Just a Meteor Flying Through an Erupting Volcano

I'm pretty sure the meteorite is way in the back, though. Found at the ONT.

The Pyramids of Antarctica

The next phase of phake news? GREAT PYRAMID OF FREEZER Mysterious ‘pyramid’ is buried in the icy wastes of Antarctica, The four-sided object, spotted on Google Earth, has scientists baffled

THIS is the Google Earth location which conspiracy theorists are now claiming is a mysterious Antarctic pyramid.

The bizarre spot has been shared widely on YouTube, with enthusiasts claiming that it is proof humanity once lived in the area and built a man-made structure.

Kind of looks like a crooked sided pyramid, doesn't it.

Some scientists have theorised that the frozen area of Antarctica was once much warmer – with possible temperatures of up to 20C.

Addressing the topic of climate in the region, Dr Vanessa Bowman of the British Antarctic Survey once said: “Go back 100 million years ago and Antarctica was covered in lush rainforests similar to those that exist in New Zealand today.”

True enough, if you go back to the era of the dinosaurs. Do we imagine sentient dinosaurs building pyramids in a jungle Antarctica? If so, it would be unlikely for the pyramid to survive. Look at what a mere 4000 or so years have done to the Egyptian pyramids.

Actually, there's a pretty simple explanation for a mountain looking like that, volcanic dikes. Looking at the site from the top:

See those two ridges radiating away from the pyramid? Now compare that to Ship Rock in the New Mexico:

The radiating lines are intrusions of erosion magma into splits in the ground around the original volcano, most of which eroded away.

Am I right? Maybe, but it sure seems more likely than a dinosaur civilization or time travelling Egyptians.

The Hard Way to Grill a Steak

Unless you have a convenient, and relatively peaceful volcano close by:

082114 Lava Steak from robert wysocki on Vimeo.

Yellowstone a Bigger Threat

Yellowstone super-volcano has 4x more magma than once thought

From the University of Utah and the “game over if it blows” department:

In a big eruption, Yellowstone would eject 1,000 times as much material as the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. This would be a disaster felt on a global scale, which is why scientists are looking at this thing closely.

Reservoir of partly molten rock is 4 times bigger than shallower chamber

Gaea doesn't love you; in fact, she's utterly indifferent to your existence. The good news is that it doesn't appear that Yellowstone is currently ready to bury most of the United States under a blanket of volcanic ash:

The researchers emphasize that Yellowstone’s plumbing system is no larger – nor closer to erupting – than before, only that they now have used advanced techniques to make a complete image of the system that carries hot and partly molten rock upward from the top of the Yellowstone hotspot plume – about 40 miles beneath the surface – to the magma reservoir and the magma chamber above it.

“The magma chamber and reservoir are not getting any bigger than they have been, it’s just that we can see them better now using new techniques,” Farrell says.

Mexican Mountain Explodes

Click to enlarge:

Electrifying shots of Mexican volcanic eruption show lightning bolts striking inside its ash plume

There are few things more beautiful - or terrifying - than the menacing flash of lightning bolts within a volcanic ash cloud.

The latests picture, captured by an amateur photographer as the Colima volcano in Mexico spews out a plume of ash and lava, reveals the raw power of a volcanic eruption.

Hernando Rivera Cervantes took the pictures as local authorities warned those living around the volcano, which is also known as the Fire volcano, to prepare for a possible evacuation.

That would be quite close enough for me, having been in the Pacific Northwest when Mt. Saint Helens blew, killing 57 people, including innkeeper Harry R. Truman, photographer Reid Blackburn and geologist David A. Johnston, completely reshaping Spirit Lake, and sending mud flows down the Toutle and Cowlitz Rivers into the Columbia River as well as ash over several states. We eveh heard the the boom in Corvallis, Oregon. But I got a scientific paper out of it, so that's something.

Did an Italian Eruption Kill Off Neandertal Man?

