Volcanic eruptions deep in our oceans unleash powerful blasts of energy at a rate high enough to power an entire CONTINENT, study finds Researchers made a mathematical model to understand underwater eruptions Found they spew out vast ash clouds which drive megaplumes of hot air They are powered by huge amounts of energy equivalent to the US’s energy … Read more
Seemingly benign volcanoes can be much more violent than previously feared due to volatile magma hidden deep below the surface, a study shows. Scientists studied volcanoes on remote islands in the Galápagos Archipelago in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Ecuador. Volcanoes that reliably produce small lava eruptions of basalt, an igneous rock, hide chemically … Read more
NATURE Dangerous Earth by Ellen Prager (University of Chicago Press £20, 272 pp) Are we in the right mood just now for reading about natural disasters? Actually, it’s when you think things can’t get any worse that a book explaining just how much worse they can get is genuinely bracing, like a cold-water swim on … Read more
‘Ecuador ama la vida’ reads the enormous sign built out of rocks at the peak of the Casitgua Mountain at the southern end of Quito, the country’s capital city. Ecuador loves life. And indeed it does, for this small but extraordinary South American country is one of the most biodiverse in the world, stretching from … Read more