Lurking beneath waves of the Mediterranean, between Sicily and the Italian mainland, lies a submarine volcano, which is showing telltale signs of being unstable. News reports this week declared that its flanks could cave in, triggering a tsunami that would swamp southern Italy.
But geologists caution that while the threat is real, it is impossible to say when the volcano might collapse.
Enzo Boschi of the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, Italy, and colleagues took a peek at the internal structure of the Marsili seamount using remote sensing methods, which included measuring how the volcano affects Earth's gravitational field.
Marsili has a hidden but active magma chamber and lies beneath the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which is part of the Mediterranean west of Italy.
Bill McGuire of University College London cautions that it's impossible to say when the volcano might erupt in the future.
newscientist.com
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