Disasters: volcanoes and Petriki

In the past two weeks, nature once again reminded who the real owner on the planet Earth.

The earthquake in the province of Qinghai in China claimed more than two thousand lives. However, this earthquake, despite the scale of the victims, turned out to be “unnoticed” against the background of another event. Tens of thousands of air passengers were “riveted” to the ground due to the eruption of the Eiyafyatlayokudl volcano in Iceland. The cloud of volcanic ash and gases spread by thousands of kilometers, blocking the space for air flights over many European countries, including the western part of Russia. Flights security agencies reasonably banned flights in unsafe space. What could end with a reactive liner with a cloud of volcanic dust, the pilots and passengers of the liner Boeing 747-236b “City of Edinburgh” “British Eirweiz” on June 24, 1982 over the island of Java knew. Despite the fact that the dust was invisible on the radars, it led to the stop of all four engines. Thanks to the self -control of the crew, this incident did without human casualties: the crew managed to start the engines and land at the nearby Jakarta airport.

Today, special services are monitored by volcanic eruptions and control the spread of eruption products from space, which allows you to carry out safe flights over volcanically active areas and neighboring territories. Iceland is “Klondike” for scientists, but a very unsafe place for life. About this island, its volcanoes and emerging problems at airports due to the last eruption, we tell on page 8-9.

But who is the owner in Russian science and whether it will be possible to stop the pseudoscientific eruptions of the newly-minted “geniuses-Samosvans”-read on page 16.