On Jan. 15, 2022, the Earth belched. It was a soda-gulping kind of burp—violent, loud, and sudden. But this event was not the usual carbonated beverage variety. It happened when bubbles of gas inside the Earth suddenly broke free.
“We know that volcanoes erupt because of bubbles,” says Leif Karlstrom. He’s a volcanologist and associate professor of Earth science at the University of Oregon. “It’s like shaking up a bottle of soda.”
When the mostly underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted in the South Pacific, the plume shot up so high it reached the edge of space. Shockwaves from the explosive event circled the Earth four times in six days. An umbrella cloud of ash blanketed
