Posted on 07/14/2016 5:58:12 AM PDT by BenLurkin
A volcano outside Rome, long thought extinct, is rumbling to life. But don't panic: The volcano isn't likely to blow its top for at least another 1,000 years.
Colli Albani is a volcanic complex of hills located 19 miles (30 kilometers) from the center of Rome. There are no historical records of eruptions from Colli Albani, so it was long thought to be extinct, according to the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Now, researchers have reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that Colli Albani just doesn't erupt that often. In fact, it enters an eruptive phase every 31,000 years or so.
A team of researchers, led by volcanologist Fabrizio Marra of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, used ground-based observations of rising land, earthquake swarms and steam vents alongside satellite data to track Colli Albani's recent activity. An analysis of rocks from the volcano revealed a history of past eruptions, the most recent of which occurred 36,000 years ago. [The 11 Biggest Volcanic Eruptions in History]
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Anyone else not exactly comforted by the thought "not likely" etc. etc. - from the same guys who said it was extinct? ;-)
I don't think any volcanoes are ever really extinct. They just vary the time between eruptions from a few hours or days to maybe a few centuries...
Hope for the best prepare for the worst
I don’t think any volcanoes are ever really extinct.
There are indeed extinct volcanoes, such as the one that created Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. There’s one near my wife’s parents’ city in India that’s so old all you can see is the scar on the ground where it used to be. The threshold seems to be 10,000 years. If it’s erupted in the last 10,000, it’s considered “active”. If it’s been more than 10,000 years, but it has the potential to erupt again, it’s “dormant”. If it doesn’t look like it could ever erupt again, it’s extinct. This one near Rome was probably considered “dormant”, but the usual journalistic accuracy turned that into extinct.
I guess it’s possible that whatever vent created Devil’s Tower could come back to life, but I would hazard a SWAG that it would be considered a new volcano, rather than the original one coming back. Ditto that one in India.
Those damn “extinct” Italian volcanos. During WWII, Mt. Vesuvius erupted damaging or destroying dozens of B-25s.
Well I think you are right for volcanos located at the tectonic boundaries (aka "Ring of Fire" and other areas) but other volcanos like the Hawaiian Islands other than "Big Island" are about as extinct as you can get as they move off of that mantle plume / hot spot!
I heard it said that Mussolini made the trains run on time. Did he put the volcanoes on a schedule, too?
There was an older gentleman at our church who had some pennies he had dropped into lava. He told us it was from Vesuvius.
Then again they could be off by 1 thousand years.
I think the Rainy Lake caldera blew its cap off. Nothing there, nor there, nor there...
I think the Rainy Lake caldera blew its cap off. Nothing there, nor there, nor there...
God’s message to the commie pope! REPENT or be Pompeii’ed!
I suppose he could have dropped them onto a glob of still-hot spewed lava.
What I can remember was they were melted into pockets in the rock.
I was a kid, and, he could have been pulling our leg, it could have been Etna, or, something else.
It was 40+ years ago that he told me this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.