A large coronal hole is emerging over the sun's eastern limb. Solar wind flowing from the opening should reach Earth on June 6-7. Solar sunspot activity is low.
no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet
and learn to be at home.**
Wendell Berry
LARGEST QUAKES -
Live Seismograms - Worldwide (update every 30 minutes)
This morning -
5.3 NEAR EAST COAST OF KAMCHATKA
5.7 EASTERN KAZAKHSTAN
5.0 STATE OF YAP, MICRONESIA
5.1 BANDA SEA
Yesterday -
5/29/12 -
5.1 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.0 NORTHERN ITALY
5.5 NORTHERN ITALY
5.8 NORTHERN ITALY
5.9 SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS
5.6 KOMANDORSKIYE OSTROVA REGION
5/28/12 -
5.1 MINAHASA, SULAWESI, INDONESIA
5.9 TONGA
5.3 NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.0 SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS
5.1 SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO, ARGENTINA
6.7 SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO, ARGENTINA
5/27/12 -
5.3 KEP. MENTAWAI REGION, INDONESIA
5/26/12 -
5.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA
6.0 BONIN ISLANDS, JAPAN REGION
5.1 NORTH OF SVALBARD
5.1 LOYALTY ISLANDS
5/25/12 -
5.1 NORWEGIAN SEA
5.0 SOUTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND
VOLCANOES -
Volcano Webcams
Supervolcanoes 'can grow in just hundreds of years' - The largest volcanoes on our planet may take as little as a few hundred years to form and erupt. These "supervolcanoes" were thought to exist for as much as 200,000 years before releasing their vast underground pools of molten rock.
Findings suggest that the magma pool beneath the supervolcano site of Long Valley in California erupted within as little as hundreds of years of forming. That eruption is estimated to have happened about 760,000 years ago, and would have covered half of North America in its ash. Such super-eruptions can release thousands of cubic kilometres of debris - hundreds of times larger than any eruption seen in the history of humanity.
Eruptions on this scale could release enough ash to influence the global weather for years, and one theory holds that the Lake Toba eruption in Indonesia about 70,000 years ago had long-term effects that nearly wiped out humans altogether.
Enormous eruptions such as that at Yellowstone result in "calderas", which can become huge lakes Initially, the magma pools are nearly purely liquid rock, with few bubbles or re-crystallised minerals. Over time, crystals develop, but the process stops at the point of the eruption. As a result, the characteristic development time of these crystals can also give an estimate of how long a magma pool existed before erupting.
Because the processes and timescales of quartz formation in the extraordinary underground conditions of a magma pool are well-known, the team was able to determine how long the crystals were forming within Long Valley's supervolcano before being spewed out in the eruption. Their estimates suggest the quartz formed over a range of time between 500 and 3,000 years.
"Our study suggests that when these exceptionally large magma pools form they are ephemeral and cannot exist very long without erupting. The fact that the process of magma body formation occurs in historical time, instead of geological time, completely changes the nature of the problem."
At present, geologists do not believe that any of Earth's known giant magma pools are in imminent danger of eruption, but the results suggest future work to better understand how the pools develop, and aim ultimately to predict devastating super-eruptions.
TROPICAL STORMS -
In the Atlantic -
-Post-tropical cyclone Beryl - this is the last advisory - Beryl was located about 40 mi...65 km WSW of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
