This awesome astronaut photo shows the striking symmetry of "twin" stratovolcanoes at the heart of Java, Indonesia. The parallel peaks are an eye-catching reminder of the region's extreme tectonic activity.

Mount Sundoro (also known as Sindoro or Sindara) on the left of the image, reaches a maximum height of 10,331 feet (3,149 meters). Its partner, Mount Sumbing, sits to the southeast (on the right of the image) and is slightly taller, at 11,056 feet (3,370 m) above sea level.

Both are considered active. Although Sumbing has not erupted since 1730, Sundoro has blown its top more recently, in 1971, and has experienced seismic activity as recently as 2012, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.

The volcanoes' peaks are just 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) apart. A raised ridge with a major highway runs perpendicularly between them.

Each volcano also has a smaller, secondary cone on its flank left over from previous eruptions (to the upper left of Sundoro and the upper right of Sumbing in the image), and their orientations make the volcanoes look like mirror images of each other.

The slopes of both cones are covered with rings of dark-green forest that sharply terminate at their bases. The volcanic soils surrounding the mountains are excellent for growing crops such as rice, corn, coffee and sugarcane, which has led to the deforestation of their surroundings, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

This matching coloration accentuates the similarities between the pair, especially when viewed from above.

One of the few differences between Sundoro and Sumbing is that the latter volcano has a sizable crater at its summit, which was carved out by the 1730 eruption. As a result, the larger volcano appears to have a darker point at its top.

The volcanoes are commonly referred to as "twins," due to their near-identical profiles. However, local people often call them "husband and wife," according to a local travel site. In this narrative, Sumbing is considered the husband due to its slight height advantage and "more masculine" profile.

Sundoro and Sumbing are part of the wider Dieng Volcanic Complex, which consists of around 20 volcanic cones stretching across central Java. Indonesia is also positioned along the "Ring of Fire," a roughly horseshoe-shaped arc of volcanoes that runs along a series of tectonic plate boundaries encircling the Pacific Ocean.

Over the past few years, there have been a number of significant eruptions in Indonesia, including a pair of violent blasts at Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki, on Flores Island, in 2024 and 2025. As of June 2026, there are seven ongoing eruptions in Indonesia — the most of any nation.

Researchers have found evidence that Earth's core is leaking gold and other precious metals, according to a new study.

The vast majority (99.9%) of Earth's gold and other precious metals are hidden in the center of our planet, with thousands of miles of near-impenetrable rock between us and these natural treasures. However, while humans are unlikely to ever mine Earth's core, new research indicates that some metals have migrated out of the core into enriched rocks that eventually ended up at the surface.

While investigating volcanic rocks in Hawaii, a team of scientists identified signs of the precious metal ruthenium — a platinum group metal — that they conclude could only have come from the core-mantle boundary, more than 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below the surface.

"When the first results came in, we realised that we had literally struck gold!" study first author Nils Messling, a researcher in the geochemistry department at Göttingen University in Germany, said in a statement. "Our data confirmed that material from the core, including gold and other precious metals, is leaking into the Earth's mantle above."

The researchers published their findings May 21 in the journal Nature.

Related: Heavy dusting of 'pineapple powder' paints Hawaii's volcanoes white after near-record snowfall — Earth from space

Earth is made up of three basic layers: a crust, mantle and core. The crust acts like a thin outer shell, the mantle is a less rigid middle layer of rocks that makes up most of the planet, and the core is the sphere in the middle. At the core, there's a sea of molten metals about 1,400 miles (2,300 km) thick – called the outer core — swirling around a mostly solid iron ball that's about 1,520 miles (2,440 km) wide — called the inner core.

Previous research has found that the make-up of Earth's Ru changed during the later stages of the planet's formation as it accumulated more material, so the Ru locked away in the core is slightly different from the Ru typically found in the mantle and crust.

For the new study, the researchers analyzed volcanic rock samples from Hawaii, including those collected at a lava lake in the active — and currently erupting — Kilauea volcano. They compared the Ru detected in these samples to Ru typically found in the mantle and found higher concentrations of the core Ru in Hawaii's volcanic rocks compared to other mantle rocks, suggesting that the Hawaii Ru originated from Earth's center.

The detection of Ru linked to the core demonstrates that precious metals, including gold, can move out of the center of the Earth. That means some of these precious metals we mine today may have originally come from the core. The study also tells scientists something about the formation of Hawaii and other regions tied to the core-mantle boundary.

"Our findings not only show that the Earth's core is not as isolated as previously assumed," study co-author Matthias Willbold, a professor in the geochemistry department at Göttingen University, said in the statement. "We can now also prove that huge volumes of super-heated mantle material — several hundreds of quadrillion metric tonnes of rock — originate at the core-mantle boundary and rise to the Earth's surface to form ocean islands like Hawaii."

Hawaii is thought to be sitting on a deep mantle plume of hot rock, driving volcanic activity in the region. Researchers recently found new evidence that Africa is being torn apart by another deep mantle plume, which also probably originated from the core-mantle boundary, like the ruthenium.

Researchers have found new evidence that a gigantic superplume of hot rock is rising beneath Africa, causing intense volcanic activity and splitting the continent in two.

Geologists have long known that Africa is slowly breaking apart in a region called the East African Rift System (EARS), but the driving force behind this massive geological process was up for debate. Now, a new study has presented geochemical evidence that a previously theorized superplume is pressing up against — and fracturing — the African crust.

Scientists found that gases at the Meengai geothermal field in central Kenya have a chemical signature that comes from deep inside Earth's mantle, likely from between the bottom of the mantle and the core. The signature matches those of gases found in volcanic rocks to the north, in the Red Sea, and to the south, in Malawi, indicating all of these places are sitting on the same deep mantle rock, according to a statement from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

"The deep mantle signatures observed in different segments of EARS are remarkably similar, suggesting that they all originate from a common deep source," study first-author Biying Chen, a postdoctoral research associate in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, told Live Science in an email.

The researchers published their findings May 12 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Related: 'River of fire' unleashes toxic gases as eruption destroys town in La Palma — Earth from space

EARS is the largest active continental rift system on Earth, ripping through around 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) of Africa. The lithosphere, Earth's rocky outer shell of crust and upper mantle, has been gradually breaking apart across the rift for around 35 million years. This has left a network of valleys that carve through the top of the continent from the Red Sea off northeastern Africa to Mozambique in southern Africa.

Previous studies identified signs of a deep mantle plume beneath EARS in noble gas signatures. Noble gases, such as helium and neon, are rare and inert, which means they usually don't chemically react with other substances. As a result, they stick around for a long time, so researchers can use them to trace long-term geological processes. However, Chen noted that these geochemical tracers have been sparse and often controversial beneath EARS.

To help clarify what's going on beneath EARS, the team used high-precision instruments to look for neon (Ne) isotopes in Kenyan gases — and they detected a deep mantle signature. The signature in the gases is very similar to those of the most primordial (ancient) surface signatures in Hawaii, which is also thought to be sitting on a deep mantle plume.

"We were very excited to see the preliminary Ne isotope data showing the primordial deep mantle signature," Chen said. "But the deep mantle signature is small and we had to work hard to disentangle it — truthfully there was no Eureka moment, we frequently questioned the result and spent many hours checking and re-checking the data."

Once the team had rigorously assessed the data, they became confident that the signature was genuine and matched signatures found in other parts of the rift. Chen noted that the EARS plume likely originates from the core-mantle boundary, about 1,800 miles (2,900 km) deep inside the Earth.

While the EARS signatures are similar to those found in volcanic rocks on Hawaii, Chen noted that the Hawaii plume is proposed to be a discrete rising stream of hot mantle, a bit like a lava lamp, while the EARS plume is probably a different shape.

"More likely a large mass of upwelling of hot buoyant material from deep within the Earth has replaced the mantle that was originally beneath the EARS," Chen said. "As it has risen and meets the solid colder lithosphere it spreads out generating enough force to fracture the thin lithosphere, leading to intense volcanic activity in the region."

