Blue Lagoon discoloured

/ 01/04/2023

We hope you have enjoyed this April-1 story. Yes, this was completely made-up and as of this morning the blue lagoon is again blue and normal service has resumed. The story was designed by Lughduniense who also made the tourism poster which we happily donate to Iceland under a CC-by-4.0 license. Join us next year for the opening of HSAP (the Hekla Summit Amusement Park, with an underground slide for rapid escape, if needed) and how an Icelandic volcano won the Eurovision song contest.

Pink water in the Blue Lagoon, Iceland

Well, this was quite a surprise. Overnight the water of the emblematic Blue Lagoon Spa in Iceland has turned pink. Volcanologists have been called in; they were baffled. Measurements were made of the water. The first preliminary result by the University of Iceland is that a significant amount of Erbium has found its way into the natural Icelandic Spa Resort. It is thought that the seismic unrest that the Reykjanes Peninsula has suffered over the past few years has allowed enriched water to collect in a reservoir 3 km deep. Yesterday’s swarm below the Blue Lagoon appears to have allowed this deep mineral water to get into the Lagoon’s water cycle.

Screenshot of the earthquake map at vedur.is

The famous Blue Lagoon is no more: this is bad news for the Spa afficionados and influencers, but it could be very good news for Iceland and its European partners.

In solution, Erbium has a uniquely pink colour. Tourists this morning initially refused to go into the water and demanded refunds on the (expensive!) tickets. After the initial tests, the company announced that the water continues to meet Iceland’s water safety standards and that Erbium is not toxic. Although this has not yet convinced all of the surprised visitors, people are now again entering the famous water.

The Iceland Tourist Office has stepped in to avoid loss of tourism, as the water can no longer claim any healing properties. It is initiating a new campaign to keep attracting tourists to the Lagoon, by declaring a Pink Season. It is a major source of income to the nation. The first poster has just been released.

Iceland is Red Hot...and Pink!

The Touristic agencies moved quickly and already devised a concept for a new campaign to attract visitors for the world’s most famous natural spa.

‘Strawberry Milk Lake’ was considered, but ‘Hot Pink’ better suits the perceptions of Instagrammers, Tik-Tokkies and other influencers.

However, it is beginning to appear that this campaign may be in vain and that the lagoon may be abandoned as a tourist attraction and become a liquid mine, as pushed by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs.

Rare opportunity

Erbium is a rare earth metal. These are valuable because they are, well, rare, and because they have very specific industrial uses. Erbium has an abundance of only 3 parts per million or 0.0003% in the earth’s crust. This, combined with the major industrial demand for erbium, makes it an expensive element, costing as much as 1000 dollar per kilogram in its pure form.

Erbium has important uses in biomedicine, communication technology and the nuclear industry.

The biomedicine use of Erbium focusses on lasers, such as the YAG Lasers for skin and eye treatment and for cosmetic surgery. These infrared lasers use Erbium-doped diodes. The same diodes are also used as amplifiers in long-distance fiber communication technology. In addition, Erbium is also used for high energy lasers. It has a unique capability to ‘upconvert’, changing lower frequency light to create higher frequency ultra-violet photons. There are a few elements which can do this but erbium has the highest efficiency.

The use in nuclear technology of Erbium centers on the nuclear reactors themselves, where it is used either in control rods or mixed with the uranium, to control the reactions better.

There are also other uses. Erbium oxide is used as a colourant for glass and porcelain, where it also has a pink shade.

Erbium oxide powder, used in glass colouring

These applications are economically important. Fibers networks are being build worldwide to replace the old copper telephone cables, needed to carry the ever increasing internet traffic. Nuclear energy is an necessary part of decarbonizing the economy, and many countries are planning to build new reactors. The UK has just announced a large expansion for nuclear energy and Netherlands is considering building more nuclear plants now that their gas fields run dry and they need to cut down on emissions, being one of the most populous regions in the world. There is a rapidly growing market for Erbium!

The Pink Lagoon Company

The Blue Lagoon company has immediately registered a new entity, called The Pink Lagoon Company, with the support of the Iceland Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs and the European Union.

Many of the rare earth materials currently come from China, Africa and Russia. Erbium specifically comes mainly from China and Vietnam. The EU has stated a desire to be less dependent on rare earth imports from China. The appearance of Erbium in the Pink Lagoon provides an opportunity.

