This is the Sidoarjo Mud Flow, a massive eruption of gas and hot torrential mud in East Java, Indonesia.

Despite a network of dams and barriers having been erected to contain the flood, as of February 2007 the mud was up to 10 m thick, with an estimated volume of 12 million cubic metres. The enormous quantity of mud has so far buried 4 villages and 25 factories, some of which you can see here, barely protruding above the surface.

Although the mud flow is one of many Mud Volcanoes found worldwide, this particularly devastating eruption is actually the result of nearby gas exploration. The drilling activity evidently triggered an “underground blow out” which apparently could have been prevented if the proper safety procedures had been observed.

The oil and gas exploration company deemed culpable for this, one of Indonesia’s worst ever industrial disasters, will be responsible for financing the repairs and compensating the victims (if they don’t manage to weasel out of it that is). Additionally, thirteen executives and engineers now face criminal charges.

Various ideas have been posited that might staunch the flow of mud (or alternatively put it to some use), however so far, all attempts to stop it have failed. Have a look at this photo from a couple of weeks ago¹ to see how much further the mud has spread - and it’s believed that it will keep flowing for years to come.

Read more at Wikipedia. Thanks to Adrian.

(It’s the last day of Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’re almost done with posting about islands. And it’s lasted about a week.)

Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada is officially the world’s largest island that is located within a lake.

That’s pretty simple, but within the island there are an additional 180 lakes…

Within one of those lakes, Mindemoya Lake (to be precise), is the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake (in the world). Still with me?

But we’ve missed out a step! On the island of Sumatra in Indonesia we find Lake Toba, and its principal island of Samosir - which at 630 square km is easily the largest island, in a lake, on a island.

After Samosir, the second largest island within a lake is Glover Island, which is in the Grand Lake on the island of Newfoundland.

However, Glover Island’s largest lake also has many islands, of which the largest is about 2 acres. This tiny, unnamed island is therefore the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island!

Unfortunately, it has no lakes in which we might find further islands.

Seeing as it’s island week, we’ve left out many additional facts about the largest lakes found on islands (some of which are larger that the lakes containing islands we’ve mentioned here) but I think this post has been confusing enough!

Wikipedia: Manitoulin Island, Samosir & Glover Island

Thanks to Dee, kejoad, Daryl, Chris W, Boing boing, Elbruz.org and World Island Info.

I realise we’ve had quite a few volcanoes this week, but you guys keep submitting them, so here’s just one more. This is the Mount Bromo in the Tenggar caldera, Indonesia, which I think looks fantastic with just one solitary puff of smoke leaking from the crater.

Slightly to the north there’s a lake (which could be an old volcano itself I suppose) which has an odd collection of grid-like objects floating on it. Answers on a postcard please…

Thanks to Arthur van Leeuwen, blouet, Asprine, Alastair Dodd and Tggb3k.

In April this year, Mount Merapi began erupting for the first time since 2002. Indonesia’s most active volcano, it has erupted 68 times since 1548 - thoroughly earning its name, which means “Mountain of Fire”.

Just over a week ago 2 people were sadly killed by the volcano, and tragically some 5,000 people were killed and 200,000 were left homeless by an earthquake which struck to the south west on the 27th of May.

And unfortunately it seems that Merapi isn’t finished yet.

Thanks to Mathieu Villeneuve.