USGS photo, M Zoeller, 11 May 2025
Rainbow’s end
It is an amazing and powerful image. The wide lava fountain in the caldera like a wall flower in full bloom, with the cloud of volcano seeds above, the lava flowing from the bleeding flower, slowly re-filling one of the largest holes on Earth, and the distant rainbow linking the lava, the caldera, the surroundings and the clouds. The sky, the ground and the Earth all connected in a fiery and colourful dance.
Tradition has it that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Which end is always left open. In this case, it is obvious. It has to be the end within the caldera, and the gold is being brought by the lava flow which conveniently terminates at the end of the rainbow. The lava even has the colour of gold. There is no doubt about it: this is the volcano which lays the golden egg. Kilauea is a gold mine and the rainbow is the tool which the miners are using to get the gold from the hole into their pockets. USGS has caught the gold bug and has gone full-Trump.
The reality is a bit more prosaic, of course. The lava is liquid rock, shining like gold because of its heat and carrying at most traces of gold. Archimedes in his Eureka-moment is measuring the volume of the lava to decide what part is gold – and what part is rock. The golden dreams evaporate as quickly as the falling rain: there’s no gold in them thar hills. Mark Twain visited Kilauea and wrote about the lava flows in the cavernous caldera: ‘ streams met other streams, and they mingled with and crossed and recrossed each other in every conceivable direction, like skate tracks on a popular skating ground. Sometimes streams twenty or thirty feet wide flowed from the holes to some distance without dividing – and through the opera-glasses we could see that they ran down small, steep hills and were genuine cataracts of fire, white at their source but soon cooling and turning to the richest red, grained with alternate lines of black and gold’. His ‘vision of hell and its angels’ ended in gold. But when Mark Twain coined the expression ‘there’s gold in them thar hills’, he rightly did not refer to Kilauea where the gold is fool’s gold. (As an aside, there may be some gold in the Thar desert – but that is another story.)
But why our obsession with gold? It is just one of many elements, and to be honest, it is not one of the most useful. It does have its uses. Especially electronics can benefit from gold. Gold conducts electric currents and does not corrode. This makes it useful in applications which require very low voltage and/or current, where any corrosion could be fatal. Your phone or even laptop (remember those?) will contain some gold. The metal is also soft and pliable, ideal for making wires. Gold can easily be alloyed with other elements to make it harder, if needed. As an aside, that may changes its colour, as shown in the diagram. The colour of magma is clearly not pure gold.
A second use of gold is for fillings in dentistry, although this is much less common than it used to be. But of all the gold in circulation, only around 10% is used for practical applications. 90% of its use is based on its perceived value. Gold is pretty, does not tarnish and is rare: what better metal is there to show off your worth? It is the ultimate crypto currency, the tulip bulb mania of today. Wedding rings, medals, oscars, gold fillings, gold coins, it is all based on showing value and status. If you really want to show off, be seen eating food covered in gold. It has no taste and is harmless, so this really is about show, not sustenance. The gold reserves of the central banks fall in the same category. The word ‘gold’ comes from Sanskrit, with as original meaning ‘shiny’. It was always about perception.
And this is not particular to modern western culture. Buddha statues were often covered in gold, in order to reproduce the reported colour of his skin. Buddhist sacred texts often use gold calligraphy against a blue background. The Incas called gold ‘tears of the Sun’. The Romans and Greeks had gold jewelry. In China and Japan, the use of gold was at times only allowed for high ranking officials. But none of these cultures found a convincing use of gold other than display. Perhaps its value made actual usage impractical even in those days.
Gold wreath, Corinth. (Source: Brooklyn museum)
Striking gold
Gold is found in many location on Earth, but there are some major deposits that have affected nations. The best-known is the Witwatersrand in South Africa. When England let the Afrikaners depart on their ‘Great Migration’, the plan was to let them have land of little value. As it turned out, milk and honey may have been in short supply but the Afrikaners were gifted enormous deposits of gold and diamonds, with minerals thrown in for good measure. Hence the Boer Wars when Musk Rhodes tried to gain control of the riches. It became a war of starvation which would haunt England’s conscience for decades. This is what gold does to people.
Gold is one of the densest metals: it weighs 19 grams per cubic centimetre. In comparison, lead is only 11 grams per cubic centimetre: many applications where lead is used would benefit from gold – if only we could afford it! The densest metal, osmium, is 22 grams per cubic centimetre, so gold is not far off. Of the usable metals (so not counting uranium and plutonium), only osmium, platinum and tungsten beat good old gold.
What all these metals have also in common is their rarity. That is not entirely accidental.
The fraction of the various elements in the Earth’s crust is shown in figure above, sourced from wikipedia. Many elements hover around 100 on the scale, where for every 1 million atoms of silicon, there is one atom from that element. Nine elements are well below that, highlighted in yellow (or mustard, if you prefer): rhodium (Rh), ruthenium (Ru), palladium (Pd), tellurium (Te), rhenium (Re), osmium (Os), iridium (Ir), platinum (Pt) and gold (Au): they are each a thousand times less abundant than, say, europium (Eu). Tellurium is a bit the exception in this list, but the other 8 are all so-called noble metals, resistant to corrosion. They don’t react with oxygen but do dissolve into molten iron. These elements are therefore known as ‘siderophiles’, literally ‘iron loving’.
And that is the reason for their rarity in the crust. Once upon a time, there was a prince the Solar System was new and the planets hadn’t formed yet. The raw material for the planets was floating around in space, around the new-born Sun. Now some elements exist in space as solid particles even at high temperatures: iron, silicon, magnesium, while some other elements evaporate easily, such as oxygen and carbon. So the latter were only solid far from the Sun and the former could exist as solid particles much closer in. The inner planets formed when these solid particles came together, while far out in the Solar system worlds formed from frozen water and carbon dioxide. This is why the inner planets are rocky: Mercury to Vesta, and the outer planets are icy: the comets, icy moon and ice giants.
As the Earth assembled itself, it grew from the infalling particles and later from gobbling up larger fragments including other protoplanets. (The Earth has a dark history. There is a reason it is the largest of the terrestrial planets.) The energy of these collisions melted the entire planet. And in this magma planet, the heavier elements began to sink to the bottom. This was mainly the ubiquitous iron, but it carried with it those high density iron lovers. Gold, ruthenium, palladium, down they went to the bottom. After some tens of millions of years, much of the Earth solidified, but not before almost all the iron had gone into the (still-molten) core. The Earth’s gold ended up with the iron in the deep, down into the core.
But not all. The deep mantle still contains a fraction of those noble elements. Deep mantle plumes can bring them up to the crust. A large intrusion from a plume can form enormous sills of mafic magma, sitting there for millions of years, unable to break through. Slowly, very slowly, the sills solidify. That goes so slow that the elements and minerals separate, the heavier ones sinking to the bottom and the lighter ones rising to the top. When the sill finally becomes solid, it has also become stratified. There are now layers upon layers containing high fractions of particular elements.
More time passes. The overlying crust is very slowly removed by erosion, possibly over billions of years. What once was tens of kilometers below the surface now is coming closer and closer. And finally, people come and find those layers. The most impressive of these is the so-called Bushveld igneous complex, a series of intrusions in short succession, 2 billion years ago, covering a region 300 by 200 km wide, north of Pretoria. The Bushveld complex in the Afrikaner heartland is now the source of 75% of the world’s platinum and 50% of the palladium.
South Africa’s gold has a different origin. There is some in the Bushveld, but the mineable deposits are found in other regions nearby. A major locality is of course Johannesburg, home of the earliest gold rush in South Africa, which led to this city developing in a locality where you might not expect one. This is the Witwatersrand Basin, an old sedimentary basin. The gold here was deposited by water, as much as a billion years before the Bushveld intrusion. If your continental plate is as old as South Africa, it may have seen more than one special event!
If you are interested in reading more about this ancient land, there are several posts on South Africa on VC, such as https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-drakensberg-and-the-storm-that-ended-gondwana/
The golden road
Water plays an important role in gold. People still pan for gold along rivers. The gold particles are eroded from their origin, and, being heavy, slowly make their way downstream, perhaps long after the original deposit has gone. In the Witwatersrand, this played out to an extreme degree where the gold collected in large reefs, thin but kilometers long. That required a rich source of gold, but also a mechanism to bring the gold to this reef. Could rivers do that? And why do most of the gold particles show little evidence for rolling along river beds (‘mechanical erosion’)? It appears that they formed in situ.
It was a different world, 3 billion years ago. There was no free oxygen in the air. Massive volcanic eruptions (you were waiting for these, weren’t you?) were bringing sulphur into the atmosphere. There is evidence for major flood basalts in the region, 2.87 billion years ago, at the same time that much of the gold was being deposited. A second deposition, 2.71 billion years ago, was covered by floor basalt shortly afterwards. What did the eruptions do?
The volcanoes brought the sulphur into the atmosphere as SO2 and H2S. The latter would not get oxidized for lack of oxygen. It ended up in the rain and in the water courses. Rivers would have been more acidic than nowadays, with pH of 4.5 to 6. In the presence of H2S in the water, gold dissolves as AuHS and Au(HS)2–. It still would have eroded from a gold source up in the long-gone mountains, but dissolved into the rivers. It would not remain as nuggets in the stream but quickly end up in the lake downstream.
Source: Heinrich, Nature Geoscience, 8, 206 (2015)
Sulphur is removed from water by reactions with iron, which forms pyrite – fool’s gold. As this occurred, gold would come out of the solution and quickly rain down on the lake bed. The idea is that every major volcanic pulse would lead to this process, ending up with a layer of gold at the Witwatersrand lake, accompanied by pyrite – exactly what is found. It is not a fast process: concentrations of dissolved gold remained low. But for an eruption like the Deccan traps, the released sulphur over a river catchment area could have formed a gold reef with a million years. The flood basalts in those archaean days may have been rather larger than nowadays and more sulphur-rich. It wouldn’t work in our days anyway because of the presence of O2 in our atmosphere. That gold in them thar hills – they don’t make it anymore.
