In spite of being posted on VC, the word ‘volcano’ does not appear in this post. Or at least, it wouldn’t have had I not written this preface. Which is why I wrote it, since we can not have a VC post which lacks the word ‘volcano’. (Of course now that I have mentioned ‘volcano’…
In the previous post we went through some of the background to this post: the structure of the Earth, the change in minerals at various depth in the mantle which change the density, and a bit on seismology which can show how the temperature changes with depth. Now it is time to see what we…
The Earth is alive. Well, not really. At least it is not life as we know it. Appropriately, the origin of this expression – slightly rephrased from the original Star Trek series – is from the second-most-famous non-human in existence, Spock, referring to a living rock. It is only a small step for humankind to…
I love large caldera volcanoes. The first reason is that they are always very beautiful, especially if they have lakes in them. The second reason is that most of them are of a class of volcanoes that leave their pointier cousins far behind. Size matters after all. At one end of the beauty spectrum, you…
Geological time is interesting, because even the geological now is decades long, if not centuries. The current geological episode at Reykjanes didn’t start with Fagrafjall (it is no longer a valley, so let us drop the “dal” out of Fagradalsfjall shall we). Nor did it start with the large and very noisy intrusion over at…
Today, May 22, 2022, it is five years ago. On May 23 2017, we woke up to the dramatic news of a suicide bomber in our home town. It killed 22 people including children. The target was an Ariane Grande concert. The artist later came back for a free concert, in memory of those killed.…
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May In the previous posts we looked at the Eifel volcanics, the Laacher See (the largest eruption in western Europe for the past 1000 centuries), and volcanic dating of the Younger Dryas. The eruption occurred a bit over a century before the sudden cooling. But what caused…
In the previous post Gijs described the surprising history of Europe’s most underestimated volcanic field. Much of the time the Eifel does nothing. On occasion it does a small eruption, just when you weren’t looking. And very rarely, it goes big, covering the surrounding areas in meter-thick ash. Gijs described the area, the monogenetic volcanoes,…
Think of one thing that has interested you for as long as you can remember, or at least for so long the level of factual knowledge you have of it is almost ridiculously vast. That one thing that always brightens up your day when you hear or read something about it, no matter how busy…
Have you ever been bitten by a dinosaur? That would be something worthy of Jurassic Park. In those movies it tends to be a lethal experience. But most children will get bitten by the dinosaur bug at some point in their early years. Dinosaurs fascinate; it is the excitement of a lost world, a wild…
In the last few weeks, I have been unusually busy with things decidedly non-volcanic as the world turned quite a bit darker. Regardless I noticed that there were quite a few things going on in the volcanic part of the news, but that did not for natural reasons end up as big news items. One…
We are happy to continue our tradition of April-1 stories that are almost true. Some of the science is correct – although we do NOT recommend sulphur-sniffing! April-1 should be a time of happiness. If you would like to re-read our previous ‘almost true’ stories The Sicilian affair Iceland eruption postponement Lava lake to provide…
One from the archives As I was growing up, having an interest in things geophysical/astrophysical, there was always a search for the “wow” factor. Not everyone’s “wow” sense is geared the same… and in some cases, the scale of stuff that people are familiar with has a lot to say about how they perceive the…
Snow is beautiful. It turns the world white and unblemished. Children love it for play, grown-ups love it for what it hides. Soon the snow will melt again, or worse, it will age like the world ages, lose its colour and become pockmarked with dirt. The beauty is temporary, here today, gone tomorrow. What was…
In January, the world experienced the loudest bang of the century – and that of the previous century as well. The sound wave of Hunga Tonga was heard across the Pacific ocean in Alaska. The air pressure wave traveled around the world – and again. And again. The ocean wave caused a tsunami across the…
