UNLESS YOU’VE HAD YOUR HEAD UNDER A ROCK since the end of the last ice age, you’ll probably be aware that things are not altogether well with our planet.
To cut a very long story quite short, global temperatures have, since the end of the industrial revolution in the mid-19th century, risen by about 0.8°C/1.4°F. That might not sound like very much, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a further temperature rise this century of around 4°C/7°F, melting much of the Earth’s polar ice and raising average sea levels by about 1 1/2 feet (46 cm). That’s based on the current trend (the reality could be much worse—or much better, if we act). As it stands, it’s sufficient to redraw the world’s coastlines and displace millions of people from their homes in low-lying coastal locations.
All the evidence points to the cause being carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by human industry. Carbon dioxide, and other so-called “greenhouse gases,” cause global warming by trapping infrared heat radiation, preventing the heat from being released to cool the planet down. If radiation arrived from the Sun only at infrared wavelengths, there would be no warming—in fact, we’d have the opposite problem, as the Sun would be unable to provide enough heat and the planet would steadily cool and gradually slip into an ice age. But that’s not what happens. Instead, radiation arrives at all wavelengths, many of which pass straight through the atmosphere unimpeded, warming the ground below. The trouble is the heat is then re-emitted by the ground as infrared, and this then gets trapped. The result is global warming.
When the first detailed calculations of global warming were produced, by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1896, it was seen as a good thing—a way to stave off the next ice age. However, over the course of the 20th century, evidence gradually accrued to support the conclusion that the long-term effects would be anything but beneficial. By the late 1980s, a significant number of scientists were calling for reductions in human-made pollution in order to avert what they saw as a major threat to the security of the planet.
Most human carbon dioxide emissions—at least, the problematic ones—are caused by the burning of fossil fuels. These are combustible chemicals formed from the remains of prehistoric plants and animals mined from deep underground. They’re rich in carbon, which is released as CO2 when the fuels are burned.
Living things absorb carbon. Plants, for example, soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, through the process of photosynthesis, locking the carbon into their structure and releasing oxygen—which is handy for us and other animal life to breathe. When these organisms die and are buried underground, their carbon content gets buried with them. But while the burning of wood and other biofuels simply recycles existing carbon from organisms to the atmosphere and back again, the use of fossil fuels is dredging up old carbon, which was safely buried underground, and dumping it back into the atmosphere. This increase in CO2 is trapping more heat, and that’s why the planet is warming up.
Of course, global warming is an average trend. There will still be periods that are colder than average—this is the careful distinction we draw between day-to-day variations, which we call “weather,” and the long-term climate. And that’s why it’s very much possible for, say, temperatures during winter in Chicago to hit–30°F, even though the global temperature trend is going in the opposite direction.
Some of the latest developments in the understanding of our changing climate are presented in the following pages. At the end of 2018, scientists confirmed that the previous four years had been the warmest on record. And this has led the rate at which Antarctic ice is melting to increase sixfold from 1979 to the present. Antarctica is now shedding over 250 billion tons (227 billion tonnes) of ice every year, all of which is driving sea levels higher.
In other environmental news, we report on the giant fatberg that was found in the sewers beneath the British seaside town of Sidmouth. You can find out why Earth’s magnetic field appears to be changing at an alarming rate. And we reveal why the map of the world you’ve been using all your life is a complete and utter fabrication. Read on.
Climate change isn’t the only serious environmental threat facing the planet. There are also crises unfolding over plastic pollution in the oceans, deforestation, overpopulation, and food production, to name just a few. Suffice it to say, planet Earth is in something of a pickle, and it’s going to take some smart minds and a concerted effort on the part of humanity to put things right.
But the good news, at least for those of us who value our sanity, is that it’s not all doom and gloom. A study by historians from Harvard has found that—despite climate change, and the general crumbling of the world order—now is actually a pretty good time to be alive. Things were markedly worse around the sixth century CE, when a volcanic eruption is believed to have thrown ash into the atmosphere, blocking out the Sun and causing crop failures, widespread famine, death, misery, and the fall of empires.
So cheer the fuck up.
67
MAN WHO FELL INTO YELLOWSTONE HOT SPRING COMPLETELY DISSOLVED WITHIN A DAY
by Robin Andrews
BENEATH YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK RESIDES ONE of the largest magma chambers in the world. Thanks to this unfathomably hot fuel source, the water systems around the park can often be extremely hot and acidic.
