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Saturday 31 August 2019

VIDEO: THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF TREES


Most of the forest lives in the shadow of the giants that make up the highest canopy. These are the oldest trees, with hundreds of children and grandchildren. They check in with their neighbors, share food, supplies and wisdom gained over their lives, all while rooted in place. How do they do this? In this video by TED-Ed, Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard explore the vast root system and intricate communication of trees. You'll learn how trees are able to communicate with each other through a vast root system and symbiotic fungi, called mycorrhizae.


Top image: Mycorrhizal network. Credit: Screenshot from BBC News/YouTube.

[Source: TED-Ed/YouTube. Top image added.]

Friday 30 August 2019

10 MOST IMPRESSIVE HACKS OF ALL TIME


The Most Impressive Hacks of All-Time
By Justin Crockett,
Toptenz, 28 August 2019.

We are fortunate to live in an incredibly advanced age, where we can buy things on Amazon and have them at our doorstep within a day or two, instantly communicate with anyone around the globe, and have access to precisely all of the “crying Michael Jordan” memes ever created.

But with that massive power at our fingertips comes immense responsibility and an even greater need for security. Hackers have wormed their way into the very fabric of our lives. Sometimes the damage can be fixed with a simple virus protection program. Other times it can bring a country to its knees. These are some of the most impressive hacks ever unleashed upon the world.

10. The Bitcoin hack


Cryptocurrency is a concept that not a lot of people understand, let alone use. But the people that use it, really use it. Basically, it’s a digital currency that uses encryption security measures, and is independent of a normal bank. There’s no physical, tangible money. You might ask, “but that doesn’t seem like it’s real,” and we would probably agree.

Nonetheless, many people online have fallen for adopted cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, though those numbers may have dipped since a major hack in 2018 by cyberthieves. A major Bitcoin company in South Korea lost about 30 percent of its virtual money holdings, which led to about a 30 billion dollars loss for cryptocurrency overall in just seven hours of trading. It caused the price of Bitcoin itself to drop around 7 percent almost instantly. This is all interesting, in that the very idea of cryptocurrency is its inherent safety, which is paramount online. The fact that an encrypted digital currency can be undone in a day of hacking raises strong concerns about its longevity.

9. The Conficker worm


2008 may not seem very long ago, but in the digital age, that’s like decades. Whole hardware and operating systems that were ubiquitous at the time have been rendered obsolete. So it’s strange to hear that a simple computer virus that was prevalent at the time is still loitering around the digital wasteland.

The Conficker worm was discovered in 2008, when it infected around 15 million computers due to its ability to be shared easily, and spread through software and removable media devices. This virus is different, though. Conficker doesn’t even steal data - it’s method is to spread to as many computers as possible and disrupt things that way. And even as recently as 2017, there were several million successful infections of computers. That’s some serious service time for a bug. One of the most common ways it happens are unpatched computers on a network. Word to the wise: those annoying software updates are your friends.

8. The Iran nuke hack


The 1983 Matthew Broderick movie WarGames dealt with the vulnerabilities of military systems to motivated hackers. In the film, he toyed with the defense department and eventually scared the pants off everyone, making it seem like a Russian nuke launch was imminent. You would think the systems in place to make a nuclear winter possible would be secure enough to not be susceptible to computer shenanigans, right?

Well, the country of Iran would tell you it’s not that absurd. In 2010, a virus named Stuxnet invaded their nuclear systems, a product of Israeli-American computer wizardry. The virus targeted Iran’s centrifuges, which helped to enrich uranium that would be used for nuclear weapons. The bug would spin those centrifuges until they busted, all while reporting everything was normal. Eventually, up to 20 percent of the country’s centrifuges were useless. And this was over the course of a couple of years. Everything was going fine until Israel ramped up the program to be more aggressive, and Iran became wise to the plan. It has since set off a rash of hacked public services and secret government programs around the globe. All hailing from a tiny virus no bigger than 500 kilobytes.

7. Spamhaus


The Spamhaus Project is an organization whose entire purpose is the tracking and fighting of spam. They hate spam. The group scours the internet to find the worst of the spammers and compile them into a list. Some estimates put their success rate at 80 percent. 80 percent…of all the spam that gets blocked, like, ever.

