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If falling rocks are big enough and hit the ground hard enough they can create a blast so intense that the rocks are pulverised into powder. Such extreme rockfalls are followed by a shockwave that can snap trees hundreds of metres away.
“They’re extremely weird phenomena, which have been somehow overlooked,” says Fabio De Blasio of the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy.
The first known example took place in Yosemite National Park, California, on 10 July 1996. Two large masses of …