Word: volcano
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...made mountain in front of his new hotel, the rumor in town was that he was building a ski resort on the Strip. But Wynn Las Vegas, which opened last week, exudes an anti-Vegas, almost Buddhist quietude. There's no theme, no showstopper like the volcano he built outside the Mirage in 1989, the pirate ships he put outside Treasure Island in 1993 or the giant pond he created with fountains choreographed to songs for the front of the Bellagio in 1998. "Theme parks are a collection of wows," says the man who not so long ago turned Vegas...
...South American plate, which is moving westward. As the oceanic plate dives deeper into a region of high temperature and pressure some 60 miles to 125 miles below the earth's surface, rock in the area begins to soften and form magma, molten rock. Says Robert Christiansen, a volcano specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park, Calif.: "This is one area in which our knowledge is the least advanced...
...they are more buoyant than surrounding rock, the diapirs percolate upward, like bubbles rising through honey, melting more rock as they go. Eventually they accumulate in pockets called magma chambers, located two miles to 15 miles underground. If the magma is very liquid and gases can escape gradually, a volcano may lie fallow for long periods of time...
...perform short-term divination, geologists examine a number of clues. Mild seismic activity in the area, rumblings or the emission of ash and gases are all harbingers of greater things to come. Changes in the snowcaps that cover tall volcanoes may also indicate trouble. In Iceland, for example, the sight of a sagging, snow-covered mountaintop, which indicates that hot magma is pushing upward and melting the ice cap, warns knowledgeable residents to head for safety. More sophisticated techniques include tiltmeters or laser ranging devices to detect deformations in the volcano cone, also caused by magma oozing upward. Seismometers...
Until they can eye a volcano and declare with certainty that it is ready to burst, scientists will remember with a wince their warning nearly ten years ago about Soufrière, a volcano on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe that began to spout a heavy plume of ash. Goaded by the geologists' alarms, authorities evacuated more than 70,000 people from the area and kept them away for 3½ months. The result: the mountain continued to sputter smoke and cough volumes of ash for a while, but it never blew. --By Natalie Angier. Reported by Christine Gorman/New York and Charles...