You definitely shouldn’t take a dip in them. They will kill you.
Back in June 2016, a 23-year-old man fell into one, and he died fairly quickly. Subsequently, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by a local TV network, more grisly details of the cause and the aftermath were revealed.
Apparently, the man was looking for a place to “hot pot,” which describes the act of getting slightly singed in natural hot springs for no logical reason whatsoever. He leaned over to dip his forefinger in, in order to test the temperature of the water, when he slipped and fell.
The victim was found dead and drifting around the pool later that day, but officials could not quite reach him to drag him out. A thunderstorm promptly arrived and forced them to retreat for the night. Returning the next day, they found that nothing of the man remained—except his wallet and his flip-flops.
In his incident report, Deputy Chief Ranger Lorant Veress pointed out that the waters were particularly hot and acidic that day. “In a very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving,” he was quoted as saying by Time magazine.
Although incidents like this are clearly quite tragic, they’re also testament to the incredibly daft lengths people will go in order to show off, be “brave,” or—in this case—have a very unique bath.
Yellowstone’s geothermal ponds, pools, and geysers average around 199°F (93°C) at the surface, and they are far hotter just a few yards (meters) down. The temperature of the liquid can exceed 212°F (100°C)—the boiling point—because the pressure of the overlying water prevents it from turning to steam.
Only inhabitable by a specialized group of organisms known as archaea, these watery doom portals are fenced off and surrounded by a bunch of quite prominent warning signs for a really, really good reason.
Are you a microscopic, extremophilic life-form? No, we didn’t think so. So stay the hell back, and don’t try any of this “hot potting” nonsense unless you want to dissolve like a sugar cube in coffee.
68
POMPEII SKELETON REVEALS THE “UNLUCKIEST GUY IN HISTORY”
by James Felton
A man who fled Pompeii midway through the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 CE, only to be smashed to death by a massive falling slab of stone suffered one final humiliation in 2018: by becoming an internet meme.
The skeleton (perhaps, unsurprisingly, not the head) of the “unlucky” man was unearthed recently at Pompeii’s archaeological dig site. It would appear that, while attempting to flee the eruption of Vesuvius, he had his head crushed by a gigantic, falling block of masonry. Since that day in 79 CE, he has remained trapped there with his face underneath the rock.
After CNN tweeted the image, with a short explanation of the story, the internet had a field day. Responses ranged from sympathy for the unlucky guy to outright laughter. Meanwhile, the story was retweeted over 14,000 times.
69
PHOTOGRAPHER CAPTURES AMAZING IMAGES OF WEIRDLY ALIEN “LIGHT PILLARS” FLOATING IN THE SKY
by Jonathan O’Callaghan
A PHOTOGRAPHER HAS TAKEN SOME RATHER AMAZING photos of an unusual phenomenon known as “light pillars.”
Vincent Brady from Charlotte, Michigan, snapped the images above nearby Whitefish Bay, which is on the eastern edge of Lake Superior.
Light pillars can look almost alien-like, with vertical beams of light seeming to extend up into space. They have an earthly explanation, though—they’re the result of cold air carrying flat, plate-like ice crystals, which reflect artificial lights to produce the odd effect.
“Light pillars have become one of my favorite subjects,” Brady told IFLScience. “They’re a unique atmospheric phenomenon that occurs when the temperature drops to single digits, but more likely when it’s subzero and the wind is calm.
“As moisture rolls in, it becomes crystallized, often referred to as ‘diamond dust.’ You can see it glistening in lights, seemingly defying gravity and dancing through the air. As the ice crystals float over light sources, they reflect and refract light and produce what appear as light pillars. Seeing them is a visual treat.”
The crystals also sometimes melt as they approach the ground, which can give the pillars the added effect of appearing to hover in the air. “You can think you’re seeing some sort of alien invasion,” said Brady.
Interestingly, it’s not just artificial lights that can produce light pillars. The Sun can do it too, an effect known as—you guessed it—a Sun pillar. The exact same thing is happening, as the Sun’s light reflects off the ice crystals to create a glowing vertical shard. The Moon can also produce a similar effect (we’ll let you work out the name).
Sun pillars are best viewed when the Sun is low in the sky. Light pillars, meanwhile, can be seen throughout the night when there are plenty of artificial lights on the ground to illuminate the crystals.
You can see more of Brady’s work at his website (www.vincentbrady.com).
