1 Jun 2021, 16:03 BST
When engineers began drilling into an Icelandic volcano named Krafla, things took a turn for the weird. The team’s objective was to approach the boundary of a magma reservoir 2.5 miles below the surface, tapping into superheated fluids that could produce geothermal energy. But when the drill was just over a mile down, molten rock began creeping up the drill.
On that brisk spring day in 2009, the engineers had accidentally hit a pocket of magma sitting right below the surface that no one knew was there.
Krafla is “one of the best studied volcanoes on the planet,” says Hugh Tuffen, a volcanologist at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom who wasn’t involved with the research. It has been repeatedly surveyed using a range of techniques, so scientists thought they had a decent grasp of its underground workings. “It’s remarkable that this magma was able to hide.”
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The famous Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, with lupines in the foreground. Handmade Pictures/Alamy
In This Story
, published in May 2021 by Penguin Books.
Two years before making history with one small step onto the Moon, Neil Armstrong went salmon fishing in northern Iceland. A picture of him, standing by a river, is exhibited in a regional museum, but the image is so small that at first you might assume it’s just a regular snapshot of recreational life in the 1960s. Smiling faintly as he holds a fishing rod, the 36-year-old Armstrong could pass for a local until you notice his baseball cap and fancy aviator shades. And, of course, his four layers of clothing.