One of today’s most dangerous volcanoes is one you’ve probably never heard about. The North Koreans call it Paektu; the Chinese call it Changbai. In a headline Friday, Science called it Mount Doom.
The picturesque, lake-topped peak, which straddles the border between North Korea and China, “explodes to life every 100 years or so, the last time in 1903,” reports Science’s Richard Stone, who visited Mount Doom in September with two volcanologists from the U.K.
The volcano’s most dramatic eruption rivaled the famous 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia, Stone writes, and it could unleash more of the same:
“Around 1000 years ago, the volcano rained tephra—pumice and ash—across 33,000 square kilometers of northeast China and Korea, dumping 5 centimeters of ash as far away as Japan…. Because Changbai's silica-rich magma is viscous and gassy, allowing pressure to build, the next eruption should be explosive.”
Read More: http://news.discovery.com/earth/mount-doom-dont-say-we-didnt-warn-you-111108.html
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