How Earthquakes and Volcanoes Reveal the Beating Heart of the Planet
The Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program has stitched together a visual archive of the world’s earthquakes and volcanoes
By Rachel E. Gross
smithsonian.com
October 4, 2016 | Updated: October 6, 2016
Your face looks fine. Trust me. But if you zoom in and take a time-lapse, you’ll see a landscape in motion: zits erupting, pore-craters forming, ridges of skin stretching apart and squashing together as you smile and frown. Similarly, the Earth outside your window might appear quiet. But that’s because you’re looking at a tiny slice in time and space. Expand your view and you’ll see plates shift, earthquakes ripple and volcanoes erupt along tectonic boundaries. The world snaps, crackles and tears asunder. Nothing stays the same.
To illustrate these dynamic patterns, the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, hosted within the National Museum of Natural History, has created a time-lapse animation of the world’s earthquakes, eruptions and emissions since 1960. Drawing from the first compiled database of sulfur emissions dating to 1978, the animations show how the seemingly random activity of volcanoes and earthquakes form consistent global patterns over time. Understanding those patterns gives researchers insight into how these dramatic events are entwined with the inner workings of our planet.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-earthquakes-and-volcanoes-reveal-beating-heart-planet-180960564/
