The West Mata undersea volcano, located 200 kilometers from Samoa, erupted in May. Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent the remotely operated underwater vehicle Jason to record the explosive action. In addition to tossing up lava and chunks of rock, West Mata also released a significant amount of sulfuric acid into the water, rendering its acidity somewhere between battery acid and stomach acid. The research team collected various samples and is analyzing them and the footage to better understand these deep sea eruptions and the life that exists around these deep underwater volcanoes. Meanwhile, we get a spectacular view of the eruption itself.

Cameras catch underwater volcano in the act [Science News]

Disaster: Volcano
Our Breaking Point: The Subway Scene

How long do you think the people were sitting in that train? Seriously — how long? After a little while of watching people pass out, one after the other, from heat? I'd LEAVE. But no, this guy has to die a painful death walking through lava. Which in itself was a horrible thing — walk faster, melty guy!

Here's the remixed version — watch the full scene here.

Disaster: Deep Impact
Our Breaking Point: The Wave of Love

Nothing brings a daughter and a distant father back together like a giant tidal wave. Call me black-hearted, but this whole "I'm facing my destruction head on, and what? Oh hey, there's my dad who was never around. What the hey, I forgive you!" Tasted like yuck. And to all the people loading up their cars: Come on, it's the end of the world, the roads are always blocked. I bet they felt foolish when they realized they could have just stood on a high mountain to avoid the water. But the hug-it-out wave was still the worst.

Disaster: Armageddon
Our Breaking Point: Ben Affleck
Good theme music and spaceman slo-mo walking, but even if you can convince the audience that a team of misfit drillers can be trained to do their jobs in space, there's no way you can make me believe this scene. Remember, the crew went up in two ships, and they get separated. But don't worry, Ben Affleck's asteroid rover isn't damaged, and he and the remaining crew drive across a sharp-as-razors terrain, fly over a cannon, and find their way back to the other crew. After they shoot their way out of the ship. WHY DID IT HAVE GUNS IN THE FIRST PLACE? Uh, no.

Disaster: The Day After Tomorrow
Our Breaking Point: Frost Running

I didn't think it was possible for a character to piss me off more than when Dennis Quaid announced that he would be walking from Philly to New York, through the worlds most horrific storm, ever. And then his movie son Jake Gyllenhaal and his friends ran from frost, and a pack of wolves. They outran cold. You cannot run from cold, and you cannot protect yourself from cold by shutting the door, nor can you breathe air that is that cold — but screw science, you just plain can't run from cold.

Disaster: Twister
Our Breaking Point: Thank God For These Leather Straps

Twister was a fun movie about lunatics who chase twisters, thus making storm-chasing look infinitely cooler than it could ever be. But for the most part, it's just lots of driving and yelling up at the sky and seeing cows fly past, etc — you know, good stuff. Until the big one. At the end, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt chase and get chased by the really, really big tornado, and instead of dying, they tie themselves with leather belts to a pole, and survive. Their arms remain intact and neither of them manage to get hit by any of the debris that is encircling them. Lucky ducks, eh?

Disaster: The Core
Our Breaking Point: Explaining Unobtainium

The science behind the ship. It's made out of unobtainium, so the hotter and deeper it gets the stronger it gets. And it's shaped like a penis. So yeah...

Disaster: Outbreak
Our Breaking Point: Dustin Saves The Town With His Words

Between a ton of accidental spills and the trained professional scientists sticking their hands into infected blood samples or falling asleep on the job, the worst moment of all is by far Dustin Hoffman's magical speech. Yes, it's worse than the little girl playing with the ebola host monkey. Never in a million years would Dustin Hoffman be allowed to sit up there in that plane. I'd give him two minutes before he was shot out of the sky.

Disaster: The Happening
Our Breaking Point: The Ending

First the plants attack cities, then the roads, then the small cities, then groups, then angry people, then it's the wind. What. The Hell. How can something that probably took millions of years to develop change in hours? Because M. Night said so, that's why — so quit your whining and watch the big ending payoff. Wahlberg and Zooey then decide to suicides themselves, because Zooey decided even though the plants are killing everyone, she should take their dead friend's child outside to run amuck. And now they are trapped — by wind. Time to give up hope and walk towards each other with big sweeping instrumentals, what HAPPENS? Nothing. "The event must have stopped before we went out here." Screw this movie.

Disaster: Dante's Peak
Our Breaking Point: Grandma Gives Her Life

While I agree with having those who have already lived full lives sacrifice themselves first, this is a freaking strange scene. They're like, "Five seconds to the dock," and she decides to walk to the shore too, for extra dramatics.

[Thanks to Annalee and Ray Wert for the phallic Core jokes]

The explosion took place 6 miles off shore, and nobody on the island was hurt.

Photos by Photo by Dana Stephenson/Getty Images.

Oil companies currently pump CO2 down into their reservoirs as a way of forcing more oil up to the surface. The process works, but it's on a small scale, and some scientists worry that the carbon dioxide won't stay put — in the case of an earthquake or future drilling, it could come bubbling right back up into the atmosphere.