One group that drew the ire of Spamhaus was CyberBunker. CyberBunker stores the data and content of literally almost anyone except for “child porn and anything related to terrorism.” Their words. Spamhaus blacklisted CyberBunker, claiming they allow themselves to be used as a host for megaspammers. CyberBunker didn’t react well to being ostracized, and though they claim they had nothing to do with it, someone likely took their side and initiated the largest cyberattack in history. In what’s called a DDoS attack, where a website is flooded with requests to the point of crashing, Spamhaus was knocked offline and Internet around the globe was slowed down. A reported 100,000 servers were used to inundate the site, and more bandwidth was taken up than any other attack ever attempted. That is a serious overreaction to wanting less ads for genital enhancement in peoples’ inboxes.

6. The Melissa virus


Ah, the growing pains of the early Internet Age. It seems so innocent, but even as your AOL connection page starting screeching its demonic language, there could have been one of the early Net viruses worming its way into your prehistoric computers.

The Melissa virus of 1999 was a document widely shared online, in which there were promises of all sorts of passwords to get into paid porn sites. The document attachment to the emails were opened, a bum Microsoft Word doc opened, and the Melissa virus took over from there. It would then hack into the user’s email program and mass-send itself to fifty of the recipient’s contacts. There wasn’t much those days that was sensitive on peoples’ computers, but it did wreak havoc on the business world, shutting down servers at companies as big as Microsoft. All told, the virus hit up more than a million computers and affected 20 percent of North American businesses, while racking up $80 million in computer damages.

5. The Fappening


Surely it’s not surprising that in the digital age, people are taking advantage of apps like Snapchat and other texting options to send each other photos of their nether bits. It becomes an even bigger deal when we find out celebrities are doing the same things we are. Going back to leaked sex tapes of Kim Kardashian and Pam and Tommy Lee, the spectre of celebrity genitalia sets the world on fire. But nothing on the level of 2014’s mass image dump of hacked iCloud photos, lovably known as “The Fappening.”

Almost 500 photos were leaked to the notorious 4chan site of celebrities in the buff, stolen from private iCloud accounts. Apple itself has seemingly had the reputation of being a closed system that is much more difficult to hack, but those responsible were well-versed in a technique called “spear phishing,” which involves gathering all the personal info on a target possible to hack their sensitive material. The FBI was quick on the case, eventually tracking the work to a few hackers spread throughout the United States, and they earned varying prison stints for their actions.

4. 2016 FBI hack


One Justice Department employee’s email account. That’s all it took for a hacker to become privy to every single person who works for the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. From that compromised account, he was able to download roughly 200 GB of incredibly sensitive info, like a real version of the Mission: Impossible NOC list. He then tricked a DOJ rep into giving him access to the database itself.

The names, rank, and personal information of nearly 30,000 employees who work in a very guarded profession immediately had their cover blown. Phone numbers and email addresses were made public, and the hacker stated he had credit card numbers as well. The hacks were apparently done by someone with pro-Palestine sympathies. That someone, it turns out, was a 16-year-old teenager living in England.

3. One writer at Wired has his whole life erased and all his gadgets frozen in minutes


Mat Honan was a tech writer for the Wired site in 2012. When hackers wormed their way into his Google account, he became a nobody. In the space of an hour.

At first, the hackers made eight years of email correspondences vanish. They took to Twitter next to issue homophobic slurs and racist rants, before deleting photos off of his Apple devices. They invaded every corner of his digital life. Think of every interaction or post or photo you’ve been a part of in your existence on the Internet. They thought of that too, and made him basically disappear, digitally speaking. Once his Apple ID was compromised, they remotely erased every single thing throughout all of his devices.

He could have stopped the hackers in their tracks early if he had utilized the extra layer of security Google offers (his fault), but once they started exploiting security lapses within Amazon and Apple, they were able to unleash much more damage (not his fault). Through it all, the hacker, known as Phobia, was in constant contact. Phobia still hasn’t had to pay for his actions, though investigators may be getting closer to finding out his identity.

2. OPM hack


We mentioned earlier how FBI and Department of Homeland Security personnel information was severely compromised in 2016. Well, just a year before that, another government agency found that they had been hacked. This time, it was the Office of Personnel Management, which is in charge of all the civilians working for the U.S. government.

The OPM’s IT department came across the hack first, when they noticed a bunch of forms used for background checks for their employees had been whisked away. And by a bunch, we mean millions. Oh, and they fingerprint records, too. The hack itself had been in progress for the previous two years, and the OPM was actually onto them by 2014, but allowed them to keep working to gain intelligence on them. Unfortunately for millions and millions of civilian government employees, this extra time just allowed the hackers to gain more and more clearance into the OPM’s systems. The attacks were blamed on China-backed hackers, and in 2017, a Chinese man was arrested for reasons related to the OPM hack, even though it wasn’t directly stated.

