Like a Hadean nightmare come to life, flickering lightning is seen hovering over the dark sulphorous caldera of Alaska's Mt. Redoubt:
[A] team of researchers scrambled to set up a system called a Lightning Mapping Array that would be able to peer through the dust and gas of any eruption that occurred to the lightning storm happening within. ... "The lightning activity was as strong or stronger than we have seen in large Midwestern thunderstorms," Krehbiel said. "The radio frequency noise was so strong and continuous that people living in the area would not have been able to watch broadcast VHF television stations."
When volcanoes erupt they blast shards of microscopic glass and toxic chemicals into the stratosphere. The plume wreaks havoc on everything from machinery to lung tissue. Redoubt is a relatively small volcano in a sparsely populated region of the world. But her big brothers and sisters have laid waste from Pompeii to Washington State. And simmering below the surface are monstrous ticking time bombs, supervolcanoes like Yellowstone, the likes of which have never been witnessed in recorded history -- but may have shaped it.
Geoscience plays a critical role in monitoring the status of these latent disasters. Along with others, we can't stop them, but steps can be taken to minimize loss of life and property. There is one sure fire way to make sure they kill a bunch of people:
Jindal singled out a $140 million appropriation for the U.S. Geological Survey as an example of questionable government spending during the GOP response to President Obama's address to Congress Tuesday night. The governor, a rising Republican star, questioned why "something called 'volcano monitoring' " was included in the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed earlier this month.
- GrrrlScientist has resurrected the old tangled bank blog carnival as Scientia Pro Publica, future versions of which you can volunteer to host on your own blogs.
- Half a century after the original Mercury 7, America's newest class of astronauts may have something in common with their famous predecessors: No rocket.
- Through a quirk of geology and meteorology, roughly three-quarters of the world's deadliest tornadoes occur in North America, most of those in a small region called tornado alley.
- Outside of that I got nothing, so the first cool link someone posts is gonna get promoted into this slot. WINNER! Pat208 with the Astronomy Picture of the Day.