The just appointed President of the Company, Guðmundur Árnason, has said that the Pink Lagoon could generate 15,000 kg of purified Erbium per year from its geothermal waters. This is not universally accepted. IMO, the Iceland meteorological agency, has given much lower estimates. They also reminded the company that meteoric water, as cycled into the lake, falls under their responsibility and should not be sold without their agreement. Discussions have been started between the Ministries of the Environment, Energy and Climate and that of Finance and Economic Affairs to resolve this conflict of responsibilities. The Erbium can be bought either pure, or if preferred the actual water can also be shipped to you for your own extraction of the valuable ore.

Future

The sudden appearance of Erbium has drawn attention to the rare earth possibilities of Iceland. The other economically important rare earth elements may be present at depth but are not as readily soluble in water. These elements are incorporated in magma and are found in rift settings and near subduction zones. Iceland is ideal because it is underlain by ancient subducted ocean crust. High abundances are therefore expected. The appearance of Erbium has confirmed this expectation, brought up to 5 km depth by the Grindavik intrusions.

With the re-activation of the Reykjanes, a possibility exists to bring those elements to the surface. The proposal is still in an early form (the Erbium only appeared this morning!) but involves triggering eruptions by injecting water into some of the echelon faults, thereby releasing the stress on these faults and creating low-stress pathways for the magma to surface in easily accessible locations. The Pink Lagoon Company has experience with such water cycling (the lagoon formed in the same way) and believes that the financial returns of these induced eruptions will be significant. The EU has indicated that they will support this, as it will provide a secure source of rare earth elements, long demanded by European industry.

 

It is not clear that this will be compatible with the continuation of touristic bathing at the Pink Lagoon. Unlike Erbium, other rare earth elements have some toxicity. In fact there is concern these could leach into the lagoon’s water over time. Daily tests will be taken to check. The Pink Lagoon company has therefore announced that pre-ordered bathing tickets have ceased to be valid.

Jar with water and sediments that will be tested for the presence of other elements that could be dangerous to people’s health – or commercially valuable.

Other countries have expressed strong interest in the proposals to induce volcanic eruptions for mining opportunities. People are asked to keep an eye on their local lakes and check for sudden colour changes. If your lake turns pink, you are kindly requested to call Jeff Bezos.

1 April 2023

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85 thoughts on “Blue Lagoon discoloured”

  1. Interesting news. Tourists must take care for the Upptypingar effects in the pink lagoon! 😉

  2. This is wonderful news for the hair dying industry. Hárlitun has set up a business by the Pink Lagoon!

  3. I don’t think this is purely related to a volcanic phénomema. Elves are probably at the origin of this phenomenon

  6. I was safe with this one having been at a copy shop before and checking the copies, esp. the date. But I don’t always know the date.

    So one day, a collegue was able to sell to me that a shark had swum up the Rhine River and stirred some trouble around Cologne. A Great White of course. I believed that until some people started laughing.

  7. Better act quick. I have a strong suspicion that it will be gone and back to normal tomorrow.

  8. That lagoon is open all year. It must be also a sado-masochistic event to be there. With two persons you lose an eye-watering sum to attend, only to find out that it can be freezing cold when you come out of the water.
    At least there is no Mososaurus inside.
    So I decided to stick with the Pink Grotto in Capri and Pink Bayoo wherever that might be.
    The Pink Ridge Mountains in Tennessee and the Pink Mountains in Australia are also thorouly recommended.

    Lake Dürren with Monte Cristallo, near Cortina, Italy

    • Listen to this who feels like it. This is from 1943 from German Tenor Rudi Schuricke. When the Americans had landed it was blocked for a while. This is the original I think:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09KWMUOyP6E

      And listen to the other one I set a link to as you can see quite a bit of the volcanic rock.

      • Don’t enlarge btw, it will then diappear. It’s black and white.

    • I never got past Trieste.

      Too busy drinking.

      (But our duty driver did almost drive the van off a nearby cliff when he got lost. Scared the $#@# out of his passengers)

    • My wife and I did it our first trip to Iceland in 2017, just to say we went.

      It was pretty bad… Jammed in like sardines, about as relaxing as standing in line (or in a queue, for you Brits) at an airport terminal. Very hyper-commercialized and about as natural as a swimming pool.

      So many better places for that sort of thing in Iceland (doubly true if Reykjanes continues to erupt), though I can’t blame them for chasing the easy money as the Blue Lagoon sits between Keflavik and Reykjavik.