A series of relatively young underwater volcanoes has been discovered under the waves of the Pacific Ocean, some of which may even be active.

The volcanoes were found during an expedition to map the seafloor near the Cook Islands in the Central Pacific, about 2,900 miles (4,700 kilometers) south of Hawaii. If these structures are volcanically active, the heat that they generate may have spawned a unique and exciting marine habitat nearby, the researchers said.

"So far, we have not seen any clear signs of volcanic activity, but then again, no one has yet had the chance to look carefully at the seabed and sample it," representatives from the Seabed Minerals Authority (SBMA), which co-led the research, said in a statement. "Once fully processed and interpreted, our new seabed map should help any future scientists quickly go directly to the best points for this sampling."

The Cook Islands are a group of 15 islands in the South Pacific Ocean, located between French Polynesia and American Samoa. This archipelago was created millions of years ago as the Pacific plate moved over a magma hotspot in the Earth's mantle — similar to the way the Hawaiian Islands were formed. A magma hotspot is a localized area in Earth's mantle where unusually hot rock rises toward the surface, causing volcanic activity. Unlike volcanoes at tectonic plate boundaries, hotspots occur in the middle of tectonic plates and remain stationary, while the plate above moves over time.

A hot mantle plume from the hotspot brings heat and magma toward Earth's crust, which can cause magma from the mantle to erupt onto the seafloor and then cool rapidly in the water. Over time, repeated eruptions build up a volcanic structure, forming an underwater volcano. If the eruptions continue, the volcano grows large enough to break the ocean surface, forming a volcanic island.

Related: Undersea volcano off Oregon coast could erupt this year, geologists predict

Most of the volcanoes in the Cook Islands are ancient, with their rocks dating back tens or even hundreds of millions of years. However, the islands of Rarotonga and Aitutaki are made of a combination of older and younger rocks, because they are among the most recent islands to form over the hotspot — the youngest rock on Rarotonga dates back only around 1.2 million years.

These newly mapped underwater volcanoes were first theorized in 2024 after researchers discovered that the rocks of one submerged volcano were only 670,000 years old. The rocks were discovered roughly 37 miles (60 km) southeast of Rarotonga, on a volcano called Tama, and they mark the youngest volcanic rocks discovered in the Cook Islands to date.

The team also theorized that, going southeast from Rarotonga through Tama, there may be several other underwater volcanoes lurking on the seafloor, which may also be much younger than the other Cook Islands.

To investigate these structures further, the ARTEX 2025 expedition was launched to map the ocean floor in the area surrounding Rarotonga. The team discovered that there was indeed a series of smaller structures dotted along the seafloor to the southeast of Rarotonga, including a 0.6-mile-high (1 km) volcano named "Pepe". The team's data is yet to be fully processed, however, and the structures have not yet been confirmed as volcanically active.

The researchers hope to return to the area to learn more about the seamounts, or underwater volcanoes, and to collect samples of the rocks to figure out exactly how old they are.

US volcano quiz: How many can you name in 10 minutes?

This striking satellite image shows the snow-capped peak of a "sacred" volcano in New Zealand, poking through an eerily circular forest containing thousands of warped, goblin-like trees.

Mount Taranaki, which was originally named Mount Egmont by British explorer James Cook in the 18th century, is an active stratovolcano located on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island. It stands at around 8,261 feet (2,518 meters) above sea level, making it the North Island's second-tallest peak behind Mount Ruapehu — a 9,177-foot-tall (2,797 m) volcano that acted as the movie double for parts of the fictional land of Mordor in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.

The near-perfect ring of dark green surrounding Mount Taranaki's slopes is Egmont National Park, which is around 12 miles (19 kilometers) across at its widest point. The park's forest is largely made up of two species of large evergreen trees, rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) and kāmahi (Pterophylla racemosa), according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

A section of kāmahi trees near the volcano's summit is known as the "Goblin Forest" because the trees there are extremely twisted and deformed as a result of having to grow over and around the fossilized remains of trees that were destroyed in past eruptions. These trees are also covered in hanging mosses and liverworts, which adds to their creepy appearance.

Related: See all the best images of Earth from space

In 2017, the New Zealand government granted Mount Taranaki the "same legal rights as a person" due to its sacred status among local Māori tribes, who consider the volcano to be an ancestor and a family member, The Guardian reported at the time.

"The status is an acknowledgment of the Indigenous Māori people's relationship to the mountain and means that harming the mountain has the same legal implications as harming the tribe," Earth Observatory representatives wrote.

Mount Taranaki is renowned for having a near-perfect cone shape, aside from the smaller remains of two extinct volcanoes located on its northeast flank (which are visible in the satellite photo). As a result, the volcano was used as a double for the equally symmetrical Mount Fuji in Japan during the filming of the 2003 film "The Last Samurai," according to NewZealand.com.

However, despite its uniform appearance, the volcano's shape has changed often and dramatically over time. A 2021 study estimated that Mount Taranaki's edifice — the part of the volcano that forms above ground — has undergone at least 16 significant deformations from past eruptions since it first formed around 135,000 years ago.

Mount Taranaki experienced its last major eruption around 200 years ago but is still considered active and sporadically spits out volcanic mudflows, or lahars. Researchers currently predict that there is a 30% to 50% chance of another major eruption in the next 50 years, which could potentially impact more than 100,000 people who live near the volcano, according to the Taranaki Emergency Management Office.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 05:22 a.m. ET to clarify that Mount Taranaki is the second-highest mountain in New Zealand's North Island, not in all of New Zealand.

Scientists are trying to establish what caused an unusual spike in earthquakes at the Mount Adams volcano in Washington state by installing multiple temporary seismic monitoring stations at the site.

In September, six small earthquakes were recorded at the "high threat" volcano. Normally, it only experiences one earthquake every two to three years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO).

"We are now working to gather more data to assess if this is really something unusual or just a volcano talking to us a bit more than it normally does," Jon Major, the CVO scientist-in-charge, told Live Science in an email.

"Our volcanoes chatter all the time," he said, adding that the nearby Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier often experience 10 to 20 earthquakes per month. "Some volcanoes, like St. Helens, Rainier, and Mount Hood undergo episodes of increased earthquake frequency where we see bursts of many earthquakes, which may last for days to weeks," he said. "That is all part and parcel of background activity at our Cascades volcanoes. So what we are seeing at Mount Adams is very far from unusual for the Cascades — but different for Mount Adams."

At 12,277 feet (3,742 meters) high and 18 miles (29 kilometers) wide, Mount Adams is the largest active volcano in Washington, surpassing Mount Rainier — the state's highest peak — by volume.

Related: The sea 'began to boil': Freak volcanic eruption of Santorini 1,300 years ago indicates huge blasts can occur during time of quiet

The increase in earthquake activity, including another magnitude 0.9 quake on Sunday (Oct. 6), does not indicate an eruption will take place. The earthquakes were very small, ranging from magnitudes 0.9 to 2. "Had one been standing at or near Mount Adams one would not have felt these earthquakes," Major said. The volcano last erupted around 4,000 years ago, but this relatively long period doesn't mean that an eruption is due, he added. "Every volcano has its own personality and they do not erupt on any particular cycles," he said. "Some may erupt and then be active intermittently for decades or centuries, then go back to a state of dormancy for centuries to millennia."

Mount Adams generally produces effusive eruptions, characterized by slow-moving lava flows rather than destructive, explosive eruptions. The summit has a big section of unstable and weakened rock. If an eruption were to occur, the main danger would come from lahars, or muddy flows of rock, ash and ice "that surge downstream like rapidly flowing concrete," USGS representative wrote in a statement.

Major said that generally "volcanoes will broadcast pretty loudly" if they are building toward an eruption, triggering lots of earthquakes that increase in size and frequency. The recent mild earthquake flurry doesn't fit that pattern.

The ground around the volcano will also deform as magma pushes up — something that can be ascertained with GPS and satellite monitoring — and the volcano starts to release gases. "These are the main things we watch for to give us a sense of whether or not a volcano may be building toward an eruption," Major said. "We fully expect to see these types of changes at any of our volcanoes should they begin moving toward eruption."

