Underwater volcano found by Italy

[DoYouEverWonder]

23 June 2006

A huge underwater volcano has been discovered 40km (25 miles) off the southern coast of Sicily.

The Italian scientists who discovered the volcano have named it Empedocles.

The volcano's base covers an area larger than Rome, and it's higher than Paris' Eiffel Tower with one peak only seven metres below the sea's surface.

Empedocles is dormant and luckily shows no sign of imminent eruption. Mount Etna, Europe's largest active volcano, lies 100 km (62 miles) to its north.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5108360.stm

They just noticed this thing? Shows you how little we know about our own world sometimes.

[cliss]

1. When I read this article, I started

thinking about some Nostradamus prediction....hm. Can't remember the details.

Thanks for posting! These scientific articles are really interesting.

[Up2Late]

2. That's weird that they just found it, sounds like it's right by Stromboli.

...which is active. <http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_stromboli.html>

One more little eruption and they might have a new Island.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. No, this is south of Sicily, and Stromboli is north of Sicily

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9069987

7 metres below the surface is very close, however. The headline "volcano found" doesn't fit the text of the article, though -

At various times in history, the volcano has formed a small island.

The first recorded eruptions occurred in the third century BC and the last in 1831.

Its emergence then put it at the centre of an international row over who the volcano actually belonged to.
...
"People used to think that there were small centres of emission, distant from each other," Cesare Corselli, president of the National Inter-University Consortium for Marine Science, was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

It hasn't really been 'found' - they've just reassessed the geology of it.

[pokercat999]

4. Guess it was the boiling water that tipped them off?