One theory for the final disappearance of Neandertal from his (and hers) final home in Europe around 40,000 years ago was a gigantic eruption in Southern Italy, which was theorized to cool the world, and put the final nail in the coffin of our most recent near relative. Climate modelers have concluded that the cooling probably wasn't sufficient to kill of the last Neandertals. From Dieneke's blog:

Campanian Ignimbrite volcanism, climate, and the final decline of the Neanderthals

Benjamin A. Black, Ryan R. Neely and Michael Manga1

The eruption of the Campanian Ignimbrite at ca. 40 ka coincided with the final decline of Neanderthals in Europe. Environmental stress associated with the eruption of the Campanian Ignimbrite has been invoked as a potential driver for this extinction as well as broader upheaval in Paleolithic societies. To test the climatic importance of the Campanian eruption, we used a three-dimensional sectional aerosol model to simulate the global aerosol cloud after release of 50 Tg and 200 Tg SO2. We coupled aerosol properties to a comprehensive earth system model under last glacial conditions. We find that peak cooling and acid deposition lasted one to two years and that the most intense cooling sidestepped hominin population centers in Western Europe. We conclude that the environmental effects of the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption alone were insufficient to explain the ultimate demise of Neanderthals in Europe. Nonetheless, significant volcanic cooling during the years immediately following the eruption could have impacted the viability of already precarious populations and influenced many aspects of daily life for Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans.

Just ignore the dinosaurs . . .

I have a couple of thoughts on this. First, given climate modelers wonderful success at predicting modern temperatures, why in the world would we believe they have the chops to predict the behavior of the weather 40,000 years ago in the midst of an ice age that we don't currently understand? That said, by 40,000 years ago, Neandertals were pretty clearly on the way out in favor of "Anatomically Modern Humans" (our ancestors), and it probably didn't help.

The other point is how fragile our climate potentially is.  Clearly an event like the Campanian eruption is still possible at almost any time from any number of volcanic areas (we're only slightly better at predicting volcanoes than we are at climate), and such events, inevitable if not predictable in the future, have the capacity for bringing our civilization to it's knees.

Now, Excuse me while I buy more ammo.

Wombat-socho celebrates his week of absence with a double dose "Rule 5 Monday: Easter Weekend Double-Dip Edition."

Fire and Ice

or what to do on a slow day in Kamchatka. Make videos of lava flowing over snow.

Watching lava fight with snow in Kamchatka:

You might guess that these red-hot lavas would burn through the snow almost instantly, reducing the surroundings to slush and steam. However, you’d be wrong. The ʻaʻa lava flows actually produced surprisingly little melt, though the snow beneath them would be gone in less than 24 hours. That’s partly because the blocky crust armoring the underside of the flow (at a cool 900 °C) insulates the snow from the hotter core of the lava. But it’s also because the snow, which contains so much air space, is a poor conductor of heat.

The pahoehoe flows were a different matter. Rather than rolling along atop the snow, they pushed down into it, producing some wild stuff— plowing up fractured blocks of snow, and even inflating domes beneath the surface that would then melt the snow above. This interaction produced more meltwater, which seeped through the snow and transferred heat much more effectively than the lava could do alone.

Even so, these flows were moving pretty slowly, and while the pahoehoe flows could produce some streams and small outbursts of meltwater, it wasn’t nearly enough to generate the kinds of dangerous mudflows common for more explosive eruptions.

Pretty hot cool ?, right?

Count this as stuff that Ted sends.

Mt. Ontake Erupts

It's really not a great surprise for a volcano in Japan to erupt; it happens all the time.  This one, however, appears to have given little warning. A number of hikers were on the mountain when an ash cloud descended on them:



That cloud coming is really something you don't want to see up close and personal. If it's not hot inside (nuée ardente ), it's really sharp sand filling the air and choking you. But what's even more distressing is this tweet from someone at the summit 1 minute before the eruption:

The Japanese translates roughly as: "Enjoying Mt. Otake alone."

Hot Enough For You?

Diving into an Active Volcano from Sam Cossman on Vimeo.

That'll Wake You Up!

Explosive eruption of Mt. Tuvurvur, New Guinea Aug. 29, 2014. Note the shock wave:



Found at Watts Up With That.

Undersea Volcano Sets New Size Record

Scientists confirm existence of largest single volcano on Earth

Covering an area roughly equivalent to the British Isles or the State of New Mexico, Tamu Massif is nearly as big as the giant volcanoes of Mars, placing it among the largest in the solar system
...
Located about 1,000 miles east of Japan, Tamu Massif is the largest feature of Shatsky Rise, an underwater mountain range formed 145-130 million years ago by the eruption of several underwater volcanoes.

