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

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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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