Santorini Volcano in the Aegean Sea, seen in this NASA satellite image, was the site of one of the largest eruptions in the last 10,000 years. The explosion of the volcano removed so much magma from below the Earth that the volcano collapsed, producing a large crater, or caldera.
The Island of Santorini has risen 5.5 inches in the last year and a half according to an article published September 9th in the journal Nature Geoscience leading to speculation that the volcano on Santorini may be getting ready to erupt again. On average, the Santorini volcano has a major eruption about every 10,000 years. The last major eruption, 3,600 years ago, created 40-foot high tsunamis and led to the destruction of the Minoan civilization. Some believe this historical eruption led to the legend of Atlantis since Plato said Atlantis went down in the ocean.
In the past 1.5 years, the magma chamber beneath the volcano island has ballooned by as much as 350 million cubic feet (20 million cubic meters), or up to 15 times the size of London’s Olympic Stadium.
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