AFP UK

The lorry combines all the input from the various sensors with a GPS system

Barrelling down a motorway south of Stockholm in a 40-tonne lorry and trailer, the driver keeps a careful eye on the road but, jarringly, no hands on the wheel.

Instead, the truck drives itself, and veteran driver Roger Nordqvist is at the ready only in case of unexpected problems.

Swedish truck maker Scania is not the only auto manufacturer developing autonomous vehicles, but it recently became the first in Europe to pilot them while delivering commercial goods.

“We take their goods from point A, drive them to point B, fully autonomously,” Peter Hafmar, head of autonomous solutions at Scania, tells AFP outside the company’s transport lab in Sodertalje, south of Stockholm.

In the pilot project, the self-driving truck is manoeuvring a stretch of some 300 kilometres (186 miles) between Sodertalje and Jonkoping in Sweden’s south, delivering fast-food goods.

From the outside, the vehicle looks almost like any other lorry, save for a rail on the roof packed with cameras and two sensors resembling bug antennae on the sides.

Inside the cab, the wheel and seats are where you’d expect to find them, but small devices and screens dot the dashboard and a nest of wires run to the computer rack housed behind the passenger seat. 

– ‘Drives better by itself’ –

Engineer Goran Fjallid sits next to the safety driver in the passenger’s seat, eyes glued to his laptop as it receives video from the truck’s cameras and flickering text with information about what the vehicle is seeing.

A second screen shows a 3D-visualisation of the truck on the road and all nearby vehicles.

The lorry combines all the input from the various sensors with a GPS system, with the different technologies acting as back-ups for each other.

“If the road markings disappear for a while, then it will use the GPS and it stays perfectly in its lane,” Fjallid explains.

“It drives better by itself than when you drive it manually,” he adds.

But he acknowledges that a lot of trial and error has gone into getting the truck to that point.

They’ve had to tweak things like how the truck handles merging onto the motorway, and what to do when another car cuts in front of it.

Every time the truck does something unexpected, such as braking or slowing down for no apparent reason, Fjallid makes a note of the exact timing so the logs and data can be examined.

The lorry’s sensors are also calibrated daily before hitting the road.

Hafmar says there are still some hurdles to clear before driverless trucks — without safety drivers — become a common sight on roads, both in terms of technology and legislation.

They expect to have this ready by the end of the 2020s or the beginning of 2030s, Hafmar says.

– No more truck drivers? –

The advent of self-driving trucks can be seen as a threat to the jobs of truck drivers — one of the world’s most common professions.

But Hafmar insists autonomous vehicles are needed to address a global driver shortage.

And, he says, it will be a long time before artificial intelligence will be able to handle all aspects of logistics.

Initially, self-driving lorries will likely be used for long-haul trips, but the last-mile distribution to shops and customers “will happen with human drivers”, Hafmar adds.

According to a report from the International Road Transport Union (IRU) in June, there were some 2.6 million unfilled positions for truck drivers around the world in 2021.

Hafmar also points out other potential benefits: since computers don’t need to sleep or rest, the vehicles can be scheduled for trips at times when there is less traffic, or drive slower — but for longer — to save on fuel.

A host of other companies are also in the race to launch self-driving trucks.

Start-ups Aurora, Waymo, Embark, Kodiak and Torc (together with Daimler) are running tests in the United States, while China’s Baidu announced a self-driving truck in late 2021.

In Europe, IVECO is working with Californian start-up Plus, supported by Amazon, and recently announced the end of their first phase of circuit testing. They will also launch road tests.

Swedish company Einride also plans to launch road tests in Germany soon.

Fountains of lava upto 200 feet (60 meters) high are spewing from Mauna Loa in Hawaii

Fountains of lava up to 200 feet (60 meters) high have been fired into the air from Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, geologists say, generating rivers of molten rock from the world’s largest active volcano.

Four fissures have now opened up on the mammoth mountain, which burst into life on Sunday for the first time in almost 40 years.

Vast clouds of steam and smoke were billowing into the sky from the volcano, which makes up half of Hawaii’s Big Island.