But David Goldberg and his team at Columbia have figured out a better way — pump the CO2 down beneath 9,000 feet of water and then into volcanic basalts. There the greenhouse gas reacts with the rock, turning into carbonate (aka limestone, aka chalk) so even if there is an earthquake there shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Of course getting any material pumped into rock close to two miles below the surface of the ocean could be tough, but the researchers are targeting a site in the Pacific Ocean offshore of Oregon and Washington that's filled with vast expanses of basalt. They're going to try some land-based trials later this year, but Goldberg says things would go a lot faster if the US cared to up the ante by throwing a little more cash towards carbon sequestration research. From EurekAlert:

The United States currently spends about $40 million a year studying carbon sequestration, but nearly all of that goes to land-based research. "Forty million is about the opening-day box office for Finding Nemo," said Goldberg. "We need policy change now, to energize research beyond our coastlines."

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences via EurekAlert

Scientists have known for years about the Borealis Basin — a region of lowlands that take up the northern half of Mars. Some thought a volcanic cataclysm caused the crater, while other speculated it could have been an impact. With the help of detailed geological readings from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Global Surveyor, they've been able to solve the mystery, concluding that something struck Mars with the force of 1 million billion Nagasaki-sized atomic bombs on a bad day four billion years ago.

Nature has devoted a special issue called "Cosmic Impacts" centered on the new findings, with a cool story on the 100th Anniversary of the Tunguska Event and a sweet photo gallery of the solar system's prettiest craters that are worth a look.

Source: Nature via BBC

The volcano spewed debris twenty miles up into the atmosphere. It erupted on Friday, May 2, and erupted again yesterday. Over 4,000 locals have fled, but luckily everyone was able to get away safely. The lava isn't the fast-moving kind, but rather a slow-moving creep of material. So nobody is being menaced by a rapidly-moving wall of liquid rock. Photographs via National Geographic.

Second Eruption in Chile [London Guardian]

Scientists got the idea for injecting sulfate particles into the atmosphere from watching massive volcanoes blow their top. When big boomers like Mount St. Helens or Pinatubo go, they throw huge plumes of sulfur-rich gunk into the atmosphere, and climate around the globe can cool significantly for up to a few years. The ozone layer also thins significantly.

Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and her colleagues calculated that if humans started artificially pumping two different sizes of sulfate molecules into the atmosphere, we could lose as much as 3/4 of the ozone layer:

The study found that injections of small particles, over the next 20 years, could reduce the ozone layer by 100 to 230 Dobson Units. This would represent a significant loss of ozone because the average thickness of the ozone layer in the Northern Hemisphere is 300 to 450 Dobson Units. (A Dobson Unit is equivalent to the number of ozone molecules that would create a layer 0.01 millimeters thick under conditions at Earth's surface).

With large particles, the Arctic loss would range from 70 to 150 Dobson Units. In each case, the larger figure is correlated with colder winters.

The ozone loss would drop in the later part of the century to about 60 to 150 Dobson Units, depending on the size of the sulfates and the severity of winters.

In the Antarctic, most of the ozone is already depleted and the sulfate injections would not significantly reduce the thickness of the ozone layer. Instead, they would significantly delay the recovery of the ozone hole.

The authors caution that the actual impacts on ozone could be somewhat different than estimated if atmospheric changes led to unusually warm or cold polar winters. They also warn that a geoengineering project could lead to even more severe ozone loss if a major volcanic eruption took place at the same time.

Because of the immense atmospheric pressure on Venus (more than 90 times higher than sea level Earth air pressure), it's unlikely that a volcano there would erupt explosively. However, it could emit sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere as liquid lava flows down the volcano's flank. The Venus Express looks at the sun through Venus' atmosphere, then uses spectroscopy to identify the chemicals there. It observed a more than 60 percent drop in sulfur dioxide levels over just a few days, strong evidence of an intermittent source of that gas. ESA scientists want to use more spectroscopy to spot a tell-tale gas plume, or infrared sensors to find volcanic hot spots. Photo by NASA.

Search For Active Volcanoes On Venus In High Gear. [Science Daily]

Above is a picture taken a few days ago of the ash plume. According to PhysOrg:

The ash plume, which is thousands of feet high, indicates an unknown geophysical change deep inside the volcano. Scientists also said small amounts of lava erupted from the crater Monday.

The National Park Service has closed Crater Rim Drive through the south caldera area until further notice, and people with asthma and other breathing problems were told to avoid downwind areas. USGS said the possibility of future small explosions from Halemaumau Crater cannot be ruled out.

Kilauea Spews Ash [PhysOrg]

Space.com reports:

Io's volcanoes spew out sulfur dioxide, which is a gas that stinks of freshly lit matches and almost entirely makes up the moon's atmosphere. As Io rotates from daylight into darkness, chilling the yellowish rock down to -226 F (-143 C), the gas freezes into a solid, much like dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide gas). About 1 to 3 percent of Io's dayside atmosphere, it turns out, is created by the volcanoes. The rest is generated from frozen sulfur dioxide turning directly into gas which, over eons, has accumulated on Io's surface.

New Horizon also got a cool image of Io's "aurora," which is caused by all that volcanic gas getting hurled into the air. Looks awesome.