70
ANTARCTICA IS NOW MELTING SIX TIMES FASTER THAN IT WAS IN 1979
by Rachel Baxter
ANTARCTICA IS MELTING AT AN UNPRECEDENTED RATE. Between 1979 and 2017, Antarctic ice loss increased by a factor of six, causing sea levels to rise by half an inch (13 mm). That’s according to a study published in 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
An international team of scientists from the University of California, Irvine (UCI), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, conducted the “longest-ever assessment of remaining Antarctic ice mass.” The team looked at aerial and satellite images of 18 Antarctic regions, which included 176 basins and some surrounding islands, to see how they had changed over the past four decades.
They discovered that, from 1979 to 1990, Antarctica lost about 44 billion tons (40 billion tonnes) of ice each year. After a slow rise between 1979 and 2001, the rate of ice loss suddenly jumped by 280 percent to 148 billion tons (134 billion tonnes), reaching an unthinkable 278 billion tons (252 billion tonnes) between 2009 and 2017.
This ice loss contributes to sea-level rise, and the team found that Antarctica’s melting ice caused sea levels around the world to rise by 0.5 inches (13 mm) during the decades studied.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak,” said lead author Eric Rignot, a professor at UCI and senior project scientist at JPL, in a statement. “As the Antarctic ice sheet continues to melt away, we expect multi-meter sea-level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries.”
And Antarctica isn’t the only contributor to sea-level rise: A recent study found that our oceans are warming at a faster rate than expected due to climate change, and, thanks to thermal expansion, warmer waters mean rising seas. This, in turn, threatens coastal communities as flooding becomes more extreme.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the researchers also found that the eastern Antarctic is an important contributor to ice loss, more so than previously thought. Past studies had suggested little to no loss of ice from this part of the continent.
“The Wilkes Land sector of East Antarctica has, overall, always been an important participant in the mass loss, even as far back as the 1980s, as our research has shown,” said Rignot. “This region is probably more sensitive to climate [change] than has traditionally been assumed, and that’s important to know, because it holds even more ice than West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula together.”
It’s no secret that the frozen continent is melting more rapidly now due to human-induced global warming. To prevent climate catastrophe, we urgently need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by switching to renewable, non-polluting fuels.
71
WHEN WAS THE WORST TIME TO BE ALIVE IN HUMAN HISTORY?
by Tom Hale
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, WE CURRENTLY LIVE IN WHAT IS the safest era of human history. Sure, “strongman politics” has made a comeback, many of the planet’s biggest problems remain unsolved, and there was that god-awful year when half of the world’s most beloved celebrities dropped dead. Nevertheless, relatively speaking, now is a great time to be alive.
So, when was the crappiest time to be alive? This question was inadvertently raised by a historical study carried out in 2018, attempting to figure out how the European monetary system changed after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Writing in the journal Antiquity, the researchers were looking for evidence of pollution from silver processing in ice cores buried deep in the European Alps. In doing so, they came across all kinds of insights into natural disasters and climate change events through the centuries.
One thing was clear: The century following the year 536 CE was a goddamn miserable time for all concerned.
“It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year,” study author Michael McCormick, a medieval historian at Harvard, told Science magazine.
This era was grim, not because of bloody wars or ferocious diseases, but due to a number of extreme weather events that led to a widespread famine. Although there are many theories floating around as to why the famine occurred, some of the sturdiest evidence points toward a “volcanic winter,” where ash and dust were thrown into the air from the eruption of a volcano, thereby obscuring the Sun.
Nobody is completely certain which volcano was the culprit. El Salvador’s Ilopango has long stood as a top contender. However, the 2018 study hints that the eruption took place in Iceland, as the ice cores gathered contain volcanic glass that’s chemically similar to particles found across Europe and Greenland.
Whatever the volcano, its effects were widespread, sparking the “Late Antique Little Ice Age” and a chain of global crop failures and famine. Snow fell during the summer in China, and droughts hit Peru. Meanwhile, Gaelic Irish annals talk of “a failure of bread in the year 536 [CE].” It seems there was scarcely a corner of Earth left unscathed.
The mini–ice age also raised a load of social problems. Some researchers have even argued that the effects of the volcanic event in 536 CE were so profound that they brought down empires (or at least tipped them over the edge). As noted in a 2016 study in Nature Geoscience, the century after the volcanic eruption saw the collapse of the Sasanian Empire, the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire, political upheavals in China, and many other instances of bloody social turmoil across Eurasia.
All in all, a crummy time to be alive.