  9. I nominate you as Iceland Tourism best marketing campaign of 2023.

  11. At least is a gag, as too many beaches are being afflicted by kilotons of red weed / red tide…
    You’d think Wells Martians had been terraforming…
    Areforming ??

  13. Hehe, I know erbium, being a rare earth chemist (amongst other elements).

    Yes, erbium is used to cause the red colour in plasma screens.

    On the other hand it isn’t very soluble in such hydrothermal conditions. I detect a scientific phenomenon known as monoaprilosis.

    • It is a little soluble in sea water. But yes, this needs further investigation. Results expected in 12 months time.

  14. The situation isn’t looking good at Columbia, Nevado del ruiz just had an insane 11,000 quakes on March 30 with 8,800 quakes yesterday. An increase in fluid-related earthquakes is noted. Nevado del ruiz has been restless for over a decade along with it’s sister volcanoes. So a larger eruption (VEI 3+) could be on the cards, and thankfully SGC is on it giving daily updates on the situation

    • Isn’t that particular volcano notorious for killer lahars?

      • Yes, Armero in 1985. Second most deadly eruption of the 20th century.

        But to be fair that eruption should have killed no one but the warnings were not taken seriously and even deliberately dismissed. Nevado del Ruiz is a gentle giant, its biggest eruptions historically being a VEI 3, and most of its massive edifice is effusive constructed from layered domes and flows. It should be a mostly harmless volcano with nothing particularly notable in its recorded history, but it is instead up on the list of disasters with Krakatau and Tambora. It might be the best example of the size of an eruption being largely irrelevant to how dangerous it is if the risk is ignored.

        • I wouldn’t really call Nevado Del Ruiz, “A gentle giant” This volcano has chugged out more VEI 4s than most other stratovolcanoes and it can produce all of the deadliest eruption styles, Lateral blast, Plinian, and Pelean.
          I wonder if this earthquakes spike has anything to do with the larger systems unrest. Nevado del ruiz is a part of massive complex of stratovolcanoes including Cerro machin, St Isabel, Cerro bravo and more! The whole complex has been suffering deep rooted unrest for the past 16 years and I am worried that the current seismic crisis could be related to this

  15. We hope you have enjoyed this April-1 story. Yes, this was completely made-up and as of this morning the blue lagoon is again blue and normal service has resumed. The story was designed by Lughduniense who also made the tourism poster which we happily donate to Iceland under a CC-by-4.0 license. Join us next year for the opening of HSAP (the Hekla Summit Amusement Park, with an underground slide for rapid escape, if needed) and how an Icelandic volcano won the Eurovision song context.

    • I am disappointed this is false. The blue lagoon could have done with a bit colour. Most water is blue – how boring!

      • Let’s not call it false. Let’s give it its modern name, an alternative fact. Which used to be a lie but that was just in the olden days when people didn’t know any better.

  16. I wants the Red – Orange – Yellow hot glowing Lagoon 🙂 comicaly laughts

      • Agreed…Could be another “burp”?
        Other than the observed volcanic ash plume, all the “official” reports aren’t indicating anything major (yet, though imminent)…but then again the latest emergency bulletin from the SGC was issued yesterday morning perhaps prior to the observed plume?
        I tried to locate the eruption on GOES-16 satellite images, but there are thunderstorms and otherwise inclement conditions that are obscuring the view from above.
        https://saeadmin.sgc.gov.co/media/bulletin/Boletin_extraordinario_volcan_Nevado_del_Ruiz_-_01_de_abril.pdf

        • the latest emergency bulletin from the SGC was issued yesterday morning

          The SGC?!

          The Goa’uld are about to attack?
          Another Ori incursion?
          Replicators?

  18. Me walking the dogs yesterday on Lake Pink Lagoon. I hope you enjoyed it just as we did devising this pink interlude.

    • Looks like jesus walking on flamingo water .. in other worlds its me when Im on alcohol

    • Im also working on an aprils fool article: in this case burying Stockholm City in a Volcanic Eruption may subit it next week before resuming My IO articles

  19. Bizarrely I was actually at the Blue Lagoon yesterday, sadly on a school trip with 39 x 15/16 year olds. It was very nice though! Doing all the usual tourist stuff. My 4th time in Iceland but I will definitely need to come back (without the kids!)

    • I was just in Iceland for the fourth time as well a few months ago!

      Intoxicating country, isn’t it?

