Egypt rejoices
With political unrest taking a heavy toll on the tourist traffic upon which the Egyptian economy relies so heavily, anything that promises to bring vacationers on board again is obviously great news. Satellite technology is doing precisely this. Images from 700 km above the Earth have shown that there are 1,000 tombs, 3,000 ancient settlements and perhaps 17 pyramids lying unexcavated and unexplored beneath the soil surrounding the Nile. US Egyptologist Sarah Parcak has led initial excavations confirming that satellite cameras powerful enough to pinpoint objects less than 1 metre in diameter are not making false promises. She told the BBC, ?Indiana Jones is old school… Sorry, Harrison Ford.?
Iceland erupts
Science cannot yet predict when volcanoes will erupt and it certainly can?t plug them when they do. So, when Eyjafjallaj?kull erupted last April, when it spewed high in the air, when ash carried across much of Europe, causing around 100,000 flight cancellations across the world?s busiest airspace and damages worth an estimated $5 billion, when Eyjafjallaj?kull practically closed down a continent and ?triggered the biggest aviation shutdown in Europe since World War II?, science didn?t come in very handy. But there were lessons learnt and those have come in handy as Gr?msv?tn erupted over this weekend. This time around, the disruption was by and large confined to Iceland, Britain and northern Germany, and the worst of it seems to be behind us now. Still, there is no doubt that Eyjafjallaj?kull persuaded geologists, meteorologists and aviation authorities to come up with better formulae for air traffic management. The blanket ban of last time around has given way to new guidelines for evaluating various levels of ash contamination in various airport atmospheres. Plus, ground, air and satellite observation facilities to track ash movement are stronger and more coordinated now. But the fact remains that many important European airports sit downwind of one of the world?s most volcanic countries and while global aviation growth has had the good luck to take place during a period of relatively infrequent volcanic activity, the next 50 years won?t necessarily boast the ?clear skies? seen over the last 50 years.