New hints of volcanism under the heart of northern Europe | Hacker News Reader

New hints of volcanism under the heart of northern Europe

ras.ac.uk

62 pointsheadalgorithm26 comments

Interesting, but the headline is a bit misleading. „The heart of Northern Europe“ sounds like it’s in the Nordic countries, whereas the study is about the Eifel region, in the West of Germany and pretty close to the heart of Europe.

Yeah that's kind of a big deal, since there's plenty of known volcanism in Italy. Eifel is still along ways from Pompeii though.

To put it another way, I wouldn't worry until they start having hot springs over there.

The region is full of nuclear plants though.

Define 'region'. Germany as a whole has six nuclear power plants left, with planned shutdowns not after 2022.

https://www.bmu.de/themen/atomenergie-strahlenschutz/nuklear...

The German one's are indeed extinguising, but the reactors Thiange (Belgium) and Cattenom (France) are still operational.

Over where? Germany is full of hot springs.

I wish, I only ever found 'warm' springs.. do you have a recommendation?

Eiffel has a cool geyser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallender_Born

There are hot springs in Aachen, near the German/ Dutch/ Belgian border. They have been known since Roman times though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachen

There are also hot springs all over Hungary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sz%C3%A9chenyi_thermal_bath, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9v%C3%ADz) and the western part of Romania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C4%83ile_Herculane, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C4%83ile_Felix), hundreds of kilometers (or miles if you prefer) away from any other form of volcanic activity...

'Northern Europe' used to refer to the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and West Germany.

But since the fall of the Iron Curtain and creation and subsequent expansions of the EU, the name now usually indeed refers to the Nordics.

The definition of what constitutes Europe (the continent) has absolutely nothing to do with either the EU or post WWII war politics. Everything west of the the Black Sea and the Ural Mountains in Russia is part of the European continent.

In the context of volcanism, this is the only interpretation possible. Before the Iron Curtain fell, what was then called Western Europe was geographically rather tiny. Even during that political period, Northern Europe was basically Scandinavia and Fennica (the Northern Countries).

When you specified Europe-the-continent you already admitted there's another way of seeing things ;)

Might be a language thing, but Europe the continent is the only definition of Europe I know about

At least the only lasting definition, anything else is based on geopolitical affiliation and therefore temporary.

Of course, the separation of Europe from Asia is also pretty artificial, but at least it's something more or less universally agreed upon...

If it would be in reference to 'Continental Europe', the calling the Eiffel region the 'heart of Northern Europe' is completely non-nonsensical as it would not even be above the mid-line of the continent.

And inside 'old' Europe, There was a sharp contrast between the 'south' countries (Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal) that were economically less developed at the time, and the rest of the EEC members, that refereed in that context to themselves as 'North European'.

Oi, who you callin' "economically less developed"? Italy boomed post-WWII, was in G6 in 1975, and is still very much among the top 8 industrialized countries.

In fact, this narration of "backward Southern Europe" is very much a recent artifact of monetary crisis due to debt, rather than anything to do with industrial output.

Italy's GDP per capita is something like $35k vs $47k in Germany. Roughly 75% of Germany's GDP per capita.

"Less developed" is a bit harsh, but there are certainly differences in income level between these two countries.

It gets weirder when you compare other countries' GDP per capita, though.

Consider this:

$38k is the GDP per capita of Mississippi, the lowest of any US state. That's still a bit higher than Italy's.

Germany's $47k GDP per capita would, if it were a US state, put it at roughly 42 of 50 states.

There's less than a 10% difference between Alabama's GDP per capita ($45k) and Germany's. Maine, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Montana are within a few hundred dollars.

The US as a whole has a per capita GDP of $62k. This puts Germany at 72% of the US's GDP per capita.

Americans don't talk about Germany as "undeveloped" despite an even greater gap between the US and Germany.

Norway is another country with a high GDP per capita at $77k. I doubt many Norwegians describe Germany or the US as "economically less developed."

(All numbers taken from Wikipedia's list of country / US state by GDP per capita rankings. Other measures like PPP, median income, life expectancy, etc. all clearly matter)

Beyond the numbers, Italy has an industrial and economic tradition that cannot be considered "less developed" in any meaningful way. Even without going all the way back to the invention of double-entry accounting or Galvani and Volta, it's the country of Fermi, Marconi, Ferrari, Ducati, Guzzi, Olivetti, ENI, FIAT (now FCA) and so on and so forth. It even has the same problems of de-localization and offshoring that are typical of the most advanced systems!

Just because it has accumulated a public debt that is only second to Japan, some interested parties nowadays tend to push a discriminatory narration, which definitely was not there in the '70s or '80s.

"Italy's GDP per capita is something like $35k vs $47k in Germany."

Ah, But! There are two Italys. The North and the South. The North is economically and industrially on par with any other region in Europe, where as the south is poor and ridden with systematic problems.

Hence you cannot really speak of Italy in any single context when figuring who it is economically and so on - the regional differences are stark. You can't average these out over the entire country.

Post WWII right up to the 70's Italy had mass emigration> Reasons given are 'the poverty and lack of jobs and income opportunities caused by poor agriculture, which pushed Italians from both the North and the South to look for better chances abroad.' [1].

Thanks to this migration wave, East Belgium still has a very extended Italian descendant community. East Belgium is where the former coal mines were where most migrants found employment. Even today, you might have noticed these areas suffered more than average from COVID-19 because of the strong Italian connections where the virus hit hardest in early 2020.

[1] 'Italian Migration' http://ftp.iza.org/dp938.pdf [pdf]

"Central Europe" appears to be the more correct geographical and cultural term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe

As a German I would never consider Germany to be part of "Northern Europe", that's more fitting for the Scandinavian countries.

What's new about it? The Eifel region (a part of which is literally called Vulkan-Eifel) has been known for centuries if not milleniae for its volcano seas. "Maar" is even part of many city names in that region.

Perhaps a better title would be "Hints of new volcanic activity under the Eifel region". The geographic background is well known, but the study finds the activity was larger than expected:

> The Eifel area is the only region in the study where the ground motion appeared significantly greater than expected

Those lakes seem to have no flow of water in or out, so I guess they just rely on groundwater flow to refill it, but how come it didnt overgrow and fill up with mud centuries ago?

A lack of flowing rivers carrying sediment to the lakes probably helps the lakes, there is less mud to fill them up.

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