1. DNC and election hack


There has been a veritable storm of crap related to Russia and just how far they got influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It’s such an all-encompassing story and the tentacles spread so far that it’s almost impossible to wrap one’s head around the main crux of it all: that election systems in every state and the Democratic National Committee itself were hacked in 2016, and that Russian hackers were likely behind it all.

DNC servers had Russian digital fingerprints all over it, it was discovered in June that year, and had likely been compromised for almost a year. Using malware, they published documents clearly meant to turn the elections in the Republicans’ favor. It went further. Other hackers went after the election cyber infrastructure located in each state, attacking them and pulling voter registrations and sample ballots. And while it’s not clear if they were able to actually change votes, we may never know just how far the hackers made it into one of America’s most revered institutions.

Top image credit: TheDigitalArtist/Pixabay.

[Source: Toptenz. Top image added.]

Thursday 29 August 2019

5 TOOLS TO UNDERSTAND FACEBOOK’S PRIVACY VIOLATIONS AND DEFEAT IT


5 Tools to Understand Facebook’s Privacy Violations and Defeat It
By Mihir Patkar,
Make Use Of, 24 August 2019.

Facebook is waging a war on many fronts today. It is misleading users into thinking their information is more secure than it is. It is using powerful political lobbies to influence government policies. And you can’t be anywhere on the internet without being tracked by Facebook.

If you don’t know how bad the situation is, you need to find out before it’s too late. These websites and apps explain why Facebook is a security and privacy nightmare, and suggest ways to take back control over your data.

1. Stop Using Facebook: Why You Should Quit FB


Digital rights activist Joel Hernández wanted a single place where people could understand, in simple words, what Facebook was doing wrong. Stop Using Facebook (Web) is the weekend project he put together.

Go through the series of 15 bullet points. You’ll learn about the different ways in which Facebook is being immoral or unethical. Also, you will realize how badly it deals with the responsibility of being the world’s largest social network. These revelations include how Facebook is manipulating your emotions by showing specific content, to how some of its employees openly say they care more about money than ethics.

Each point is ably backed up by a link to a reputed source like news media, analysts, or fact-checkers. Then, Hernández lists “how” you can quit Facebook, providing alternatives to popular Facebook apps as recommended by Ethical.net.

2. Pretty Zucky: Timeline of Facebook’s Privacy Misdeeds


If you thought that the problems with Facebook are cropping up just now, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Facebook has always been problematic, as you can see with this timeline of its misdeeds with privacy-related matters.

Pretty Zucky (Web) tracks news about the social network from the time Zuckerberg left Harvard to work on it full-time. You’ll see that even back in 2006, users found the News Feed creepy, that Wired pointed out private profiles aren’t private, that it faced a class action suit in 2008, and that it first hired lobbyists back in 2009 to push its privacy agenda.

Each item on the timeline is a placard with a headline, a brief description or extract of the relevant information, and a link to the original source. From November 2005 to June 2019, you’ll see the growth of Facebook and how it pushed the boundaries of privacy.

3. Block FB: Simple Extension to Block Facebook


There are some excellent websites and apps to find out what Facebook knows about you and block it. Firefox users can grab Mozilla’s own Facebook Container to thwart the social network, but there isn’t a Google Chrome version of it. For now, Block FB (Chrome) is one of the simplest ways for Chrome users to stop Facebook in its tracks.

The extension launches a two-pronged attack on Facebook. First, it blocks common Facebook URLs, such as the homepage, apps, developer pages, and so on. If you try to visit it, it simply won’t work.

Next, it also stops all Facebook tracking through elements like the Share button on a web page. By stopping a Facebook pixel from firing on a third-party’s page, the social network cannot create records of your browsing activity.

Download: Block FB for Chrome (Free)

4. Replace Facebook by SaaSHub: Alternatives for Every Facebook App


It’s great if you’ve decided to end your dependence on Facebook. But once you see Facebook owns several different services that you depend on, you might wonder if it’s possible to quit Facebook. SaaSHub (Web) created a handy page of all major Facebook products and its alternatives.

Each app has at least three alternatives, with their salient features. While the four big ones (Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram) deserve dedicated articles on them, it’s the smaller Facebook apps that matter.

This isn’t a list of privacy-centric apps alone. You will find apps from other companies which aren’t squeaky clean and even some that are as notorious as Facebook. The idea is to give you options and let you choose.

