walls. David’s soldiers climbed down into the spring and by tunnelling under the walls got access to the city.
Later, one of David’s successors, King Hezekiah, fearing that the Assyrians would take Jerusalem using the same approach, rerouted the water into the city via a 550 metre long tunnel. It proved to be a good decision, for in 701 BC, Jerusalem was the only city that the Assyrians failed to take. Water still remains a major factor in shaping modern history in the region, and Michael Bramnik said that when he went in search of hydrological maps for other towns and settlements he was often rebuffed with a claim that such maps do not exist.
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