Rescue teams desperately sought survivors on August 6th after two boats carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa.

In the immediate aftermath of the boats’ loss on August 5th, Italy’s coastguard said it had rescued 57 people and recovered two dead bodies— those of a woman from Ivory Coast and her 1-year-old child. Local media reported on Sunday that at least 30 people remained missing and were feared dead.

Italy’s Ansa news agency said survivors described how the two boats carrying people trying to illegally enter the European Union had set off from the Tunisian port of Sfax on Saturday. One boat was thought to have had 48 people on board and the other 42. Most were reportedly from sub-Saharan Africa.

Reuters said the coastguard rescued the survivors from the water about 46 kilometers southwest of Lampedusa, which is about halfway between the North African nation of Tunisia and the larger Italian island of Sicily. The island has become a major destination for migrants from Africa wanting to enter the EU and claim asylum (政治避难) .

Italy’s interior ministry said 92, 000 people have arrived in Italy irregularly by sea so far this year to apply for asylum in the EU. During the same period last year, 42, 600 made the very dangerous journey.

The ministry said at least 2, 000 migrants have turned up on the island of Lampedusa in the past few days alone. Most had been rescued by the coastguard and by various charities from small boats in the Mediterranean Sea.

The International Organization for Migration, or IOM, which is the United Nations’ migration agency, said on Sunday both boats that sank on Saturday had been hit by major storms.

Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the IOM, told the Agence France-Presse news agency an official examination had been launched into the circumstances surrounding the loss of the boats. He said the probe will be conducted from the town of Agrigento, on the island of Sicily. “Whoever allowed them, or forced them, to leave with this sea is equal to a mad criminal,” he said. “Rough seas are forecast for the next few days. Let’s hope they stop. It’s sending them to slaughter (屠杀) with this sea.”

Emanuele Ricifari, the chief of police in Agrigento, said the people-traffickers (人贩子) would surely have known rough seas were expected.

A volcanic eruption (火山喷发) created a new but possibly changeable island in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. An underwater volcano next to the Kingdom of Tonga erupted in early September, causing lava (岩浆) to rise to the surface. The steam (蒸汽) and water out of it then formed into a new land mass, measuring at over eight acres.

The Home Reef seamount is the place where the volcano erupted on September 10th, 2022. NASA’s Earth Observatory noted that it took about eleven hours for the land mass torise out of the water. The agency published an image that has spread on social media that shows the size of the new unnamed island.

Over the weekend, the Tonga Geological Services stated the island was about 8.6 acresand measured about 50 feet above sea level. While volcanic activities continued to plague the Home Reef, only a couple of neighboring the Tonga islands were at low risk. “All sailors are, however, advised to sail beyond 4 kilometers away from Home Reef until further notice,” officials with the Tonga Geological Services noted in a statement.

Underwater volcanic eruptions near Tonga that led to new islands,although uncommon, have happened a few times over the last two centuries, including in 1852, 1857, 1984 and 2006. However, NASA’s Earth Observatory showed that many of these volcanic islands existed only for a few months or years.

“Islands created by undersea volcanoes often last only for a short time, though very few sometimes last for years. Home Reef has had four recorded periods of eruptions, including events in 1852 and 1857,” the agency noted. “An island created by a 12-day eruption from nearby Late’iki volcano in 2020 was washed away after two months, while an earlier island created in 1995 by the same volcano remained for 25 years.”

Yellowstone National Park is boiling. The Wyoming park is filled with hot springs and geysers—all fueled by a bubbling (沸腾的) supervolcano.

Scientists agree the Yellow stone supervolcano is unlikely to blow anytime soon. Should it erupt, it would be a disaster. The eruption would shoot out enough rock and ash to cover most of the United States.

So in 2017, NASA scientists ran a thought experiment to see if they could stop a future super-eruption. The study was led by Brian Wilcox. His team came up with the idea of drilling a series of wells around the edge of the park and pumping cold water down into the hot rock. This would cool the boiling rock and prevent a disaster. As a bonus, the system would provide enough geothermal energy to power the entire country. The idea, however, has reached a standstill. Yellowstone and other national parks have long been protected from commercial energy development to ensure that these regions remain untouched.

Nowhere has geothermal energy had a greater effect on the environment than in New Zealand. Much like Yellowstone, the Wairakei Basin of the country’s north island was once a bubbling scene where 70 geysers periodically fired jets of water into the air. That is, until1958, when a geothermal power plant was developed nearby. Today, Wairakei does not host a single geyser. The power plant destroyed all 70 of them, along with 240 hot springs.

Should a project like this take place at the edges of Yellowstone National Park, it could easily leave the surface features untouched and still drill deep enough to generate geothermal power. Indeed, that was NASA’s supposed solution.

But Richards does not like the idea. Even if a geothermal power plant did not destroy the region’s features—from geysers and hot springs to mudpots—the plant would not go unnoticed in such an untouched area.