Volcanoes are the tip of an iceberg. 90% of the volcano is hidden, down to the magma chamber 10 km or more below the surface. What we see is only the cone on top of the conduit. The perfect cone of Fuji, or even St Helens (before it blew up), is like the hat on…
Child The volcano towers; forms a mountain sublime Build by eruptions and matured over time But a new site is feeding from its magma supply A small mountain is trying to reach for the sky The volcano watches a new cone unfold Child of its magma. New life to behold The little volcano plays with…
Physiology has a dog; physics has a cat. Pavlov’s dog was a sad animal, lying in its cage with wires attached both inside and out, alive but not as we know it. I know – I have been in his lab when the place was called Leningrad. The dog was still there, or at least…
Volcanoes are frightening. They can dramatically alter the local landscape, and change people’s live – normally for the worse. The best place to be is far away. But large eruptions can have wider impacts. The ash can cover regions a continent away, and sulphate aerosols can spread at high altitude around the world. The sulphate…
Volcanoes are often inconveniently located in isolated and unpopulated regions. Of course, some of these regions are unpopulated precisely because of their volcano, or instead of unpopulated are depopulated, but that is a different story. When an area is devoid of people, there tends to be a reason. Modernity looks for and finds cheap and…
It is a wonderful, and funny place. New Zealand has more than its fair share of the world’s beauty. You want volcanoes, rivers, beaches, forests, mountains, liveable cities, it has it all. Its history is out of this world. Apart from a few bats and some dolphins, the first mammals to arrive were human. In…
How Scotland met England The stones form an irregular circle, surrounding the taller stone in the centre. On one side of the small hill, an arm from the Atlantic ocean approaches, across a single-lane track. On the other side, a field, a small road and a few houses. Silence reigns: the only sounds come from…
Rome is an ancient wonder. It feels strange, walking along a street next to the heart of the world city, but surrounded by old ruins. Here the old survives next to the new. There was extensive damage done by the Vandals, the people who overran Italy in the 5th century. They cut off the water…
The Lives of Lake Baikal It is said that a huge stone fell from the sky like they do now, sometimes. While it was falling it became red hot. When it hit the earth there was a great rainfall. Earth, stone, and water came to a boil and in that turmoil Lake Baikal was born.…
It is lonely out here, 850 km east of Christchurch, New Zealand, a small archipelago unprotected from the Roaring Forties. Even the international date line carefully avoids it, bending around it to the east. Few people live here; of the eleven Chatham islands, only two are occupied: Chatham island itself, and Pit island. The bending…