But where did the original gold source come from? The gold reefs came from an eroding mountain – how did that golden mountain form? It turns out, it is the same process. Gold brought to the crust in an intrusion stays locked in the deep crust – until it meets water. Wait long enough, and a subduction zone will come along. The descending plate releases water and sulphur, and both percolate up. The water-soaked rock melts, and a subduction volcano forms. But in the deep melt, the gold meets the hot sulphuric water. Gold, normally reluctant to join in with chemistry, forms an AuS3 complex, and this form of gold travels more easily with the melt. The gold now ends up near the surface in veins. There are other models for how gold gets to the surface while other heavy noble metals do not, but this one seems to work well. This process is the goose that lays the golden egg.
But where did the gold come from originally? How deep does the plume need to be to form a gold-rich intrusion? Gold is heavy and likes iron: can it remain in the deep mantle or did it all end up in the core of the Earth? That is the golden question.
Ruthenium
The answer, it now seems, has come from one of those other funny elements: ruthenium. Like the other dense siderophiles, it is expected to have been taken into the core in the first 60 million years of the Earth’s existence. But the rain of meteors continued and this brought in some more ruthenium, which remained in the crust. There was however a difference. The new ruthenium had a slightly different ratio of the different isotopes. Ruthenium has 5 different isotopes, ranging from 98Ru to 102Ru, each accounting for 10-30% of the lot. The crucial isotopes are 100Ru and 102Ru which are a bit higher in the earlier ruthenium, i.e. what ended up in the core.
Source: Nils Mesling et al, Nature, May 2025, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09003-0
Mesling measured these isotopes in basalt from various locations. The results are shown above for the 100Ru isotope. The modern upper mantle shows values around zero (meaning no enrichment or depletion), represented by the purple bar in the figure. That is seen in the Eifel in Germany, indeed a shallow hot spot. La Reunion and the Galapagos show similar values although with a larger uncertainty. The Bushveld intrusion shows depletion whilst ancient basalt from Greenland shows strong enrichments. But very notably, various samples from Hawaii (including Kilauea Iki) show enrichment.
What does this tell us? First, the Greenland values are very high and represent the oldest material. It came from a deep layer which was pure stuff from the oldest days. The Bushveld values are similar to those of the later addition of ruthenium, so represent the pure younger material. The older and younger material had not yet mixed to any significant degree: magma showed either one or the other. In the modern upper mantle the two are mixed, and this mix is shown in the Eifel. But Hawaii shows enrichment. It is not just getting bulk mantle, it has enrichment from the oldest stuff, although it is not pure old: there is some mixing. The extra, old stuff must come from the deep.
The authors argue that the Hawaiian ruthenium is a mix from material from the mantle and from the core. To get this, there must be some core material that is getting out at the core-mantle boundary, creating a layer with a mixed composition. The Hawaii plume is reaching into that layer. It is bringing core material to the surface!
The mixing of core and mantle may have happened at some time in the past, or it may still be happening: that would be hard to tell. But at some point, core material has been leaking back into the mantle.
Gold from the core
The article discusses other elements but not gold. News reports, however, jumped on the golden angle. For if ruthenium managed to escape the core, it could be expected that related elements could also do this. And gold is very much related: it too sank into the core, so did it too find its way back up? Does the gold that we value so highly contain material that long ago, as the Earth formed, sojourned to the core – and came back? As the authors commented in news reports, at least some of the small supplies of gold and other precious metals may have come from Earth’s core.
Gold is precious to us. People who have it, treasure it. And now we have another reason to admire it. This shiny, pliable metal has been on a journey. It has been carried by volcanoes – perhaps more than once. And now we know that that ring on your finger may even have seen the core of the Earth. A heart of gold.
Albert, May 2025
Sources
Ru and W isotope systematics in ocean island basalts reveals core leakage. Nils Messling et al. 2025, Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09003-0
Witwatersrand gold deposits formed by volcanic rain, anoxic rivers and Archaean life. Christoph Heinrich, 2015, Nature Geoscience, 8, 206
The Hawaii plume is also the hottest basalt erupted in the Cenozoic, and probably since at least the breakup of Pangea.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X20302399#:~:text=Calculations of the mantle potential,reported for any Cenozoic basalt.
The lava erupting now isnt 1700 C but over 1300 C was recorded from the pre 2018 lake at one point I think. It is likely over 1200 C right now, and has been multiple times and at both volcanoes. Its not just gold that comes up from the core 🙂
Kilauea still on the cusp of E23, but there are some quakes in the east end of the caldera. They have happened often for a couple months now but not as many at once. I wonder uf maybe a small intrusion is happening there, it might erupt eventually.
I imagine if a vent does erupt there though it would probably put an end to high fountaining, although maybe only temporarily.
It looks like inflation is returning to Kilauea after a 3-day lull in supply, the next episode should start in a matter of hours. The east caldera quakes I think are just the summit being inflated.
Is Kilauea slowly shifting towards a steady/continuous eruption type or is it going to renew the episodical eruption type?
Its still episodic. Its actually kind of unclear what stops episodic eruptions really. The only thing that has been observed is a satellite vent opening and removing pressure, but that actually working has a low success rate, Pu’u O’o had many flank vents before the fatal one in 1986, only the last one had a permanent change. Mauna Ulu was the same but less obvious. Kilauea Iki was killed early by the ERZ eruption, never to become a shield.
It was never recorded and prabably poorly observed at best, but the post 1790 filling of the caldera probably involved high fountaining, and it might have ended when magma started leaking into the SWRZ, or if the vent (probably the one that became Halemaumau) was drowned. Thhe Kamakaia Hills eruption, probably around 1820, that was a real SWRZ eruption though, from the SWRZ connector, so something probably changed a bit before that.
It’s a Strombolian eruption now. The spattering looks more like Stromboli’s explosions than normal Hawaiian lava fountains.
How would continuous eruptions with lava tubes … like later Pu’u O’o stages work in the summit caldera? When can it change toward this?
The early 19th century eruption in the summit had a very high rate compared to all other historical experiences with Kilauea. When it ended, the high rate diverted towards SWRZ and ERZ with voluminous and fast eruptions. The caldera filling eruption ended, before the lava shield could rise above the caldera. Will our eruption end like this or different?
UWD continues the stairs inflation again. Maybe the calm phase is over soon an we get the next lava flash flood:
How much gold is there inside Jupiters core? there is alot of stuff inside there
disappointingly little
There would likely still be a lot overall, even if there is 20x less iron and associated elements out there its still about tbe same amount as in the Earth, and that is probably on the low end really.
I have wondered what state of matter the core is, technically. It has the density of a solid but is it actually truely a solid or is it a compressed gas or plasma? Some of the ‘ice’ phases predicted for water on Neptune and Uranus sounds like it is a compressed partial plasma of crystaline O2- and fluid H+ (very summarized) and Jupiter has much more extreme conditions. The suns core is probably physically lime a liquid metal if you could actually observe it but it us called a plasma, is it an arbitrary distinction?
There maybe up to 10 – 20 Earth masses of sillicates in the center: Jupiter contains alot of materials but I guess very little of the heavier atoms in the inner core are gold as you say
I blame Jupiter for the sole cause why we dont have any Super Earth in our solar system.. Jupiter that huge swollen obese hungry mass stole too much of Earths avaible protoplanets in hadean era and its migration may have thrown some Super Earths into the proto – sun or thrown them out from the solar system. Jupiters massive fuzzy core may have 15 earths masses of iron – sillicate in the center, planetary ackretion is surivival of the fattest and its a competition eating that Jupiter have won very well …
Hungry it really ate almost all of the planetary disk that did not vent into our sun at least the matter thats not in the ort cloud
Wait until planet 9 is confirmed or not before saying that 🙂 Its right at the grey area it could be a solid or fluid planet, I think if it is real it will be solid but icy not rocky, like a giant version of the icy moons and small planets, although it will be different just based on size.
If it exists it will be found within a year or two. Technically this also doesnt stop other planets existing either, the size of the Moon or Mars, even Earth sized, could exist in the outer Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud, and we couldnt see it really.
South vent throwing spatter out, both vents are really bright, looks like they both go this time. Whatever the tilt was doing it looks like its going up again so E23 probably starts fountaining tonight.
I see the Reykjanes Ridge is having a party.
A big party!
IMO appears to have website issues, the English page is very slow to load and stopped updating hours ago, before the swarm really got going. Icelandic page is alive and well, as is the swarm:
https://vedur.is/skjalftar-og-eldgos/jardskjalftar/reykjaneshryggur/
Today Bláfjallaskáli (Brennisteinsfjöll system) joins the earthquake party at 5-7km depth. Maybe a possible location for another Fagradalsfjall eruption?
Going by the first hours of data in the vedur page, not updating, the swarm seems to start at a low intensity around the summit of Fuglasker volcano, then propagate northeastward while escalating in strength. The swarm could well be a dike intrusion:
Blue are the oldest, red are the youngest eqs:
The swarm is very small compared to the first big intrusion of Sundhnukur. So if a dike, it must be a small one, with ~5 km length. And the last earthquakes to the east would be trigger quakes on the faults connecting the Fuglasker and Eldey segments.
Is the sea deep enough for a non-Surtseyan pillow lava eruption? In this case we would only by tremor notify if an eruption happens.
An Article that deserves a gold medal! 😉
The deep relationship between gold and iron gives an explanation why a mountain with historical gold mining is called “Iron Mountain” (Eisenberg). But there are more possible alternative reasons for this label, f.e. a historical site for Medieval iron industry.
Although gold has more mass than iron, it melts at deeper temperatures: Gold melts at 1064°C, iron at 1539°C. So hot lava can melt gold. How can we explain the high melting point of iron?