5. SocialVault: Store and Re-Browse Your Facebook Data


If you delete your Facebook account, all the data you uploaded on it is going to be gone forever. Facebook lets you download all that data to your computer, but it’s likely going to be a large file and you can’t really browse it easily. SocialVault (Web) is a quick-fix solution to these problems.

SocialVault is built on Blockstack, the decentralized internet ecosystem, so you’ll need a Blockstack account to use it. Once you download all your Facebook information, follow SocialVault’s instructions to upload it all to the decentralized Gaia server, which is also automatically encrypted so that the app developer can’t see your data, while you get a backup.

Once the upload is finished, you’ll find an easy interface to browse the history of your Facebook data, such as posts, photos, and so on. There are currently some issues with large files and messages, but the developer intends to fix those soon.

Should You Deactivate or Delete Facebook?

These warnings and advice about Facebook make it clear that using the social network is detrimental to anyone who cares about their privacy and digital activity. If you think you can do away with Facebook entirely, it might be better to cut the cord for good.

But there’s a difference between deactivating and deleting Facebook. Deactivating your account still lets Facebook store your personal data on its servers. If you delete your account, that data will be erased after 30 days. But your privacy is still not entirely protected, as the article suggests.

Top image credit: TheDigitalArtist/Pixabay.

[Source: Make Use Of.]

THE MOST AMAZING SPACE IMAGES THIS WEEK


Space Photos: The Most Amazing Images This Week!
By Doris Elin Salazar,
Space.com, 24 August 2019.

Two galaxies join each other in a gravitational dance, a cosmic jellyfish floats in space and India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission snaps its first picture of the moon. These are just some of the top space photos this week on Space.com.

1. Chandrayaan-2 snaps its first picture of the moon

Image credit: ISRO

India’s Chandrayaan-2 entered lunar orbit around a month after it launched and snapped its first picture of the moon’s surface on Wednesday (Aug. 21). The mission aims to land near the moon’s south pole by Sept. 6, however, the image shows the far side of the moon - the area that contains the Apollo crater and Mare Orientalis.


2. Two galaxies caught in a dance


The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of two galaxies caught in a cosmic dance, as the mutual gravitational attraction pulls them closer to each other. The slow-motion galaxy collision, which scientists call UGC 2369, is about 424 million light-years away.


3. Seagull nebula flies across the night sky


This purple-and-orange hued image from the European Southern Observatory's VLT Survey Telescope shows the Seagull Nebula, made up of three gas clouds, a region of starbirth some 3,700 light-years away from Earth. The nebula appears like a flying seagull, spreading its wings across the sky.


4. Astronaut rocks Artemis logo during spacewalk

Image credit: NASA

Astronaut Nick Hague sported the mission patch for the Artemis moon program during a spacewalk on August 21. NASA unveiled the logo for Artemis last month, ahead of the planned mission to the moon by 2024. The patch shows a dramatic white "A" floating in black space above a blue horizon that represents Earth.


5. Cosmic jellyfish floats in space

Image credit: Jeff Berkes

This image captured by Hubble Space Telescope shows what happens when an old star, similar in size to the sun, grows old and casts off layers of gas. The red giant star, known as NGC 2022, appears like a cosmic jellyfish floating in space.


6. Fires ravage Amazon rainforest


NASA captures satellite images of the fires raging through the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. The fires have been ablaze for weeks now, and have so far reached a number of Brazilian states, including Amazonas, Para, Mato Grosso and Rondonia, and the tropical forests of Bolivia.


7. A closeup of Jupiter

Image credit: NASA/ESA/A. Simon-Miller (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

Jupiter's Great Red Spot and several smaller storms are revealed in intricate detail in this new close-up image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers used imagery from the telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 to stitch together this flat, stretched-out map of the entire planet.

8. Earth’s glowing, red skin

Image credit: Luca Parmitano/NASA/Twitter

Astronaut Luca Parmitano captured this stunning view of the African continent from the International Space Station, as he marveled at the 'skin of Earth.' The image shows off Africa's red soil, a type of clay enriched with iron and aluminum, which covers large areas of the continent. (However, Parmitano did not specify which part of Africa he was flying over.)

9. A tiny meteor spotted in the Milky Way

Image credit: Tony Corso

Astrophotographer Tony Corso found a tiny trail of a meteor near the center of this image after snapping this photo of the night sky over Mount Rainier in Washington state. The meteor was likely a member of either the Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower or the Alpha Capricornids, both of which peaked at the end of July. It could have also been a Perseid meteor, although that shower didn't peak until about two weeks later.

