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Published online 28 January 2005 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news050124-14

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Furnace creates instant fossils

Artificially petrified wood could help clean up radioactive waste.

A group of US researchers have petrified wood in record time, compressing a process that normally takes eons into a matter of days.

Yongsoon Shin and his colleagues at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, have developed a technique that converts an average two-by-four into a hard, fossil-like sponge in about five days.

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