74
HUGE 210-FOOT (64-METER) FATBERG DISCOVERED BENEATH QUAINT ENGLISH SEASIDE TOWN
by Rosie McCall
EVER SINCE LONDON’S MOST UNLIKELY CELEBRITY, THE Whitechapel fatberg, drew headlines in 2017, the UK has had something of a morbid fascination with the mammoth-sized clumps of gunk lurking in the sewer system.
The latest fatberg to make the rounds is a 210-foot (64-meter) beast found in Sidmouth, Devon—the largest of its kind to be found by the region’s local water provider, South West Water (SWW). To put it into perspective, this particular monstrosity is about 26 feet (8 meters) longer than the Leaning Tower of Pisa is tall.
Fortunately for residents of and visitors to the sea-facing town of Sidmouth, authorities located the berg “in good time” and long before it posed any kind of risk to beachgoers or risked blocking any toilets, BBC News reports.
Fatbergs are an abominable concoction of human excrement, sanitary products, drugs, contraceptives, and other insoluble items, all covered in congealed fat. As IFLScience reported in 2017, Thames Water spends more than $1 million every single month to remove the swarm of fatbergs plaguing the UK capital, thanks to residents’ willful disregard for proper waste management practice.
Fortunately for the brave men and women at SWW, this fatberg didn’t weigh in anywhere close to the Whitechapel monstrosity. Cheerfully nicknamed “Fatty McFatberg,” this weighed 143 tons (130 tonnes) and was a jaw-dropping 820 feet (250 meters) tip to tip. It was so big it took a dedicated team of eight, working every day for several weeks, to break it down with the help of some high-powered jet hoses.
And even that beast of a fatberg pales in comparison to one found close to the South Bank in central London in April 2018, a 2,460-foot-long (750-meter-long) monster. That’s roughly twice the height of the Empire State Building.
The latest discovery shows that fatbergs are a much larger problem that we thought—and even country dwellers aren’t safe from the lavatorial horrors that plague urban centers.
The moral of the story—think before you flush.
75
Microplastics Found in 100 Percent of Sea Turtles Tested
by Tom Hale
A collaboration of UK scientists conducting a study of 102 turtles, across seven different species, from three different oceans, has found that all individuals—every single one—had microplastics in their guts. In total, over 800 synthetic particles were discovered in the animals’ digestive tracts.
76
SOMETHING LIVING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA IS ABSORBING LARGE AMOUNTS OF THE CO2
by Madison Dapcevich
BACTERIA LIVING MORE THAN 21/2 MILES (4 KM) BELOW the surface of the Pacific Ocean are absorbing an estimated 10 percent of the carbon dioxide that oceans remove from the atmosphere every year.
A team of researchers discovered that benthic bacteria (those living just above the seafloor) are taking up large amounts of CO2 and assimilating it into their biomass by an unknown process. “This was completely unexpected,” said study author Andrew Sweetman in a statement. “Their biomass then potentially becomes a food source for other animals in the deep sea, so actually what we’ve discovered is a potential alternative food source in the deepest parts of the ocean, where we thought there was none.”
Writing in Limnology and Oceanography, the researchers say benthic bacteria, rather than seafloor animals, could be the “most important organisms” when it comes to consuming organic waste that drifts down toward the ocean floor.
To examine the cellular processes of benthic organisms, the team analyzed sediment samples taken from an area in the eastern Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico, known as the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCFZ), a deep-sea ecosystem completely devoid of light, but for flashes of bioluminescence, and with a surprisingly biodiverse seabed environment. Bacteria here “dominated the consumption” of organic waste over a period of one or two days for which the team observed. When scaling their results, that equates to about 220 million tons (200 million tonnes) of carbon dioxide that could be fixed into biomass every year, making the region a potentially important component in the deep-sea carbon cycle.
“We found the same activity at multiple study sites separated by hundreds of kilometers, so we can reasonably assume this is happening on the seabed in the eastern CCFZ and possibly across the entire CCFZ,” said Sweetman.
Assuming the results can be applied to the greater CCFZ, the authors say their findings could have implications for proposed mineral extraction in this region. The CCFZ is home to more than just deep-sea sponges, sea anemones, shrimps, and octopods. The clay-like muddy bottom is topped with trillions of potato-sized polymetallic nodules containing deposits of nickel, manganese, copper, zinc, cobalt, and other minerals. It’s an area so rich in minerals that the International Seabed Authority has awarded 16 exploration contracts for groups interested in conducting surveys for future seabed mining.
