Explanation:
When
Vulcan, the
Roman god of fire, swings his blacksmith's hammer, the
sky is lit on fire.
A recent eruption of
Chile's
Villarrica volcano shows the delicate interplay between this fire --
actually glowing steam and
ash from
melted rock --
and the light from distant stars in our
Milky Way galaxy and the
Magellanic Clouds galaxies.
In the featured timelapse video, the
Earth rotates under the stars as
Villarrica erupts.
With about
1350 volcanoes,
our
planet Earth
rivals
Jupiter's moon Io as the most
geologically active place in the
Solar System.
While both have magnificent beauty, the reasons for the existence of volcanoes on
both worlds are different.
Earth's volcanoes typically occur between slowly shifting
outer shell plates, while
Io's
volcanoes are caused by
gravitational flexing resulting from
Jupiter's tidal gravitational
pull.
