In 1864, three people set out on the journey of a life time. Starting at Snaefellsjokull, Hans, Axel and Otto descended into the crater, found openings to the depth and started on a journey to the centre of the Earth. At least, so Jules Verne told us in his book Voyage au centre de la…
Report by Jesper Sandberg Forewords 2025 has so far been an exciting year with volcanoes, definitely so with Kilauea which is in many ways Earth’s most impressive volcano. It continues its caldera filling episodes at the previous Halemaumau crater area. If Kilauea keeps going like this for years the whole caldera will be filled.…
Welcome to our April-1 story which has the untruth, the whole untruth and nothing but the untruth. Nothing in here is real. Although even that is not true. The mentioned rocket propulsion methods all exist or are under development. Even the rocket railgun launcher, which we carefully made up for this post, suffered from a…
Since April 2024, Mount Spurr has shown increasing signs of activity. These are now at a level where an eruption is plausible. Nothing is ever guaranteed with Alaskan volcanoes: they can always decide to go back into the freezer. Eruptions are decided on the Spurr of the moment. (Yes, I had to get that one…
Super-eruptions are rare. That is probably a good thing, even for Tallis. Too many things can go wrong for us in a supereruption. If you need a reminder, a super-eruption is often defined as a VEI-8, erupting more than 1000 km3 of ‘stuff’, leaving a crater 20 kilometers or more in diameter. Hector has written…
Visiting Big Island and seeing live lava at Kahauale a 2 lava flow of Kilauea part 2 Into the belly of the beast Jesper Sandberg Introduction It is hard to describe how incredibly special for me those days in Kilauea were and the insanely strong nostalgia for that. In part two I will take up…
Visiting the Big Island and seeing live lava at Kahauale a 2 lava flow of Kilauea. Part 1 The first days on the Big Islands western side Introduction Its hard to describe how amazing it was for me to see Kilaueas lava flows live in action ( Pele cursed my own future by touching her…
After Albert’s explanation of Afar’s volcanic and tectonic past, I will look into this region’s Holocene volcanism, and try to create the first comprehensive volcanic history of this very unstudied volcanic area. I like Afar because the volcanoes are “naked”, what I mean is that due to a desertic environment, the lava is slow to…
Tourists have left, schools are closed. Santorini, source of 2% of the Greece GDP, has been evacuated. There has been continuous shaking for two weeks. The epicentre is 20 km from Santorini and the earthquakes are mainly below M5, but there is a risk that this could lead to a larger event. In any case,…
Africa is broken. It is being dissected by the famous East African Rift which extends over a length of 5000 km along the eastern side of Africa and seems poised to destroy Africa as we know it. Some say a new ocean will form here. In that case a new name will be needed. Suggestions…
In 1912, Alfred Wegener published his proposal that continents had moved. He presented various lines of evidence, of which the best remembered is the fact that the opposite shores of the Atlantic ocean fit together as pieces of a puzzle. There was much more, including the fact that earthquakes were focussed on the Pacific ring…
The Ethiopian volcanic situation keeps escalating. A viral video is circulating of an eruption from the Dofen volcano: https://x.com/volcaholic1/status/1875137887160672670 To me, it’s an eruption because it’s throwing rocks and it’s on a volcano. It could be phreatic or magmatic. It’s phreatic if it’s driven by heated groundwater, or magmatic gasses from an intrusion, without fresh…
Two pillars sit at the end of the world. To the ancients, the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea was the end of the known (civilized) world. Mythology tells us that Hercules smashed the mountains to create an opening, flanked by two pillars. We don’t quite know which mountain was the southern pillar, but the northern…
Iceland can do surprises. Its main activity is in a limited number of volcanoes which can erupt anytime, with frequencies ranging between once per century to twice per decade. These are the usual suspects, including Grimsvotn, Bardarbunga, Askja, Katla, Hekla, Krafla. (Grimsvotn is the only one not ending in ‘a’.) The beasts can go small…
Which inner child doesn’t like advent calendars! Every day a small window opens to reveal a chocolate, a small surprise, or (less exciting) parts of the nativity story. Luxury ones can be obtained, if needed, but our inner children don’t mind: chocolate tends to be quite good enough. The tradition started in Germany but like…
