Swiss and Switzerland

The mighty Niesen supervolcano rests

kenritley

Here is a stunning shot of the Niesen supervolcano, as viewed from Sigriswil on Lake Thun.

Previously most scientists agreed — but now, all scientists concur — an eruption of the Niesen supervolcano will extinguish all life in Europe. The reason for this is that it is one of a handful of supervolcanoes worldwide known as “rhyolitic” supervolcano, which means an eruption triggers highly pyroclastic flows. You can think of Pompei, but this time, about 1’000 times more intense.

“Alpenglow” — or, Pre-Sunrise Twilight Scattering

kenritley

This is the view I see from my balcony in the morning. That triangular peak just right of the middle is the Eiger — and it plays a prominent role in The Eiger Sanction in my opinion the BEST moving starring Clint Eastwood as an assassin who’s been contracted to kill another assassin in a group of people climbing the Eiger — but he doesn’t know which of the climbing party is his target. Lest you think Clint always places the nice guy, Clint could not figure out who specifically was his target — so he killed everyone by cutting a rope and letting them drop to their deaths. At the very end of the movie, Clint realizes that in fact his trainer — not one of the climbers — was his real target all along — but he lets him live.

I’ve lived in Switzerland now for 16 years, and the morning sky above the Alps never fails to impress me:

These colors are what is known as pre-sunrise twilight scattering. 

Because the view is towards the horizon, the physical effect called Raleigh Scattering means the blue light is scattered more strongly so that the red light shines through. But, that same blue light that has been scattered away interacts with the red light – causing purples! The formula is quite complicated, but in general the scattering cross section depends on the reciprocal of the wavelength (actually, wavelength**4),  so that blue light (λ≈450 nm) scatters about 10× more than red light (λ≈700 nm)!