At present, Mount Adams only has one permanent seismic monitoring station around 7 miles (11 km) southwest of the summit. There are plans to install more permanent stations at the site next summer, Major said.

"At this point, we simply do not have enough data to say much of anything," he added. "After the new [temporary] stations we install have had a chance to collect data for a while, we'll be in a much better position to assess the potential causes and significance of this seismic activity and then determine if any further action is needed."

David Pyle, a volcanologist at the University of Oxford in the U.K., said the recent earthquakes could be caused by a "whole range of processes," including the rocks creaking due to internal stresses and strains.

"At Mount Adams the small cluster of detected events is out of the ordinary, given how quiet the volcano has been for the past 40 years," he told Live Science in an email. "This is no cause for alarm, and it is too early to diagnose the cause, but the 'sentinel seismometer' [the permanent station] has done its job, and the team monitoring the volcano will now be able to keep a closer eye on the subsurface, using the array of ground- and satellite-based instruments to which they have access."

Magma flowed into the dike beneath Grindavík at an unprecedented rate of 261,000 cubic feet per second (7,400 cubic meters per second) before the volcano first erupted in Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula, according to a new study.

"We were very surprised," lead author Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, told Live Science in an email. During the three previous eruptions in the region that took place between 2021 and 2023, magma flow into the dike was estimated to be less than 3,500 cubic feet per second (100 cubic m per second). "For the Grindavík dike it was almost 100 times higher," Sigmundsson said.

A 9.3-mile (15 kilometers) magma dike — a near-vertical tunnel running from the magma chamber beneath — formed beneath Grindavík in November, 2023,. At that point the region experienced a massive increase in seismic activity. Officials evacuated the fishing town, which has a population of around 3,800, given the risk of an eruption.

The volcano erupted on Dec. 18, with a 2.5-mile (4 km) fissure opening and sending lava spewing up to 100 feet (30 meters) into the air. The volcano erupted again on Jan 14., with two fissures opening on the outskirts of Grindavík. A third eruption occurred today (Feb. 8), with a 2-mile-long (3 km) fissure opening up near Mount Sundhnúkur to the north of Grindavík. The events are part of a millenia-long cycle that fuels eruptions.

Related: 'Time's finally up': Impending Iceland eruption is part of centuries-long volcanic pulse

In a new study published Feb. 8 in the journal Science, researchers examined the formation of the dike that led to the eruptions by combining satellite-based observations and seismic measurements, along with physical models. They found the magma flowed from the chamber into the dike at an exceptionally fast rate, comparable to the estimated rate of the 1783/84 eruption of Laki, which is around 130 miles (209 km) west of Grindavík . Within a year of the 8-month-long eruption, 60% of the country's livestock and 20% of the population died.

The Reykjanes Peninsula sits at the boundary of the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. This section of the boundary has been stretching without any eruptions in the last 800 years. The Grindavík dike formed after magma accumulated about 3.1 miles (5 km) beneath the surface in what is known as a magma domain.

"A magma body is like an 'expanding balloon' inside the Earth, that can rupture," Sigmundsson said. The scientists found that the eruption took place with only modest overpressure — the amount of pressure that exceeds the surrounding pressure at that depth. This modest pressure alone could not have led to such immense speeds of magma flow.

"It means that other factors were important in explaining the fast magma flow — namely the forces due to the prior stretching of the crust (tension) as well as a large fracture on the boundary on the magma domain," Sigmundsson said. "The stretching forces contributed very significantly to the driving pressure for magma flow in the dike, causing the very fast flow."

Discovering such a high inflow rate of magma has implications for other volcanoes. A dike with a high inflow rate of magma is potentially more hazardous than those filling at lower speeds. But it's also important to place the fill rate in context of the geological setting, as this will help determine the likelihood of magma reaching the surface.

The ability of this chamber to fill so quickly also has implications for future hazards on the Reykjanes Peninsula — even areas not in the direct path of erupting magma.

"The consequences of extensive faulting and fracturing above the dike in Grindavík, showed how very destructive such events can be, even without an eruption," Sigmundsson said.

Eerie new NASA images have revealed the intense heat still emanating from the recently awakened volcano in Iceland.

On Jan. 14, a volcano in Iceland's southwestern Reykjanes Peninsula erupted again after a massive eruption in December. In the nearby fishing town of Grindavík, newly opened fissures spewed lava that triggered evacuations before engulfing houses and causing rolling blackouts in the area.

The recent NASA imagery, captured Jan. 16, shows the thermal signature of these lava flows as they poured from cracks in Earth's crust. By combining data from a thermal infrared sensor, a land-imaging satellite and elevation models of the area, scientists measured the amount of heat emanating from different regions in the eruption zone.

RELATED: 'Grindavik remains at risk': Attempts to dam the lava from Iceland's erupting volcano could fail, volcanologist warns

"A fissure eruption began at 7:57 a.m. local time on January 14, 2024, approximately 1 kilometer [0.6 miles] away from Grindavík," NASA representatives wrote. "Lava flows from the January 2024 eruption appear the warmest (yellow), while the still-warm December 2023 flows and the Blue Lagoon geothermal pool also stand out from the relatively cooler surrounding land."

The molten rock rising in the region is continuing to cause the ground beneath the volcanic area near Grindavík to push upward, but it is "too early" to tell whether the rate of land uplift has increased since prior to the eruption on Jan. 14, according to an update from the Icelandic Met Office on Jan. 19. A swarm of earthquakes preceded the initial eruption, but GPS data suggests that seismic activity has decreased in the area in the past few days.

This series of eruptions stems from a deluge of magma collecting below the Earth's surface, which has formed an underground path, or dike, that stretches for around 10 miles (16 kilometers) across the region. The accumulation of molten rock eventually blasted through the ground.

Construction workers have built large earthen dams and berms to divert the lava, but it's still unclear whether these measures will save Grindavík and the homes of its 3,500 residents, as well as a nearby geothermal power plant.

Though the latest eruption has ended, "there is still high danger of ground collapse into fissures within the town," the officials at the Icelandic Met Office wrote. Some experts believe more eruptions are on the horizon on the Reykjanes Peninsula — although they cannot predict when and where the next one will occur.

"We don't know where the next one is going to happen and we don't know how large it will be," Carmen Solana, an associate professor of volcanology and risk communication at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., previously told Live Science. "That's the sad part of volcanology — we know that something is going to happen and you know roughly where, but you cannot pinpoint with that precision."

The deep sea is an enigmatic, alien world. But every year, scientists make discoveries about the ocean's depths that help to fill in parts of the puzzle, and this year was no different. From gigantic seamounts and the deepest-dwelling fish to a mysterious golden orb and puzzling methane leaks, here are the 10 best deep-sea discoveries of 2023.

Gigantic seamount 

In November, researchers mapping the seafloor near Guatemala discovered a gigantic underwater mountain, or seamount, that is twice as tall as the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. 

The 5,250-foot-tall (1,600 meters) cone-shaped structure, which lies 7,870 feet (2,400 m) below the ocean's surface, is the remnant of an ancient underwater volcano and covers around 5.4 square miles (14 square kilometers). Researchers discovered it using multibeam sonar during a six-day crossing between Costa Rica and the East Pacific Rise — a tectonic plate boundary in the mid-Pacific Ocean.

Seamounts provide crucial rocky habitats for deep-sea corals, sponges and a host of invertebrates. Experts estimate that there are at least 100,000 undiscovered seamounts in the world's oceans.

Seafloor heat waves 

In a March study, researchers revealed that some of the ocean's deepest points have likely been experiencing previously unknown heat waves that threaten the creatures living there.

Heat waves near the ocean's surface, which are the result of human-caused climate change and oceanographic phenomena such as El Niño, have been documented for decades. But a computer model using surface temperatures and ocean currents showed that the seafloor is probably also experiencing what researchers refer to as "bottom marine heat waves." 

These deep-sea heatwaves can be even more extreme and last longer than surface heat waves, the models revealed.

