NASA should consider getting into the cheesy disaster movie business. It already has an elevator pitch for a low-budget film. “You’ve heard of sharknado, now get ready for sharkcano,” NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center tweeted on Sunday.
NASA hasn’t lost its mind. Goddard shared an image from the Earth-observing Landsat 9 satellite showing a disturbance in the ocean. “The Kavachi Volcano in the Solomon Islands is home to two species of sharks,” Goddard explained. “It’s also one of the most active submarine volcanoes in the Pacific, seen here erupting underwater by Landsat 9.”
According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, Kavachi started erupting in October last year and satellite images showed the change in water color in April and May of this year. The volcano’s summit is about 65 feet (20 meters) below the waves.
High up in the canopy of the California redwood forests, the wandering salamander lives, eats and soars. Scientists are marveling at the skydiving amphibians and their ability to effortlessly glide and pull off complex aerial maneuvers.
A study led by researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) and the University of California at Berkeley investigated Aneides vagrans’ gliding skills using a wind tunnel to capture slow-motion footage of the amphibians in action. The wind tunnel simulated the conditions of falling through the air. The paper appeared in the journal Current Biology on Monday.