Perhaps the most determined of all the women who travelled during the 19th Century was a Viennese widow called Ida Pfeiffer. One of her most dangerous undertakings was to enter, unaccompanied by any other Europeans, into the lands of the Bataks of Sumatra
Plots of earthquake hypocentres on north-south swathes across the Banda Sea show that the northern and southern Wadati-Benioff Zones zones involve the same slab of subducted lithosphere. But can that scoop-shaped slab hang together?
During her 77 year lifetime Ayn Rand experienced disaster in many forms. She knew earthquakes happened. Did she have anything to say about them?
Just as Rose was about to leave Réunion, the French frigate Cybèle anchored in the roads a few cable lengths away and collided with the Uranie, breaking loose an anchor and nearly breaking the bowsprit. Who was this careless and incompetent captain, and why was he in the Indian Ocean?
Improvements in seismic tomography have allowed subducted slabs to be identified in the mantle even when they are no longer seismogenic. How well do tomographic models from different researchers compare?
Readers of the 1927 edited version of Rose de Freycinet’s diary may well feel that she could have said more about her meeting on Mauritius with her brother-in-law Charles. But she did say more. It was simply edited out.