“Estimates of the tallest fountain heights are between 100–200 feet” but most are much smaller, the United States Geological Survey said in an update Monday.

“There is a visible gas plume from the erupting fissure fountains and lava flows, with the plume primarily being blown to the Northwest.”

Geologists say there is currently no risk to people and property below the eruption.

“The longest and largest lava flow is issuing from fissure three,” the USGS said Tuesday.

“This lava flow crossed the Mauna Loa Weather Observatory Road… and the flow front was located approximately six miles (10 kilometers) from Saddle Road (the main road at the foot of the northern flank).”

The lava fountain from the newest fissure was up to 33 feet high, the agency said.

Everything is currently contained in the Northeast Rift Zone, the USGS said, but warned Mauna Loa is a dynamic volcano.

“Additional fissures could open along the Northeast Rift Zone below the current location, and lava flows can continue to travel downslope.”

Pressure has been building at Mauna Loa for years, the USGS said, and the eruption — which lit up the night sky — could be seen 45 miles (72 kilometers) away, in the west coast town of Kona.

While lava is not presently a risk to populations, scientists have said winds could carry volcanic gas and fine ash downslope, as well as Pele’s Hair — fine strands of volcanic glass formed when lava skeins cool quickly in the air.

Named after Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, the strands can be very sharp and pose potential danger to skin and eyes.

– ‘Long Mountain’ –

Authorities in Hawaii have not issued any evacuation orders, although the summit area and several roads in the region were closed, and two shelters have been opened as a precaution.

The largest volcano on Earth by volume, Mauna Loa, whose name means “Long Mountain,” is larger than the rest of the Hawaiian islands combined.

The volcano’s submarine flanks stretch for miles to an ocean floor that is in turn depressed by Mauna Loa’s great mass — making its summit some 11 miles above its base, according to the USGS. 

One of six active volcanoes on the Hawaiian islands, Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843.

Its most recent eruption, in 1984, lasted 22 days and produced lava flows reached to within about four miles of Hilo.

Kilauea, a volcano on the southeastern flank of Mauna Loa, erupted almost continuously between 1983 and 2019, and a minor eruption there has been ongoing for months.

A Falcon 9 rocket is now scheduled to blast off at 3:37 am (0837 GMT) Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida

SpaceX on Wednesday postponed by one day a mission to launch the first private — and Japanese — lander to the Moon.

A Falcon 9 rocket is now scheduled to blast off at 3:37 am (0837 GMT) Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX said on Twitter that the delay was to carry out more pre-flight checks.

Until now, only the United States, Russia and China have managed to put a robot on the lunar surface.

The mission, by Japanese company ispace, is the first of a program called Hakuto-R. 

The lander would touch down around April 2023 on the visible side of the Moon, in the Atlas crater, according to a company statement.

Measuring just over 2 by 2.5 meters, it carries on board a 10-kilogram rover named Rashid, built by the United Arab Emirates. The oil-rich country is a newcomer to the space race but counts recent successes including a Mars probe in 2020. If it succeeds, Rashid will be the Arab world’s first Moon mission.

“We have achieved so much in the six short years since we first began conceptualizing this project in 2016,” said ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada.

Hakuto was one of five finalists in the international Google Lunar XPrize competition, a challenge to land a rover on the Moon before a 2018 deadline, which ended without a winner. But some of the projects are still ongoing.

Another finalist, from the Israeli organization SpaceIL, failed in April 2019 to become the first privately-funded mission to achieve the feat, after crashing into the surface while attempting to land.

ispace, which has just 200 employees, says it “aims to extend the sphere of human life into space and create a sustainable world by providing high-frequency, low-cost transportation services to the Moon.”

Future missions are set to contribute to NASA’s Artemis program. Artemis-1, an uncrewed test flight to the Moon, is currently underway.

The US space agency wants to develop the lunar economy in the coming years by building a space station in orbit around the Moon and a base on the surface.

It has awarded contracts to several companies to develop landers to transport scientific experiments to the surface. 

Among them, the American companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines should take off in 2023, and could arrive at their destination before ispace by taking a more direct route, according to reports.

