Tyger Tyger, burning bright,In the forests of the night (William Blake, The Tyger) Lava is lovely. The warm (or hot) red colour gives it beauty, and the intricate movement of a lava flow makes it mesmerizing. But it is at night that the lava really comes to life. What appeared shiny black in the light…
I loved Naples. It is a lively Mediterranean city where there is always something going on. The people are amazing. I was told (a long time ago) by someone whose wife was from there that they were visiting the city, and his wife went somewhere and had told him in no uncertain terms to stay…
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble Do you remember that famous Australia TV soap where everyone in the town helped each other with their mini-crises, such as ‘who took my surf board’ and where the life guard walked around the beach in their swimmers? (I may be getting confused here with…
Lights of the North! As in eons ago, Not in vain from your home do ye over us glow! William Ross Wallace (1819–1881) A repost from 2018 with minor updates Jan 25, 880 AD, was a remarkable night. The Arabian historian Ibn Abi Zar wrote about it more than 400 years later, from the ancient…
The parent is famous. The shock waves of the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 reverberated around the world – in the atmosphere, in the sea and in the news media. This was the first large eruption in the era of instant communication. The eruption itself was luckily on an island at some distance from human…
It is a spectacular city. The harbour bridge and the opera house are instantly recognizable, but scratch only the surface. Once those have been seen, it is time to explore the real city with its dense flocks of boats parked everywhere along the shore, the busy centre with the Queen Victoria shopping centre, the cliff…
It should be easy to recognize a volcano. They stand high above the surrounding land, a singular cone which couldn’t really be anything else. Of course, they may not stay that way. Erosion may destroy the shape. A big explosion may replace the cone with a crater. Or there may never have been a cone,…
The mountain got its name in 1911 when students of the local university, named New Mexico School of Mines, climbed up the hill and painted a 50 meter tall letter ‘M’ near the summit. Other Mines schools had their letter, so why not Socorro? And of course it had to be bigger than the other…
I still remember the birch trees. Two million of them – they were the main view from the train, interrupted by small villages of wooden houses. Closer to Moscow those houses had been colourful but here in Siberia, paint seemed to be a rarity and the houses looked weathered. We finally left the train at…
Did you know that there is an international treaty on eruptions? In truth, there isn’t. But there is a treaty on nuclear explosions, and there are similarities between explosive volcanic eruptions and nuclear explosions. Banning eruptions would go a bit above the United Nations powers. Could a volcanic eruption appear as a nuclear test? There…