Seafloor ecosystems are often populated by lobsters, scallops, flounder, cod and other commercially fished creatures, which means bottom marine heat waves could have serious financial implications as well as being ecologically destructive. 

 Mysterious golden orb 

In September, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) researchers dredged up a mysterious golden orb from the seafloor in the Gulf of Alaska. Initial analysis revealed it was "biological in origin" — but scientists had no idea what it was.

Researchers plucked the golden orb from a seamount around 10,825 feet (3,300 m) below the surface using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The mysterious object was around 4 inches (10 centimeters) wide and appeared to be attached to a rock. When it was pulled to the surface it lost most of its structure and "melted" into a gloopy pile.

Scientists were divided on what the orb was — some thought it was an egg case and others suspected it was a sponge, while others noted it could also be something else entirely. And the orb's identity is still unknown.

The orb's gold color is also a mystery. "Since no natural light penetrates to these depths, it's often hard to determine why certain colors emerge," researchers wrote.

Egg-covered volcano 

In July, researchers explored an ancient deep-sea volcano off Canada's Pacific coastline and discovered that it was surprisingly still active — and covered in up to 1 million football-size eggs.

The underwater mountain, which towers 3,600 feet (1,100 m) above the seafloor, was spouting warm, nutrient-rich water that sustained a thriving ecosystem of deep-sea corals and a nursery for Pacific white skates (Bathyraja spinosissima) — little-known sea creatures related to sharks and rays.

The skates had laid countless rectangular-shaped eggs, known as mermaid's purses, on the seamount. Scientists estimated there could be anywhere from 100,000 to over a million eggs in the area. When these eggs hatch, the seamount likely provides an ideal habitat for the juveniles to grow before heading into the wider ocean.

Baffling methane leak 

In August, researchers discovered an enormous, puzzling methane "leak" coming from the bottom of the deepest point in the Baltic Sea. 

The team found that the greenhouse gas was "basically bubbling everywhere" from an area covering roughly 7.7 square miles (20 square km) — around 4,000 soccer fields — at a depth of about 1,300 feet (400 m). 

The bubbles were also rising much higher than similar methane emissions across the globe. Normally, methane gets dissolved in deep waters and rarely travels more than a few hundred feet above the seafloor. But the gas rising from this area reached up to around 65 feet (20 m) below the ocean's surface, which is "completely new." 

The researchers think the methane is coming from decaying organic matter on the seafloor, but it is unclear why there is so much of it and why it is rising so high up in the water column. 

 Deepest-dwelling fish ever 

In April, scientists released eerie footage of a group of ghostly white fish swimming around the seafloor more than 5 miles (8 km) beneath the waves in one of the world's deepest trenches.

The unidentified species of snailfish, which likely belongs to the genus Pseudoliparis, was spotted by researchers controlling an ROV in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench near Japan at a depth of 27,349 feet (8,336 m), which is more than 500 feet (150 m) deeper than any fish have been seen before.

The immense pressure at this depth would crush most fish. But snailfish have replaced their scales with a gelatinous layer that helps absorb this pressure. The snailfish also contain special chemicals that protect them on a cellular level.

On the same expedition, researchers trapped and dragged up two snailfish in the nearby Japan Trench at a depth of 26,319 feet (8,022 m), which makes them the deepest fish ever caught by humans.

Deep-sea coral reefs 

During a 30-day expedition off the coast of Ecuador, ocean explorers discovered a pair of pristine, deep-sea coral reefs near the Galápagos Islands.

The reefs sit at around 1,000 feet (300 m) beneath the ocean surface, which is much deeper than most coral reefs, and the larger of the two is more than 2,600 feet (800 m) long. 

The reefs feature a rich diversity of stony coral species that have likely thrived there for thousands of years. They are home to lots of other creatures including crustaceans, anemones, brittle stars and urchins. 

The expedition also confirmed the existence of two seamounts in the nearby area, which scientists had previously detected in satellite data.

'Pristine wilderness' under threat 

In a May study, researchers revealed that one of the most promising sites for future deep-sea mining activities is home to more than 5,000 newly identified animal species, which could all be in imminent danger if humans start mining the area.

The Clarion-Clipperton Zone is a large seafloor deformation that stretches from Mexico to Hawaii and covers around 2.3 million square miles (6 million square km), which is around 3.5 times the area of Alaska. It is covered in potato-size spherical nodules that are rich in highly desired metals such as manganese, cobalt and nickel, as well as small concentrations of extremely valuable rare earth elements.

Researchers analyzed more than 100,000 individual records collected from the area and estimated that 90% of the species they identified could be new to science. Deep-sea mining, which could begin properly in the next few years, could threaten all of these species. 

"With the possibility of mining looming, it's doubly important that we know more about these really understudied habitats," researchers wrote.

Hidden underworld 

In August, scientists exploring a hydrothermal vent field in the Pacific Ocean discovered a hidden ecosystem buried beneath mini volcanic cones. 

The hydrothermal vents, which are located in the East Pacific Ridge near Central America, have been studied for more than 40 years. But for the first time, researchers looked beneath the vents by scraping away the ocean bottom sediment using the robotic arm of an ROV. In doing so, they discovered a wide diversity of sub-seafloor creatures including worms, snails and deep-dwelling octopuses.

"This truly remarkable discovery of a new ecosystem, hidden beneath another ecosystem, provides fresh evidence that life exists in incredible places," researchers wrote.

 'Mind-boggling' volcano map 

In April, researchers published a "mind-boggling" map of more than 19,000 underwater volcanoes across the globe, most of which were newly discovered.

Researchers used radar data from multiple satellites to complete the map. The satellites looked for tiny deviations in gravity created by the seamounts and were able to spot underwater mounds as small as 3,609 feet (1,100 m) tall. 

The team thinks the map could help scientists learn more about ocean currents, plate tectonics and climate change.

The map is one of the most complete seamount compendiums ever created, but researchers still think there are thousands of undiscovered structures littering the seafloor.

Less than a month ago, scientists were unsure if Venus had active volcanoes. Now, a new map reveals that there could be at least 85,000 of them covering the surface of the hellish planet.

Until recently, experts believed that Venus was probably a geologically dead planet that was incapable of volcanic eruptions. In the past, scientists identified thousands of volcanoes on Venus, as well as coronas — flattened volcano-like features covered in solidified lava. The planet has a gooey flowing mantle beneath its outer crust, and its atmosphere is rich with carbon dioxide and sulfur, indicating that the planet had a volcanic past. However, Venus no longer has any tectonic plates, which play a key role in volcanic activity and major eruptions on Earth. For that reason, scientists deemed it unlikely that any of the Venusian volcanos were currently or had recently been active. 

But on March 15, researchers published a reanalysis of data collected during NASA's Magellan mission that orbited a probe around Venus between 1989 and 1994. The data revealed the first evidence of recent volcanic activity on Venus, after the researchers spotted traces of a volcanic eruption that occurred in 1991. Prior to this, on Feb. 23, another group of researchers using the Magellan data showed that the planet's outer crust was much thinner and more "squishy" than previously realized, which suggested magma could still make it onto the planet's surface through coronas.

In a new study published March 24 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, researchers, inspired by the recent discoveries on Venus, created a new map of the planet's surface highlighting every potential volcano. To do this, they used a computer program to look at Magellan’s data for signs of volcanoes. They spotted at least 85,000 volcanoes, although the team doesn't know if they are active, dormant or geologically dead. (For context, there are 1,350 potentially active volcanoes on Earth, although this does not include volcanically dead cones, and more undiscovered volcanoes likely lurk beneath Earth's oceans.)

Related: Alien life on Venus? No chance, says new NASA study

The new map is "the most comprehensive map of all volcanic edifices on Venus ever compiled," study co-author Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a statement.

Around 99% of the volcanoes on the map are quite small — less than 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) wide. This makes them hard to differentiate from their surroundings, which is why so many had gone unnoticed until now, researchers wrote in the paper. Many of these small volcanoes are clumped into groups, called volcanic fields, but it is unclear why this has happened.

