You think the neuron images were intentional? I just assumed he linked to an image that he thought was lightning after seeing a thumbnail of it next to a volcano article.

Probably not, it's Inigo's text after the images, with his :p
I spose he might have found them googling, but regardless it's pretty cool

I assumed he was pointing out the similarities. Which I enjoy finding in nature too btw. Certain trees in the winter look uncannily like astrocytes and certain kind of neurons in their branching patterns.

Oh, yeah. Visually, they fit right in. Amazing really. Some kind of fractal law working there. Or something.

God's just not all that creative. . .


maybe even lazy.

[Atheist] Or maybe we just evolved to see patterns [/Atheist]

BigV, great pics! That must have been really something to stand there and behold the mountain, both the immediacy of its mass but also sensing what that glow and steam meant.

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/mshnvm/dig...web/msh070.jpg

To get more precisely oriented: The shot above is from the northeast (see map below). "We ask that you credit the source of the images as 'Image courtesy of USDA Forest Service, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.' " 'Kay.
MSHNVM Photo Gallery

http://www.kidscosmos.org/kid-stuff/...elens-nasa.jpg

North is straight right.
So, facing the mountain, V, you were to the left (south or SE) of Spirit Lake for those shots? :cool: Nice.

Of course, it's also really something knowing what occurred there when we were younger.;) The photographer who caught this amazing sequence was somewhere out "your" way, only probably farther south:

http://home.planet.nl/~monique.schil...osenquist1.jpg
http://home.planet.nl/~monique.schil...osenquist2.jpg
http://home.planet.nl/~monique.schil...osenquist3.jpg
http://home.planet.nl/~monique.schil...osenquist4.jpghttp://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Imgs/Gif/D...00-084_med.gif

"Explosions (red) begin to rip through the landslide (green)
[Original illustrations by T.R. Alpha]"

http://home.planet.nl/~monique.schil...osenquist5.jpg
http://home.planet.nl/~monique.schil...osenquist6.jpghttp://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Imgs/Gif/D...00-085_med.gif

"Exploded rock debris (red) forms a pyroclastic surge that quickly overtakes the landslide (green)"

Photo sequence: "08:32:21.0 am . . . 08:33:18.8 am"
Page with GIF animation of Rosenquist pics.
The graphic on this page briefly tells the photographer's story. He was 10 miles away.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...8_sequence.gif

This graphic (and two added to pic sequence) shows MSH from straight east, or south of you, BigV. Also, the first photo inset must be from the south or southwest of the eruption.

Short USGS page on the mechanisms of magma intrusion, landslide, and explosion of the north face of Mt. St. Helens.
Site map for ton of USGS pages on Mt. St. Helens.
Index for megatons of volcano pages, but inexplicably omitting Io. :mad2: :)

some more pix from Chile -- including the ash plume from space.

Fantastic pics and links.

barefoot serpent, cool pic. I have a question below.

Today's the 38th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...g/0518_big.gif

I remember that day as being disastrous at the two opposite corners of the United States, with Mt. St. Helens in Washington and riots in Miami. Here's a page with the text of the Mt. St. Helens story.

So, barefoot serpent, I was going to ask whether you remember the east-west movement of the MSH ash plume back in 1980. It arrived over the Midwest on, I think, May 20. Even at this distance and dilution, the air smelled faintly of sulphur.

More odd was how the light was changed. Whether from sulphur in the air between you and objects down on ground level, or from atmospheric filtering of the sunlight, everything looked barely tinted yellow, as though the CSI: Miami cinematographer had grabbed the wrong filter. Actually, the yellow wasn't that strong (CSI: Miasma is like swimming in orange juice), but just enough to give you the sense that something was wrong. It was like how the light of a partial solar eclipse, or even of a heavy ozone day, is strange.

Ha! I was in a broken down Renault 10 on the side of the freeway outside of Spokane wondering what all the gray snow was.

These are my favorite MSH shots.

Notice these are all before and after shots of the same spots.!!!

As Bruce says, why are there no "during" shots?

Because people were busy screaming and running away?

Actually, there had been plenty of warning that things would be happening, so that area was evacuated.