當P火山在1991年6月1日突然噴發的時候，火山過去與現在的威力再壹次成為頭條。
volcanoes are the ultimate earthmoving machinery. A violent eruption can blow the top few kilometres off a mountain, scatter fine ash practically all over the globe and hurl rock fragments into the stratosphere to darken the skies a continent away.
火山是地質運動的終極形式。壹個強烈的火山能噴發到山頂上空幾千公裏，把可怕的火山灰幾乎覆蓋整塊地表，並且把巖石碎塊噴到平流層把整塊陸地變得昏天暗地。
But the classic eruptionconeshaped mountain, big bang, mushroom cloud and surges of molten lavais only a tiny part of a global story. Vulcanism, the name given to volcanic processed, really has shaped the world. Eruptions have rifted continents, raised mountain chains, constructed islands and shaped the topography of the earth. The entire ocean floor has a basement of volcanic basalt.
但是典型的噴發如C，B，M，S僅僅是火山的壹小部分。火山確實塑造了地球。火山噴發能夠分裂陸地，造就山脈，形成島嶼，以及塑造地球表層地形。整個海洋的海底表層就是火山玄武巖的構成的。
Volcanoes have not only made the continents, they are also thought to have made the world’s first stable atmosphere and provided all the water for the oceans, rivers and icecaps. There are now about 600active volcanoes. Every year they add two or three cubic kilometres of rock to the continents. Imagine a similar number of volcanoes smoking away for the last 3500million years. That is enough rock to explain the continental crust.
火山不僅僅造就了陸地，他們也被認為早就了地球上穩定的大氣層和為海洋、河流、冰川提供所有的水源。實際上現存約600個活火山，它們每年都會為陸地增加兩三立方公裏的巖石。想象壹下在過去35億年中的火山噴發涼，就可以解釋為什麽有現在的陸地。
What comes out of volcanic craters is mostly gas. More than 90%of this gas is water vapour from the deep earth: enough to explain, over 3500million years, the water in the oceans. The rest of the gas is nitrogen, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, methane, ammonia and hydrogen. The quantity of these gases, again multiplied over 3500million years, is enough to explain the mass of the world’s atmosphere. We are alive because volcanoes provided the soil, air and water we need.
從火山口噴發出來的大部分是氣體，其中90%以上的氣體是由地球深層的的水蒸發而來，這也就足以解釋35億年來形成的海洋的水量了。其余的氣體主要是氮氣、二氧化銻、二氧化硫等。35億年來的這些氣體總量就足以解釋現在地球的大氣層了。我們現在能夠生存是因為火山為我們提供了我們所必須的土地、空氣和水源。
Geologists consider the earth as having a molten core, surrounded by a semi-molten mantle and a brittle, outer skin. It helps to think of a soft-boiled egg with a runny yolk, a firm but squishy white and a hard shell. If the shell is even slightly cracked during boiling, the white material bubbles out and sets like a tiny mountain chain over the cracklike an archipelago of volcanic islands such as the Hawaiian islands. But the earth is so much bigger and the mantle below is so much hotter.
地理學家認為地球有壹個炙熱的由不完全融化的巖石和壹個脆弱的表層所組成的內核，它就像壹個煮的半熟的雞蛋，有穩定但粘糊糊的蛋白和堅硬的外殼。壹旦外殼在煮的時候哪怕有壹點點破裂，蛋白就會噴出來在接口附近形成類似的小山脈，例如夏威夷群島。但是地球比這個大得多也也熱得多。
Even though the mantle rocks are kept solid by overlying pressure, they can still slowly ‘flow’ like thick treacle. The flow, thought to be in the form of convection currents, is powerful enough tofracture the eggshell of the crust into plates, and keep a few centimeters a year. These fracture zones, where the collisions occur, are where earthquakes happen. And, very often, volcanoes.
盡管地幔巖石堅硬地躺在上面，但是他們也會慢慢的浮動。盡管像液體壹樣流動，但也足以讓地表折斷成板材壹樣，並且保持每年幾厘米的速度。折斷的部分之間發生碰撞，就是地震發生的地方，並且也常常引發火山爆發。
These zones are lines of weakness, or hot spots. Every eruption is different, but put at its simplest, where are weaknesses, rocks deep in the mantle, heated to 1350`C, will start to expand and rise. As they do so, the pressure drops, and they expand and become liquid and rise more swiftly.
這些區域就是些脆弱區。每個火山的噴發都不壹樣，但是最簡單地說，當這些脆弱區裏面的巖石溫度達到1350度時，地幔就會開始膨脹並上升，隨著而來的就是壓力下降，談後導致地幔更加上升，巖漿變成液體和上升的速度更快。
Sometimes it is slow: vast bubbles of magmamolten rock from the mantlench towards the surface, cooling slowly, to show through as granite extrusions (as on skye, or the great whin sill, the lava dyke squeezed out like toothpaste that carries part of hadrian’s wall in northern England). Sometimesas in northern Ireland, wales and the karoo in south Africa- the magma rose faster, and then flowed out horizontally on to the surface in vast thick sheets. In the deccan plateau in western india, there are more than two million cubic kilometers of lava, some of it 2400merer thick, formed over 500000years of slurping eruption.
