Hekla is famous for its short run-ups prior to eruption, typically the run-up involves a smattering of small earthquakes for an hour or so and then it goes boom. Pavlof has the same nasty habit of not announcing upcoming eruptions. At beast you get a few harmonic tremor episodes in the hours prior to an…
It is sometimes hard to understand the size of the Icelandic volcanic systems. We often read statistical things like “Half of all the ash in Europe” and “One third of all basalt produced in the world” and we still do not really get it because we lack a point of reference. Instead we time after…
Imagine that you are Gunung Merapi and that nobody cares about you since there is much more famous volcano named Gunung Merapi. And to make things worse it is also located in Java, Indonesia. So, you think long and hard and through a few well placed eruptions you create a side vent with a very…
Science should be “sexy”. Once we had decided to write an article on Olympus Mons, we began to consider how to present it in a manner that would appeal to our readers. The regular science article is usually a rather monotonous enumeration of facts, figures and equations and thus heavy to digest for the average…
This far, the expedition had been a highly successful failure. Five weeks into the exploration with three weeks of intense survey had brought a wealth of data, but not what they had come for. Olympus Mons or Nix Olympica, the Olympic Snows as it was formerly known, had stubbornly refused to accede to human wishes.…
In spite of its incredible height, Olympus Mons was well below the horizon as seen from ‘Olympia’, just like that Earthly committee as shorn of imagination as it was endowed with political acumen which had originally named the colony Mars Base Alpha. The residents had immediately renamed it in honour of the largest volcano in…
Statistics and volcanism does not exactly go hand in hand, especially since it tends to end up with idiots claiming that volcanoes are “overdue”. A volcano is never overdue, they may shift patterns of their eruptions, go into extended periods of dormancy, or pretty much do anything that they jolly well pleases. It is…
In this part of the series I will take a look at the risks of harvesting geothermal energy. Let me begin with stating that so far there has been no large accident caused by harvesting geothermal energy. On the other hand, there is no such thing as totally safe ways to harvest energy. We all…
DIANA BARNES This post was run almost a year ago (February, as will be obvious from the start) but has remained an old favourite, often talked about but now hidden in the catacombes of the lost site. VC is taking the liberty of doing a re-run of this celebration of life. It’s Valentine’s day this…
Large eruptions are well known. Mention Pinatubo, Mount St Helens, Krakatoa, Thera, and everyone knows something about it. The Tambora eruption of 1815 is the largest of this set: it caused the “year without summer”, left tell-tale marks in the ice sheets, and remains a terrifying example of the destructive power of volcanoes. But the…