For a Kilauea update, see the bottom of the post Astronomy is a dangerous science. It is not just the fact that astronomers love to blow things up. Exploding stars are their bread and butter. For a bit of adventure, they collide black holes. And who else would start the history of everything with a…
Update May 8 No major changes. The lava pond in Kilauea is now reported as 220 meters down, and may still be dropping. The most recent images suggest it is still going down. Below 400 meters there would be a risk of ground water getting into the hole with phreatic consequences, but so far there…
Volcanoes spring predictable surprises. Ever since Puʻu ʻŌʻō began to inflate it was clear that a new break-out was brewing. The 61-G flow had been in decline for many months: the spectacular ocean entry had ceased some time ago, and the flows had withdrawn to within a few miles of the origin. That is typical…
In Part I, the five main faults in the region around the Levant were discussed: the Red Sea spreading ridge and its associated triple point, the Dead Sea transform fault, the Zagros suture, the Anatolian strike-slip fault (actually two near parallel faults), and the Aegean subduction zone. Every type of fault that is known occurs…
Humanity has a long history of living on this Earth. During the days and years, our world continuously changed. We grew up in the shadows of the approaching ice ages. We left Africa when the changing sea opened up a road to Asia, and followed an ever-changing coast line to the far East. And throughout…
Is this the most northerly elephant in the world? 200 meter tall and rising from the Atlantic Ocean, this Neptunic elephant lives at Heimaey Island, off the south coast of Iceland. A combination of basalt and wave erosion has left a convincing elephant head, complete with deeply wrinkled trunk. There are other elephant rocks in…
Hekla is the most mysterious of Iceland’s many volcanoes. Its brooding summit overlooks the broken plains 800 meter below as if it were an English Lord (or perhaps Lady) of the Manor. The fiefdom looks bare and uninviting, but that is not purely Hekla’s fault: once this was dense forest, but it was cut down…
A year ago there were frequent eruptions of Bogoslof volcano. But over the months, it dropped out of the news, as the eruption quieted down and finally ceased. This brief post is a recoup of what came before, and what the state of the island is now. Bogoslof is one (and sometimes two or three)…
The sea is our fascination. We go out of our ways to find it, and it is where we go for holidays, spending our time lying on the beach. Close to half the world’s population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast. For those who live here, there is a good living to be had,…
Here is the story of the beginning, when there was not one bird, not one fish, not one mountain. Here is the sky, all alone. Here is the sea, all alone. There is nothing more –no sound, no movement. Only the sky and the sea. Only Heart-of-Sky, alone. And these are his names: Maker and…