Monday, April 17, 2006

Moat of Death!!


Wow, I love that name.

Via National Geographic News, a Giant Deep-Sea Volcano with a "moat of death" has been found.
Beneath the waves of the South Pacific lies a volcanic realm nearly as strange as that featured in TV's hit drama Lost.

But instead of a mysterious island, scientists have found a bubbling submarine volcano whose weird features include a swirling vortex, a host of strange animals, and a fearsome zone of toxic waters dubbed the Moat of Death.

The volcano, described in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sits within the crater of a gigantic underwater mountain rising more than 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) from the ocean floor near the island of Samoa.

The seamount, called Vailulu'u, is an active volcano, with a 2-mile-wide (3.2-kilometer-wide) crater. The cone rising within it has been dubbed Nafanua, for the Samoan goddess of war.

I suggest we immediately send a republican congressional delegation there on a fact-finding mission.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Argh, the punchline at the end of the article: Another effect of global warming is that the same chemistry causing the "moat of death" will become widespread in the oceans. A gigantic moat of death.

Sigh.

(I agree with you, though -- the phrase "Moat of Death" has a real ring to it.)

--mismn