“If mining proceeds in the CCFZ, it will significantly disturb the seafloor environment,” said Sweetman. “Just four experiments similar to ours have been conducted in situ in the abyssal regions of the oceans; we need to know much more about abyssal seafloor biology and ecology before we even consider mining the region.”
77
A MYSTERY ABOUT EASTER ISLAND’S STATUES MIGHT FINALLY BE SOLVED
by Tom Hale
A SELECT FEW OF EASTER ISLAND’S GIANT “MOAI” HEADS have an especially strange choice of headwear. Just a handful of these famous volcanic-rock dudes have a red “hat” placed on top of their head. Not only are these hats made out of a red stone from a quarry on the other side of the island, they also appear to have been added after the statues were erected.
So, how and why did these 11-ton (10-tonne) “pukao” hats get up there on top of a 13-foot (4-meter) statue? After years of contemplation, archaeologists from the Pennsylvania State University think they’ve finally found the answer.
“Lots of people have come up with ideas, but we are the first to come up with an idea that uses archaeological evidence,” Sean W. Hixon, a graduate student in anthropology at Penn State, said in a statement.
The island, 2,340 miles (3,700 km) off the coast of Chile, was first inhabited in the 13th century by Polynesian seafarers. They spent the next two centuries forging these giant sculptures out of volcanic tuff. Experts still argue about it, but it’s now generally accepted that these monoliths were moved from the quarry with a rocking motion, in much the same way that you would move a refrigerator, except using ropes. This quarry, however, is over 7 1/2 miles (12 km) away from the red scoria quarry that the pukao hats were cut from.
Writing in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Hixon and colleagues suggest that the hats were placed on the statues after they were erected, most likely after being rolled in raw form from the quarry to the statues and then carved on site. They argue this because uncarved red scoria stone can be found en route to the statues from the quarries.
Ramps must have then been used to get the hats up to head level. However, imaging studies have highlighted indentations on the under sides of the hats, which would have rubbed off the soft stones had they each been pushed up a ramp on their base.
Instead, the researchers argue the pukao were rolled up the ramps to the top of a standing statue using a parbuckling technique, a tried-and-tested method of shifting heavy loads that employs the help of ropes looped under the object (see illustration here). The researchers figured out that this whole process would require fewer than 15 workers.
Why they went to all this effort, though, still remains a mystery.
78
An Island off the Coast of Japan Has Gone Missing
by Rosie McCall
The island Esanbe Hanakita Kojima (population: zero), off the north coast of Hokkaido, Japan, has gone missing. The island, 1,640 feet (500 meters) off the coast of the village of Sarufutsu, stood at just 5 feet (1.4 meters) above sea level. It is thought to have now become submerged.
79
THE MAP YOU GREW UP WITH IS A LIE. THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD REALLY LOOKS LIKE
by Tom Hale
THE WORLD IS NOT QUITE WHAT IT SEEMS. MOST OF the maps you see are based on “Mercator projection,” a 450-year-old technique for projecting the spherical surface of the Earth onto a flat sheet. Even Google Maps used a variant of it until August 2018.
The Mercator projection (light blue) overestimates the true size of landmasses (dark blue) the further you get from the equator.
However, Mercator projection is surprisingly bad at accurately reflecting the true size of many countries. To demonstrate, Neil Kaye, a climate data scientist at the Met Office in the UK, has designed a map visualization that compares the Mercator projection with true projections of each country’s land area. The image (see here) elegantly shows how the Mercator projection overrepresents the size of many countries, especially those farther away from the equator.
Just take a look at how much smaller Russia, Canada, and Greenland really are. Europe, parts of Asia, and the US also shrink away a considerable amount using the new projection. The old Mercator projection depicts Greenland as a landmass larger than Africa, however, in reality, Africa’s area is a whopping 14 times greater than Greenland’s.
The Mercator projection was first presented by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It’s been extremely useful for exploration, as it allows a navigator to plot a straight-line course and maintains the country’s true shape, but when you translate a three-dimensional shape, such as a globe, into a two-dimensional projection, something’s got to give. In this case, it’s a distortion of size and distance as you get closer to the planet’s poles.
The Mercator projection has also been accused of having political undertones by presenting a Eurocentric colonial view of the world. As a result of all of these biases and shortcomings, some schools in Boston even decided to get rid of the map in favor of the alternative Gall-Peters world map. However, this projection isn’t perfect, either. While it represents the area of a landmass more accurately, it distorts the shape.