Melting point of elements in the transition series depends on many factors, but essentially on the number of outer shells electrons being shared to form the metallic bonds in the solid states. So the highest MP are usually located in the middle of transition series, usually in electronic configurations that give a number of valence electrons from 5 to 7. The Highest melting metal, Wolfram (group 6), has a 6s25d4 configuration.
Going backwards, the number of bond electrons decrease, going forward they grow up but the orbitals fill up and the unpaired couples (those that being shared form bonds) again decrease, reaching a minimum with group 11 (coinage metals). Is not Iron that has a high MP, it’s gold that has a low one !
(I know, the situation may be more complex than so, for instance relativistic effects are involved in Hg being liquid at room temperature, but as a general trend the explanation is considered reasonably sound.
Spatter increases at the twin cones of Kilauea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqmpkUdMtyA
It looks like the slow beginning of the big “splatter” eruption
The current spattering resembles much the eruptions of Stromboli. It is relatively explosive with bombs and a strong gas pressure.
… But the eruption calmed down again. Maybe it only does Strombolian eruptions now.
Its still doing that, both vents every few minutes but not in sync. Its likely both vents erupt this time.
Whatever was going on with the tilt has stopped now. Its probably a DI event, although without the D just a level flat. Its too short to be a real magma supply change.
Now the North vent clearly has a lava pond in the crater. This lava pond has an ongoing spattering … and slowly increases towards an overflow. After I’ve written this, the eruption has stopped.
But it’s interesting that we currently have sometimes an actually strombolian eruption of Kilauea. That’s rare, if we look at the dominant eruption type 1800-2000.
North vent has actually filled in its crater by the looks of it, theres a smallish vent with a low spatter cone but the floor is either very close or level with the spillway. The south vent is a little more enclosed but similar, neither is really a wide pond now so most likely either vent will have huge fountains without having to blast through a lava pond.
Strombolian isnt common but it has happened at Kilauea before. Lots of rift eruptions are evolved magma or start off that way, and some are very evolved, like at F17 in 2018. Also I think Pu’u O’o had similar explosive spattering at times, as well as a similar buildup before fountains. But Pu’u O’o and Mauna Ulu were likely not as gas rich as the summit, which will have much more dissolved CO2 relatively, so that might also be a factor.
Kilauea’s summit currently probably has a similar setting like Stromboli, but larger with maybe 100 times larger magma chamber and a large amount of gas. The strong gas pressure causes sometimes lava bomb eruptions like Stromboli’s. They are more like the original Stromboli eruptions than the grey (ashy) Strombolian VEI scale. Most global Strombolian eruptions are grey with ash/tephra, a bit different to the effusive component of Stromboli.
Minor (miner?) correction – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witwatersrand_Gold_Rush was 1886 but the mine in Dolaucothi (where my grandfather was a miner) had a goldrush from 1862 to 1911 (though it had been mined since 75AD), so ‘technically’ there ought to be a tweak in the sentence containing the phrase “Johannesburg, home of the earliest gold rush”, but the article is very good so I’ll let it slide 🙂
https://www.clogau.co.uk/pages/history-of-welsh-gold
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witwatersrand_Gold_Rush
Thanks for this! I love hearing about people’s family history. When I wrote it I had in mind the first gold rush in South Africa but didn’t actually write that down. So you are quite right. (The first gold rush in the US was in 1799.) I’ll fix this in the post.
Nice article Albert! Gold has fascinated people for a very very long time.
Once I spent several days in the British Museum. The Uruk Room was particularly interesting. You could see metallurgy in development, since one of the first metallic artifacts was a golden dagger. Then next were the silver spear points the palace guard had. Only after them were copper tools and weapons. The Chalcolithic had started!
As well as sulfur the other lixiviant (oops, arcane metallurgy speak) is sodium chloride brine. Hot salty ground water extracts gold out of the rock as auric chlorides.
I am not sure whether it is chloride or the hydrosulfide ions you mention, but one fun thing is that geothermal plants become coated with gold. This has happened at the Rotorua geothermal power station in New Zealand, their pipes get gilded on the inside!
Gold deposition from geothermal discharges in New Zealand (1986)
I have a long arc with gold personally. Our old dad took us kids to the historic goldfields west of Sydney. We panned for gold and found a reasonable amount, which our dad had cast into wedding rings by a jeweler. They were rather good, since there was a bit of silver and copper in the gold dust, so that the metal had a really beautiful pattern of waves and striations of different colors.
Then I went into chemistry, and worked at two gold mines. I had the privilege of casting 5 kg gold bars, from molten gold out of the crucible. Then, after casting them, taking them to a drill press and drilling a hole right through them! The drillings went into a sample jar and then off to the lab to be assayed. The bars contained a variable amount of gold, usually about 80 or 90%, depending on how well the plant was operating, with some silver and copper being coextracted in the process. We had to know what the gold content was so we’d get paid the right amount for each bar. Drilling a hole through a gold bar is probably one of the more surreal things you can possibly do. A helicopter would then come regularly to take them away.
E23 fountaining probably started. North vent is going but not really high yet. South vent is quiet still, which is interesting with how active it was last night.
The start looked like a tiny hole in a water hose though, I havent seen that before.
The fountaining is starting to get quite higher.
That’s the biggest lava fountain I’ve ever seen. Absolutely incredible.
The south vent is erupting now too.
Holy wtf, I think this might have just set the new Hawaii record :0
I was wondering about that. This is assuredly at least the tallest fountain of this eruption sequence so far, at the very least!
ALmost looks like it’s producing an ash plume.
The south vent has two gushers, one is a bit sideways. 6:23 pm Hawaii time.
Make that 3 south vents, there is one in front between the two main ones on the V3 camera…
It looks like at least 400m, but the rising bottom of the caldera confuses the visual perspective a bit.
From the often ignored V2 live cam. This was the tallest it got. Maybe it wasnt 500 meters but it was at least 350, and it might actually have got to 500 if it was jetting straight up instead of sideways.
https://i.imgur.com/bfLssIC.jpeg
The tilt at UWD has dropped 4 microrad since the eruption started, so at least 2 microrad an hour, or probably close to 1 million m3 an hour. This might be over very fast lol.
Thats also over 270 m3/s, and over 250 seems a safe bet. If it goes down the full 10 to the bottom of E22 then it is still only going to last another 3 hours, and erupt probably 4-5 million m3 of lava. I think that will get it over 0.1 km3 too, almost exactly 6 months after starting 🙂
I love the V2 view at max fountain height!
wow. wow. wow. A triple treat
The episodes keep getting more impressive. V3 was breathtaking around 17:10 local when massive curtains of lava were crashing into the floor in front of the camera like meteorites. And the 3+ lava fountains created a fresh new view of the eruption at night.
Yes that line of fountains was a hard contrast to a few hours ago, although only the south vent is alive now and it is probably about to end soon.
Deflation of the volcano during the episode, as recorded in the tiltmeters, was almost twice as fast as that of the strongest preceding episodes. In fact, the rate of deflation briefly peaked at 3.5 microradians per hour, which (given a microradian seems to be about 0.52 million cubic meters) should yield 500 cubic meters per second.
HVO says ‘more than 300 meters’. The ash plume reached 1500 meters
I was watching the stream back, and when the fountain was at its tallest there actually werent any lava flows at all, the lava had to fall so far it didnt flow anymore after landing, just adding to the tephra accumulating in the southwest bay of the caldera and presumably far downwind outside it too. And because there was no pond above the vent there was very little flow down the spillway, so basically all of the magma erupting became heavy tephra and didnt flow away. When the south vent became more important and fountains got lower later the lava flows were enormous and flooded a huge area within hours.
I think a lot of the ash plume was from existing tephra being blown up into the air after the fountain rained down.
To get such a dark ash plume, you either need a lot of ash or small particles. The latter could come from quite gas-rich lava, as that would allow the spatter to break up into smaller bits. I don’t know what the lava volume in the fountains themselves is, but expect that the majority of the lava flows out from the cones without taking part in the fountains. I am not surprised that the lava flows became much stronger when the fountains became less. Either way, these short episodes are very impressive. Something to remember.
At peak height there was very little lava flowing from the south vent cone itself, nearly all of it was ejected. This only applied to the first half hour or so.
Do tall lava fountains in most cases produce tephra as well? Etna is known for very tall lava fountains and ash plumes (visible in satellite images) at the same time. Maybe the gas pressure that causes very high lava fountains leads to the formation of a “lava cloud” in which miniature lava droplets are solved in the air and become tephra. Small lava droplets probably solidify faster than big lava drops.
I imagine that also Mauna Kea did lava fountains like that. During the active postshield stage it was probably the dominating style. Both Kilauea and Mauna Kea are closer related to Etna’s eruption style than Mauna Loa.
There is no upper limit of a lava fountain, when the ash plume goes above 10 km it just gets called a plinian eruption instead. I guess maybe the cut off is when the magma is a solid before landing, but theres no fundamental difference, and one can argue its hard to separate an ignimbrite from a lava flow in a lot of ways too. Most volcano books put plinian and hawaiian type eruptions on opposite ends of the spectrum but ther are actually very close. Vesuvius is as much a hawaiian type volcano as it is a plinian volcano.
Mauna Loa does tall fountains too, just not 400+ meters historically. It probably got over 300 meters in 1940 and 1949, and 150 meters is pretty normal in most eruptions at some point including in 2022, which is when it gets above the rim of the caldera on the eruption now for comparison. It probably did fountains as big or even bigger than now in 1868 and during the Hapaimanu eruption in 1710, which involved multiple km of gravity potential, so sustained for many days or even weeks in the 1710 event. Theres many similar older cones far down the slopes on both rift zones.
But there is a trend that Kilauea probably does bigger fountains typically, its got to over 400 meters in 1959, 1960, 1969, 1984, 1985, 1986 and now 2025, as well as multiple times at unknown exact dates between 1790 and 1840, probably mostly around 1810. Supposedly those last ones were up to 1 km tall, but that might have been adding an expected caldera depth and just meant a couple hundred above the rim. But still bigger than now, perhaps not for much longer though 🙂
Mauna Kea does big fountains because it erupts mugearite which is basically alkaline basaltic andesite, and is both more gas rich and probably a lot more viscous than typical Hawaiian lava, although it might be widely variable in both of those between magma batches. Its magma storage is really deep.
