Mt. Vesuvius Rising: A New NASA View
Of all the forbidding places on Earth perhaps none is more notorious, or more awe inspiring than Mt. Vesuvius, Italy. Recent NASA images from the International Space Station offer gripping evidence of just why Vesuvius was and is so awesomely terrifying. Why? Well, not because Vesuvius is the largest volcano, but because so many people now leave beneath its spellbinding presence.
Mt. Vesuvius – courtesy NASA
Best known for the eruption of 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius' forceful eruption back then led to the famous Roman city of Pompeii being destroyed. That eruption, which killed more than 16,000 bears a far more sinister character when its considered there are 3 million living in the same space today. Also interesting, Vesuvius is one of the largest European volcanoes, and among the most dangereous to have erupted in the last 100 years.
Vesuvius is continually monitored for potential signs that could signal the beginning of another eruption. The volcano is actually a lot more dangerous than previously thought. Back in 2006, in an issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, new theories on the massive volcano came to light. According to the NASA story where the image below were posted, Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, Pierpaolo Petrone, Lucia Pappalardo, and Michael Sheridan discovered a much more broadly spread ash bed stretching away from the volcano, which indicated a Bronze Age eruption even more powerful perhaps than the Pompeii event.
NASA images of Mt. Vesuvius
The gist of this new data suggests that current evacuation plans may be to conservative given a larger scale event. Events such as the Bronze Age one have a relative occurrence rate of about 2000 years. The Bronze Age began somewhere around 3200 BCE and lasted until 600 BCE. This puts the 2000 year event a bit too close for comfort.
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