The researchers believe there could be more, even smaller volcanoes less than 0.6 mile (1 km) across that do not show up on their map. The true number of cones on the Venusian surface could be in the hundreds of thousands, study lead author Rebecca Hahn, a doctoral student at Washington University in St. Louis, said in the statement. 

Future missions to Venus, including NASA's VERITAS mission, which is scheduled to launch in December 2027, and the European Space Agency's EnVision mission, which is scheduled to launch in the early 2030s, will provide new high-resolution images that could help find these potential hidden mini-volcanoes, she added. 

The researchers hope their new map t can be used by other researchers to predict future eruptions and to learn more about the planet's volcanic past and present.

"We've already heard from colleagues that they’ve downloaded the data and are starting to analyze it, which is exactly what we want," Byrne said. "I'm excited to see what they can figure out with the new database."

New satellite images of an active volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma capture vivid streams of lava pouring down the coastal mountain range and nearing the Atlantic Ocean. 

The eruption began on Sept. 19 from fissures on the western flanks of the Cumbre Vieja crater on La Palma, which is one of Spain's Canary Islands, located off the coast of northwestern Africa. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captured glowing lava flows snaking across the island in images taken on Sunday (Sept. 26), a week into the eruption. 

"After Cumbre Vieja split open and began erupting on Sept. 19, 2021, a slow-moving wall of basaltic lava began bulldozing its way through populated parts of one of the Canary Islands," according to a statement from NASA's Earth Observatory. "Lava flows have destroyed nearly 400 homes, covered dozens of kilometers of roads, and consumed farmland on the island of La Palma as they creep down the western flank of the volcanic island toward the ocean." 

Related: 10 incredible volcanoes in our solar system

The Landsat 8 satellite images offer a natural-color view of lava streaming through the communities of El Paraiso and Todoque, along with clouds of white smoke rising from the area. The hot, molten lava spewing from the eruption glows red in the satellite imagery, while a dark, black crust appears in areas where the lava has cooled at the surface. 

The satellite observations from Sept. 26 also captured infrared views of the volcanic eruptions, revealing the hottest parts of the red hot lava flowing down the slopes of the crater. 

"Many of the white rectangular features near the coast are greenhouses. The dark green areas along the coast are crops, likely fields of bananas," according to the statement. "The volcanic plume streaming toward the northeast contains a mixture of ash, sulfur dioxide and other volcanic gases." 

Volcanic activity briefly slowed in the early morning hours of Monday (Sept. 27). However, the Cumbre Vieja volcano began expelling lava and smoke again later in the day, and experts from the Volcanology Institute of the Canary Islands (INVOLCAN) suggest that the eruption could persist for weeks or months. 

Lava flows may soon reach the Atlantic Ocean. Hot lava meeting the sea may trigger explosions and emit clouds of chlorine gas, posing further risk to residents in the area. Those along the eastern shore of the island were ordered into lockdown on Monday after thousands had already evacuated the area in days prior. 

The Cumbre Vieja volcano last erupted in 1971, though that event was less significant than the current eruptions, experts say.

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

A fleet of floating robots has figured out why the Galápagos Islands exist. And, according to the robots' creators, the discovery could help explain why the Earth isn't a floating ball of ice.

The Galápagos Islands are a volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) off the coast of Ecuador. The islands are most famous as hosts to a large number of species not found anywhere else in the world, which helped the biologist Charles Darwin develop the theory of evolution. Now, according to an international team of researchers, we know that the islands were formed by a thin tunnel bringing magma up from a "mantle plume" 1,200 miles (1,900 km) below the surface. Scientists had suspected such a plume might exist before, but this is the most direct evidence yet that it’s down there.

The researchers published their description of the mantle plume, and the floating robots that helped discover it, today (Feb. 4) in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. [The 10 Most Pristine Places on Earth]

"Mantle plumes" are giant bubbles of very hot magma that sit much closer to the Earth's crust than usual. For decades, scientists have proposed that plumes like this could explain why certain regions of the planet are very volcanically active, even though they're far from the edges of tectonic plates where volcanism is more expected. (Hawaii is a famous example.) Not every volcanologist accepts this explanation, but those who do think it explains why the Earth hasn't run out of heat.

While the planet has had temperature swings in its history significant enough to radically transform the climate (we're in the middle of an unnaturally sudden one right now), its temperature has remained fairly constant from a geological perspective. The planet hasn't cooled over time from its internal heat running out. And, according to the study authors, this requires some explanation.

Earth could have only maintained its temperature, lead author Guust Nolet, a geoscientist at the University of Nice/Sophia Antipolis in France, said in a statement, "if some of the original heat from its accretion, and that created since by radioactive minerals, could stay locked inside the lower mantle. But most models of the Earth predict that the mantle should be [pushing heat up to the surface] and releasing this heat much more quickly. These results of the Galápagos experiment point to an alternative explanation: The lower mantle may well resist [transferring heat up through the body of the planet], and instead only bring heat to the surface in the form of mantle plumes such as the ones creating Galápagos and Hawaii."

The result would be a kind of trickle effect, where the hot innards of the planet would release enough geothermal heat to keep the crust warm, but not so much that it burned itself out.

To detect this possible mantle plume feeding the Galápagos, the researchers deployed nine robots called "MERMAIDS," which would float freely about a mile (1.6 km) under the ocean surface, listening for underwater earthquakes.

Scientists figure out what's going on inside the planet by carefully studying how earthquakes move through it. It's a technology that's a bit like an ultrasound, but on a massive scale. The problem is, most earthquake data comes from land, which covers just a third of the planet's surface. The MERMAIDS are designed to fill in the gaps. [Channel Islands: Photos of North America's Galapagos]

Whenever they hear an earthquake, according to the statement, the MERMAIDS rise to the ocean surface and use GPS data to figure out their location on Earth. Then they transmit home their GPS and seismic data. This is the sort of data the researchers used to reconstruct the plume under the Galápagos, which is the first published result from the MERMAIDs project.

It's worth noting that not every seismologist accepts that mantle plumes really exist. As Sara Pratt reported in 2015 for Earth Magazine, some seismologists doubt that there's enough information in seismic waves to offer clear pictures of what's going on that far below the crust. Opponents of the theory point out that the various definitions of "mantle plume" are often so broad as to contradict one another, and that while many mantle plumes have been "discovered," no one's been able to produce a confirmed list of ones that really exist. These doubters offer alternative, modified theories of plate tectonics that explain volcanic hotspots like Hawaii and the Galápagos.

Still, mantle plumes remain the dominant explanation in seismology for places on this planet like the Galápagos. And this plume discovered under those islands would be the first major discovery accomplished using free-floating seismometers. Scientists now have an exciting new method for peering deep into the planet.

• The World's 5 Most Active Volcanoes
• Best National Parks to Visit During Winter
• Gallery: The Incredible Eruption of Mount St. Helen's

Originally published on Live Science.

NASA's Juno spacecraft recently spotted a possible new volcano at the south pole of Jupiter's most lava-licious moon, Io. But this volcanically active moon is not alone in the solar system, where sizzling-hot rocks explode and ooze onto the surface of several worlds. So how do Earthly volcanoes differ from those erupting across the rest of the solar system?

Let's start with Io. The moon is famous for its hundreds of volcanoes, including fountains that sometimes spurt lava dozens of miles above the surface, according to NASA. This Jupiter moon is constantly re-forming its surface through volcanic eruptions, even to this day. Io's volcanism results from strong gravitational encounters between Jupiter and two of its large moons, Europa and Ganymede, which shake up Io's insides.

Rosaly Lopes, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed observations of Io between 1996 and 2001, during the Galileo spacecraft mission to Jupiter.

"Io has lots of caldera-like features, but they are on the surface," Lopes told Live Science. "There are lots of lava flows and lots of lakes. Lava lakes are pretty rare on Earth. We have half a dozen of them. We think they have occurred in the past on Venus and Mars. But on Io, we actually see lava lakes at the present time." Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is one such spot on Earth dotted with lava lakes. [Photos: Fiery Lava from Kilauea Volcano Erupts on Hawaii's Big Island]

Juno scientists asked for Lopes' help in identifying Io's newly found hotspot. She said the new observations of Io are welcome, because Galileo was in an equatorial orbit and could rarely see the poles; by contrast, Juno is in a polar orbit and has a much better view. There are some hints that Io might have larger and less-frequent eruptions at the poles, she said, but scientists need more observations to be sure.