That puts it at just about the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary.  Something else for the dinosaurs to have worried about

Until now, it was unclear whether Tamu Massif was a single volcano, or a composite of many eruption points.

By integrating several sources of evidence, including core samples and data collected on board the JOIDES Resolution, scientists have confirmed that the mass of basalt that constitutes Tamu Massif did indeed erupt from a single source near the center. The results appear today in a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“Tamu Massif is the biggest single shield volcano ever discovered on Earth,” says lead paper author Will Sager of the University of Houston. “There may be larger volcanoes, because there are bigger igneous features out there such as the Ontong Java Plateau. But we don’t know if these features are one volcano or complexes of volcanoes.”

So it's the largest volcano on earth, unless we find another bigger one that's been hiding.  Ain't science grand?

Tamu Massif covers an area of about 120,000 square miles.

By comparison, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa–the largest active volcano on Earth–is a mere 2,000 square miles, or less than 2 percent the size of Tamu Massif.

To find a worthy comparison, one must look skyward to the planet Mars, home to Olympus Mons. That giant volcano, which is visible on a clear night with a good backyard telescope, is only about 25 percent larger by volume than Tamu Massif.

It does not appear that the volcano is active now or has been in the geologically recent past, which is likely a good thing, as that much volcanic activity in a short period would surely have  deleterious consequences on the earth's atmosphere and climate.

Seen at Watts Up With That.

New Volcano Threatens Life on Earth

But not for another 100 million years or so: Supervolcano forming north of New Zealand

A supervolcano forming north of New Zealand could spell the end of the world - but there is no need to panic, it won't happen for at least 100 million years.

Researchers from the University of Utah have warned of impending doom after discovering that two or more continent-sized piles of rock are colliding as they move at the bottom of Earth's thick mantle, 2896km beneath the Pacific Ocean near Samoa.

They said the movement could be the beginning of a vast eruption that could threaten life on earth in 100 million to 200 million years.

It is hypothesized that 70,000 years or so ago, the eruption of a supervolcano called Toba almost caused an extinction of the human race.

"What we may be detecting is the start of one of these large eruptive events that - if it ever happens - could cause very massive destruction on Earth,'' said seismologist Michael Thorne, the study's principal author and an assistant professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.

"This is the type of mechanism that may generate massive plume eruptions, but on the timescale of 100 million to 200 million years from now. So don't cancel your cruises,'' he said.

If the human race still exists in some form in 100 million years, and they haven't found a way to get off the planet and colonize the rest of the universe, they will have deserved it.  If nothing else, they should be able to find a way to tap the heat, and use it, getting needed energy and cooling the magma.

Most Insane Volcano Footage of All Time

From the comments:

You should have brought one of those pie-tin things of jiffy-pop with you and then sold it to the popcorn company as a commercial to pay for some of your trip. (plus who doesn't like a snack after being irrationally close to a huge lake of lava?? I know I do!)

World's Best Trash Disposal

Also good for disposing of unwanted personal papers, old credit cards and spouses beyond their "use by" date.

Leaving Vancouver

The ship sailed more or less on time, 5:00 PM

SFO to YVR

The second leg of today's trip was from San Francisco to Vancouver. The plane skirted the Cascade Mountains on the way up, and gave quite a nice view of many of the stratovolcanoes that dot the range:

An old favorite, Crater Lake, the remains of the collapsed volcano, Mount Mazama. The island off to the edge is Wizard Island.

More old friends, the Three Sisters, which loom over the Willamette Valley in Oregon, visible, on a clear day, from Corvallis, where I went to graduate school.

The remains of Mount Saint Helen's, with the new domes clearly growing in the crater. The new Spirit Lake is off to the left.

 

Death Valley's Big Popper

A volcanic crater in Death Valley is shown to have exploded as recently as 800 years ago, and has exploded several time previously:

In California’s Death Valley, death is looking just a bit closer. Geologists have determined that the half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater, formed by a prehistoric volcanic explosion, was created far more recently than previously thought—and that conditions for a sequel may exist today.

Up to now, geologists were vague on the age of the 600-foot deep crater, which formed when a rising plume of magma hit a pocket of underground water, creating an explosion. The most common estimate was about 6,000 years, based partly on Native American artifacts found under debris. Now, a team based at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has used isotopes in rocks blown out of the crater to show that it formed just 800 years ago, around the year 1200.

