Thursday, May 08, 2008

Mordor


The above is a real photo. A volcano in Chile which has been dormant for 9000 years recently decided to erupt.

"The mingling of lightning and ash seen above may be a "dirty thunderstorm."

The little-understood storms may be sparked when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collide to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms
."



The volcano spewed ash and debris more than 12 miles high.


Here is a satellite photo showing how far the plume stretches. Areas beneath the plume were buried under as much as 6 inches of volcanic ash.

As impressive as that is, it ain't shit compared to the super volcano that lies beneath Yellowstone National Park, which could blow at any moment.



Have a nice day.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Global warming I'm sure..just ask Al Gore (rolling eyes).

Anonymous said...

But..but the creationists tell me that the Universe is only 6 thousand years old! (rolling eyes.)
-Kanga

Satyavati devi dasi said...

What an incredible picture.
Just a few minutes ago I was watching that show 'When Yellowstone Erupts'. The whole concept of a supervolcano is terrifying.

But I have a question. They said that the Yellowstone caldera is basically a hotspot over which the continent moves. Well, the Hawaiian chain is also a hotspot, which explains all the islands and seamounts all the way up to Japan and stuff. So how come they're so different? Iceland is different because it's on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but what I'm wondering is why two hotspots would behave so differently.

Anyway, this is why I love geology.

Anonymous said...

wow thats some intense stuff right there. You know XO? Sometimes I don't mind living in the asshole of the country. We may have crime, poverty bad weather and ignorance, but we are safe on the volcanic destruction front. Which is well...nice.

Fiery said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fiery said...

thanks for that XO. You can just rock me to sleep tonight. ;)

Xavier Onassis said...

satyavati - I can't answer those questions. My specialty is off-planet stuff, not deep-planet stuff.

crseum - yeah, I know what you mean. Tornados are MUCH safer. LOL!

fiery - okey dokey! :)

Xavier Onassis said...

crseum - because I'm so freaking lazy, you fell off my google reader when you changed formats. I've fixed that and you are back on. Can't promise when I'll get around to updating my blogroll, but at least I have the live nude spidermonkeys back! Yipee!!!