The Volcano Next Door.
Scientists descend to a fiery lava lake to protect a Congolese city in its path. By Michael Finkel Photograph by Carsten Peter "excerpt comes from the April issue of National Geographic magazine" (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/04/nyiragongo-volcano/finkel-text) When? This is the question that has brought two of the world's leading volcano scientists to the center of Africa; it's the question that haunts a team of Congolese seismologists; it's the question that may determine the fate of close to one million people. When will Nyiragongo erupt? Nyiragongo is a two-mile-high volcano towering over the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—one of the most active volcanoes on the planet and also one of the least studied. The chief reason for the lack of research is that for the past 20 years the eastern DRC has seen nearly constant warfare, including a spillover of the massacres in neighboring Rwanda. One of the largest United Nations forces...