Volcano

It happened in Iceland on Friday, March 19, 2021 at 8:45 PM. About 20 miles southwest of the capital, molten rock suddenly burst through the surface from below. Bright lava fountains then lit up the night sky. A volcano in this valley finally woke up after almost 800 years of sleeping soundly...We divide volcanoes into 3 categories: active, dormant, or extinct. Around 1,900 of them around the globe are considered active. That means they’ve erupted in the recent past and will likely do it again in the possible near future. Dormant volcanoes haven’t popped off for a long time, but they still may in the future. You could say they’re sort of sleeping. As for extinct ones, those guys haven’t done anything in more than a million years!

DAY 1A small but powerful tremor is shaking the city of Naples, Italy. The news networks are reporting on the event. The experts believe that Mount Vesuvius, the stratovolcano on the Gulf of Naples [Mount Vesuvius], will explode soon — but when?

We are in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Here, the fastest car in the world is being tested. That little dot in the distance is it. But it’s approaching very fast, and then it passes by in a split second! And it’s only after a while that we hear its noise. Whoa! Yes, this car is moving at a speed higher than the speed of sound, so we first see it and only then hear it approaching. Now let’s move to the garage and take a closer look at this technological miracle. This is Bloodhound LSR. It’s not really a car nor a rocket. This thing was built just to break the existing speed record, and to be the first car to reach 1,000 mph. It has an elongated body, with a length of 42 feet [42 ft (12.8 m)] from end to end. And its width is 8.2 feet. So its size is almost identical to a school bus. Only the school bus doesn’t have the most important detail — the jet engine.

Darkness. You open your eyes and see a bright light. Silhouettes of people seem to be flashing around. Your eyes get used to the light, and you look around. You’re in a hospital. Doctors in white protective suits and gas masks are standing around you. “How do you feel?” one of them asks. You don’t remember what happened. You scratch your head and hear a strange scraping sound. You look at your palm. It’s made of glass. Your whole body is covered with glass! The doctors say there was an accident, but you don’t remember anything. You get out of bed and notice the whole floor is covered with a thick layer of fluff. This is necessary to save you from breaking your skin against the hard floor. It’s difficult for you to move around; you feel fragile. Any contact with objects leaves scratches on your body, and they burn. Doctors offer you some mashed potatoes, but you aren’t hungry. You wanna know what’s going on and why all the people here are wearing gas masks?

Do you know the feeling when you’ve been trying to solve one mystery for your entire life? Nope? Well, Detective Anderson does. During almost thirty years of working for the police, he solved many riddles, caught hundreds of robbers, and helped save thousands of lives. There’s a huge number of successfully solved cases on his record.At the age of 25, he caught a thief who changed his own face with plastic surgery once a year. When Anderson was 30, prisoners started breaking from jails all over the world. The detective successfully solved this case. At the age of 38, he discovered the secret base of a forbidden order in a volcano’s mouth. By his 50s, he managed to explain all the most inexplicable things in the world. But there was something he couldn’t solve. These were two mysteries from the 50s, cases of missing planes. All these years, Anderson has been scrolling through the details of this puzzle. Unfortunately, he was too young when this story began. All he had were guesses and notes.

Ah...You’re on the grass, looking up at the blue sky, enjoying some singing birds and catching some warm rays. You watch differently shaped clouds soaring slowly, high up into the air.Suddenly you hear a powerful loud rumble coming from far away. You get up and notice a gigantic thick cloud ahead. But it’s not the size that scares you, it’s the shape. The cloud looks like a skull. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean anything bad’s gonna happen.

Want to figure out together what a cross sea phenomenon is? It’s not a body of water that gets angry all of a sudden if that’s what you’re thinking. (Ha. It was what I was thinking!) It’s more like the ocean playing a game of chess with itself, creating these beautiful square waves. But beware, it’s not just a harmless game! These waves can be seriously dangerous, especially for swimmers and boaters.Imagine being caught in the middle of two opposing swells, waves coming at you from all directions. That’s a cross sea — also called “square waves” — and it can appear and disappear within minutes, making it even more unpredictable and hard to navigate through. They’re more common in shallow waters, like off the coast of France’s Isle of Rhé or on the beaches of Tel Aviv, but they can pop up anywhere around the world.

Have you ever noticed how insects seem to get bigger in certain parts of the world? Take Australia and the Amazon rainforest, for example. They’re notorious for having some of the largest and creepiest crawlies around. What’s the deal with these hotspots of insect activity? Warmth plays a part in insect growth, but it’s not the only factor at play. You won’t get bugs that large out in the desert, for instance, despite the heat. The real secret lies in their access to water. In tropical and subtropical environments, there’s usually plenty of moisture to go around, which means a year-round supply of delicious snacks.

Loki, the Norse spirit of mischief, was comfortably living around Asgard, the “headquarters” of Norse supreme beings. One day, he began looking for yet another way to prank some of his fellow Asgardians. While others were sleeping, he decided to cut off Sif’s hair. She was the wife of Thor, the protector of thunder, the sky, and agriculture. Sif was extremely proud and attached to her hair, as she had beautiful flowing blonde locks.

Massive tsunamis, destructive tornadoes, giant meteorites, devastating earthquakes. Ooh, better have insurance. But all these are minor natural disasters compared with the eruption of a volcano. Some volcanoes can destroy a city, as it was with Pompeii. Or some islands in the Pacific Ocean. But there’s a dangerous type of eruption that can destroy all life on the planet. This type is called “flood basalt.”

You’re walking along a hot desert under the scorching sun. You run out of supplies, there is no more water. You dream about rain, but there are no clouds in the sky. With each step, you lose more and more strength and... fall. You notice a small pond nearby. Is it real water or just a mirage? You can’t get to your feet, so you crawl there. The water is getting closer by the minute, but not because you’re moving towards it. It’s the water approaching you. In a few minutes, the pond area increases. Here, you’re already in it. A small lake has formed, 60 feet deep, at the place where the piece of the desert was.

This hidden village is called Aogashima. It’s located right in the middle of a volcanic crater! You can find it to the south of Japan, in northernmost Micronesia. The story goes that a volcano erupted in the Philippine Sea in the 1780s, causing a lot of harm to a nearby community. Half of the population managed to escape the massive eruption and came back years later to rebuild their village. At the moment, about 160 people are living there peacefully, even though the volcano is still considered to be active.