Tag: volcanoes

Seeking for life in all the wrong places

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/06/Seeking-for-LIfe-in-all-the-Wrong-Places.mp3[/podcast] “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it,” was never actually said in the original series of Star Trek (in fact, it’s from The Firm’s popular parody song “Star Trekkin’”), but it still sums up the notion that we might not recognize extraterrestrial life when first we encounter it because it’s so different …

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Plate tectonics

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/03/Plate-Tectonics.mp3[/podcast] Our planet may look like a solid ball of rock, but if you could crack it like an egg (not actually something I’d recommend, although it would make for a fun scene in a science fiction novel or movie) you’d find it’s quite fluid inside. And, in fact, the Earth’s solid shell, called the …

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Volcanoes revisited

Last month, Sicily’s Mount Etna erupted for two weeks, providing television viewers with spectacular pictures but really doing very little damage. But that’s not always the case with volcanoes. After all, the most violent explosion on Earth in modern times wasn’t a nuclear blast–it was the eruption of Krakatoa, which blew apart in 1883. The …

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Volcanoes

You probably didn’t notice, since nobody but me has bothered to point it out, but August 27 was the 103rd anniversary of the eruption of Krakatoa, an active (obviously) island volcano located in the Sunda Strait, south of Sumatra and west of Java. In 1883 it blew apart in the most violent explosion on Earth …

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