Innehållsförteckning för October 2023 från Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

There are more than 1,300 active volcanoes on the planet. Some erupt continuously for many years, while others erupt suddenly with little to no warning. On Jan. 15, 2022, the world was largely caught off guard with the world’s most violent volcanic eruption ever recorded with modern instruments. It occurred in Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HUNG-ah TONG-ah-HUNG-ah ha-AH-pie), Tonga, in the South Pacific. But HT-HH, as it’s now sometimes called, hadn’t really come out of nowhere. This submarine volcano had erupted out of the ocean back in January 2015, creating a new island. The volcano was located 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, and joined together two small uninhabited islands called Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai. That’s where the volcano’s full name came from. After the 2022 eruption,…

Science@Work Coolest job ever. No, make that the hottest job ever. As a volcanologist, Tricia Nadeau has a front-row seat to erupting volcanoes. Recently, these active volcanoes have included Hawai`i’s Mauna Loa that erupted in November 2022 and K lauea that erupted in June 2023. K lauea’s recent event was the fourth in a string of eruptions since 2020. Nadeau researches the geologic impacts of volcanoes and the gases they produce. Her office is in one of the most beautiful, and geographically diverse, places in the world—Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park on the island of Hawai`i. Hot molten lava and explosive displays are part of the job. The volcanoes can be unpredictable, making Nadeau's schedule sometimes irregular. We caught up with her early in the morning the week of Kīlauea’s June…

Do the Math You’ve probably seen a soccer ball dozens, if not hundreds, of times. So without looking at one, quickly sketch the pattern on a classic soccer ball. Now compare your drawing to the real thing. Did you get it right? Many people don’t. They haven’t paid close attention to a soccer ball’s appearance, even though they may have often seen or played with one. A soccer ball’s distinctive pattern of hexagons and pentagons is based on a mathematical shape called a truncated icosahedron. A regular icosahedron is a 3D (three-dimensional) shape with 20 triangular faces, each one an equilateral triangle. (Icosa comes from the Greek word for 20.) It has 30 edges and 12 corners. Note that five triangles meet at each corner. If you slice off, or…

AT YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK IN WYOMING, WIDE-EYED TOURISTS SNAP PHOTOS AS GEYSERS SPEW HOT WATER AND STEAM INTO THE AIR. Yet something ominous lurks beneath their feet. It’s what powers the geysers and heats the hot springs. It’s a supervolcano. Around 8.7 million years ago, it exploded with a force that broke open the land with streams of lava. Gas and ash spewed into the air. Volcanic glass rained down over an area the size of New Jersey. Any animals or plants in this area were buried and most likely vaporized. Fine ash fell over the entire United States and spread in the air around the globe, altering the weather worldwide. A supervolcano is a volcano that produces a massive eruption measuring eight, the largest possible, on the Volcanic Explosivity…

Hands-On HOLIDAY TIME IN OREGON! YOU’VE BEEN ENJOYING THE BEAUTIFUL SCENERY NEAR THE SEEMINGLY QUIET VOLCANO MOUNT HOOD. But trouble is brewing in paradise. Over the past week, the ground has started rumbling. Is the behemoth beneath you about to erupt? Cascades of smoldering rocks and plumes of noxious gases make volcanoes deadly natural hazards. Unfortunately, today 800 million people–that’s around 10 percent of the world’s population–live within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of active volcanoes. Besides homes, bridges, roads, factories, and more may lie along paths where debris falls. Ash clouds can also ground airplanes. To avoid lost lives and plan for damage, it is important to determine how large an eruption may be and when it may occur. Most times, volcanoes are “silent.” They aren’t spewing out molten rocks,…

It’s one of the rarest forms of volcanic activity—and among the most lethal. A limnic eruption occurs when a dangerous gas trapped at the bottom of a volcanic lake suddenly turns over and then escapes. This gas, carbon dioxide, is heavier than air. It’s also colorless, odorless, and impossible to breathe. One limnic eruption at Lake Nyos in Cameroon, Africa, in August 1986 asphyxiated 1,700 people and 3,500 livestock overnight. This event alerted scientists to the threat and led them on a campaign to study and stop these killer lakes—before history repeats itself. Conditions for a Limnic Eruption These unusual but deadly explosions fall into the category of natural disasters. Limnic eruptions are rare because the conditions for their formation must be precise. There must be a buildup of carbon…

Volcanic eruptions can cause tragic loss of life, bring widespread destruction, and change the face of the Earth itself. They can also reshape our weather, shift the balance of power between nations, and rewrite history. If we look closely enough today, we can see evidence of these giant explosions and their aftermath in the most unlikely places. They can be found in famous stories and works of art, and even in items we use every day. The ve large eruptions described here made some of the most remarkable impacts of all. Using cutting-edge science and sifting through centuries of clues, modern-day experts have reconstructed these blasts from the past. Thanks to the insights they’ve gleaned, we can return to these incredible eruptions as they once were, minus the danger. We…

HERPETOLOGY These Snakes Should Be in the Circussss A tiny snake in Southeast Asia has an unusual trick for escaping other creatures that want to eat it. When it’s scared, the snake curls into a circle and cartwheels away. People had glimpsed this trick before, but scientists recently got a chance to see the cartwheeling and take pictures of it. The scientists had startled the animal, called a dwarf reed snake, as it was crossing a road. Immediately, the snake rolled away. The researchers caught the snake and brought it to flat ground so they could take pictures of its acrobatics. Dwarf reed snakes usually come out only at night. During the day, they like to stay hidden under rocks or logs. But if they sneak out into the sunlight,…

On Jan. 15, 2022, the Earth belched. It was a soda-gulping kind of burp—violent, loud, and sudden. But this event was not the usual carbonated beverage variety. It happened when bubbles of gas inside the Earth suddenly broke free. “We know that volcanoes erupt because of bubbles,” says Leif Karlstrom. He’s a volcanologist and associate professor of Earth science at the University of Oregon. “It’s like shaking up a bottle of soda.” When the mostly underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted in the South Pacific, the plume shot up so high it reached the edge of space. Shockwaves from the explosive event circled the Earth four times in six days. An umbrella cloud of ash blanketed nearby Tongan islands. Tsunami waves stretched the breadth of the Pacific Ocean. And one…

Fiery volcanoes and the frigid polar regions seem poles apart. But concealed in the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are mementos—ash and sulfate particles—from past super-powerful volcanic eruptions. During such eruptions, volcanoes spew material dozens of miles into the sky. The swirling of winds disperses these chemicals and ash over continents, all the way to the poles. When snow falls there, the material is also deposited. In ice cores—cylinders of ice drilled from ice sheets—sulfate from past volcanic plumes shows up as spikes. Measuring how intense each spike is helps scientists figure out how strong each eruption was. In the 1970s, polar scientists stumbled upon a sulfate spike that occurred in roughly 1259. Unlike others, though, this one was ginormous. It dwarfed the spike from the ear-splitting 1883 eruption of…