Venus and Mars volcanoes are all right tonight

Venus also appears to have active lava flows on its surface, where temperatures reach more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit (425 degrees Celsius). The few Soviet Venera spacecraft that landed there in the 1970s and 1980s lasted only a short while. Lopes said it's unclear if Venus has active volcanoes currently, although multiple observations from Europe's past Venus Express mission suggested it might. One example is Idunn Mons, which is a hotspot that may have erupted relatively recently.

Venus has dome volcanoes, or volcanoes with lots of peaks, although these volcanoes might be inactive. This kind of volcano is also common on Earth. A dome volcano is formed from eruptions of viscous (sticky) lava, with only a small percentage of gas that oozes out.

"Volcanologists call it two-face lava, because it hides itself and oozes out," Lopes said. Mount St. Helens, in Washington state, is one such example, with several of these lava domes dotting its crater. Venus  is also populated with other types of volcanoes and volcanic features — pancake domes (which look like pancakes), arachnoids (eroded calderas that look like spiders), lava flows and volcanic plains.

Venus and Mars also have shield volcanoes, a type of volcano made up almost entirely of fluid lava flows. (Shield volcanoes are common on Earth, in Hawaii in particular, Lopes said.) Mars possesses the highest volcano in the solar system — Olympus Mons — and several other monster volcanoes, perhaps because its gravity is lighter than Earth's and the volcanoes can grow taller.

On Mars, the volcanoes appear to be dormant, as there are no visible recent lava flows on the surface. There's extensive evidence of past volcanism, though. There are flood plains of basalts, as well as other types of volcanoes that "were formed by more explosive volcanism, because they are highly eroded on the flanks," Lopes said.

Other worlds in our solar system also had lava volcanism in the ancient past, including Earth's moon, Mercury and the dwarf planet Ceres, Lopes said. And then there are worlds with possible cryovolcanism — or icy volcanoes — in which the erupting material is water, or water mixed with nitrogen or methane.

There is evidence of active plumes at Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. Saturn's moon Titan may also have past cryovolcanic features on its surface, Lopes' research has found. Other worlds with possible cryovolcanism include Triton (Neptune's largest moon), Pluto, and Charon (Pluto's largest moon).

Originally published on Live Science.

Shiprock thrusts up from the surrounding New Mexico desert without warning. It's no wonder this abrupt landform is the center of a Navajo legend involving a giant bird that turned to stone — it's impossible to look at the sheer cliffs without wondering what created them.

A new view of Shiprock from space offers a few hints. Leading toward the rugged rock formation in San Juan County is a dark dike, a part of the volcano that created the 1,969-foot-tall (600 meters) cliff formation.

The formation is on Navajo Nation land and is known as Tse Bit'a'i, or "winged rock" in Navajo, according to the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (NMBGMR). Legend holds that the rock was Earth that became a bird and carried the Navajo people to the desert on its back, settling down and turning to stone again after the journey, according to Atlas Obscura. Navajo tradition holds that people should not climb or disturb the rocks, so they have been closed to recreation since the 1970s. [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit]

Geologically, Shiprock originated from a volcanic eruption about 30 million years ago, according to the Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources. At the time, the rocks were up to 3,280 feet (1,000 m) below the ground and formed the "neck" of a region of volcanic rocks that has otherwise eroded away. The formation is made from a potassium-rich magma called "minette," according to the bureau, and is heavily fractured into a type of angular fragmented rock called breccia. While the surrounding rock has eroded away, Shiprock and some of its accompanying lava dikes remain.

The new image of Shiprock was taken by the Operational Land Imager on NASA's Landsat 8 satellite on April 12, 2017.

Original article on Live Science. 

New videos show the first ever observations of deep submarine volcanic eruptions.

Most of the Earth's volcanic activity happens underwater, anywhere from the surface all the way down to depths greater than 2.5 miles.

However, this underwater activity has rarely been seen directly. Previous accounts were either after the eruptions or by surface vessels that couldn't get close enough to the action.

Submerged fireworks

In March 2004, a team of NOAA scientists sent a remotely operated research submarine, named ROPOS to find some hot vents along the Mariana Arc volcanic chain.

"What we found was an eruption in progress," said Verena Tunnicliffe, a biologist at University of Victoria, Canada. "We found this big pit with rocks and molten sulfur flying out. And we were sitting at the edge of this pit."

Pulsating plumes of opaque yellowish ash containing droplets of sulfur started surging out of a feature called Brimstone Pit, close to the summit of a volcano named NW Rota-1, 60 miles northwest of the island of Rota in the North Pacific Ocean, at 1,820 feet below the water surface.

It wasn't until the scientists brought the vehicle to surface that they saw the dime-sized golden droplets covering the exterior of ROPOS. The results are detailed in the May 25 issue of the journal Nature.

Moving plates

The Earth's outer layer is made up of plates, each moving about four inches a year. Earth's molten lava rises and pushes Earth's plates apart in the middle of the oceans.

When an oceanic plate slides under a continental plate, it creates a subduction zone. The rock is once again heated as it goes down into the Earth, and magma again rises to form volcanoes.

While the oceanic Pacific Plate moves west towards Japan, the Philippines Plate moves eastward towards Hawaii. The Pacific Plate is being subducted and gases and molten lava are coming up through the Philippines Plate, Tunnicliffe explained.

This causes magma and other materials to spew out in volcanic eruptions at sites like Brimstone Pit.

The return

In October 2005, the scientists sent another vehicle, the Hyper-Dolphin, to the site to Brimstone Pit and found that it's still active and spewing out magma ash.

In their latest expedition, which started in April 2006 and recently ended, the team's third remotely operated vehicle to visit the site, Jason II, was bombarded by volcanic bombs.

"Volcanoes put out magma in different forms," said Robert Embley, a geophysicist at the NOAA Vents Program. "In water they solidify. The smaller ones are ash and the bigger ones are bombs."

But more importantly, Jason II also showed that the volcano is still active and ongoing.

On Jason II's first dive, the team was unable to find Brimstone Pit because a volcanic fog made it hard to see.  In the second dive, the fog had dissipated and the scientists noticed that part of the volcano had fallen off since their last visit.

"Something happened there before we got there," Embley told LiveScience.

The slow-moving cloud of white smoke soon started becoming more active. The cloud and bubbles started escalating and pulsing like never before, suggesting the volcano continually erupts in cycles of varying activity.

"In some ways we were able to see what was happening underwater better than is possible on land—because the pressure of 560 meters (1,837 feet) of water dampened the power of the explosive eruptions and so we could observe what was going on from very close up, which is impossible on land," said study team member William Chadwick of Oregon State University.

Acid water

When the area water was sampled, even when there was no activity, it was found to be very acidic from the high concentration of sulfur.

"Sulfur dioxide is one of the main gases that come out of arc volcanoes," Chadwick said.  "When the sulfur dioxide mixes with seawater, it produces sulfuric acid and sulfur droplets. This makes the volcanic plumes very acidic, like stomach acid."

This and the recurrent rain of molten sulfur and ash mean that the sides of the volcano are inhospitable to all but a handful of hardy organisms such as shrimp extreme microbes that huddle in mats.

Volcanic eruptions at northern latitudes have a different impact on the climate than eruptions in the tropics, a new study shows.

Volcanoes can pump ash and chemicals 10 miles (16 kilometers) or higher into the air in major eruptions. Winds push the stuff around the planet. Up high, sulfur dioxide from a volcano mixes with water vapor and forms small particles called aerosols, which block sunlight and affect climate.

Using data from real eruptions and climate projections from advanced computer models, researchers looked at how differently the material is spread in an Alaskan eruption versus one in the Philippines.

