MOUNT VESUVIUS

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Context

• When Mount Vesuvius erupted in Herculaneum in AD79, it buried the Roman town in ash and pumice and destroyed hundreds of antique scrolls in the library.
• The scrolls are riches for historians, who may soon be able to understand them thanks to artificial intelligence.

About

• It is an active volcano in southern Italy that rises above the Bay of Naples on the Campania plain.
• It is the only active volcano on the European continent.
• Because its eruptions often include explosive eruptions as well as pyroclastic flows, the volcano is classed as a complex stratovolcano.
• A pyroclastic flow is a dense mixture of hot lava, pumice, ash, and volcanic gas.
• It is well known for destroying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD.
• It is part of the Campanian volcanic arc, which is a chain of volcanoes formed by the convergence of the African and Eurasian plates.
• This subduction zone runs the length of the Italian peninsula and is the origin of volcanoes such as Mount Etna, the Phlegraean Fields (Campi Flegrei), Vulcano, and Stromboli.
• The lower section of the subducting slab has torn and divorced from the top part under Vesuvius, forming a "slab window."
• As a result, the rocks erupting from Vesuvius are slightly different chemically from the rocks erupting from the other Campanian volcanoes.