Climate protesters in Paris this year used slogans inspired by Netflix film 'Don't Look Up'

Fictional films and TV have immense power to shift attitudes on political issues, yet they remain little-used in debates over climate change.

Analysing a database of 37,453 film and TV scripts from 2016 to 2020, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) found that just 1,046 — 2.8 percent — included any keywords related to climate, and only 0.6 percent mentioned “climate change” specifically. 

A similar British study by Albert, a sustainability NGO, found that “cake” was mentioned 10 times more than “climate change” in TV subtitles in 2020.

“The vast majority of films and shows we watch exist in a different reality, where climate change does not exist. This allows viewers to live in a fantasy,” said Anna Jane Joyner, founder of Good Energy, a consultancy that helps scriptwriters address the issue.

Scriptwriters have been keen to address climate change, Joyner said, but felt others would not be interested, or that they would be branded as hypocrites.

“Many writers feel guilty about their own lifestyle — that unless you’re a perfect climate citizen, you can’t authentically write about it,” said Joyner. “But we need less shaming.”

It helps that public concern is rising.

The number of Americans viewing climate change as a major threat jumped from 37 to 55 percent between 2017 and 2021, despite right-wing denials. 

In Britain, it jumped from 37 to 65 percent.

– ‘Para-social relationships’ –

TV has helped shift political attitudes over the years, especially around race and sexuality, from the first inter-racial kiss on “Star Trek” in the 1960s to the gay stars of 1990s sitcoms “Ellen” and “Will and Grace”.

The latter was even cited by then vice-president Joe Biden in his decision to support marriage equality in the United States in 2012.

“People tend to view entertainment as frivolous… and writers who care about climate change might think that audiences will not be receptive,” said Erica Rosenthal of USC. “But that is false.”

Her work has shown how viewers form “para-social relationships” with characters on-screen, exposing them to new ideas and people. 

“Even if climate change only comes up in passing in a show that we love, it subconsciously validates that this concern is normal,” said Joyner.

“You need that sense of connection before you get to a place of agency.”

However, some mentions are more useful than others, she added.

Two common tropes are the apocalypse — which is demoralising — and characters that badger others about their SUV or plastic straws. “Nobody likes a scold,” said Joyner.

Simple gestures can help — characters expressing concern about the climate, using public transport or minimising food waste.

“We see plenty of stories on extreme weather but they are rarely, if ever, linked to climate change… That would be easy,” added Rosenthal.

– Conquering nature –

Hollywood has long explored humanity’s relationship with nature, dating back to the grand vistas of early Westerns.

“Initially, Westerns were about conquering the land, but very quickly we see that domesticating nature should not mean destroying it,” said Veronique Le Bris, who compiled “100 Great Films for the Planet” in France.

Horror over nuclear weapons spurred change after World War II, she added.

As early as 1958, celebrated director Nicholas Ray made “Wind Across the Everglades” about animal conservation.

There have been many examples since, from “Erin Brokovich” to “Wall-E” to “Don’t Look Up”.

But the current focus on global climate change is tricky for filmmakers, Le Bris said, perhaps because we are all complicit at some level. 

“The LGBT debate was fairly neat. Either you’re tolerant or not,” she said. “But nobody is perfect when it comes to climate.”

A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft with three astronauts to China's Tiangong space station, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province

Chinese astronauts on Wednesday arrived at the Tiangong space station, where they completed the country’s first-ever crew handover in orbit, state news agency Xinhua reported.

The trio blasted off aboard a Long March-2F rocket at 11:08 pm (1508 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwestern China’s Gobi desert, Xinhua said, citing the China Manned Space Administration (CMSA).

The vessel — carrying veteran Fei Junlong and first-time astronauts Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu — successfully docked with the station early Wednesday, the agency said, according to Xinhua.

They then joined three other astronauts who had been aboard the Tiangong space station since early June.

Fei, 57, is returning to space after 17 years, having commanded the Shenzhou-6 mission in 2005. 

The mission’s main responsibilities were “achieving the first crew handover in orbit, installing… equipment and facilities inside and outside the space station, and carrying out scientific experiments,” said CMSA spokesman Ji Qiming.