Turns out tropical eruptions result in a wider distribution of particles, while material from eruptions in the far north tends to stay up there. The result can affect your weather for months.

Northern eruptions are carried east by a band of wind around the Arctic. The wind circles the planet at about the latitude of Moscow.

In 1912, the Mount Katmai region in Alaska generated one of the largest eruptions of the 20^th Century. (The main source was actually the nearby volcano Novarupta, but it?s long been called the Katmai eruption).

Ash fell a foot deep across more than 3,000 square miles, and the higher cloud was carried as far away Africa.

The Katmai eruption was compared to the 1991 explosion of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. That event caused the entire planet to cool by about 1 degree.

Tropical eruptions tend to create aerosols that block heat from the sun in the lower atmosphere, cooling temperatures in the subtropics. But in turn, this creates a reduced north-to-south temperature gradient that generally causes warmer winters over the Northern Hemisphere.

"Although the Mount Katmai eruption was found to have some role in the winter climate, including distinct cooling in southern Asia, the most significant climate effect was during the summer when strong cooling over the Northern Hemisphere landmasses caused a decrease in the Asian monsoon circulation," said Luke Oman, a researcher at Rutgers University. "Large tropical volcanic eruptions tend to spread aerosols around the globe, but with high-latitude eruptions like Katmai, they remain north of 30?N latitude."

"This study not only offers further evidence that the location and intensity of an eruption largely determine the Earth's overall climatic response, it also helps us see how well our computer models perform," said co-author Gavin Schmidt of NASA.

• Volcano Science & History
• Dangerous US Volcanoes Not Properly Monitored
• New Volcano Threat: Just When You Think It's Safe ...
• Super Volcano Will Challenge Civilization, Geologists Warn

The Fury

of Volcanoes

Mount St. Helens

in 2004

Dangerous volcanoes in six states are not adequately monitored, U.S. Geological Survey officials said Friday. The agency called for a new nationwide warning system.

Geologists conducted a new survey of the 169 known U.S. volcanoes and ranked them according to their threat to human life, property and aviation safety.

Alaska, California, Washington State, Oregon, Hawaii, Wyoming all have "dangerous volcanoes with monitoring gaps or no monitoring in place," the report concludes.

"We cannot afford to wait until a hazardous volcano begins to erupt before deploying a modern monitoring effort," said USGS Director Chip Groat. "The consequences put property and people at risk - including volcano scientists on site and pilots and passengers in the air."

Though volcanoes erupt sporadically, the risk is real.

747 nearly lost

"We nearly lost a fully loaded Boeing 747 to volcanic ash cloud in Alaska in 1989," said Capt. Ed Miller of the Air Line Pilots Association.

Miller said a partnership with the USGS now provides warnings that help pilots avoid such plumes. When Mount St. Helens woke up last October and spewed ash, the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory notified air traffic control centers within five minutes.

By placing seismic instruments and other sensors on a volcanic mountain, geologists can detect early warning signs of possible eruptions and also note eruptions that are underway in remote locations. About half of the most threatening volcanoes are monitored at a basic level, the report found, while only a few are well watched.

"Monitoring capabilities at many hazardous volcanoes are sparse or antiquated, and some hazardous volcanoes have no ground-based monitoring whatsoever," the report states.

The report calls for a National Volcano Early Warning System (NVEWS) that would create a 24/7 Volcano Watch Office.

"This is the only way to forewarn communities at risk in enough time to activate emergency response plans, and ultimately help save lives and property," Groat said.

The hotspots

Since 1980, there have been 45 eruptions at 33 volcanoes in the United States. Of those, 15 were considered notable, the report found.

The report found 13 "very high threat volcanoes" with inadequate monitoring. Though some erupt infrequently and may be dormant now, geologists expect them to eventually reawaken, and many are near large population center. The list:

USGS officials and geologists plans to meet with federal agencies, state and county emergency management agencies, businesses and other organizations to finalize plans for the nationwide early warning system.

The full report can be downloaded here.

Related Stories

• The Science and History of Volcanoes
• New Volcano Threat: Just When You Think It's Safe ...
• Super Volcano Will Challenge Civilization, Geologists Warn
• Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Poses Health Risk
• Rumbling Alaskan Volcano Prompts Warning
• Scientists: Volcano Monitoring Funds Low

Uplink Your Views

Discuss this or other Forces of Nature stories

The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill the planet and threaten human civilization, British scientists warned Tuesday.

And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it.

Several volcanoes around the world are capable of gigantic eruptions unlike anything witnessed in recorded history, based on geologic evidence of past events, the scientists said. Such eruptions would dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, Pinatubo and anything else going back dozens of millennia.

"Super-eruptions are up to hundreds of times larger than these," said Stephen Self of the United Kingdom's (U.K.) Open University.

"An area the size of North America can be devastated, and pronounced deterioration of global climate would be expected for a few years following the eruption," Self said. "They could result in the devastation of world agriculture, severe disruption of food supplies, and mass starvation. These effects could be sufficiently severe to threaten the fabric of civilization."

Self and his colleagues at the Geological Society of London presented their report to the U.K. Government's Natural Hazard Working Group.

"Although very rare these events are inevitable, and at some point in the future humans will be faced with dealing with and surviving a super eruption," Stephen Sparks of the University of Bristol told LiveScience in advance of Tuesday's announcement.

Supporting evidence

The warning is not new. Geologists in the United States detailed a similar scenario in 2001, when they found evidence suggesting volcanic activity in Yellowstone National Park will eventually lead to a colossal eruption. Half the United States will be covered in ash up to 3 feet (1 meter) deep, according to a study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Explosions of this magnitude "happen about every 600,000 years at Yellowstone," says Chuck Wicks of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied the possibilities in separate work. "And it's been about 620,000 years since the last super explosive eruption there."

Past volcanic catastrophes at Yellowstone and elsewhere remain evident as giant collapsed basins called calderas.

A super eruption is a scaled up version of a typical volcanic outburst, Sparks explained. Each is caused by a rising and growing chamber of hot molten rock known as magma.

"In super eruptions the magma chamber is huge," Sparks said. The eruption is rapid, occurring in a matter of days. "When the magma erupts the overlying rocks collapse into the chamber, which has reduced its pressure due to the eruption. The collapse forms the huge crater."

The eruption pumps dust and chemicals into the atmosphere for years, screening the Sun and cooling the planet. Earth is plunged into a perpetual winter, some models predict, causing plant and animal species disappear forever.

"The whole of a continent might be covered by ash, which might take many years -- possibly decades -- to erode away and for vegetation to recover," Sparks said.

Yellowstone may be winding down geologically, experts say. But they believe it harbors at least one final punch. Globally, there are still plenty of possibilities for super volcano eruptions, even as Earth quiets down over the long haul of its 4.5-billion-year existence.

"The Earth is of course losing energy, but at a very slow rate, and the effects are only really noticeable over billions rather than millions of years," Sparks said.

Human impact

The odds of a globally destructive volcano explosion in any given century are extremely low, and no scientist can say when the next one will occur. But the chances are five to 10 times greater than a globally destructive asteroid impact, according to the new British report.

The next super eruption, whenever it occurs, might not be the first one humans have dealt with.

About 74,000 years ago, in what is now Sumatra, a volcano called Toba blew with a force estimated at 10,000 times that of Mount St. Helens. Ash darkened the sky all around the planet. Temperatures plummeted by up to 21 degrees at higher latitudes, according to research by Michael Rampino, a biologist and geologist at New York University.

Rampino has estimated three-quarters of the plant species in the Northern Hemisphere perished.

Stanley Ambrose, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois, suggested in 1998 that Rampino's work might explain a curious bottleneck in human evolution: The blueprints of life for all humans -- DNA -- are remarkably similar given that our species branched off from the rest of the primate family tree a few million years ago.

Ambrose has said early humans were perhaps pushed to the edge of extinction after the Toba eruption -- around the same time folks got serious about art and tool making. Perhaps only a few thousand survived. Humans today would all be descended from these few, and in terms of the genetic code, not a whole lot would change in 74,000 years.

