mosteiros, sao miguel, azores, portugal

termas da ferraria, sao miguel, azores, portugal

sete cidades, sao miguel, azores, portugal

furnas, sao miguel, azores, portugal

lagoa do congro, sao miguel, azores, portugal

sunset crater volcano, az

make lava, not war

you and the world have changed since you were born

Explore BBC Earth's unique interactive, personalised just to you.

Find out how, since the date of your birth, your life has progressed; including how many times your heart has beaten, and how far you have travelled through space.

Investigate how the world around you has changed since you've been alive; from the amount the sea has risen, and the tectonic plates have moved, to the number of earthquakes and volcanoes that have erupted.

Grasp the impact we've had on the planet in your lifetime; from how much fuel and food we've used to the species we've discovered and endangered.

And see how the BBC was there with you, capturing some of the most amazing wonders of the natural world. bbc

my heart has beaten 1 billion times in my lifetime. 

a fly my age would have a family of 10,544 generations by now.

on mercury i am 116.

there have been 131 major eruptions since i was born. 

The Calbuco volcano in southern Chile erupted

Quiet since 1972, it's blown twice since Wednesday, generating striking images and concerns over the effects of both the lava and a mammoth cloud of ash.

That column of ejected ash measures nearly 7 miles, says Chile's National Mining and Geology Service, citing a "flyby" that was made early Thursday. In its latest update, the agency says volcanic activity is finally diminishing but that a state of emergency remains for a 12-mile area.

Saying 5,000 people have left the area around the volcano, NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports, "Local officials say people are very, very frightened. The immediate concern is the volcano's eruption could trigger snow melts and cause flooding."

Why China's Pollution Could Be Behind Our Cold, Snowy Winters

The animation from NASA shows how pollution from Asia and other continents mixes and moves around the world. (It's a simulation made with satellite data from September 2006 to April 2007.)

The colorful swirls represent airborne particles in the atmosphere. Many of those particles are sea salt (shown in blue) picked up from the ocean, and dust (shown in red-orange) scooped up from deserts.

But there are also man-made sources of particles. Soot from fires is shown in green-yellow, and sulfur from fossil fuel emissions and volcanoes is in white.

As the animation moves through time, you can see fires billow up from South America and parts of Africa. Dust from the Sahara Desert sweeps west, and power plants in North America and Europe emit sulfur that blows east.

Then, about 43 seconds into the video, Asia comes into view. And its coal-powered industrialization is clear.

Large swaths of emissions from burning coal pulse from China and Southeast Asia in white. Sometimes the particles blow east and mix with storms above the Pacific Ocean. These storms can have a big effect on winter weather in the U.S., Jiang says.

Storms in the Pacific move northwest; some hit the West Coast and cause rain and snow. Others end up far north in Canada, where they can alter the weather across the entire U.S., Jiang says. npr

ajanta caves, india

Yellowstone supervolcano 'even more colossal'

A study shows that the magma chamber is about 2.5 times bigger than earlier estimates suggested.

A team found the cavern stretches for more than 90km (55 miles) and contains 200-600 cubic km of molten rock.

The findings are being presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Prof Bob Smith, from the University of Utah, said: “We’ve been working there for a long time, and we’ve always thought it would be bigger... but this finding is astounding."

If the Yellowstone supervolcano were to blow today, the consequences would be catastrophic.

The last major eruption, which occurred 640,000 years ago, sent ash across the whole of North America, affecting the planet’s climate.

Now researchers believe they have a better idea of what lies beneath the ground.

The team used a network of seismometers that were situated around the park to map the magma chamber.

Dr Jamie Farrell, from the University of Utah, explained: “We record earthquakes in and around Yellowstone, and we measure the seismic waves as they travel through the ground.

“The waves travel slower through hot and partially molten material… with this, we can measure what’s beneath.”

The team found that the magma chamber was colossal. Reaching depths of between 2km and 15km (1 to 9 miles), the cavern was about 90km (55 miles) long and 30km (20 miles) wide.

It pushed further into the north east of the park than other studies had previously shown, holding a mixture of solid and molten rock.

“To our knowledge there has been nothing mapped of that size before,” added Dr Farrell.

The researchers are using the findings to better assess the threat that the volatile giant poses.

“Yes, it is a much larger system… but I don’t think it makes the Yellowstone hazard greater,” explained Prof Bob Smith.

“But what it does tell us is more about the area to the north east of the caldera.”

He added that researchers were unsure when the supervolcano would blow again.

Some believe a massive eruption is overdue, estimating that Yellowstone’s volcano goes off every 700,000 years or so. read more: bbc

Fractures Fill Floor of Gleaming Martian Canyon

Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona  

Water once coursed through Echus Chasma, a canyon incised across a Martian plateau. Here we see fractures meeting on the floor of the canyon.

Lava from a more recent eruption partially covers the blue bottoms of the fractures, captured here by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

source