But you forget Hualalai, which is as fluid as the main pair but more alkaline too with high volatile content. Most of its eruptions look to have similar fountains to normal Hawaiian eruptions but there are two eruptions in the saddle that made fountains getting on 1 km tall, so Etna sized.
An extraordinary feature of Episode 23 was the lava jet. Lava flowed out with a force and speed like a jet engine.
The Big Island News Video Clip shows the best phase of the lava fountain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr44Bs692zs
B1 Webcam shows the fast progression of lava over the lava lake. It expanded the lava field a bit towards the east, but that’s difficult to estimate without tools:
Well something changed for us to get more than two fountains in one episode.
More pressure, but the south vent has stayed open the whole time glowing just not fountaining, it was going to join eventually.
The entire fountain episode lasted less than 6 hours, yet saw 12 microrads of drop on the tiltmeter, so probably over 5 million m3, even 6 million m3. So 1 million m3/hour average, or well over 250 m3/s.
The lava is still flowing and has ponded in the east end of the caldera, flooding even more of the downdropped block. Very unlikely any of it will be left within a few months.
There was also a reasonably big quake along the caldera fault during the fountaining, compared to other quakes nearby at least. The more the caldera fills, and vents rise up, the summit gets more quakes.
Do they monitor the amount of lava bombs and tephra that falls outside the caldera? There was probably a lot this time. The crazy tall lava fountain had a long black curtain of something falling outside.
The “Hazards” in the volcano update doesn’t mention the risk of volcanic deposits falling upon the caldera rim, although there are hiking paths. Did Washington’s defunding process reach to HVO so that they report less than usually?
That side of the caldera has been closed for the public ever since the fumaroles of Overlook Crater appeared in 2007, which the final paragraph of each update notes: “Other significant hazards also remain around Kīlauea caldera from Halemaʻumaʻu crater wall instability, ground cracking, and rockfalls that can be enhanced by earthquakes within the area closed to the public. This underscores the extremely hazardous nature of Kīlauea’s caldera rim surrounding Halemaʻumaʻu crater, an area that has been closed to the public since late 2007.” That basically makes the hiking paths a non-issue, not to mention the likelihood they don’t even exist after the barrage of tephra the past episodes.
The NPS map also shows no trails extending past Uekahuna or Keanakako’i,
What’s the latest take on campi flegrei?
I see the alarmist YT channels are screaming about it Bild-style, and it would be nice to read a more balanced update by someone more grounded.
Maybe a short article could be in order? 🙂
https://youtu.be/9UrYRY3-PgQ?si=_6WrrGrh2ac0smRR
The so-called news channel by Silki has been appalling on this topic. I made the mistake of having a go at her about it, asking her to calm down.
From pixel-counting UWD, the summit inflated 10.7 µrad ahead of the episode at a mere 3.4 m³/s on average (≈ 4.1 million m³). Had it not stalled for about 72 hours, it would’ve been 4.4 m³/s on average. The episode itself resulted in a deflation of 11.9 µrad at 206.2 m³/s on average (≈ 4.6 million m³).
For fun, I also calculated peak effusion rate (eyeballing this from about 1625 to 1700 – the ±steepest decline), during which UWD showed a deflation of 3.6 µrad, or about 1.38 million m³ (1 µrad = 5 000 000 m³ ÷ 13 µrad; from episode 18 post-mortem). This leads to an impressive 668.6 m³/s on average for that time period.
Is the whole eruption since December now approaching 0.1 km³?
In sum the episodes lasted around 26.5 days, if we only count the eruption times. If we assume that the eruption has had an output until now of 0.1 km³, this is the same volume as the 2021-2022 eruption in 437 days.
1973 an eruption on ERZ that lasted 29 days, erupted less than 0.01 km³, so less than 10% in the same time.
The 1960 Kapoho eruption was faster than our eruption with 1/4 km³ in 36 days, but on lower ERZ. Also 2018 lower ERZ was faster. So LERZ eruptions can be faster than our summit eruption. But all higher (middle ERZ or summit region) recent eruptions were slower.
HVO recently published a map with data up to episode 21: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/may-21-2025-kilauea-summit-eruption-reference-map. It notes 93.2 million m³ had been erupted in that time. With E22 (USGS 3.8 million m³) and E23 (my calculation of 4.6 million m³) added to that number, we’re at 101.6 million m³, or just over 0.1 km³.
The LERZ benefits from hydrostatic pressure, which was perhaps best illustrated in 2018, where 1.5 km³ erupted in just three months while the summit collapsed (or 187 m³/s on average). I would say it’s impossible for the summit or upper parts of both rift zones (also including MERZ in this) to match any eruption on the LERZ in terms of average effusion rate start to end, as these regions don’t benefit at all from hydrostatics. For comparison, the 101.6 million m³ in five months of our current eruption works out as a measly 7.6 m³/s on average; past long-lasting eruptions average even lower: ‘Aila’au (summit, 1410-1470, 5.2±0.8 km³) 2.7 m³/s; Maunaulu (MERZ, 1969-1974, 350 million m³) 2.3 m³/s (excludes the 3½ month pause); Pu’u’o’o (MERZ, 1983-2018, 4.4 km³ excluding LERZ) 3.9 m³/s. Kilauea Iki (summit, Nov-Dec 1959) is an outlier in that each episode featured drainback. If you go solely by lava erupted you end up at 32.8 m³/s over 36 days; take into account drainback and you end up at 12.2 m³/s.
The crazy bit about 2018 is most of the lava probably erupted in only July, when the caldera sank down as a block instead of the old vent filling in. June 26 was when that started becoming obvious. The downdropped block was at about 500 feet deep, or about 150 meters. And the 2018 caldera is probably about 1000 acres in area or 4 km2. A cylinder that big is 0.6 km3, while the remaining cone shaped deep pit is tbe same as the volume erupted to now basically which is about 0.26 km3.
I dont know what the calculated DRE is for the lava, it is probably more than the caldera collapse volume otherwise it would be 50% voids which seems unlikely. But if it actually is that high then the eruption average was probably 300 m3/s in July, which is comparable to last nights episode but lasting over a month… And if the DRE is more than the caldera then there is a lot of magma that was erupted that must have been from deep down.
Episode 23 was extraordinary with the high speed of the lava jet. I’ve never seen a lava jet like this before. It resembled a jet engine or a rocket nozzle, how lava came out of the ground. It looked a bit unreal, how fast and violent the lava jet occured.
Interesting the supply appears to slow, maybe that is showing pressure is building up in the magma chamber and it is getting harder to erupt relatively. Magma is a liquid so supply goes to very low values if pressure gets high and nothing can adjust. It could result in magma going elsewhere soon potentially, or if the existing vents arent enough then more summit vents could open. There is net slight inflation since E3 when thing levelled out.
Before that though fountains will probably only get taller 🙂
The force of the lava fountains have increased recently. The lava fountain of Episode 23 was a beast, like a vertical jet engine.
Maybe this development leads to a situation like on Stromboli between the episodes. The cones steam and spatter between the episodes like the vents of Stromboli. There is supposedly a similar pattern with a degassing magma reservoir that occasionally does lava blobs.
Probably not, Stromboli doesnt usually do big lava fountains like this so its magma is always shallow. Etna is often like Stromboli when in moderate activity but if it is more active it does episodic fountains and those have quiet gaps, not continuous spattering.
If anything I see the episodes possibly getting further apart and larger, but with less activity between, not more. The vents could change to continuous spattering if a lateral vent is able to form and drain out most of the lava though, but such a vent would be far outside the caldera to the southwest. And no more fountains at least while that happens. This could ve exactly what happened in the early 19th century too.
Between the episodes Kilauea like Strombli doesn’t do lava fountains, but heavy steam and gas emissions with occasionally spattering. Here they descriebe the dynamics of Stromboli: https://www.usgs.gov/publications/upper-conduit-structure-and-explosion-dynamics-stromboli
It looks as if between the magma reservoir and the surface, there is a similar pattern in Kilauea now.
Earthquakes resume near Geirfuglasker at 10-15km depth https://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/reykjanesridge/#view=map
Geirfuglasker was Iceland’s Pengiun island: Pinguinus impennis = Great Auk had a last colony on this island. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_33/August_1888/The_Home_of_the_Great_Auk
The paper claiming that the settlement Tall El-Hammam was destroyed by a cometary airburst around 1600 BC leading to the story of Sodom and Gormorrah has been withdrawn by the publishers. There were errors in the analysis and interpretation and the airburst models were incorrect and the editors no longer have confidence in the reliability of the paper. The same authors were also behind the claim that an impact caused the Younger Dryas. Both stories were always very unlikely.
Starship launches tomorrow night! It will be fun to see if the flying cigarr makes it through reentry this time
I am sure it will be called a success. Hopefully it won’t hit anyone this time
It woud be fun to test Musks Starships reentry capabilities at Jupiter ( just for fun of it ) Jupiter really is an INSANE reentry due to its enormous mass you are accelerated to simply phenomenal speeds that can be well above doubble the speed of asteroids impacting Earth and is minimum 8 times faster than Apollo reentry which is pretty scary indeed. Starship moves through Jupiter’s tenious atmosphere, it compresses the air in front of it – this is called atmospheric ram pressure. The compressed jovian air ( glowing like a nuclear explosion ) reaches many tens of thousands of degrees, ( perhaps
35 000 c ) even at lowest reentry angle. This heats the heat shield very quickly Starship woud not stand a single chance its breaking up into a shower of bright shooting stars G forces deaceleration over 230 G likley woud turn it into a pulp. Its of course only desgined for Martian and Earth atmospheric entry thats quite tame in comparison!
