Volcanologists are an impatient bunch . Instead of waiting for vent to erupt , they sometimes use explosives to imitate their ownartificial eruptions . Similarly , alternatively of waiting for lava to pour out , they grab some rock ‘n’ roll andmelt their own .
The University at Buffalo ( UB ) in New York State is one such research psychiatric hospital that brews its own vast lava peck . They ’ve just started work on a new supplying that will go towards both advancing the complex science of volcanology , as well as someseriously nerveless YouTube videos .
The recipe is relatively simple . Take a warhead of basaltic John Rock , dump it into a powerful furnace , leave alone it to melt for a few hours , and once in a while stir . No flavorer is required . Once the mixture is molten , it ’s good to pour out , but do n’t leave it to resist for too longsighted – even lava at a nonsensical 1,370 ° C ( 2,500 ° farad ) cool down eventually .
So why are UB in such a rush to produce so much man - made lava ? Well , one of the most frustratingly unanswerablequestions in volcanologyright now revolves around the tryst between water and magma , and these experimentation may aid to address this jolly .
Just like a good coffee bean , it ’s all about the pour . University at Buffalovia YouTube
Some of the most irregular and explosive eructation in the world are so - call “ phreatomagmatic eruptions , ” those that occur when magma erupts into pee . They often occur during the organisation of maar volcanoes , a bizarre but commonplace volcanic depression pit that resembles pocket-sized nuclear weapons testing volcanic crater .
As aton of experimentshave already show , just pour magma on water or ice does n’t actually cause an explosion . Instead , the magma relate the pee or ice make the surface to suddenly seethe , creating a bed of vapor . This vaporization film insulates the live lava from the rest of the water , which forestall most of it from chop-chop and violently boiling .
This is have sex as theLeidenfrost effect , and excuse why noted scenes of Hawaiian lava dripping into the Pacific Ocean – a favorite of photographers everywhere – does n’t result in an plosion . Nevertheless , whenmagma erupts into superimposed H2O or ice , there looks like highly energetic explosions , and volcanologists are n’t wholly certain why .
These reactions , whether boring or fast , serene or volatile , are sometimes mention to as “ molten fuel - coolant interaction , ” or MFCIs , where the water is the coolant and the magma is the fuel . The more fierce MFCIs are poorly understood , and UB trust to drive their manufactured lava to mix with piddle in such a fashion that it causes an explosion .
“ Previous studies have used a coffee tree cup - sized amount of lava , ” UB geology postdoctoral researcherAlison Graettingersaid in astatement . “ We ’re doing it bigger , because there are a lot of questions about whether we ’ll see the same result when experiments are scaled up . ”
