After Albert’s explanation of Afar’s volcanic and tectonic past, I will look into this region’s Holocene volcanism, and try to create the first comprehensive volcanic history of this very unstudied volcanic area. I like Afar because the volcanoes are “naked”, what I mean is that due to a desertic environment, the lava is slow to…
Tourists have left, schools are closed. Santorini, source of 2% of the Greece GDP, has been evacuated. There has been continuous shaking for two weeks. The epicentre is 20 km from Santorini and the earthquakes are mainly below M5, but there is a risk that this could lead to a larger event. In any case,…
Africa is broken. It is being dissected by the famous East African Rift which extends over a length of 5000 km along the eastern side of Africa and seems poised to destroy Africa as we know it. Some say a new ocean will form here. In that case a new name will be needed. Suggestions…
In 1912, Alfred Wegener published his proposal that continents had moved. He presented various lines of evidence, of which the best remembered is the fact that the opposite shores of the Atlantic ocean fit together as pieces of a puzzle. There was much more, including the fact that earthquakes were focussed on the Pacific ring…
The Ethiopian volcanic situation keeps escalating. A viral video is circulating of an eruption from the Dofen volcano: https://x.com/volcaholic1/status/1875137887160672670 To me, it’s an eruption because it’s throwing rocks and it’s on a volcano. It could be phreatic or magmatic. It’s phreatic if it’s driven by heated groundwater, or magmatic gasses from an intrusion, without fresh…
Two pillars sit at the end of the world. To the ancients, the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea was the end of the known (civilized) world. Mythology tells us that Hercules smashed the mountains to create an opening, flanked by two pillars. We don’t quite know which mountain was the southern pillar, but the northern…
Iceland can do surprises. Its main activity is in a limited number of volcanoes which can erupt anytime, with frequencies ranging between once per century to twice per decade. These are the usual suspects, including Grimsvotn, Bardarbunga, Askja, Katla, Hekla, Krafla. (Grimsvotn is the only one not ending in ‘a’.) The beasts can go small…
Which inner child doesn’t like advent calendars! Every day a small window opens to reveal a chocolate, a small surprise, or (less exciting) parts of the nativity story. Luxury ones can be obtained, if needed, but our inner children don’t mind: chocolate tends to be quite good enough. The tradition started in Germany but like…
This may come off as a surprise but the Earth isn’t a sphere, this is a lie forged by the elites to keep us from our true selves, the reality is that our world takes the shape of great rhombicosidodecahedron! Our pathetic brains are incapable of understanding the ∞/0+-5i dimensions in our universe and as…
Some events can cast long shadows. The UK is still talking about the storm of 1987 (‘the worst night since the Blitz’), the winter of 1963, the storm floods of 1953, the London smog of 1952, the Great Storm of 26 November 1703. Other countries have their own stories. But one event in particular still…