Starship thats a thin steel tube will likey be completey destroyed even when its still 200 km above the very highest ammonia cirrus if we tested one for Jovian reentry
In 2009 an asteroid the size of Icon of the seas made a hot firecloud the size of the pacific ocean when it hit Jupiter these jovian high speed atmospheric entries are CRAZY really
Amalthea 270 kilometers long is in a decaying orbit around Jupiter : ) an object that size moving at souch speeds will create simply gigantic explosion when it hits Jupiters stratospause…will look like a small supernova have lit at Jupiter when that happens!
I wants an Io Volcano Orbiter and a new atmospheric probe for Jupiter maybe that billonare coud build them for me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6TjtkTl3iA
30 years ago since the Shoemaker Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter luckly it did not strike our planet… simply mindblowing is the energy from an object the size of an oil tanker which is a quite small impactor
Im more curioys how well it will reenter on Mars. No doubt it will survive but does it really have enough drag to slow down and land as expected? I dont doubt SpaceX landing, that part actually is very reliable, the reentry and probably more specifically the heat tiles are where the problems are but Mars has different criteria on both. I do actually wonder if Elon knew how hard this would be, ges notoriously optimistic, but it didnt really sound like he was lying saying this would be ready years ago, I think he was dead serious but it was much harder than expected. Well, for him anyway. Its the same as cybertruck, took much longer and is basically just worse than expected, where model 3/y and Falcon 9 are gold standards of their fields and bulletproof now.
On Mars you of course use Retro – rockets ( or whatever its called ) to burn away the last speed for compensation of the thin atmosphere that does not much do that much drag, the retro thrust you of course gets from the engines. I will be fun to see how it goes tomorrow
Indeed its a tame entry compared to Jupiter! : )
Yes but SpaceX already does that to land anyway, but even with 1/3 the gravity the landing would still be at higher velocity than they do on Earth. Starship is massive, and that might be to give it more drag in the Martian atmosphere but still its going to have to come in at a very shallow angle to bleed off all that energy. Maybe thats also part of why Raptor was designed, its as far as I know the most efficient heat engine ever built so far, over 60% efficient. I guess a rotating detonation version might be better but maybe only marginally. Its vastly higher than any piston engine.
Space-X has not yet achieved that from orbital velocity. The first stage disconnect at much lower speed. And they need a flat landing platform (not available on Mars) and a clamping system (same). Lacking that, a rocket landing will be done with a much smaller craft – think lunar landers (which still have tendency to topple on landing, again for lack of a flat platform). I loved the airbag landings but astronauts probably wouldn’t. The crane landing of curiosity was wonderful – but after it had touched down, the rest of lander was crashed nearby, again not ideal for a manned mission. I consider this an unsolved problem
I dont see why a ship with adjustable length legs couldnt be made. Yes it would weigh more but if Starship is refueled in LEO then the weight should be less important.
This probably wont happen until after a failed landing on Mars or the Moon otherwise, but theres thousands of engineers at SpaceX its hard to imagine they wont react. The fact Starship actually has landed on the tower shows the level of control that exists.
You’d land the craft as dry as possible. The fuel for the return journey would be landed separately nearby. ‘The Martian’ got this spot on, I think. And yes, you only need the fuel to get into LMO (not LEO when on Mars). The rest of the fuel would wait in orbit. In fact you wouldn’t land your main craft anyway, not if a return journey is foreseen.
My preference would be for a space-shuttle type design (large winged aircraft) which at the end goes for a balloon landing (not a parachute). More like a combination of a space shuttle and a giant airship.
I mean that the ships are launched and stay in LEO, and get refueled there by further launches, before departing to Mars from LEO. I cant remember the original primary source but Elon once talked of thousands of Starships being sent over at once I think in 2026. Both of those things are not going to happen unless there are some insane developmebts not disclosed but sending a fleet over would solve a lot of problems. Only perhaps one ship would need to be habitable and human rated, the others are just storage and may not even be shielded or airtight. One may carry LO2 and one LNG, another most of the water, another most of the food. Perhaps only one would land too, or maybe 2 of them. And if need bethey could possibly all be landed on Phobos, but thats different.
It could even be possible to have 7 link up in a hexagon surrounding a central ship, the inhabited one, so that all resources are accessible and there is both huge extra space as well as much more shielding if a solar storm hits. Even igniring Mars, that would be a cheap replacement for the ISS potentially, and with some advantages too as well as being much bigger. Probably also could be put higher in LEO and avoid the atmosphere entirely.
Basically the whole idea revolves around it being way more than just one Starship.
Soft landings on Mars are not easy. The atmosphere is very thin and parachutes don’t work as well. On the other hand, orbital velocity is much less than on Earth and this means much less aerobraking is needed. The main question is how hard a landing is allowed.
The problem really is the huge amount of kinetic orbital energy you have to dump somewhere. The first stage never gets near orbital speeds and turns round and lands without a high temperature re-entry phase. Ideally enough fuel should be left to decelerate using rocket power but this would cost lots of payload. So its heat and radiative plasma that does the deed, and yes, that’s hard and hard to test except in real life. There will be more failures before it becomes reliable.
Whatever you think about Musk as a person, what he has achieved in SpaceX is worldbeating and amazing and we are all richer as a result. Except maybe astronomers ….
But how does micron-sized gold dust precipitates go large ??
Electricity generated by earthquakes might be the secret behind giant gold nuggets
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-electricity-generated-earthquakes-secret-giant.html
quotes:
Scientists have long been fascinated by the formation of gold nuggets, often found nestled within quartz veins. New research led by Monash University geologists suggests that the process might be even more electrifying than we previously thought—literally.
Gold nuggets, prized for their rarity and beauty, have been at the heart of gold rushes for centuries
—
“The standard explanation is that gold precipitates from hot, water-rich fluids as they flow through cracks in the Earth’s crust,” said Dr. Voisey.
“As these fluids cool or undergo chemical changes, gold separates out and becomes trapped in quartz veins,” he said.
“While this theory is widely accepted, it doesn’t fully explain the formation of large gold nuggets, especially considering that the concentration of gold in these fluids is extremely low.”
The research team tested a new concept, piezoelectricity. Quartz, the mineral that typically hosts these gold deposits, has a unique property called piezoelectricity—it generates an electric charge when subjected to stress. This phenomenon is already familiar to us in everyday items like quartz watches and BBQ lighters, where a small mechanical force creates a significant voltage. What if the stress from earthquakes could do something similar within the Earth?
To test this hypothesis, researchers conducted an experiment designed to replicate the conditions quartz might experience during an earthquake. They submerged quartz crystals in a gold-rich fluid and applied stress using a motor to simulate the shaking of an earthquake. After the experiment, the quartz samples were examined under a microscope to see if any gold had been deposited.
“The results were stunning,” said study co-author Professor Andy Tomkins, from the Monash University School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment.
“The stressed quartz not only electrochemically deposited gold onto its surface, but it also formed and accumulated gold nanoparticles,” he said.
/
==
Nik-note: There’s more, but I reckon this summary is my fair-use limit.
Presumably, piezo-electrolysis effect also applies to eg copper and silver nuggets, too ??..
😉
Fox news picked up on the story.
Scientists ‘strike gold’ in shocking discovery from Hawaiian volcanic rocks
New testing methods reveal precious metals traveling 1,800 miles from planet’s center
“A German university, Göttingen University, has literally “struck gold” in recent findings from volcanic rocks.
A new study of these volcanic rocks from Hawaii, that leaked out from deep under the lithosphere, contained various precious metals.
Dr. Nils Messling of the Göttingen University’s Department of Geochemistry said in a news release they were surprised when the test results came in.
“When the first results came in, we realized that we had literally struck gold! Our data confirmed that material from the core, including gold and other precious metals, is leaking into the Earth’s mantle above,” Messling said.”
CERN recently succeeded in making Gold (Au) from Lead (Pb):
https://www.spektrum.de/news/transmutation-teilchenphysiker-machen-blei-zu-gold/2265772
https://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.111.054906
They shot two Pb atoms at each other. If they miss each other scarcely, they get a dissociation of protons. If a Pb (82 protons) atom loses three protons, it convertes to Au (79 protons). Unfortunately for the gold industry (and fortunately for the gold price) the created gold atoms disappear as fast as they are born.
” we report for the first time the production of gold in the photoabsorption by lead nuclei … a total of some 2.9×10−11g of various gold isotopes were produced”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCgZrc51i4
Starship live to enjoy later when it blasts off
Watched it live on X.
Fascinating to see the Starship melt, live on camera, after the attitude jet leak. The Starlink datalinks are seriously robust.
Several significant failures, but the ship reached effective orbit and the booster was on its way to landing. They’re getting there, but complex pieces of engineering are complex.
Yes, that was not good. The booster failed on return – that was the part they thought they had nailed. It was a recycled booster, so a possible cause is undiscovered damage. The main rocket failed shortly after. Fuel leaks should not happen in rockets! Starship is becoming quite a dangerous piece of equipment.
I think they are taking the 1960s approach of build it and run it instead of simulate ut for 20 years and run it… Which one is better short term is a question but only 9 tries isnt really all that much really. Starship isnt cheap in absolute but compared to its rivals it is, SLS cost 30 billion not counting that it us basically the same as Constellation, which cost 230 billion in 2004… And which was also a direct derivitive of the Space Shuttle so should have been half done… Starship has probably cost well under 10 billion, which is impressive for what has been achieved so far even if far off of ambitions set yet.
I also wouldnt be surprised if there are lots of pre built parts and this is maybe not the newest iteration.
You don’t mention the risks. Doing tests far away from anyone is ok, if you have money. But Starship has now had major failures which could have caused fatalities on the ground. Airplanes have been endangered, island have been hit by debris and of course the time when the take-off platform exploded and send concrete miles away. This is not a game any more. This time, the errors happened a bit later and people were not in danger, so that can be seen as an improvement. But if they continue like this, a bad accident becomes more and more likely. Starship is a big toy. So far, I am not impressed.