“During the stay, the Shenzhou-15 crew will welcome the visiting Tianzhou-6 cargo ship and hand over (operations to) the Shenzhou-16 manned spaceship, and are planning to return to China’s Dongfeng landing site in May next year.” 

The Tiangong space station is the crown jewel of Beijing’s ambitious space programme — which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon, and made the country the third to put humans in orbit — as it looks to catch up with the United States and Russia.

Tiangong’s final module successfully docked with the core structure earlier this month, state media said — a key step in its completion by year’s end.

“I expect that China will declare construction completion during or at the end of the Shenzhou-15 mission,” independent Chinese space analyst Chen Lan said. 

China has been excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from engaging with the country.

Once completed, the Tiangong space station is expected to have a mass of 90 tonnes — around a quarter of the ISS — or similar in size to the Soviet-built Mir station that orbited Earth from the 1980s until 2001.

Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace”, will operate for around a decade and host a variety of experiments in near-zero gravity.

Next year, Beijing plans to launch the Xuntian space telescope with a field of view 350 times that of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Fountains of lava upto 200 feet (60 meters) high are spewing from Mauna Loa in Hawaii

Fountains of lava up to 200 feet (60 meters) high have been fired into the air from Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, geologists say, generating rivers of molten rock from the world’s largest active volcano.

Four fissures have now opened up on the mammoth mountain, which burst into life on Sunday for the first time in almost 40 years.

Vast clouds of steam and smoke were billowing into the sky from the volcano, which makes up half of Hawaii’s Big Island.

“Estimates of the tallest fountain heights are between 100–200 feet” but most are much smaller, the United States Geological Survey said in an update Monday.

“There is a visible gas plume from the erupting fissure fountains and lava flows, with the plume primarily being blown to the Northwest.”

Geologists say there is currently no risk to people and property below the eruption.

“The longest and largest lava flow is issuing from fissure three,” the USGS said Tuesday.

“This lava flow crossed the Mauna Loa Weather Observatory Road… and the flow front was located approximately six miles (10 kilometers) from Saddle Road (the main road at the foot of the northern flank).”

The lava fountain from the newest fissure was up to 33 feet high, the agency said.

Everything is currently contained in the Northeast Rift Zone, the USGS said, but warned Mauna Loa is a dynamic volcano.

“Additional fissures could open along the Northeast Rift Zone below the current location, and lava flows can continue to travel downslope.”

Pressure has been building at Mauna Loa for years, the USGS said, and the eruption — which lit up the night sky — could be seen 45 miles (72 kilometers) away, in the west coast town of Kona.

While lava is not presently a risk to populations, scientists have said winds could carry volcanic gas and fine ash downslope, as well as Pele’s Hair — fine strands of volcanic glass formed when lava skeins cool quickly in the air.

Named after Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, the strands can be very sharp and pose potential danger to skin and eyes.

– ‘Long Mountain’ –

Authorities in Hawaii have not issued any evacuation orders, although the summit area and several roads in the region were closed, and two shelters have been opened as a precaution.

The largest volcano on Earth by volume, Mauna Loa, whose name means “Long Mountain,” is larger than the rest of the Hawaiian islands combined.

The volcano’s submarine flanks stretch for miles to an ocean floor that is in turn depressed by Mauna Loa’s great mass — making its summit some 11 miles above its base, according to the USGS. 

One of six active volcanoes on the Hawaiian islands, Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843.

Its most recent eruption, in 1984, lasted 22 days and produced lava flows reached to within about four miles of Hilo.

Kilauea, a volcano on the southeastern flank of Mauna Loa, erupted almost continuously between 1983 and 2019, and a minor eruption there has been ongoing for months.

A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft with three astronauts to China's Tiangong space station, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province

China on Tuesday launched the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft carrying three astronauts to its space station, where they will complete the country’s first-ever crew handover in orbit, state news agency Xinhua reported.

The trio blasted off in a Long March-2F rocket at 11:08 pm (1508 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwestern China’s Gobi desert, Xinhua said, citing the China Manned Space Administration (CMSA).

