🌃 That's actually kind of beautiful in a weird, apocalyptic way.
Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a historical eruption for you tonight—and I’m not talking about my Twitter mentions. So, thirty-three years ago, on June 15th, 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines decided it was done being polite. This volcano just went full pyroclastic flow—that’s the fancy Greek term for “oh absolutely not”—and shot an ash column seven kilometers straight up into the sky. Seven kilometers! That’s like if your coffee maker exploded with the fury of a thousand angry breakup texts. For context, that’s 4.3 miles high. Your regular airplane cruising altitude is 35,000 feet. Pinatubo said, “Hold my magma,” and just… started punching the stratosphere. ...