I bet the first manned flight of Spaceship will be certainly even more exciting (to its astronauts) than the first manned flight of Boeing’s Starliner.
Thing is even if the orbiter project ultimately fails, the booster seems more robust, this one was reused so not surprising it blew up at landing at this early stage, and apart from landing it performed very well. Basically the same as Falcon 9 but 100 tons to orbit. Make the Starship but just the hull and with 1 Raptor, would be by far tbe biggest thing like it. And could be made very cheap as it isnt intended for human rating or re entry.
Basically its a massive Falcon 9, which is ironic as the Starship was originally called the Big ‘Falcon’ Rocket 🙂
To be honest this is basically exactly what the unmanned Starships are anyway, so I see it happening. Probably mostly Starlink launches for a while.
Also, just, you could use this as a space station. Its not unlikely a lot of the unexpected control issues are related to the landing flaps.
The best part is the engine. It used a lot of raptor engines, which are well tested and reliable. Everything else is more shaky. And of course, the heat tiles have not yet been tested to the full.
Im surprised hey havent put the heat tiles on a Dragon that was no longer rated for use. I imagine the problem isnt their own durability but how well they stay stuck to the rocket, so the glue durability. The ocean landing with the burned up flaps seemed to be otherwise fine apart from the said flaps, at least enough to show the tiles work.
I agree Raptor is an incredible piece of engineering. Ironic that the first successful EV company and the company that made the most efficient combustion engine both have Elon Musk as CEO…
I wants both an Io Volcano Orbiter and and atmospheric probe for Jupiters great red spot, all even more radiation proofed than Juno and better cameras and all kinds of instruments ( An Io – Cassini like probe) woud be the ideal to study the volcanoes, Io is a volcano addicts dream really…. I wants nothing else… maybe Musky coud get intrested rather than being oranges mouth
Musks Starship 9 burnt up again on reentry. Musk is getting billions in trumpifyed government contracts. So to him its just very expensive firework toys…I really hopes Starship 10 will be more of a sucess rather than becomming a man made meteor shower again
Very interesting piece, Albert!
For some reason I never liked it, even as a child, I preferred silver. It seemed more subtle to me. So, I never had it as jewellery, and we had wedding rings made of silver, whereas I also like copper in some craftsmanship, and also brass.
Maybe I was influenced as a child by all the novels and history I read about the mess including murder it created, the dealing with the North- and Central-American Indians, the piracy, the novel “The Treasure Island”, and today we have Uncharted IV, fascinating.
I believe it made people crazy and obsessive. As a means of cryptocurrency it is practical.
In nature I prefer the red and white of say the Colorado Plateau or the Blue and Silver of the Pacific Ocean.
It has a drastic colour. And a bad aura, you mention the wars in SA. Also thinking of Goldfinger.
But it makes a good read, here and in suspense.
Thank you for the piece.
Muisca Raft
The Muisca raft, between circa 600–1600 AD. The figure refers to the ceremony of the legend of El Dorado. The zipa used to cover his body in gold dust, and from his raft, he offered treasures to the Guatavita goddess in the middle of the sacred lake. This old Muisca tradition became the origin of the legend of El Dorado. This Muisca raft figure is on display in the Gold Museum, Bogotá, Colombia.
Source, wikipedia, gold.
The Curse
It was not until 1616, over twenty years later, that Raleigh received permission from James I to attempt a second expedition in Guiana. He promised the king that he could recover an abundance of gold from a certain mine near the Caroní that he had heard of on his former voyage. James gave Raleigh strict instructions not to engage in any hostilities against the Spanish, who still controlled the area around the Orinoco. On reaching South America, Raleigh remained aboard the ship and sent a force headed by Lawrence Kemys to seek out the mine. For unclear reasons, Kemys attacked and captured the Spanish town of Santo Tomé; Raleigh’s son Wat was killed in the battle. Unable to find the mine, the men returned to the ship, where Kemys, facing Raleigh’s displeasure, committed suicide. Raleigh was put on trial in England – charged with lying about the mine and with attempting to stir up conflict between England and Spain – and was executed.
Wikipedia, El Dorado
Its harder to trust now after the flat tilt signal but E24 is looking on track to be in about 4-5 days. I also noticed after E23 the vents dont really look like distinct craters anymore, they are still separated but theres not much of a confining wall either around them or between them now, so no lava pond blocking the vents meaning tall jetting fountains are likely at both vents for the next episode 🙂
4 microrad in 2 days is also above average, so it might be cancelling out the flat earlier, which is consistent with it being a muffled DI event.
This video shows the incredible lava jet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db9qvUWYgcQ
Would the 79 AD Vesuvius eruption still surprise us today with our volcano monitoring skills? St. Helens and Pinatubo showed signs weeks before the Plinian eruption. Did Vesuvius show similar signs?
79 AD Vesuvius had a cork / plug that prohibited the immediate rise of magma to the surface. Does the “boiling” below the plug cause a certain type of earthquake swarms that indicates the coming disaster? How tactile were these earthquakes for humans? Maybe in 79 AD they felt some swarm quakes, but didn’t take them as warning sings.
I have often seen it said the big earthquake of 62 AD was a precursor but I cant see how and its never been justified as far as I know.
I would guess it is very unlikely the eruption wouldnt have been noticed weeks in advance though, but exactly how powerful and what magma type could have been unclear and it might not have been sufficiently evacuated. Most of Vesuvius lava is potassic tephri-phonolite at least for its recent main cone but the 79 AD magma was phonolite and more evolved, likely also more viscous but it is mostly the high volatile content that matters for this. Maybe a mixed effusive explosive eruption would be expected but not the defining example plinian eruption.
Problem is Vesuvius in recent times was very active to 1944, so we saw it as an open vent volcano like Etna, but in 79 AD it wasnt. It also isnt now, although 80 years isnt long enough or a VEI 5 still its likely long enough to mean the next eruption wont be mostly effusive. Since 79 AD the longest gap has been about 350 years but most gaps are less than a century so its likely the next eruption will be before 2100.
That longest dormancy was between 1150 and 1500. During that time magma could have been going to Campi Flegrei, not directly as composition is different but the heat at depth which is presumably common to the area. Campi had a phreatic eruption at Solfatara in 1186 and erupted properly in 1538 but after decades of build up. Solfatara is also where heat has increased the most recently and uplift began in the 20th century after Vesuvius went quiet and following long term subsidence, seems like there could be a case for interaction between them.
From https://www.volcanocafe.org/vesuvius-in-retrospect/
“Seventeen years before the eruption, the Neapolis (literally New City) area was struck by a powerful earthquake which seems to have had its epicentre close to Pompeii as the destruction was heaviest there. There are reports of hundreds of sheep dying from tainted air, probably carbon dioxide poisoning, which argues that the 62 AD earthquake was a precursor of the 79 AD eruption. In 64 AD, the emperor Nero visited Neapolis and performed at the theatre. During his performance, another earthquake struck but legend has it that the emperor concluded his performance after which the theatre was evacuated and then collapsed.”
Vesuvius’ eruptions have become weaker since 1631. It may be heading for a long quiescence.
Weaker but are they less voluminous? It also held an open vent for years at a time most of the last 400 years and likely had a high supply. Not too much to suggest it is going to sleep particularly long this time.
The idea is that over those 400 years, the open conduit has been steadily narrowing. At some point it blocks up completely and it takes big shake to get Vesuvius back to work.
Does Phonolite allow more sudden Plinian eruptions than Ryholite (Chaiten) and Dacite (St. Helens, Pinatubo)?
People without volcano knowledge may interpret earthquake swarms as “normal earthquakes”. This happened likely in the days before August 24th 79. During Roman Time they were also unable to detect deformation on the volcano. On St. Helens 1980 we could well see the deformation, but in other cases the human eye can’t notice significant deformation.
Does the plug that blocks the rising magma, only come by cooling or is it also caused by a different magma type? The magma type of 1944 was probably different to the 79 magma type. I imagine that cooled basalt, andesite or foidite is more solid than cooled dacite, ryholite or phonolite.
Vesuvius is not uninteresting, but if I had a time machine, the eruption I’d most like to return before is Tarawera – and I’d take a seismic network!
From the evidence we have, it went from no, or at best very ambiguous, signs of unrest, to first felt seismicity just before midnight, to a VEI 5 basaltic plinian eruption over and done with before dawn. Did a bloody great dike really ascend that fast?!
OT :For those who still aren’t convinced about climate change: in Switzerland (Blatten, Valais), a glacier collapse just engulfed the area. The village had just been evacuated. One person is missing.
Blatten is flattened. At least it was evacuated in time – hats off to the scientists. Some people though wanted to deny what was happening and stayed behind.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnv1evn2p2vo
Eos’ Landslide Blog has been watching that flatten Blatten
https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/blatten-4
Global warming is quite literally a fact.
Most of N America and Europe is noticeably not under 1km of ice.
Drawings and photographs from the past clearly and unambiguously show glaciers retreating.
Let’s be honest, human CO2 generation in the last century onwards must be making it significantly worse.
Sadly wars (Putin), economic need (China, Africa, S. America) will ensure large excess CO2 production for many decades to come.
It will happen, it will be bloody and will accelerate the inevitable global collapse due gross overpopulation.
Then we will return to somewhere in the feudal system, with world populations stable at a few hundred million. A pretty miserable life for all. Inevitable, I am afraid.
Such is progress, and humans are never logical faced with warlords and power-hungry people.
It is deeply regrettable that some people in power or vying for power do not take the future seriously.
They never have.
Usually old men who think its important to leave a mark in history, no matter the cost.
They do not seem to understand that when they are dead, they are dead.
End of.
The rest of us have to face the consequences.
That said, overpopulation is the bane of humanity.