The vessel — carrying veteran Fei Junlong and two first-time astronauts Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu — successfully docked with the station early Wednesday, the agency said, according to Xinhua.

Fei, 57, is returning to space after 17 years, having commanded the Shenzhou-6 mission in 2005. 

His team will join three other astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station, who arrived in early June.

“The… main responsibilities for the mission are… achieving the first crew handover in orbit, installing… equipment and facilities inside and outside the space station, and carrying out scientific experiments,” said CMSA spokesman Ji Qiming.

“During the stay, the Shenzhou-15 crew will welcome the visiting Tianzhou-6 cargo ship and hand over (operations to) the Shenzhou-16 manned spaceship, and are planning to return to China’s Dongfeng landing site in May next year.” 

The Tiangong space station is a crown jewel in Beijing’s ambitious space programme — which has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon, and made the country the third to put humans in orbit — as it looks to catch up with the United States and Russia.

Tiangong’s final module successfully docked with the core structure earlier this month, state media said — a key step in its completion by year’s end.

“I expect that China will declare construction completion during or at end of the Shenzhou-15 mission,” independent Chinese space analyst Chen Lan said. 

China has been excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from engaging with the country.

Once completed, the Tiangong space station is expected to have a mass of 90 tonnes — around a quarter of the ISS — or similar in size to the Soviet-built Mir station that orbited Earth from the 1980s until 2001.

Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace”, will operate for around a decade and host a variety of experiments in near-zero gravity.

Next year, Beijing plans to launch the Xuntian space telescope with a field of view 350 times that of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to blast off at 3:39 am (0839 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a backup date on Thursday

SpaceX is set Wednesday to launch the first private — and Japanese — lander to the Moon.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to blast off at 3:39 am (0839 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a backup date on Thursday.

Until now, only the United States, Russia and China have managed to put a robot on the lunar surface.

The mission, by Japanese company ispace, is the first of a program called Hakuto-R. 

The lander would touch down around April 2023 on the visible side of the Moon, in the Atlas crater, according to a company statement.

Measuring just over 2 by 2.5 meters, it carries on board a 10-kilogram rover named Rashid, built by the United Arab Emirates. The oil-rich country is a newcomer to the space race but counts recent successes including a Mars probe in 2020. If it succeeds, Rashid will be the Arab world’s first Moon mission.

“We have achieved so much in the six short years since we first began conceptualizing this project in 2016,” said ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada.

Hakuto was one of five finalists in the international Google Lunar XPrize competition, a challenge to land a rover on the Moon before a 2018 deadline, which ended without a winner. But some of the projects are still ongoing.

Another finalist, from the Israeli organization SpaceIL, failed in April 2019 to become the first privately-funded mission to achieve the feat, after crashing into the surface while attempting to land.

ispace, which has just 200 employees, says it “aims to extend the sphere of human life into space and create a sustainable world by providing high-frequency, low-cost transportation services to the Moon.”

Future missions are set to contribute to NASA’s Artemis program. Artemis-1, an uncrewed test flight to the Moon, is currently underway.

The US space agency wants to develop the lunar economy in the coming years by building a space station in orbit around the Moon and a base on the surface.

It has awarded contracts to several companies to develop landers to transport scientific experiments to the surface. 

Among them, the American companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines should take off in 2023, and could arrive at their destination before ispace by taking a more direct route, according to reports.

The skills to make this traditional black Chilean pottery are rapidly disappearing, as is access to the materials to make them.

Two social traditions from South America were honored Tuesday as UNESCO recognized the rapidly disappearing skill required to make black pottery in Chile and the ancient knowledge of Colombian Indigenous groups as intangible cultural heritage practices. 

The United Nations’ cultural agency wrote on Twitter that it had added the centuries-old ceramics skills of mainly women in the Chilean towns of Quinchamali and Santa Cruz de Cuca to its list of cultural heritage in need of urgent preservation.

Techniques to make the black earthenware, which is adorned with white accents, are applied to functional items such as cups and plates and to more decorative items such as figurines of farm animals or rural people.

According to the UNESCO nomination form, there are only five male and 74 female potters currently carrying on the tradition, many of whom are elderly, meaning that in 10 years, there would only be 12 active potters under 60.

