However, the monks - who carried out "one-point" meditation, where they focus attention on a single object or thought - were able to focus on one image.

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Apophis is some 350 metres across, considerably larger than the object that is thought to have flattened 2, 000 square kilometres of Siberian forest as it vaporised in the atmosphere above Tunguska in 1908.

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While 1km-size and bigger asteroids are thought to hit only once every 500, 000 years, on average, rocks 50-100 metres across, like the Tunguska object, are thought to hit the planet once every thousand years.

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He said he called out to a neighbour and asked him what he thought the object was.

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The highlight is the foundation stone of the city of Ai Khanum, laid by Alexander the Great around 300 BC, and thought to be the only object in the world which is known to have been in his hands.

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Whitmire notes that Sedna, thought by some to be an inner Oort Cloud object, may have also been perturbed by Tyche, since Sedna has an orbit well beyond that of Neptune.

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The Earth appears to have cooling properties that exceed the previously thought ones, and computer models are inadequate to try to foretell a chaotic object like the climate, where actual observations are the only way to go.

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Magazines have traditionally thought of themselves as kind of a locked book, of a complete, discreet object.

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It has long been thought that the lunar body resulted from an impact between the early Earth and another planet-sized object 4.5 billion years ago.

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