Greta Thunberg’s movement was initially successfull in distributing the message in the world. But the wars and nationalist trade politics caused inflation, uncertainty and poverty. This has probably led to a recurrence of materialistic values that ignore nature and climate.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs assumes that humans need to have satisfied safety and materialistic needs, before they can care about things beyond this: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmaterialism
The mountain collapse looked like a cold pyroclastic flow:
https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/grosse-teile-von-blatten-verschuettet-bilder-zeigen-geroelllawine-490800412498
This can flow extremely fast, in part because ice has a very low friction coefficient (~0.05). It helps that the collapse was at the bottom of the glacier, not higher up.
https://www.volcanocafe.org/the-kazbek-disaster-a-cryoplastic-debris-flow/
Added to this fold mountains usually are steeper than volcanoes. This part of Switzerland has the highest mountains of the Alpes. Around Blatten the peaks reach close to 4km above sea leve, while the valley has around 1.5km altitude. Permafrost supports the survival of steep slopes of mountains, that can be vertical.
This has nothing to do with any change whatsoever, but is a normal process.
3.000 years ago, free download.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Geological-map-of-the-Tschirgant-rockslide-area-at-the-confluence-of-the-Inn-River-and_fig5_266383672
On a map you can see easily that the Loetschental, Wallis, is on the same line in a southwest-northeast trending tectonically active mountain chain.
Another place where this happened and massively are the Rocky Mountains after the first building phase and also, to a lesser degree, today:
https://www.climbing.com/news/rockslide-destroys-classic-boulders-rocky-mountain-national-park/
Jackson Hole, Wyoming is sitting on miles of sediment. Some of this comes down suddenly.
Best feed DEEPL with it:
“Hans Rudolf Keusen ist ein gefragter Experte, wenn es ums Einschätzen von Naturgefahren in den Bergen geht. Der 84-jährige Geologe erklärt, was in den letzten Tagen ob Blatten passiert ist: «Im Prinzip ist es ein Gletschersturz, der durch eine gewaltige Last von Bergsturz vom Kleinen Nesthorn verursacht worden ist. Dieses Felsmaterial hat auf den Gletscher gedrückt und ihn aus dem Gleichgewicht gebracht.»”
https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/felssturz-im-loetschental-was-am-berg-ob-blatten-konkret-passiert-ist
It is a rock slide that fell on a glacier and took the glacier down. The mountain is called Kleines Nesthorn, and the event has been expected since at least a year ago. The village was already evacuated since then or at least partly evacuated.
Example
https://www.deepl.com/en/translator#de/en-us/Wie%20die%20Schweiz%20ihre%20D%C3%B6rfer%20vor%20Schlammlawinen%20sch%C3%BCtztBesch%C3%A4digte%20und%20zerst%C3%B6rte%20H%C3%A4user%20und%20Strassen%2C%20von%20der%20Aussenwelt%20abgeschnittene%20Alpgemeinden%20und%20mindestens%20zw%C3%B6lf%20Tote%20oder%20Vermisste%3A%20Das%20ist%20die%20Bilanz%20der%20Unwetter%2C%20welche%20die%20Schweizer%20S%C3%BCdkantone%20Graub%C3%BCnden%2C%20Tessin%20und%20Wallis%20zwischen%20Mitte%20Juni%20und%20Anfang%20Juli%20heimgesucht%20haben.Die%20starken%20Regenf%C3%A4lle%20liessen%20nicht%20nur%20die%20Fl%C3%BCsse%20anschwellen%20und%20f%C3%BChrten%20zu%20%C3%9Cberschwemmungen.%20Sie%20setzten%20auch%20das%20an%20Bergh%C3%A4ngen%20abgelagerte%20Felsmaterial%20in%20Bewegung%20und%20l%C3%B6sten%20Schlamm-%20und%20Steinlawinen%20aus.%20Solche%20Murg%C3%A4nge%20sind%20sehr%20zerst%C3%B6rerisch%20und%20schwer%20vorhersehbar.
This might have more to do with warming phases which also produce massive rainfalls.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/klimaschutzlosungen/wie-die-schweiz-ihre-d%c3%b6rfer-vor-schlammlawinen-sch%c3%bctzt/85054080
Climate change is an important factor, because it weakens permafrost that holds stones together. It is in the Alpes indeed not the only factor, because orogency and erosions do always change the mountains and cause sooner or later landslides and mountain collapses.
Been over a month since I last checked but we’re on track for a mid/end June eruption at Sundhnukur:
Based on the prior two eruptions, its probably just about reached the point it could erupt at any point going forward. Later is more likely but it could be tomorrow or in July.
There have been a lot of tbese strong quakes showing up on SDH seismometer since last episode.
The big quakes are only visible on this station which is weird, and nothing showing up at Pahala which is where I thought they came from. The smaller tremors are also much more obvious, its probably gas pistoning but usually it was only within a day ir two of fountaining but its been continuous since the end of E23. HVO doesnt talk about it so maybe it is a phantom signal or artificial but still.
Inflation continues to swing between flat deformation and positive deformation. This swinging may cause earthquakes and also changing activity. Is the volcano more active during positive or during flat deformation?
There were recently minor quakes in the eastern part of the Caldera and in Kilauea Iki. Maybe the fast increasing heavy weight of new lava on the SW part (Halema’uma’u and surroundings) of the Caldera cause a geophysical inbalance in the summit region and tectonic quakes.
New interferogram of Kilauea, there isnt any obvious deformation outside of expected so no exiting explaination of the flat tilt excursion before E23.
http://www.mounts-project.com/static/data_mounts/kilauea10/2025/kilauea10_20250522T161635_20250528T161530_VV_ifg.png
There is a really clear view of the E23 tephra fallout though,
I think about if the interferogramm also shows an isostatic upheaval of the Kilauea Iki region. The fast added volume and mass in the west part of the caldera may cause a isostatic subsidence like in Scandinavia during glaciation. If ice can push land down, lava weight will have a similar effect. During glaciation of Scandinavia there was a counter movement (upheaval) in the ice-free tundra landscapes around it. Kilauaea Iki shows perhaps a counter movement like this now.
It doesnt really look like that is happening though, at least not over short timescales. The GPS at BYRL just west of Kilauea Iki is showing slight subsidence since the eruption started, the GPS that are south of the caldera show slightly more subsidence. UWEV station near the former HVO building shows slight uplift though. The slight subsidence south of the caldera I can see being relaxation of the south caldera upper SWRZ area that was highly pressurized last year but the uplift north of the caldera would imply inflation that isnt evident elsewhere. Perhaps it is the rebound you talked about.
In all cases it is very slight, significantly less than the level of deformation before the eruption began, so it probably isnt too important really. There doesnt appear to be any sign the magma is going anywhere else. Given the vents are very likely over 1000 meters elevation now this is an important factor and probably means the summit actually is about to overflow. Although its also very likely lava will erupt out of connected cracks on the SWRZ, both rift connectors are quiet.
The interferogram shows well, that trade winds from Northeast did prevail during most eruptions. So most ash deposits fall towards the SW. It is accidentally the same area, where the 1919 cracks occured in the desert sand.
https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=6534899&id=a5ea322f-5814-4dc5-8d5e-f4b2060846b9&gid=22BABE50-D715-4720-90BE-B2D980E1E407
Just NNE from SDH
2025-05-30 07:39:38
Earthquake
Magnitude:3.2M
Depth:0.5mi
southern caldera wall. It caused a notable change in the UWD tilt. No change in the seismic rumbles, so seems tectonic.
It looks like the south caldera fault slipped, a very tiny collapse. SDH was pushed up slightly and is south of the caldera, UWD fell. I dint know if it is big enough to have any affect on magma pressure immediately but it is interesting the caldera is starting to get noisy. Even if magma isnt forcing up anywhere else along the ring faults its clear they arent as quiet or stuck as assumed. It might be assumed a similar mag 3+ quake will occur near the vents or just east of them in the north rim now.
The main magma plumbing system has shown a slight deflation since this eruption began, not even really deflation just relief of the extra pressure now a vent is open. All the tilt stuff is caused by the shallower magma body that feeds Halemaumau and collapsed in 2018, except occasional larger distant quakes further out. Everywhere else seems to be totally inactive, although the episodes actually do show on tiltmeters at Pauahi crater and at Pu’u O’o which is interesting.
Kilauea is intermittently spattering with at times some small fountains.
And it is only 5 or 6 microrads on the UWD to reach the Ep. 23 peak. I forecasted Ep. 24 might either be on this weekend at least or the next weekend at most. Now with this earthquake on the south wall of the caldera, do you think this might affect the behavior of the vents? I did remember Chad saying there were small earthquakes on the east rim of the 2018 collapse and that was before the north vent became dominant before Ep. 23.
Tomorrow is the last chance for a 6th May episode. March had five episodes. If May gets a sixth one, it’s a record month. The “normal” episodes in May happened after three to five days. An episode on 31st May would belong to this average type of May 2025. Only the extraordinary 23rd episode happened after long nine days.
Overview over the 23 episodes: https://www.nps.gov/havo/learn/nature/december-2024-summit-eruption.htm
If we look at the 3-months deformation, the next episode is more likely to be delayed, because inflation will supposedly be higher than deflation (net inflation). The minimum points of deformation build waves over several episodes. After episode 23 we’re in a wave trough. So it most go up sooner or later again:
Not sure how helpful this will be – but you can look at the weather, tides etc for the last 10 years on various map projections – you probably want to click the burger icon in the bottom left
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-354.37,55.50,355/loc=-20.025,64.156
I clicked on Iceland to start in a good spot – but you can drag the map around to look from other angles
Oh, just found you can get sulphur dioxide and some data on particulates of different sizes – clicked on hawaii, might be interesting to scroll back through time on that https://earth.nullschool.net/#2025/05/31/1400Z/chem/surface/level/anim=off/overlay=so2smass/orthographic=-152.57,21.87,355/loc=-155.478,19.419
Thermal map of the lava flows so far (top is ep. 21, bottom is ep. 23, ep. 22 seems missing). Quite a sight when lava flows make it to the other side of the field.
