Scientists brew lava and blow it up to better understand volcanoes
BUFFALO, New York: What happens when lava and water meet? Explosive experiments with manmade lava are helping to answer this important question.
By cooking up 10-gallon batches of molten rock and injecting them with water, scientists are shedding light on the basic physics of lava-water interactions, which are common in nature but poorly understood.
The project — a long-term, ongoing study led by the University at Buffalo — published its first results in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR): Solid Earth.
The scientists caution that the number of tests so far is small, so the team will need to conduct more experiments to draw firm conclusions.
The research shows that lavawater encounters can sometimes generate spontaneous explosions when there is at least about a foot of molten rock above the mixing point. In prior, smaller-scale studies that used about a coffee cup’s worth of lava, scientists in Germany found that they needed to apply an independent stimulus — in essence pricking the water within the lava — to trigger a blast.
“If you think about a volcanic eruption, there are powerful forces at work, and it’s not a gentle thing,” said lead investigator Ingo Sonder, research scientist. “Our experiments are looking at the basic physics of what happens when water gets trapped inside molten rock.”