    • The fact that this volcano is having such an intense swarm after years of unrest in conjunction with large uplift doesn’t bode well. 30,000 quakes in just the past few days is insane. Nevado del ruiz has a history of producing VEI 4 eruptions in the past 2000 years and it has access to a massive magma body. Hopefully if the volcano goes big, enough people would’ve been evacuated to avoid another tragedy.

      • Nevado has had a variety of open-venting episodes in the last 10 years. Basically vulcanian type eruptions that didn’t amount to much. That’s not to say that there is no risk of something larger building, but the fact that this seems to be a largely open system is probably a good thing from the perspective of risk.

        The other “good” thing here is that humans have a penchant from learning from past disasters. Sometimes this becomes PTSD, but there is at least some benefit of having a resultant fear from a disaster. Because of the Armero disaster, I would wager that not only are the early alert systems robust in this area, but the locals are probably well aware of the risks that the volcano poses and are probably more vigilant than they would otherwise be.

        • There was a small lava dome formed there during 2015-16 too. This swarm could be the prelude to new lava dome growth, or stronger vulcanian explosions. I don’t know how likely a plinian eruption is.

          There has been inflation centered under nearby Santa Isabel volcano and covering a large area, 30 km across, spanning Nevado del Ruiz and Nevado de Tolima, since 2012. While Nevado del Ruiz itself has been a very strong sulphur dioxide source, often going over 1000 tonnes a day. It is possibly among the few top continuous SO2 degassing volcanoes during the past year, together with Sabancaya and Popocatepetl which have also been ash venting and doing vulcanian explosions.

  21. And on the subject of not quite real

    I thought I’d jump on the “AI” bandwagon and asked ChatGPT/DALL-E (via Bing) to create an image of what the Mars helicopter might have seen if it could go back in time and witness an eruption on Mars.

    I for one surrender to our new AI overlords 🙂

  22. Laguna Del Maule had its alert level increased with talk of detected tremor? Anyone have any further details on this?

    • Hmm, probably nothing imminent. I must confess Laguna Del Maule is on my short list of volcanoes to be excited over.

      Due to its remote location, even a large eruption would be unlikely to threaten many people directly I believe? If that’s the case, it’s definitely one of my frontrunners for that ultimate Jesperian / Tallisian ‘big bang.’

      • What an exciting first quarter! In Ecuador, Chiles-Cerro negro is producing it’s 4th major swarm consisting of over 70,000 earthquakes, as the systems struggles to break the plug and erupt for the first time in 160,000 years! A region wide volcanic awakening is taking place at the Aleutians, with Tanaga, Okmok, Trident,and Aniakchak under intrusion. Can one of these give us another Novarupta? In Chile, one of world’s fastest inflating volcano is producing an unusually strong swarm for the volcano. will it finally produce an eruption?
        High hopes for this year!

        • Trident maybe, it is a neighbor of Novarupta. But the others probably not, Tanaga is not that sort of volcano.

          But, Laguna del Maule could do something pretty big. Maybe not VEI 6 but a 5 is very plausible for such a large volcano. Certainly including that it seems to make lava flows after the volume of eruptions probably goes into the multiple km3 range with an explosive opening. And it is as silicic as it gets. Perhaps you should move to Chile Tallis 🙂 3 rhyolite eruptions in less than 30 years.

          • Yes, I wonder what’s with the Southern Andean Volcanic Zone and rhyolite/rhyodacite.

            There is Cordon Caulle which erupted rhyolites in 1921, 1960, and 2011, and is rapidly inflating as we speak. Chaiten which also erupted rhyolite in 2008-2011. Calabozos-Descabezado-Cerro Azul which effused 5 km3 of rhyodacite in 1846 and then blew up another 5 km3 of rhyodacite magma explosively in 1932. Domuyo, a long dormant rhyolite-rhyodacite system, which was one of the fastest inflating silicic volcanoes, if not the fastest, during 2014-2019. And Laguna del Maule, another rhyolitic system, which has been inflating for 17 years nonstop at some of the highest rates, or even the highest at times, of any silicic caldera system at the moment. I don’t think there is any other region in the planet that can claim anywhere near such an amount of rhyolitic-rhyodacitic unrest in recent historical times.

          • And yet none of those eruptions was larger than a VEI 5 (not to say they are small though) and the eruptions were all dominantly effusive by absolute volume total, does go quite against the narrative of rhyolite being extremely explosive, seems it is just hard to get a rhyolite eruption that is actually small, so even opening phases of mostly effusive eruptions are still big.