10. Solar eclipse throwback

Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

Two years ago on August 21, a rare coast-to-coast total solar eclipse swept across the continental United States, briefly turning day into night for millions of spectators from Oregon to South Carolina. ESO photographer Petr Horálek created this stunning composite of the moon and the sun's corona during totality by combining many exposures of varying duration.

Top image: Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of two interacting galaxies commonly labeled as UGC 2369. Credit: Stuart Rankin/Flickr//CC BY-NC 2.0.

[Source: Space.com. Top image added.]

Tuesday 27 August 2019

8 WORLD’S INCREDIBLE UNDERWATER VOLCANOES


The World’s Incredible Underwater Volcanoes
By Christopher Stephens,
Toptenz, 26 August 2019.

Volcanoes are notorious features on the landscape, but the mountains of Earth’s surface do not claim all of the volcanological action in the world. Concealed below the waves, underwater volcanoes mean that earth, fire and water can explode into a fury at any time in certain places, sometimes with fascinating results. Today, we’ll look at the most fascinating underwater volcanoes worldwide. While scarce, video footage has been included where available.

8. Kick ‘Em, Jenny


The beautiful azure waters of the Caribbean Sea hide some volcanic activity so dangerous that parts of the sea are off limits to explorers. The notorious aquatic volcano Kick ‘Em, Jenny, several miles offshore of Grenada, is 4,266 feet from the ocean floor at its summit, which is fully submerged. The summit is approximately 656 feet below sea level. The volcano erupted 14 recorded times following its 1939 discovery. Exclusion zones keep boats and swimmers away to protect anyone from being boiled or blasted in case of eruption. Kick ‘Em, Jenny is the Eastern Caribbean Sea’s sole active submarine volcano.

The volcano lies on the edge of a steep drop-off, with part of the volcanic cone creating a wall-like boundary in the ocean floor’s topography. A crater in the top of the volcano adds to its appearance. The above video with submarine footage highlights the seemingly incongruous juxtaposition of molten rock and seawater that defines Kick ‘Em, Jenny, with illustrations and a discussion by Dr. Steve Carey. The name Kick ‘Em, Jenny refers to the commonly used name for a mule, notorious for kicking just like the temperamental volcano.

7. The Mayotte Mega Volcano Incident


Residents of Mayotte, a French island territory located in the waters separating the island nation of Madagascar with Mozambique, a country on the African continent heard a strange hum, which was recorded in 2018. After, a scientific discovery was made in the form of the largest underwater volcanic eruption ever recorded. The blast was so powerful that the island of Mayotte actually moved and sunk several inches.

The underwater volcano is gigantic at half a mile in rise from the ocean floor and 3.1 miles long, located 31 miles off the coast of Mayotte. This all happened in just six months. The event should shake public complacency about volcanos, as it was underwater and also in an area that had been free of volcanic activity for 4,000 years. Small earthquakes were felt on a nearly daily basis by island residents, prior to the documentation of the cryptic yet massive volcanic event near Mayotte as the largest underwater volcanic eruption in history.

6. The Deepest Volcanic Eruptions on Earth


Close to Samoa, Fiji and Tonga, a huge volcano stands on the ocean floor. In fact, this volcano is both enormous and active. Towering one mile in height above the surrounding ocean floor, the West Mata Volcano, nicknamed the “underwater Fourth of July” by scientists observing the eruption, which was recently captured on film. It might be a good thing that the volcano is underwater, for its lava is some of the hottest on the planet in the modern geological era.

Not only is this undersea volcano gigantic and hot, the area of eruption is also huge. Despite the great height of the volcano, it’s base is so deep that the mountaintop eruption is still a record holder as the deepest volcano ever to be recorded by researchers. In 2009, a series of spectacular images and videos were captured showing the formation of the boninite lava deposits, which offers researchers a fascinating glimpse of the way crust rock is recycled upon collision of tectonic plates. Not only were the explosive sounds of the eruptions recorded by hydrophone, images also showed extremophile species such as shrimp staying alive close to the volcanic activity.

5. Loihi Seamount


The Hawaiian Islands are infamous for their volcanic origin and offer tourists a glimpse of earth, air, water and fire interacting in spectacular coastal volcanic eruptions. Loihi Seamount stands out as an underwater volcanic feature of particular scientific interest in the Hawaiian Island chain. The volcano is 22 miles away from the island of Hawaii, and has its summit 3,000 feet below the waves. Loihi Seamount itself is on the side of Mauna Loa, the world’s largest shield volcano.

