In collaboration with Dr. Christine Houser (@seismodoc), a specially appointed assistant Professor of solid Earth geophysics at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Japan, NASA Goddard Planetary Scientist Dr. James O’Donoghue (@physicsJ) created another amazing animation titled “Scale and Composition of Earth’s surface: Major constituents of the crust, water, and atmosphere” and published on his YouTube channel.
For most people, continents are Earth’s seven main large landmasses.
But geoscientists have a different take on this. They look at the type of rock a feature is made of, rather than how much of its surface is above sea level.
In the past few years, we’ve seen an increase in the discovery of lost continents. Most of these have been plateaus or mountains made of continental crust hidden from our view, below sea level.
Maria Seton, University of Sydney; Joanne Whittaker, University of Tasmania, and Simon Williams, University of Sydney
On August 28, Stromboli volcano in Italy woke up a second time this summer. Tourists decided to ride a boat near the erupting volcano – but the journey turned out to be “fun”: they had to escape from the wave of pyroclastic flow. The eruption did not lead to casualties and destruction, but the tourists got really scared.
In fact, it was a really dangerous act. The pyroclastic flow is what makes composite volcanoes like Stromboli so deadly.
The blockbuster movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) involves more than just dinosaurs wreaking havoc. Humans are sent in to rescue some prehistoric critters on the volcanic island of Isla Nublar, and chaos soon begins. The volcano erupts, and everyone runs away as a roiling cloud called a pyroclastic flow approaches. At one point the main character disappears into the cloud. Luckily, some dinosaurs and humans in a strange glass ball fall over a cliff into the sea, and our hero splashes in not long after.
Mount Stromboli, one of the three active volcanoes in Italy (others being Mount Etna on Sicily – continuous activity, and Mount Vesuvius, near Naples – last erupted in 1944), has been in almost continuous eruption for the past 2,000 years. The last eruption took place on 3 July 2019. The exact moment of the event has been filmed in a sailboat.
According to research published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Earth’s oldest rock (which is 4.1 billion years old) has been found in an Apollo 14 sample from the Moon. If confirmed, it’s an amazing discovery.
Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano (also one of the most active volcanoes in the world) is sliding into the Ionian Sea at rates of centimeters per year. If part of it falls into the sea, it could create horrible mega-tsunamis that would devastate the eastern Mediterranean shores.
The universe is shrouded in mystery, and part of this mystery involves our own little planet. Although there
However, the studies in Seismology have allowed us to gather sufficient information about the Earth and its structure. The planet comprises several layers, which have their own attributes, and composition. So let’s dive in further to discover some enlightening aspects.
During the STS-68 mission (September 30-October 11, 1994), the crew members of Space Shuttle Endeavour used a 70 mm camera to photograph Klyuchevskaya Sopka (also known as Kliuchevskoi), a stratovolcano, the highest mountain on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia and the highest active volcano of Eurasia. The eruption was new when this photo was taken. It was photographed from 115 nautical miles (213 kilometers) above Earth.
I stumbled upon an amazing web page showing what did ancient Earth look like. On the “Dinosaur Pictures and Facts” web page (dinosaurpictures.org), there’s also an interactive animation. On this page, you can either select the years (i.e. 600 million years ago) or jump to a particular event (i.e. first multicellular life) and see how ancient Earth did look like then. You can also remove the clouds and stop the Earth’s rotation if you want to.