on Toshareproject.it - curated by Bruce Sterling
*What if the earthquakes are hallucinated?
Campi Flegrei is an active volcano located within the densely populated Neapolitan area. This volcanic region, which is home to more than 500,000 people, has experienced episodes of unrest dating back to the late 1950s. The last period of unrest started in 2005, with a significant increase of the seismicity in 2018, including five earthquakes above a magnitude 4 in the first eight months of 2025. The new research expands the seismicity recorded by monitoring stations from 2022 to 2025 from about 12,000 to more than 54,000 earthquakes.
The data revealed two faults converging under the town of Pozzuoli, west of Naples, which has been continuously monitored since the early 1980s, when unrest caused the land to rise more than 6 feet and more than 16,000 earthquakes prompted evacuation of 40,000 residents.
“These long faults suggest that an earthquake in the magnitude 5 range is not out of the question,” said study co-author Bill Ellsworth, who co-directs the Stanford Center for Induced and Triggered Seismicity. “We’ve known that this is a risky place for a long time, since the ’80s when part of the city was evacuated, and now we’re seeing for the first time the geologic structures that are responsible.”
The stakes are high for understanding the complex natural system of Campi Flegrei, which in the past 40,000 years has produced two of the largest eruptions in Europe….