* Astronomy

What's beneath Hawaii's most active volcano?

Christelle Wauthier, assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences and the Institute for CyberScience at Penn State, has been studying Kilauea volcano for several years and is getting ready to start a new project at Penn State -- one using a radar imaging technique that researchers call interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) to try to peer below its surface and learn more about why the volcano is so volatile.
Read more

James Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands on the 18th January, 1778 

There are questions as to whether Spanish explorers did arrive in the Hawaiian Islands two centuries before Captain James Cook's first documented visit in 1778. Ruy López de Villalobos commanded a fleet of six ships that left Acapulco in 1542 with a Spanish sailor named Juan Gaetano aboard as pilot. Depending on the interpretation, Gaetano's reports seemed to describe the discovery of Hawaii or the Marshall Islands in 1555. If it was Hawaii, Gaetano would have been one of the first Europeans to find the islands. Some scholars have dismissed these claims as lacking credibility.
The 1778 arrival of British explorer James Cook was Hawaiis first documented contact with European explorers. Cook named the islands the "Sandwich Islands" in honour of his sponsor John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.
Read more

Big Island "booms" have residents asking questions

The USGS's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory recorded over 60 earthquakes strong enough to be located beneath Kilauea, over a dozen of which were greater than a magnitude 2.0; the largest was a magnitude 3.2 earthquake.
Read more 

Two-faced Kilauea volcano exposed

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano draws two million visitors every year but its photogenic lava fountains and rivers hide a more tempestuous nature.
Scientists say their latest research indicates that explosive eruptions have been far more common in the past than the gentle outflows seen today.
Read more