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10/14/201807/27/2020

Mauna Kea: the tallest mountain of the world

With its 8.848 meters above the sea level, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on the earth, but if we consider measuring mountains from the bottom of the ocean, the highest mountain is the Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano located in the Hawaiian Big Island, with 10.210 meters (more than a km taller than Everest!).

Owing to the dry atmosphere, elevation and stable climate, Mauna Kea is one of the best sites in the world for astronomical observation.
On its summit, there are observatories useful for scientific research, despite not well considered by Native Hawaiians, for whom the summits of the Hawaiian mountains are sacred places.

The MKVIS Maunakea Visitor Station is accessible for tourists.

08/22/201607/27/2020

Redwood National and State Parks, U.S.A.

Hyperion is the name of a Sequoia Sempervirens, the world’s tallest known living tree located in the Redwood National and State Parks, California (Western U.S.A.). It is 115,61 m (379.3 ft) high.

The biggest tree in terms of volume (1.487 mc) is General Sherman, a giant Sequoiadendron Giganteum located in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in Tulare County, California (U.S.A.).

It is also the longest-lived of all trees on the planet with an estimated age of 2.300 – 2.700 years and his name is in honor of William Tecumseh Sherman, a general of the American Civil War.

06/25/201607/27/2020

Yellowstone National Park, U.S.A.

Everyone knows Yellowstone, located in the northwest area of Wyoming, for bison, geysers, Yogi Bear and the beautiful natural formations, but one of the most fascinating aspects of this place is hidden under the ground: the Yellowstone caldera (volcanic crater formed after the collapse of an empty magma chamber) is one of the few supervolcanoes on the earth, formed after the Lava Creek eruption, approximately 630,000 years ago, and now located in one of the so-called earth’s crust hot spots, where the magma goes through the earth’s mantle and approaches the surface. The caldera measures approximately 50 kilometers long and 75 kilometers wide.

It is supposed that the destructive potential of the Yellowstone caldera is thousands – maybe millions – of times higher than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.