That geologic youth means it probably still has some vigor; moreover, the scientists think there is still enough groundwater and magma around for another eventual reaction. The study appears in the current issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

A steam explosion is what pops popcorn.

Using Muons to 'X-Ray' Volcanoes

A cool application of cosmic ray muons used to image the inside of volcanoes to help determine the potential severity of eruptions.

Cosmic rays are high energy particles that come crashing into the Earth's atmosphere from outer space. This is happening a lot, all the time, and when one of these cosmic rays hits an atom in the atmosphere, it smashes itself into a muon, which is a tiny little subatomic particle similar to an electron. Over the last minute or so, about 10,000 muons passed straight through your body, but I'm guessing that you didn't notice, because they're generally not harmful.

Even though most muons pass right through you (and everything else, for that matter), every once in a while one of them has the misfortune to smash into an atom and it stops. And the denser something is, the more likely a muon is to run into it (since there are more atoms for it to hit). This is the same basic principle by which the x-rays that you get at the doctor's office work: there's a piece of film, and it gets exposed based on how many x-rays pass through your body and hit it. Since the denser parts of your body like bones stop more of the x-rays than floppy bits like tissues, you can build up a picture of your otherwise invisible insides.

With muons, it's possible to use a very similar technique to take x-rays* of just about anything of any size at all, including volcanoes. Instead of film, two parallel muon detectors are placed somewhere near a volcano, and muons are tracked as they pass through. By comparing the locations on the two detectors that muons hit, their trajectories can be traced, and the number of muons that have passed through the target (the volcano) are recorded. Just like with an x-ray, you'll get fewer muons passing through denser rock, and with enough detectors scattered around the volcano, you can gradually build up a 3D picture of what's going on inside.

Watch Sneak Peak: Deadliest Volcanoes on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Yes, this is cool, but it's also important. Volcanoes really are a threat...



On the other hand, I got my first scientific publication out of Mount St. Helens. We heard it explode from Corvallis, Oregon (about 110 miles away), and got dusted with ash from one of the later eruptions.

Iceland Prepares for "The Big One"

Katla Volcano - 14 earthquakes in 48 hours!

9 Jul 10 - Fourteen earthquakes have occurred below Iceland's Mýrdalsjökull glacier during the past 48 hours - one within the last 4 hours. Katla Volcano lies beneath the Mýrdalsjökull glacier.

Katla Volcano usually erupts every century, says Iceland's President Olafur Grimsson. and the last eruption was in 1918. "The time for Katla to erupt is coming close."

"I don't say if, but I say when Katla will erupt," Grimsson says. "We have been waiting for that eruption for several years."

"It can create, for a long period, extraordinary damage to modern advanced society."

Katla is one of the largest volcanoes in Iceland, a land built by volcanoes.  It has erupted 16 times since 900 AD, a rate of more than one per century, and with the last eruption in 1918, it would seem likely that it is due or overdue for one.  Katla is also a volcano of great explosive power, 4-6 on a scale of 8 for the logarithmic  Volcanic Explosivity Index.

Katla is geologically tied at the hip to its near neighbor Eyjafjallajökull  (it is also much easier to spell and pronounce).  In the past 1000 years, all three major eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull have been followed by eruptions of Katla.  As you may recall, Eyjafjallajökull erupted in April of 2010, causing local flooding, spreading ash, and disrupting European and trans-Atlantic air travel for several weeks.

A very recent report has ice melting under Katla's glacier, and causing flooding and road damage...

A glacial flood affected South Iceland last night, likely caused by draining of geothermal melt water from underneath the east side of the Myrdalsjokull glacier.

Scientists have been speculating that the glacial outburst may have been caused by a very small volcanic eruption; but no visual or seismic evidence to confirm that theory has yet come to light.

The flood peaked last night and engineers are already working on repairing damage to local roads. The sudden outburst knocked out a bridge on the Route 1 highway, leaving the road closed. Icelandic interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson told reporters that fixing the road is his top priority and the Icelandic Roads Administration is already working to build a temporary replacement bridge. It is hoped the road will open again in the coming weeks.

...but that the earthquake activity was subsiding and that the activity was not sufficient to suggest a large eruption was occurring (yet...).