Word: lavas
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...Foundation, the Alvin, on loan from the Navy, is making a new series of exploratory dives. The expedition is called "Oasis," and its target area is a region of undersea volcanic vents nearly 150 miles south of Baja California. The site is part of a seismically active region where lava oozes from fractures in the earth's crust...
...less important scientifically, both landers managed to drill a few centimeters into the Venusian surface, scoop up some rock and analyze its chemistry. The conclusion: the material at both sites was basalt, fire-formed rock typically found in lava flows on earth. Indeed, based on its telltale traces of potassium, the material at Venera 14's site seemed uncannily like rocks that come out of the earth at the volcanically active mid-ocean ridges...
...findings provided the strongest evidence to date for a growing view among planetary scientists. Unlike the moon, Mercury or even Mars, Venus does not seem to be a dormant world, essentially unchanged for billions of years. The presence of what seems to be fresh lava-like material indicates that Venus either is still active with volcanic eruptions and lava flows or has only recently become quiescent. Says Pepin: "Here we have a planet like earth whose heat engine is still going strong...
...digging a hole in the sand, and all the adults who walked by told you to keep going and you'd end up in China? We all grew up with these aspects of romance. Did any of those elders ever add that you'd have to scoop out boiling lava when you hit the middle of the earth en route? Of course not. They--like Buffet--were content to nurture and protect romantic ideas without exposing them to reality...
...brought one hillside house slamming down onto two others, killing a woman. Two hundred yards away, Writer Brian Vander Horst watched. Says he: "It happened so fast that two rooms from the falling house were flashing with lights as they came down the hill. Mud was running like molten lava." Surgeon Robert Rabkin had planned to spend Monday night in his Sausalito condominium, but decided at the last moment to attend a hospital meeting miles away. Leaving home he had a foretaste of disaster: the stream running through the property was a dark, muddy brown. When Rabkin returned seven hours...