有時候會比較慢，因為從地幔深處會有大氣泡冒出來達到表層，是的巖漿慢慢降溫。例如……地方的火山；有時候巖漿上升或越來越快，並流出了地表，如……地方的火山。在印度西部的P高原，是由超過兩百萬立方公裏的熔巖，有的超過2400米厚, 經過50萬年噴發形成的。
Sometimes the magma moves very swiftly indeed. It does not have time to cool as it surges upwards. The gases trapped inside the boiling rock expand suddenly, the lava glows with heat, it begins to forth, and it explodes with tremendous force. Then the slightly cooler lava following it begins to flow over the lip of the crater. It happens on mars, it happened on the moon, it enen happens on some of the moons of Jupiter and Uranus. By studying the evidence, vulcanologists can read the force of the great blasts of the past. Is the pumice light and full of holes? The explosion was tremendous. Are the rocks heavy, with huge crystalline basalt shapes, like the gaint’s causeway in northern Ireland? It was a slow, gentle eruption.
有時候巖漿確實流動很快，來不及冷卻就已經上升了。困在滾燙巖石中的氣體突然噴發，巖漿也隨著熱氣發光，於是突然猛烈地爆發了。稍微冷卻壹點的熔巖便開始隨著而在火山口邊沿流動。這種情況發生在火山，也曾經在月球上發生過，甚至在木星和天王星的壹些行星上也發生。通過研究這些證據，火山地質學家能夠看出過去火山爆發所呆在的巨大力量。爆炸非常劇烈。……
The biggest eruptions are deep on the midocean floor where new lava is forcing the continents apart and widening the atlantic by perhaps five centimeters a year. Look at map of volcanoes, earthquakes and island chains like the Philippines and japan, and you can see the rough outlines of what are called tectonic platesthe plates which make up the earth’s crust and mantle. The most dramatic of these is the pacific ’ring of fire’ where there have been the most violent explosionsmount Pinatubo near manila, mount st helen’s in the rockies and ei chichon in mexico about a decade ago, not to mention worldshaking blasts like Krakatoa in the sunda straits in 1883.
最大的火山爆發發生在深海中間的地表，那裏的熔巖迫使陸地分離，並以每年大約5厘米的速度拓寬大西洋。看看火山、地震以及如菲律賓、日本等的島嶼分布圖，妳會看見所謂tp的大致輪廓。這個輪廓由地球表層和地幔組成。最戲劇性的是太平洋“火山環”，那裏有最強烈的火山爆發，如……
But volcanoes are not very predictable. That is because geological time is not like human time. During quiet periods, volcanoes cap themselves with their own lava by forming a powerful cone from the molten rocks shopping over the rim of the crater; later the lava cools slowly into a huge, hard, stable plug which blocks any further eruption until the pressure below becomes irresistible. In the case of mount Pinatubo, this took 600 years.
但是火山的爆發很難預測。這是因為地質時間和人類時間不同，在平靜期，火山會自己在火山口形成強有力外殼，隨著巖漿冷卻形成巨大堅硬穩定的接口時，它就會阻礙火山的進壹步爆發，直到爆發的壓力變得無法抵制。對於P火山，這個過程耗費了600年。
Then, sometimes, with only a small warning, the mountain blows its top. It did this at mont pelee in Martinique at 7.49a.m.on 8 may, 1902. Of a town of 28000, only two people survived. In 1815, a sudden blast removed the top 1280 meters of mount tambora in Indonesia. The eruption was so fierce that dust thrown into the stratosphere darkened the skies, cancelling the following summer in Europe and north America. Thousands starved as the harvests failed, after snow in june and frosts in august. Volcanoes are potentially world news, especially the quiet ones.
有時僅僅會產生壹點小小的征兆，火山就爆發了。如1902年5月8日早上7.49分，M火山突然爆發，壹個28000人的小鎮僅有2人生還。1815年，突然的爆發把IT山升高了1280米。火山爆發非常猛烈以至於塵埃進入平流層，使天空變昏暗，歐洲和美國北部沒有了壹個夏天。數以千計的人由於六月下雪八月出迷霧而歉收遭受饑餓。火山是世界性消息，尤其是那些沈睡的火山
Shatter打碎，破壞，粉碎shattering驚天動地的fine 可怕的，糟透的hurl投擲，猛投rifted裂縫分裂cubic立方的，立方體的quantity量，總量，數量semi-半，不完全的意思brittle易碎的，脆弱的soft-boiled煮的半熟的雞蛋mantle覆蓋物，臉紅，覆蓋，地幔。Fracture破裂，折斷magma巖漿lava熔巖火山巖（冷卻之後的）crystalline水晶似的