Will Drilling Into a Volcano Trigger an Eruption That Destroys Naples?

Scientific research has helped humankind avoid or mitigate many of nature’s best attempts to send us to a violent end, but what do researchers do when the pursuit of research could trigger the very disaster from which science is trying to protect us? That’s the question facing geologists in Naples, Italy that will begin sinking seven four-kilometer bore holes into the Campi Flegrei caldera, the site of a “supercolossal” volcanic eruption 39,000 years ago. Those doing the drilling hope to learn more about the geological activity beneath the giant collapsed crater so they might better predict future volcanic disasters. Critics say the drilling could precipitate that very cataclysmic eruption the researchers are trying to avoid. Previous studies show that Campi Flegrei is one of Earth’s most volcanically high-risk places; just 4,000 years ago series of violent eruptions cut the landscape into what it is today. Prior to those eruptions the Earth’s crust...

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