This underwater volcano may seem novel, but it is by no means new, for its formation started approximately 400,000 years in the past. With its history of growth, Loihi Seamount is not expected to remain an underwater volcano. This youngest volcano in the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount chain is has a projected time of breaking the surface of the ocean between 10,000 and 100,000 years in the future. The current summit is 10,000 feet higher than the ocean floor, making the huge volcano larger than Mount St. Helens was prior to the 1980 eruption. This volcano is the sole volcano in Hawaii that is in the “deep submarine preshield” development phase. Earthquake activity has been significant, with 4,070 occurring in summer 1996 alone, the most recent year of eruption.

4. Alaska’s Hidden Volcanoes


Alaska may be a land that is often frozen and the last place that comes to mind as far as volcanoes are considered. In 2013, a dormant volcano that had not gone off for around 10,000 years was discovered in Southeast Alaska. This volcano was close to the surface, just 150 feet below the waves. Two years afterward, another volcano was found, but this one was active.

The newly discovered volcano was also much deeper, being 3,000 feet below the surface. The activity released methane gas that trailed upwards around 66 percent of the way to the surface. Sounding equipment used to monitor the activity of the volcano was used to create fascinating color coded images of the eruptions and methane gas plumes.

3. Axial Seamount, Oregon


It is rare to be able to study an underwater volcanic eruption live, but Oregon’s coast offers scientists a valuable glimpse into lesser known aspects of geology. The Axial Seamount is an active volcano located around 300 miles off the Oregon coast, alternatively called the Coaxial Seamount and Axial Volcano. Due to the sudden cooling effect of the ocean water, the lava at the Axial Seamount eruption site formed strange structures that are comparable to a pillow in shape, with a glassy composition.

The seamount is ground zero for eruption activity in the Cobb-Eickelberg Seamount Chain, as well as being the youngest of the volcanos in the chain. Rising 3,609 feet above the sea floor, the volcano has erupted multiple times in recent years. Due to the simple structure of the volcano and resulting regularity of the volcano’s activity, the Axial Seamount has been studied in depth. The 1998 eruption was followed by a 2011 eruption that spewed a lava flow one mile across the seafloor, while 2015 ushered in another round of activity.

2. Marsili, Italy


The Mediterranean region may not be remote, yet it holds its secrets, and those could prove to be very dangerous thanks to the dangers posed by extreme underwater volcanic activity. The largest underwater volcano in Europe, Marsili Volcano, is 43.5 miles in length, 18.6 miles in width, and lies 1,476 feet below the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The volcano poses a threat not only through the risk of magma release, but for rather novel geological reasons that also present the risk of a post-volcanic activity tsunami to Italy.

Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology indicated that the Marsili Volcano is unstable and is at risk of a wall collapse. Such a disastrous event could prove catastrophic due to the release of magma in quantities that would be measured in the thousands of tons. The magma release would trigger a shocking event: a tsunami in the Mediterranean region, which would involve the Tyrrhenian Sea engulfing parts of Sicily, Calabria and Campania. Despite the risk, the volcano remains a little known potential natural disaster in the making.

1. Explorer Seamount, Canada


Off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada - which is the largest island on the west coast of North America - is Canada’s largest underwater volcano. Located off Northern Vancouver Island is the Explorer Seamount. The submerged mountain is quite large, covering 772 square miles, the size of the volcano is greater than the city of Vancouver.

The volcano rises 8,202 feet above the ocean floor, at a spot where the summit is still 2,723 feet below the surface. The tectonic plate activity of the volcano site is significant, being a tectonic spreading centre. This location marks the boundary of the Pacific plate and the Explorer plate. The volcano is part of the Explorer Ridge, and was named after the ship Explorer, which was a Coast and Geodetic Survey Vessel which operated in the North Pacific and Gulf of Alaska between 1940 and 1943. Researchers have flocked to the site. A four-hour dive followed by a two week expedition to the Explorer Seamount revealed a great wealth of biological activity, with sponges being described as something akin to an undersea rainforest flourishing on the huge hidden mountain.

Top image: Deepest ever filmed West Mata submarine volcano. Credit: NOAA/National Science Foundation/Wikimedia Commons.

[Source: Toptenz. Top image and some links added.]