Sitting ducks

Based on the latest evidence, eruptions the size of the giant Yellowstone and Toba events occur at least every 100,000 years, Sparks said, "and it could be as high as every 50,000 years. There are smaller but nevertheless huge eruptions which would have continental to global consequences every 5,000 years or so."

Unlike other threats to mankind -- asteroids, nuclear attacks and global warming to name a few -- there's little to be done about a super volcano.

"While it may in future be possible to deflect asteroids or somehow avoid their impact, even science fiction cannot produce a credible mechanism for averting a super eruption," the new report states. "No strategies can be envisaged for reducing the power of major volcanic eruptions."

The Geological Society of London has issued similar warnings going back to 2000. The scientists this week called for more funding to investigate further the history of super eruptions and their likely effects on the planet and on modern society.

"Sooner or later a super eruption will happen on Earth and this issue also demands serious attention," the report concludes.

Scientists have gone back-and-forth in recent years on what caused the various mass extinctions clearly evident in the fossil record. The worst of these, known as the Great Dying, occurred 250 million years ago. More than 90 percent of all species perished.

Experts are pretty sure an asteroid was behind a more recent mass extinction, which took with it the dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago. A more controversial recent claim has been that a similar impact caused the Great Dying.

But a new study finds no evidence for an impact 250 million years ago, at what is known as the end of the Permian Era.

Wrong calling cards

A team of scientists led by Christian Koeberl from the University of Vienna studied rock samples in sections of the planet's crust in Austria and Italy that are dated to the end-Permian extinction.

"Our geochemical analyses reveal no tangible evidence of extraterrestrial impact," Koeberl said. "This suggests the mass extinction must have been home-grown."

Asteroids bring elements to Earth that are rare here. Excess iridium, helium-3 and osmium-187, for example, can serve as calling cards for a space rock. In a series of previous studies, a group led by Luann Becker of the University of California, Santa Barbara has claimed evidence from other locations for such extraterrestrial signatures, all associated with the end-Permian event. Several scientists have doubted those results, however.

The new study found only very small levels of iridium in the 250-million-year-old rocks, and revealed no traces of helium-3 or osmium-187.

There might have been several causes for the extinction, Koeberl said in an email interview, "but right now volcanism appears as the main culprit. I don't think an impact was involved in this case."

Choking the air and sea

The slight concentrations of potentially extraterrestrial materials were probably instead deposited by chemical interactions involving low oxygen levels in the ocean and high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Koeberl said. The likely cause of the excess carbon dioxide: volcanic activity. That new interpretation is based in part on a more detailed analysis of the composition of the ancient materials by Koeberl's group.

The researchers also cite other recent studies that suggested the extinction occurred at the same time as extensive volcanic activity in what is now Siberia.

Here's what might have happened:

Long ago, theorists say, all the continents were huddled in one giant landmass called Pangea. Ancient spurts of volcanic activity sometimes cause huge cracks, allowing new oceans to form and leading to the separated continents we know today.

A similar event at the close of the Permian -- but one that did not form a new ocean -- flooded the atmosphere with gas and dust, altering the climate and making life impossible for many species, Koeberl's team concludes.

The research is detailed in the December issue of the journal Geology.

Supercontinent

Pangea began to break up about 225-200 million years ago. This animation shows how it unfolded.

SOURCE: USGS

While earthquakes and hurricanes often seem the most devastating types of natural disasters, volcanoes can have more wide-ranging effects than either.

As the Philippine's Mount Pinatubo showed in 1991, a volcano can create a cloud of sulfuric acid that encircles the entire planet.

Volcanoes form when chambers of magma, or hot molten rock, boil to the surface. These magma chambers often remain sealed for hundreds of years between eruptions, until the pressure builds sufficiently to break through a vent, which is a crack or weak spot in the rock above.

The blast creates a crater, where lava and ash spill out, forming the cone. On some volcanoes, the magma chamber collapses after a violent eruption and a caldera forms, which is just a large, bowl-shaped crater. (See Long Valley Caldera below.) Sometimes these calderas fill with water, as happened at Crater Lake in Oregon.

Where volcanoes develop: Hot spots and subduction zones

Earth's crust is made up of a dozen or so major plates, each moving about four inches a year. Rising magma pushes Earth's plates apart in the middle of the oceans. Here and along other weak spots in the plates, hot spots occur.

The Hawaiian Islands were created by a hot spot. When an oceanic plate slides under a continental plate, it creates a subduction zone. The rock is heated again as it dives into the Earth, and magma again rises to form volcanoes.

The volcanoes that tower above the surrounding mountains from California to Washington state are caused by subduction zones. This same process builds mountains and causes earthquakes.

Scientists have long theorized about giant chambers of pure magma deep within the Earth, which is eventually forced to the surface and reshapes the planet's crust. Instead, the magma seems to flow through a network of smaller vertical columns and interconnected chambers, according to the most recent research.

Volcanoes in history

AD 79: One of the most famous volcanoes is Mount Vesuvius, which sits along the Bay of Naples in southern Italy. It has erupted more than 50 times in the past 2,000 years. It was the AD 79 eruption, which buried Pompeii, that Vesuvius is famous for, but another eruption in 1631 killed some 4,000 people.

1669: In Sicily, Mount Etna sent a river of lava through the streets of Catania, killing some 20,000 people there and in the surrounding region.

1783: The eruption of Mount Skaptar in Iceland devastated farming and fishing, causing a famine that killed a fifth of the country's people.

1815: Whirlwinds and tsunamis from the eruption of Mount Tambora, on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia, killed 12,000 people. The volcano sent a cloud ejecta into the atmosphere that was more than four times the amount ejected by Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

1883: Another Indonesian volcano, Krakatoa, erupted in an explosion heard 3,000 miles away. Seventy-pound boulders landed on islands 50 miles away, and a 130-foot tsunami devastated hundreds of villages, including Java and Sumatra. About 36,000 people died. Dust high in the atmosphere caused the Moon to appear blue, and sometimes green, for two years.

1902: Mount Pel?e, on the island of Martinique, smothered the town of Saint-Pierre in deadly gas and hot ash, killing 29,933 of the 29,937 residents.

1980: Mount St. Helens in Washington state blew 1,300 feet off its top, killing 57 people and causing a midday darkness in towns 85 miles away. Though fresh in many peoples' minds, Mount St. Helens was relatively small by historical measures. The cloud of material it ejected was only about 5 percent of what Mount Pinatubo coughed up.

1991: After 600 years of dormancy, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines rumbled for days before erupting and killing about 750 people, including several journalists who kept vigil in a restricted area waiting for the eruption. Ash was more than 6 feet deep in a two-mile radius around the volcano, and buried a U.S. air base 15 miles away.

Pinatubo's cloud of sulfuric acid, some 20 million tons of it, climbed to more than 12 miles in the stratosphere. Over the next several weeks, the cloud encircled the equator and spread to the poles, covering the entire planet. The particles reflected sunlight and cooled the Earth by nearly a full degree Fahrenheit.

Other significant U.S. volcanoes

Lassen Peak, California: Erupted between 1914 and 1917, causing no deaths. Lassen is considered one of the most likely in the Cascade range to erupt again.

Long Valley, California: The Long Valley Caldera is a 10 by 20-mile depression in the Sierra Nevada Mountains caused by an eruption 700,000 years ago. A tremendous explosion spit out molten rock from 4 miles under the surface; afterward, the whole mess settled more than a mile down into the depression where the magma had been.

Magma still feeds hot springs in the caldera. Earthquakes in 1980 marked the beginning of new activity that has included shifts in the position of hot springs and swarms of other small earthquakes. Geologists say it probably indicates that magma is again rising from below, and they suspect the area will erupt again.

Mount Shasta, California: Last known eruption was in 1786. Believed to erupt every 600 to 800 years. Mountain is significant as the incredibly dominant visual element in the Northern California landscape.

Kilauea and Muana Loa, Hawaii: Each tend to erupt every two or three years; eruptions are non-explosive, allowing these two volcanoes to be among the most studied active volcanoes in the world.