In August 2018, cartographers released the alternative Equal Earth projection map in hopes of overcoming all the problems with the world’s various different map projection schemes. However, if past debates within cartography (of which there have been many) are anything to go by, then this issue will undoubtedly rumble on and on.
80
2015–2018 Have Been the Hottest Years on Record, UN Report Reveals
by Tom Hale
The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has announced that 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 are the top four hottest years ever recorded. The WMO warned that the current trend would lead to temperature increases of 3–5°C by the end of the century. The message on climate change couldn’t be clearer.
82
EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD IS UP TO SOME SERIOUSLY WEIRD STUFF AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY
by Tom Hale
THE PLANET’S MAGNETIC FIELD IS UP TO MISCHIEF again and geophysicists are pretty dumbfounded.
Earth’s magnetic poles can wander several kilometers every year; however, the north pole’s movement has become increasingly stranger of late. For reasons that are currently unclear, the magnetic north pole seems to be slipping away from Canada and toward Siberia at an erratic rate, according to a news report published in Nature early in 2019.
“The location of the north magnetic pole appears to be governed by two large-scale patches of magnetic field, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia,” Phil Livermore, a geomagnetist at the University of Leeds, in the UK, was quoted as saying by Nature. “The Siberian patch is winning the competition.”
Every five years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maps out the Earth’s magnetic field in the World Magnetic Model (WMM). At the time of writing (January 2019), this had last been published in 2015, with the next edition planned for 2020. But the freak magnetic behavior has forced scientists to revise the map earlier than anticipated (although that had to be postponed because of the US government shutdown).
Earth’s magnetic field is created by molten iron in its core swirling around because of thermal convection currents. It’s a fairly chaotic situation in there, resulting in a complex pattern of magnetism, which can prove extremely difficult to model and predict. Just to complicate things further, an unusually punchy geomagnetic pulse (a sharp change in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field) occurred under South America in 2016, which is believed to have contributed to the recent unexpected changes.
The magnetic field is central to many forms of navigation. Most obviously, a compass relies on magnetic fields, but more advanced systems use the field to get a bearing, too. Perhaps more worryingly, it is the magnetic field that protects the Earth, and all life on the planet’s surface, from lethal, high-energy, charged particles that stream through outer space.
It is possible for truly monstrous changes to the magnetic field to take place. Scientists know the Earth can undergo a phenomenon known as a “geomagnetic reversal”—where north and south magnetic poles literally swap places, with the field becoming significantly weakened during the switchover. The last major reversal was 781,000 years ago, but smaller flips are believed to have occurred every 20,000–30,000 years over the last 20 million years.
83
NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS ITALIAN SUPERVOLCANO IS FILLING UP WITH MAGMA
by Alfredo Carpineti
WHEN ONE THINKS OF NAPLES AND VOLCANOES, THE mind goes straight to Mount Vesuvius, the volcano responsible for the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 CE. But a more worrying volcano exists just to the west of the city, called Campi Flegrei. Also referred to as the Phlegraean Fields, this “supervolcano” has a large crater (aka caldera) that’s 8 miles (13 km) across. An eruption would be deadly and catastrophic, spewing magma tens of kilometers into the stratosphere.
Research published in 2018, in the journal Science Advances, has shown that the magma reservoir underneath Campi Flegrei has begun to fill up. This buildup phase will likely lead to a large-volume eruption in the distant future, and while the danger is not imminent, it shows that the supervolcano needs to be kept under constant surveillance. About 1.5 million people live next to or right on top of the caldera.
The new assessment shows that the chemical composition of the magma entering the caldera has changed lately. Volatile substances, in particular, are being separated from the magma, which is increasing the pressure beneath the caldera.
The two major past eruptions at this site occurred 39,000 and 15,000 years ago, which formed the caldera and led to part of it ending up underwater. Several minor eruptions also contributed to the landscape of the region, and the researchers were curious to see what they could learn about the future of the supervolcano from its recent past. For instance, in 1538, an eight-day eruption led to the formation of Monte Nuovo (literally “new mountain”), a cinder-cone volcano, within the Campi Flegrei caldera.
While the analysis gives important insights into the changes within Campi Flegrei, the team states clearly that there is no evidence on which to base speculation about when the next eruption will be, or if it will be a major one. There is even the possibility that the system will become dormant.