Austin feels laid-back. The small down-town area has bars and restaurants with live music of varying quality. One person does morning percussion on the sidewalk. There are quite a few self-driving ...

Io, moon of Jespiter Jupiter, is famously volcanically active. It has more than 400 active volcanoes, over an area the size of Asia. Some of the volcanic mountains are taller than Mount Everest.

Today is 270 years since the destruction of Lisbon. The earthquake of All Saints day 1755 in Lisbon changed a nation and is still remembered across the continent. Hence a republication of our 2016 ...

Iwo Jima is famous. The battle between the US and Japanese forces are well remembered – by both sides. Before the war, about 1000 people lived here. After the war, none. There is a military base only.

Living near the sea can be good. First and foremost, the sea provides a food supply in the form of fish and shellfish which is available throughout the year. The open water provides fast transport ...

Volcanic activity in North America is surprisingly infrequent. In spite of there being no less than 255 volcanoes or volcanic features such as maars or volcanic fields listed for California (20), ...

A top-secret development on Mount Rainier came out in the open this morning. There was widespread surprise and excitement when people in Tacoma and Seattle saw a rocket launched from the summit of the ...

These are not eruptions like we have seen in modern times. The two largest eruptions of the past 2000 years are Tambora in 1815, and Taupo around 200 AD. They ejected around 150 km 3, decent VEI-7’s ...

The double-booked land is also known as the Afar Triangle, a low-lying region wedged into the Ethiopian Plateau. The region is not for the intrepid. The name is synonymous with remoteness. It is also ...

To me, it’s an eruption because it’s throwing rocks and it’s on a volcano. It could be phreatic or magmatic. It’s phreatic if it’s driven by heated groundwater, or magmatic gasses from an intrusion, ...

Here is the famous Steppe, the dry grass-land, the never-ending plain stretching across Eurasia from China to Hungary. Rainfall is too limited for trees to grow. The climate is harsh, with hot summers ...

After writing my Ionian articles (there will be more Io later, since after all it has the solar system’s most magnificent active volcanoes) I felt it is time to return to Earth again, to a much ...