Excerpted from Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal About Earth and the Worlds Beyond. Copyright (c) 2021 by Robin George Andrews. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. The science is in: Lava, while molten, is bad for life. It flambés it to death. But microbes can thrive in conditions most animals would find abhorrent. The same is true for much of the East African Rift, with watery pools home to all kinds of life sitting between fresh, jagged lava flows still baking…
