This is nothing to do with Star Trek, it's the study of volcanoes. Leading contender for the biggest and baddest of them all is Mt Etna in Sicily.
Mt Etna towers nearly 11000ft - the exact height is in flux because of eruptions and chutes of lava at the summit - and it covers an area greater than that of metropolitan New York and is easily visible from the moon. The volcano has erupted 135 times, claiming countless lives. The biggest eruption is thought to have occurred in 1669 when a chasm about 12km long opened up from the summit to the town of Nicolas. Later eruptions have destroyed a vulcanologists' Observatory and devastated villages and agricultural land on the slopes.
As recently as 2003 an eruption forced the closure of the local airport at Catania, destroyed an area of pine forest and a ski resort as well as depositing ash over miles of surrounding countryside. This is one mean volcano. Local villagers still keep emergency supplies of religious relics to ward off the wrath of the volcano when the scientists fail them.
If the volcano were all bad news the inhabitants might have given up by now, but the monster is also bountiful. Lava spewed from the mouth of the volcano makes for wonderfully rich soil and citrus orchards, pistachios, almonds and vineyards flourish on the slopes of Mt Etna. Volcanic pumice is used in soap and glass, while hard obsidian and basalt were the steel of earlier times. Hot springs are boon to suffers of arthritis and grottos created by the lava flows were used to store ice before refrigeration - Sicilians have always loved their gelati!
Although the wildflowers make a glorious display in spring and summer, above 7000ft, the landscape is all bleak sulphurous craters and lumps. If you make the ascent you can stay overnight in one of the Refugi, before getting a jeep or hitching a ride to the summit with vulcanologists. The Torre del Filosofo close to the summit commemorates the first ever vulcanologist, a Roman philosopher called Empedocles who according to the stories, disappeared in 433BC leaving his slippers by the edge of the crater. The summit is usually shrouded in cloud because of the heat from the volcano, but somehow that just makes the experience more eery. Peer into the depths of the Valle de Bove chasm whose sheer sides fall almost 3000ft and you'll get a sense of just how small and vulnerable we still are in the face of the destructive force that can be unleashed in minutes.