          • The southern Andes is also home to a lot of older large caldera systems that simply are not well publicized. As if often repeated here, “this region needs a better PR agent”.

            The two big boys are Calabozos and Atuel, both which are among the largest calderas in the world. But there are others as well that if going simply off the caldera size would register as being larger than almost all the holocene eruptions.

          • Tromen too, Cbus. Some massive outpourings of lava there going off Google Earth.

          • Tromen is interesting, it’s not really like the others in the caldera zone here since it’s a very large effusive shield that sits well east of the main arc in what would perhaps be a distant back-arc zone. I believe it’s had a caldera eruption, but that may be due to effusive eruptions, not from an explosive collapse. There are a few other effusive shields in this zone as well, most notably the even larger Payun Matru. You can look at the region on Google earth and see that it’s littered with volcanic vents, shield volcanoes, and monogenetic formations. Many of these are likely extinct, but I would wager that the arid nature of the region has preserved these features quite well.

            As for other large caldera systems in the southern andes, you have the 16x20km Diamante caldera, the 12km wide Pino Hachado caldera, the 20 x 15 km Caviahue caldera (at Copahue) in addition to the 15 x 25 LDM caldera.

            Given, this area is rather arid, so a lot of these calderas are old – as in over 500k years old. They just are more visible and better preserved than calderas we would potentially see in other volcanic arcs around the world. But that being said, that is a significant cluster of calderas that would register as being mid to large size VEI-7 eruptions if you simply estimate their size off the displacement from the caldera itself.

          • Payun Matru is still active, holocene eruptions are known. Tromen erupted in the 19th century according to GVP.

          • The climate is arid, and that has allowed for post-glacial volcanic features to be very well preserved. However this area has seen some extreme uplift in the past several million years, and it has been glaciated during the ice ages, these two things combined have led to strong erosion. You have have granitic plutons that are only 5 million years old but are at the surface. The back-arc is more well preserved since glacial erosion has not happened there.

            I remember reading somewhere, a long time ago, that Caldera del Atuel is not a real caldera, but rather an erosional feature. I think it was some geologic map of that area. There are a number of other invented calderas, or calderas that are not substantiated by enough evidence, in this area of the Southern Andes.

            The long term history of caldera activity in the Southern Andes is not very impressive, certainly not as outstanding as Japan or New Zealand. But during historical times it seems to have been swarming with rhyolitic volcanism, and rapidly inflating silicic systems.

    • Thanks for sharing. 11,000 earthquakes in the past 4 days. It seems like a very important swarm. The earthquakes are very shallow, many are only 4-1 km deep. They happen next to Rhyolite Las Nieblas, a ~2000-year-old lava flow. SERNAGEOMIN says it’s the longest seismic crisis, although they don’t specify how big it is compared to other swarms. Laguna del Maule inflated 22 cm during the past year, and it has been inflating for ~17 years, with a total of ~0.42 km3 supplied to the volcano since then.

      https://rnvv.sernageomin.cl/complejo-volcanico-laguna-del-maule/

      It could be the precursor to an eruption as far as I can tell, although I don’t know how likely an eruption is. If it erupts, it will probably open with a VEI 4-5, then make a large rhyolite flow. There is a very small chance it could collapse and make a VEI 6-7.

      https://rnvv.sernageomin.cl/complejo-volcanico-laguna-del-maule/

      • Do they have any methods of imaging the active magma body here?

        The thing I always question when estimates of eruptible magma are made is that they seem to frequently only account for recent inflation of a magmatic body. As most of us here know, magma can sit in storage for a very long time, so estimates of potential VEI for an eruption would need to account for how much magma in total is in a system that can become potentially eruptible.

        Definitely would be an exciting volcano to watch erupt – as others have stated, it’s maybe the best place to have an eruption on earth due to the lack of people nearby.

          • “Eruption of the entirety of the modeled melt volume, 23 km3, would have a much more substantial damage potential. ”

            Basically, the modeled melt volume in the system would be enough for a Novarupta-sized eruption if all of the modeled melt is erupted. But most volcanoes don’t erupt all of their eruptible magma in one go.

            One question I always wonder is the extent to which an eruption of eruptible magma can trigger enough depressurization of the previously uneruptible magma to then rapidly reactivate / phase change into an eruptible state. I’m not sure how much this process is an actual thing, but it makes sense on a surface level and would explain a lot of the dynamics we’ve seen evidence for in larger caldera eruptions.

