PLINY the Younger, the ancient Roman scholar, was lucky enough to be at a safe distance when Mount Vesuvius blew her top in AD 79. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, was not so fortunate and was suffocated by the eruption, which also buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Afterwards Pliny wrote about his experience, describing the volcanic cloud as “being like a pine rather than any other tree, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches”.
An important question for geologists investigating such eruptions is: how do volcanoes accumulate…
