Latest Volcano Stories
An airborne radar developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has returned to Hawaii to continue its study of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii's current most active volcano. The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, mounted in a pod under NASA's G-III research aircraft from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., returned to Hawaii's Big Island on Jan. 7. The one-week airborne campaign will help scientists better understand processes...
Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian geologic period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth’s history. Although the cause of this event is a mystery, it has been speculated that the eruption of a large swath of volcanic rock in Russia called the Siberian Traps was a trigger for the extinction. New research from Carnegie’s Linda Elkins-Tanton and her co-authors offers insight into how this volcanism could...
SAN DIEGO, Jan. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Volcano Corporation (NASDAQ: VOLC), a leading developer and manufacturer of precision intravascular diagnosis and therapy guidance tools designed to enhance the treatment of coronary and peripheral artery disease, said today it expects total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2011 will be approximately $92.7 million, bringing expected full year 2011 revenues to approximately $343.5 million. The expectations for revenues in the fourth quarter...
New finding on mercury-volcanic link could re-write history on past annihilations Scientists have uncovered a lot about the Earth’s greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago when rapid climate change wiped out nearly all marine species and a majority of those on land. Now, they have discovered a new culprit likely involved in the annihilation: an influx of mercury into the eco-system. “No one had ever looked to see if mercury was a potential culprit. This was a...
Satellite imagery is showing Alaska’s Cleveland Volcano spewing ash 15,000 feet into the air from uninhabited Chuginadak Island about 940 miles southwest of Anchorage, USA Today is reporting. “It’s not expected to cause a disruption to big international air carriers,” U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist-in-charge John Power said, who went on to call the event a “small explosion”. Air carriers in the region are showing a bit more concern, “any time you put an ash cloud up...
Subaquatic volcanic activity has resulted in the formation of a new landmass in the Red Sea -- a smoking island that has appeared in between the Rugged and Haycock islands, according to various media reports published earlier this week. According to Discovery News, lava fountains reaching heights of up to 100 feet were spotted by fishermen off the coast of Yemen on December 19. Specifically, the activity was witnessed close to the group of islands known as the Zubair Group, off the west...
A team of scientists from Oregon has collected microbes from ice within a lava tube in the Cascade Mountains and found that they thrive in cold, Mars-like conditions. The microbes tolerate temperatures near freezing and low levels of oxygen, and they can grow in the absence of organic food. Under these conditions their metabolism is driven by the oxidation of iron from olivine, a common volcanic mineral found in the rocks of the lava tube. These factors make the microbes capable of living...
An undersea volcanic eruption that has been ongoing in the Atlantic Ocean south of the Canaries for more than a month now could be creating either a new island or an additional territory to the southern coast of El Hierro, said scientists studying the eruptions. For more than a month, burning lava and gases have been spewing up from the sea floor three miles south of El Hierro, the smallest of the seven Canary Islands. And on Tenerife, the most populous of the group of islands, 60 miles...
Lava fingerprinting reveals differences between Hawaii's twin volcanoes Hawaii's main volcano chains--the Loa and Kea trends--have distinct sources of magma and unique plumbing systems connecting them to the Earth’s deep mantle, according to UBC research published this week in Nature Geoscience, in conjunction with researchers at the universities of Hawaii and Massachusetts. This study is the first to conclusively relate geochemical differences in surface lava rocks from both chains...
NASA said on Tuesday that there is no evidence of a massive supervolcano erupting in 2012, despite what some may believe. A supervolcano refers to an explosive volcanic eruption that eject about ten thousand times the quantity of magma and ash that Mount St. Helens expelled in 1980. NASA said Earth's surface has preserved clues of many massive supervolcanoes through hollowed-out calderas-craters that can be as big as 60 miles across after a volcano collapses from emptying out its entire...
Latest Volcano Reference Libraries
Scoria is a term used by geologists to describe an igneous rock containing many gas bubbles, or vesicules. Scoria forms when magma rich in dissolved gases is vented. As the magma encounters lower pressures, the gasses are able to escape and form bubbles. These bubbles are trapped when the magma cools and solidifies. Volcanic cones of scoria can be left behind after eruptions, usually forming mountains with a crater at the summit. An example is Mount Wellington, Auckland in New Zealand....
Volcanic ash is the term for very fine rock and mineral particles less than 2 mm in diameter that are ejected from a volcanic vent. Ash is created when solid rock shatters and magma separates into minute particles during explosive volcanic activity. The usually violent nature of an eruption involving steam (phreatic eruption) results in the magma and perhaps solid rock surrounding the vent, being torn into particles of silt to sand size. The plume that is often seen above an erupting volcano...
Olympus Mons -- Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in the solar system, at 25 km. Located on Mars, and officially called by its Latin name Olympus Mons. It is named for the mountain on Earth. Olympus Mons is an apparently extinct shield volcano, the result of highly fluid magma flowing out of volcanic vents over a long period of time, and is much wider than it is tall; the average slope of Olympus Mons' flanks is very gradual. The Hawaiian islands are an example of similar shield...
Jupiter's Moon Europa -- Europa is a puzzle. The sixth largest moon in our Solar System, Europa confounds and intrigues scientists. Few bodies in the Solar System have attracted as much scientific attention as this moon of Jupiter because of its possible subsurface ocean of water. The more we learn about this icy moon, the more questions we have. Because the nature of science is to ask questions, we cannot resist the mystery of Europa and its potential for possessing an ocean. Early...