The knowledge is passed down through women.

Another threat to the tradition is the planting of pine and eucalyptus forests in the area, making it difficult for the potters to secure the clay and guano needed to produce the ceramics.

Being on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding will allow Chile to access financing to preserve the tradition.

It also gives international recognition to an important cultural practice.

“Being added to the Urgent Safeguarding list means the ceramic tradition of Quinchamali and Santa Cruz de Cuca will endure, but it also allows me to secure my future as a potter,” Nayadet Nunez, 31, told AFP.

– Ancestral Colombian knowledge –

UNESCO also granted intangible cultural heritage status to an ancestral system of knowledge held by four Indigenous Colombian communities who live in the world’s highest coastal mountain system.

UNESCO said that the Arhuaco, Kankuamo, Kogui and Wiwa peoples had essential knowledge to “take care of mother nature, humanity and the planet.”

Colombia’s culture ministry said that, as tourism grows in the mountainous area, the Indigenous groups “play a fundamental role in guaranteeing the protection of the eco-system … and avoiding the loss of their cultural identity.”

The four groups, distinct but related, live on the slopes of the pyramid-shaped Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia and dress in traditional white clothes and woven straw hats.

“The System of Knowledge entails an extensive understanding of the territory, through which the sea, rivers, stones, mountains, and snow-capped peaks are recognized as the totality of a single living body,” read the nomination form.

To its inhabitants, the Sierra Nevada is the center of the world, surrounded by an invisible “black line” taking in the sacred sites of their ancestors, according to Survival International, an NGO that defends Indigenous rights.

They believe it is their role to maintain the balance of the universe.

burs-fb/caw

Mauna Loa erupts for the first time since 1984 on Hawaii Island, on November 28, 2022

Fountains of lava up to 200 feet (60 meters) high have been fired into the air from Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, geologists say, generating rivers of molten rock from the world’s largest active volcano.

Three fissures have now opened up on the mammoth mountain, which burst into life late Sunday for the first time in almost 40 years.

Vast clouds of steam and smoke were billowing into the sky from the volcano, which makes up half of Hawaii’s Big Island.

“Estimates of the tallest fountain heights are between 100–200 feet” but most are much smaller, the United States Geological Survey said in an update Monday.

“There is a visible gas plume from the erupting fissure fountains and lava flows, with the plume primarily being blown to the Northwest.”

Geologists say there is currently no risk to people and property below the eruption.

“Lava flows from the two higher fissures moved downslope but stalled about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from Saddle Road (the main road at the foot of the northern flank).”

Lava flowing from the third open fissure at around 10,000 feet was also a long way from the road.

But, the USGS warned, Mauna Loa is a dynamic volcano.

“Additional fissures could open along the Northeast Rift Zone below the current location, and lava flows can continue to travel downslope.”

Pressure has been building at Mauna Loa for years, the USGS said, and the eruption — which lit up the night sky — could be seen 45 miles (72 kilometers) away, in the west coast town of Kona.

While lava is not presently a risk to populations, scientists have said winds could carry volcanic gas and fine ash downslope, as well as Pele’s Hair — fine strands of volcanic glass formed when lava skeins cool quickly in the air.

Named after Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, the strands can be very sharp and pose potential danger to skin and eyes.

– ‘Long Mountain’ –

Authorities in Hawaii have not issued any evacuation orders, although the summit area and several roads in the region were closed, and two shelters have been opened as a precaution.

The largest volcano on Earth by volume, Mauna Loa, whose name means “Long Mountain,” is larger than the rest of the Hawaiian islands combined.

The volcano’s submarine flanks stretch for miles to an ocean floor that is in turn depressed by Mauna Loa’s great mass — making its summit some 11 miles above its base, according to the USGS. 

One of six active volcanoes on the Hawaiian islands, Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843.

Its most recent eruption, in 1984, lasted 22 days and produced lava flows reached to within about four miles of Hilo.

Kilauea, a volcano on the southeastern flank of Mauna Loa, erupted almost continuously between 1983 and 2019, and a minor eruption there has been ongoing for months.