          • I personally see tomography articles with some scepticism. Tomography has low resolution and simplifies the way seismic waves actually propagate, it tends to blur structures, makes them look more spread out than they really are, and other errors and artifacts can happen too. The storage is likely to be smaller and more concentrated.

        • Thank you for mentioning this, because I often always have this question myself, not just with respect to Laguna Del Maule. I frequently see sources estimate a potential eruption at solely the estimated volume of the intrusion which confuses me because it never seems to account for stored magma and how that could be incorporated into an eruption.

          I get that not every volcano has large shallow storage, but still this is something that often leaves me confused.

      • A large ryholite lava flow would be interesting. How often do they happen on earth?

  23. I cherry-picked a few statements in an article about LDM – article is here: https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/24/12/article/i1052-5173-24-12-4.htm

    While phase 2 eruptions are dominantly rhyolitic, several andesitic, rhyodacitic, and mixed eruptions occurred on the western periphery of the basin, including the mid- to late-Holocene succession of a rhyodacite lava (rdcn), andesite scoria (asm), and a rhyodacite dome (rdsp), each erupted from a contiguous vent system in the northwestern part of the basin (Fig. 1B) (Hildreth et al., 2010). Moreover, the rhyolite lavas display coherent temporal trends in trace element compositions (Figs. 2D–2F), reflected in coeval rhyolites on opposite sides of the lake having nearly identical major and trace element compositions.

    Phenocrysts in large silicic ash flow tuffs reveal magma residence times up to several hundred thousand years (Costa, 2008; Reid, 2008; Simon et al., 2008; Wotzlaw et al., 2013).

    What remains unclear is whether a crystal-poor rhyolitic melt layer that intercepts mafic recharge magma at deep levels currently caps the entire magmatic system or, alternatively, if the current unrest reflects a singular intrusive event rebuilding toward such a configuration.

    Constraints on the long-term magma supply rate, Q, are as follows: The minimum value of Q of 0.0005 km3/yr assumes an eruptive volume of 13 km3 of silicic magma over the past 25 k.y. that includes an estimate of tephra volume equal to that of the lavas (Fierstein et al., 2013). The maximum value of Q of 0.03 km3/yr is based on the model of an inflating sill needed to drive the ongoing deformation by Feigl et al. (2014). These parameters suggest that the magma body (melt + mush) supplying rhyolite into dikes that have erupted has a volume of at least 100 km3 and more likely several hundred cubic kilometers (see figure 6 in Jellinek and DePaolo, 2003). As the magma body takes on a flattened, disc-shaped form via lateral spreading, hoop stresses concentrate at the intrusion’s edges, allowing dikes to form around its periphery—consistent with the spatial distribution of vents at Laguna del Maule (Jellinek and DePaolo, 2003).

    An interesting volcanic system. Fortunately out of the way of most folk.

    • There was a previous large calderic system in place towards the northwest of the Laguna del Maule basin – the Bobadilla caldera.

      Seems that this is also true for several similar systems in the Chile/Argentina zone, Pleistocene caldera events that have continued volcanism right up until the present day in the same areas. Caldera del Atuel is astonishingly big!

      • Yep, and there is very little I’ve ever been able to find about Caldera del Atuel. Somewhat astonishing for a 30×45 km caldera (which is larger than many of the Taupo Volcanic Zone calderas). I would wager it’s very old considering it’s hard to even see when looking at the region on Google earth. Given how dry the region is (which preserves calderas quite well), I would imagine the fact that this isn’t that visible means it is quite ancient.

    • Google Mars CTX mosaic mode is sharper than this 🙂

      • Depends where you look. It can only be as sharp as the available images. But yes, I did zoom out a bit. It is very good.

    • Really cool. The CTX imagery in Google Earth is incomplete, so this mosaic is better. The full CTX imagery can be seen in JMARS too, and with higher resolution I think, but the panning and zooming is much slower than here.

  25. While volcanic studies over the past century have shown that volcanoes can be connected, without having a direct relationship between their magmatic reservoirs, the process is not fully understood.

    In the case of Mauna Loa and Kīlauea – two volcanoes on Hawaii’s Big Island – studies indicate that active changes of one volcano trigger a dynamic response in the other

    https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/news/envisat-data-show-how-volcanoes-communicate-with-each-other

  26. Pingback: The Dinosaur Egg Hunt of the Deccan traps | VolcanoCafe

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