The Story of Mount Toba
The popularity of
Lake Toba is not doubt anymore. Many tourists must have ever heard about this lake. In fact, the
Mount Toba itself is not less popular compared to the
Lake Toba. If
Lake Toba is popular of its attractive tourist's objects, then what you'll find about the Mount Toba is quite contradictive. The name Mount Toba is familiar among scientists as they study about the mega eruption of Mount Toba. Yes, that's a surprising fact that the beautiful
Lake Toba is in fact formed by a terrible Mount Toba eruption that almost lead to the human being's extinction. Mount Toba has ever erupted three times.
The first one occurred 800 years ago forming caldera what is now known as Prapat and Porsea area. The second one with the smaller force occurred 500 years ago produced the caldera in north of
Lake Toba. The third eruption of
Mount Toba is the fiercest. It happened 74,000 years ago and formed a caldera which is filled by water and known as
Lake Toba with Samosir Island in the middle of it. Because of its large pocket of magma which formed more than hundreds of meters caldera, Mount Toba then is classified as super volcano. The other interesting fact about Mount Toba is the gravity anomaly at Mount Toba. According to the law of gravity, from one place to another will have the same force of gravity when has mass, and the relativity of the same height. If any other material that was in there with different masses, then the tensile force will be different. Imagine when Mount Toba erupted. A lot of material that comes out from Mount Toba with mass loss and tensile force is reduced then going up-lifting. This is what led to the emergence of Samosir Island. Mount Toba with its mega eruption has been history but what was formed after the Mount Toba's eruption become the historical evidence that you can enjoy now as
Lake Toba and Samosir Island.
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