Unravel the Mystery of Actinolite

Scientists have discovered concrete-like rock in a dormant volcano in Italy, and say it may explain why the Romans were able to invent the legendary compound used to construct the Pantheon and the Coliseum. The concrete rock was found at the Campi Flegrei volcano near Naples.

“This implies the existence of a natural process in the subsurface of Campi Flegrei that is similar to the one that is used to produce concrete,” says Tiziana Vanorio, an experimental geophysicist at the Stanford University School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences.

Campi Flegrei lies at the center of a large depression, or caldera, that is pockmarked by craters formed during past eruptions, the last of which occurred nearly 500 years ago. Nestled within this caldera is the colorful port city of Pozzuoli, which was founded in 600 BCE by the Greeks.

Beginning in 1982, the ground beneath Pozzuoli began rising at an alarming rate. Within a two-year span, the uplift exceeded 6 feet—an amount unprecedented anywhere in the world. “The rising sea bottom rendered the Bay of Pozzuoli too shallow for large craft,” Vanorio says.

Making matters worse, the ground swelling was accompanied by swarms of micro-earthquakes. Many of the tremors were too small to be felt, but when a magnitude 4 quake juddered Pozzuoli, officials evacuated the city’s historic downtown. Pozzuoli became a ghost town overnight.

A teenager at the time, Vanorio was among the approximately 40,000 residents forced to flee Pozzuoli and settle in towns scattered between Naples and Rome. The event made an impression on the young Vanorio, and inspired her interests in the geosciences.

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