A church on the Greek island of Santorini overlooks the Kameni volcanic peak, where a future eruption could be more explosive than scientists previously thought. The Greek island of Santorini is an undeniable aesthetic marvel, with its iconic white-and-blue houses perched high above an azure bay. But this paradisical locale has a spectacularly violent origin story.
In the year 726, one of Kameni’s eruptions generated significant explosions and threw out myriad molten matter. Based on volcanic rocks recovered from the eruption, this was thought to be the worst-case scenario that Kameni could produce.They estimate that at least 100 billion cubic feet of lava, ash, and scorching-hot rocks were expelled from Kameni, making it comparable to the formidableof the submarine Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai volcano in the Pacific.
The 726 eruption has been a focus for those hoping to understand how hazardous Kameni might be in the future. Historical accounts sound frightening: it was said that the waters of the bay began to boil, before “the entire sea was on fire,” says Preine—after which, deafening explosions blanketed the sky with ash and the land with pumice stones.But the volcanic evidence found by scientists didn’t seem to quite match up to those apocalyptic descriptions.
An explosive eruption throwing out 100 billion cubic feet of erupted matter is certainly a frightening thought. But the reality was likely more nightmarish. “Santorini should be taken seriously given the volcano’s tsunamigenic potential and the large number of people that could be affected,” says, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge who wasn’t involved with the work. “While this paper does say that 726 was bigger than we thought, it doesn’t significantly increase my concern about what was already a concerning volcano for multiple reasons.”
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