In the previous post, we read about the birth of Surtsey. It was a famous eruption, which taught us how quickly and unexpectedly new land can form. We have since seen similar eruptions elsewhere as well. Nishinoshima is a small and isolated Japanese island, 1000 kilometers south of Tokyo. An eruption started just off its…
(A repost, originally written by Carl, November 13, 2013. The post has been expanded from the original.) Tomorrow, the fourteenth of November, will be the official birthday of Surtsey. In a way it was a triple birth. First of all it was the birth of the Island of Surtsey, it was also the birth of…
“The sun became dark and its darkness lasted for one and a half years… Each day it shone for about four hours and still this light was only a feeble shadow… the fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like sour grapes.” Michael the Syrian, about a 6th century eruption It smells. Sulfur is…
This is a rerun of a post that appeared in December, 2013: the date explains the unseasonal greeting at the start. It was written by Fran. Reunion sits near the head of a chain of volcanic islands in the Indian Ocean, ending (or beginning) at the Deccan traps. Hot spot volcano candy at its best.)…
Ceres is different. It was the first asteroid to be discovered and is by some distance the largest. Ceres contains a quarter of all the mass on the entire asteroid belt. (That sounds more impressive than it is: the mass is just over 1% of that of the Moon.) But it does not look like…
The expanse of water seems to go on forever. The Pacific ocean covers a third of the Earth surface, more than all the continents combined. The east-west width between Indonesia and Colombia is almost 20,000 km. There is 700 million cubic kilometer of water down there! 45 different countries own part of it. The averaged…
There is more to Flores. The island is spectacular in any case. The Portuguese explorers called it Cabo de Flores (Cape of Flowers) because of the red-flowered flame trees, dotted between the palm trees of the north coast. The landscape is varied, from low-land savannah to volcanic rain forest. It is not as wet here as…
This is the second instalment of the Dawn space trilogy. If you haven’t seen the first part yet, you may want to read that first. The region was known to be peculiar. The ground around the German town of Nordlingen contained strange rocks – the houses were build from them. Geologists had decided that it…
We begin with the real World Cup, and a big congratulations goes to France who were crowned world champions of football 2018 last Sunday after beating Croatia 4-2 in the final at Moscow. We also acknowledge the World Cup runners-up Croatia for giving it their all. So the Volcano World Cup has now come to…
So now we have come to the final of the 2018 Volcano World Cup which will be Peru against Iceland. Who you want to be crowned volcano world champions is up to you. Will the champions be the explosive stratovolcanoes of southern Peru, or will it be the basaltic volcanoes of Iceland (some of which…
There used to be a missing planet. It had long been realized that there was an empty gap in the Solar System, between Mars and Jupiter. The two were just too far apart. The distribution of the planets was described well by a relation proposed by Johann Titius and Johann Bode, and this relation predicted…
So now we are in the semi finals stage and one step away from the final, when we have some serious volcano nations going up against each other. Who do you want to see in the final? Just cast your votes. Peru vs Costa Rica PERU For Peru I will pick Sabancaya to represent…
So we’ve now reached the quarter final stage of the Volcano World Cup and this is where the competition starts to tighten up when serious volcanic nations come up against each other. Do the usual, vote for whoever you want to progress to the semi finals. Russia vs Peru RUSSIA I thought I’d make…
Here we are at the knockout stage and where the competition starts to hot up. Vote for whichever country in each game you want to see progress to the quarter finals. Russia vs Portugal RUSSIA For this match up I pick the Kamchatka volcano Gorely to represent Russia to go up against a Portuguese…
Two VC readers, mjf and Turtlebirdman, contributed lists of historical and slightly pre-historical eruptions of Kilauea. They are worth putting into a post and that is what we have done. We assumed that the second list made use of the first, and used that. It is worth pointing out that an eruption is a failed…