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Pink Floyd inspired research into medieval monks and volcanology
- kitd 4y agoInterestingly, the impact of the Black Death in Europe in the 1300s was known to have been exacerbated by poor harvests caused by years of bad weather. I wonder if the lingering effects of those eruptions in the later 1200s played a part.
- pif 4y agoAs far as I understand, the harvests were not much worse than "usual" bad harvests, but Europe was reaching its peak population, given the technology of the epoch, and a bad harvest had just a worse outcome than before.
- nasir 4y agoI find it interesting how carefully the title of this article is curated. It's a pure (harmless) clickbait. I wonder if it necessarily attracts the right eyeball. Or any eyeball is a good eyeball?
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoIt does somewhat bury the lede: > The darkest lunar eclipses all occurred within a year or so of major volcanic eruptions. Which if correct, has predictive power about future eruptions, since future lunar eclipses can be accurately predicted.
- gattilorenz 4y agoIt’s the other way around. The eclipse is darker than usual because of volcanic ashes in the atmosphere. You can certainly predict a darker-than-usual lunar eclipse (if a volcano recently erupted), if that’s your thing.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoI see! thanks for explaining the mechanism. I should have read more. So the "darker than usual" aspect won't be from astronomical calculations, but from the historical records. Seems like it: "By putting together the information from ice cores and the descriptions from medieval texts we can now make better estimates of when and where some of the biggest eruptions of this period occurred."
- gattilorenz 4y agoLovely indeed. Imagine the title if the idea came up while on the toilet.
- the_last_human 4y agoYou see it as clickbait, I see it as signaling a deeper understanding of Floyd’s work as it indirectly references the moon (the most famous work) as well as their iconic Live at Pompeii. To me, it’s a great title.
- mattpallissard 4y agoAlternate title: Researcher gets baked and thinks about the moon and volcanoes.
- nasir 4y agoyeah who would click on that?