Thursday, December 13, 2012

Science stories below the fold

BoingBoing links to a Wired discussion of the danger of "volcano tourism": Sometimes they explode.

The Boing Boing article points out the story of the Volcano scientists who were killed by a volcano threatening eruption but not believed to be ready to explode.

In 1993, Stanley Williams survived an close-encounter with a volcano. A volcanologist, he was standing on the rim of Colombia's Galeras volcano when it erupted with little warning. Six of his scientific colleagues and three tourists were killed. Williams fled down the mountain's slope — until flying rocks and boulders broke both his legs. With a fractured skull, he managed to stay conscious enough to huddle behind some other large boulders and dodge flying debris until the eruption ended and his grad students rescued him.

Yeah. My son lives in the nearby city, and as kids, my sons used to climb up the volcano to picnic. And the volcano has a webcam. Colombian volcano site HERE.

----------------------------------------

The "WAGD" ariticle of the day:

Melting Polar Ice could release viruses.
Frozen viruses may have been making their way back into the environment for centuries, even without global warming. Scientists theorize that periodically melting Arctic lakes release previously frozen influenza viruses, which are picked up by migrating birds and transported toward human populations. One virus seems to have reappeared in the 1930s, the 1960s and, most recently, in 2006, when a Siberian lake melted, a biological warfare researcher told Wired in 2009. "This phenomenon may take place regularly, far beyond what we witness," said Dany Shoham of Israel's Bar-Ilan University.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-polar-ice-viruses.html#jCp

-----------------------------------

Astronomy photo of the day:


Milky Way Over Quiver Tree Forest
Image Credit & Copyright:
Florian Breuer

No comments: