Volcanoes

Nyiragongo’s lava lake glows like a wound in the earth’s crust, pooling molten rock just beneath the summit crater in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Minoan civilization on Crete was doing just fine until around 1600 BCE when Thera—now called Santorini—decided to explode with roughly four times the

David Johnston radioed “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” at 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, from his observation post five miles north of Mount St.

Iceland’s Katla volcano sits under the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap like a dragon sleeping under a weighted blanket. Except this dragon breathes fire hot

Mars has Olympus Mons—a volcano so absurdly large it makes Everest look like a speed bump. At 72,000 feet tall and roughly the size of Arizona, it’

Deep inside Sicily’s Mount Etna, where temperatures hit 1,000°C and sulfuric acid drips from cave walls, something is thriving. Not just surviving—thriving.

The Moon has volcanoes. Had volcanoes. Whatever—the point is they existed, and for a ridiculously long time nobody cared because we were too busy staring at craters.

On the morning of May 18, 1980, David Johnston radioed in from his observation post six miles north of Mount St. Helens. “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!”

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft caught Enceladus—one of Saturn’s smaller moons—spewing jets of water vapor and ice particles into space back in 2005.

Hurricane Katrina gutted New Orleans in 2005, and the evacuation became a masterclass in what not to do. Roughly 100,000 people—mostly poor, mostly Black—got