Also, I would like to make a prediction that, if this fountaining continues and goes on the trend of going SW, likely a cone would eventually bury the SW bay of the 2018 collapse feature and even completely cover the cliffs around the vents…
From this angle the vents are already half way up the wall from when it started. I think its less but still the build up.
Same areas, different angles. I think it might struggle for a bit as the spatter would form lava flows that spread across the SW bay floor. With each new flow there, it is just elevating it higher and higher than the rest of the area. Also, looking on the cameras, parts of the forming tephra cone does slide, like a glacier, all because their interiors are still molten until they cool down enough that they stop. I think that might go on until it gets high enough or something changes.
The caldera before/after the collapses 2018:
Still a bit to fill, until the caldera floor reaches to the level of April 2018.
If it was a cylinder, its about another 0.6 km3 to fill the 2018 caldera to its north rim. But its likely the area around the vents will already be taller than the rim by that point as it isnt really filling as a level liquid surface but is a shield at the vent side. The caldera also doesnt have vertical walls so could be either smaller or larger too, probably a bit smaller is my guess, 0.5 km3 maybe. At current supply rates that is between 2 and 3 years away.
When was the flat caldera floor created that existed until 2018 outside Halema’uma’u?
That angle makes it look deeper, the lava has filled up the large majority of vertical height lost. The crater floor is about 3000ft elevation or 915 meters in the east end so probably more going west, the rim where the V3 cam is sits about 3600 ft or 1100 meters. The top of the cones against the cliff is about 3400ft though, or 1030 meters, so the vents are probably about 1000 meters elevation, and surrounding adjacent floor closer to 975 meters.
The last map was on May 21, before E22, so its also very likely the huge arching fountains of those episodes significantly raised the crater floor south of the vents, just visually it looks totally different and much higher up after E23.
(When was the flat caldera floor created that existed until 2018 outside Halema’uma’u?)
About half was from 1919-1921, slightly less of a percentage was August 1971, (and most of this was covered by August 1974.) The rest were from eruptions dating back to 1886ish.
How was it built so flat? It looked nearly horizontal like Nevada’s salt lakes.
Wasn’t there a time in the 19th century, when the whole caldera hosted a lava lake?
Its a caldera fault block that was flooded over in 1921 or maybe earlier, and much more completely in 1971, 1974 and finally 1982. The feature seems to be an incomplete ring graben and Keanakako’i formed inside it, possibly also west Kilauea Iki, and it has evidently been intruded by magma multiple times historically since forming probably in 1790. Known eruptions include 1832, 1868, 1877, possibly 1959, 1971, 1974 and 1982. Those are just the eruptions, there have probably been many intrusions too most recently possibly in 2020.
I think the reason it is so flat now is because it is ponded lava mostly from 1982 which foundered a few times after the eruption. Probably the same in the 70s.
To be honest by the time the vents are high enough to overflow that way, its quite likely new vents could open elsewhere in the caldera, including the Keanakako’i area. That was seen in the 1970s, when Mauna Ulu slowed or stopped eruptions immediately happened basically everywhere not only in Halemaumau.
Yes, imagine a shield cone rising above the caldera and sending lava flows to Mauna Iki on the surface. It would be the same way above the ground, where 1919 magma ran through a subsurface dike.
Yes basically, although I think the lava would flow further south first, probably burying the 1974 and 2024 vents and flow, and then flow past the Koae faults and down to the coastal plain. If it does this as tube fed pahoehoe it will probably also overtop the Koae fault scarps and flow more directly south eventually. It is actually far from a given that the first overflows actually are tube fed though, the first overflows night be fast noving a’a flows instead.
If the episodical behaviour continues, I’d imagine that each episoe chooses its individual path for lava flows. We observed it recently during episodes 21 and 23, that the path of lava flows were different. Maybe the cone is going to erupt a bit like Pu’u O’o 1983-84 with a variety of lava directions, but with shorter episodes:
It would be an interesting image with a cone like Pu’u O’o’s late cone above the caldera. A whole new summit geography.
I mean that is basically what will happen. Its probably a 50/50 it is still fountaining like that in a few years after getting tall enough to overflow. The ponded lava in the caldera before doesnt seem to be connected at all, only being fed when surface lava flows down or just the weight of the new lava on the crust. Its like Mauna Ulu next to Alae crater in 1969, or the 1949 vent of Mauna Loa, more like those than it is like Kilauea Iki in 1959. Its going to be interesting for sure.
HVO released some new images today and one answers a question I think a lot of us have been asking.
The tephra on the caldera rim is at least 10 meters thick if that hill is 1 km2 in area there is 10 million m3 of tephra, depending on how thick it is in the southwest bay of the caldera this seems very plausible.
Its hard to put more solid numbers but theres a good chance this eruption is a VEI 2 or even 3, and actually is probably the most tephra Kilaueas summit has erupted in over 200 years. But its not ‘explosive’ so it will still be a VEI 0…
At this rate though its going to be probably double that thickness at least by 1 year anniversary, fountains are getting taller and more powerful. And by the time enough lava erupts to fill the 2018 caldera there will be a new summit to Kilauea.
I’d assume that the tephra is in fact a mass of small bombs. Not a sand-like tephra, but stones. The photo shows that the tephra is rough, not fine. Maybe … there are even some lava droplets in between that hit the ground above the caldera rim in a liquid state and froze after impact.
Lava fountains are in fact a borderline phenomenon between explosive and effusive eruptions. There are lava fountains with more effusive characteristics and others with more explosive elements. The current tall and with strong gas pressure driven lava fountains are still mainly effusive, but are a bit more explosive than normal Hawaiian lava fountains.
The bombs fall out but further away it would be ashy, the stuff big enough to not be called ‘ash’ wouldnt be blown up so high or carried in the wind.
I think it’s possible that lava bombs or drops land on the caldera rim next to the eruption, if the lava fountain takes the right direction. Until now the lava fountain took a bit “wrong” direction, where the distance to the caldera rim is longer.
I have wondered that too, even maybe forming spatter fed flows up on the rim. But it would need to be directed towards the wall and it isnt right now so maybe not for a while.
We don’t have to wait long time, until the cones grow to the height of the caldera rim. Then we get a whole new situation and physical conditions
Yes that might happen even next year at this rate, the cone is growing fast.
Episode 24 is probably going to be larger than episodes 19-22. The inflation towards episode 24 is as long and high as before episode 23. Episodes 23 and 24 belong to a group of strong episodes, where it’s uncertain how many members will belong to this group in the end.
Can someone, for the love of God, point me in the direction for recent InSAR data on Iwo-jima? I am losing my mind. I’ve got a crazy idea about the volcano but I can’t even start to verify anything without a more comprehensive map of the volcano’s deformation!
I don’t think there is any, at least not in the public domain. It (or was?) not part of the sentinel insar mapping which doesn’t cover the oceans. I just look at images which show the growing extent of the island. The US ships which were beached on the north shores are now well on-shore.
Whatever…
I’ve been dealing with some nonsense, and I’ve got 4 or 5 ideas but can’t put half of them on paper,
I was thinking that Iwo-Jima could be charging Trapdoor Caldera quake/uplift pulse akin to Sofugan or Kika-Ioto. This is because the uplift has slowed or stopped at some parts of the Island, but horizontal deformation has remained steady. The NW part of the Island is still inflating and it shifted from moving west to east which could also support this. I think it’s feasible but I’d like more information.
Mount Spurr seismo looks somewhat agitated.
https://avo.alaska.edu/explore/webicorder/spurr#SPCP
Yes, I know it is only on yellow alert.
that’s what i was just wondering … too bad about the current weather right now, there (gusty wind??)
Yeah the webcam shows a lot of bad Alaskan weather and airplanes leaving from Anchorage every five minutes or so. Tons of air traffic in that area. Webcam is facing north.
Every once in a while you can see the mountain peaks (it has several). I saw steam a couple of times, one was a substantial plume, others quite tiny.
Is the Ljosufjoll system nearing eruption do we think? The VT quakes are definitely getting shallower.
I would very much doubt it’s “nearing” in the terms most people would use… it’s an old, cold system and it will take a LOT of seismicity, likely over years or decades, before we could say it’s “nearing” eruption.
Can the old system surprise us with a sudden eruption? Maybe it can escalate pretty fast like La Palma’s eruption 2021 from the deep source to the eruption on the surface. We may be in the fog of “knowing nothing” two weeks before the actual eruption.
I generally agree but if the magma supply is slow and stable, it might not behave like expected. Theres no central volcano at this location, its entirely monogenetic. Its also not a rift zone, Eyjafjallajokull abd Oraefajokull are both central volcanoes with complex plumbing and stress fields under them that slow magma, not so here. And Fagradalsfjall was releasing a lot of tension built up for centuries, so was probably noisier than it otherwise would have been.
I agree the last couple weeks when it breaks into the upper crust will probably be noisy but that could begin this year really, there doesnt seem to be a lot of difficulty in magma rising up.
Whatever the answer it is a pretty unique event, maybe Surtsey was the closest in geological context but that I dont think was well recorded or even really noticed far before it surfaced.
Tarawera? It may depend on whether old magma is being reheated – if so, things could suddenly go fast. But in general, cold rock is brittle and magma inflow will cause earthquakes (though possibly not much inflation). Warm, ductile rock can accommodate new magma without much seismicity. Wilson argues that if the intrusion is very deep (kimberlite), it can erupt quite suddenly. That is not the case here though.
I was thinking Krakatau in the 19th century, having been inactive for 300 years. My conclusion from the old (and rather sparse) reports was that changes may have started 50 years before the eventual eruption. Tambora became more active several years before the big blow, when it developed a steam cloud. So yes, old systems may well give long warnings.
I don’t think Tarawera is very relevant as it’s in a very different geological setting, part of the Okataina caldera, and prior to 1886, its previous eruptions had been rhyolitic, plinian, sub-plinian, and dome-building eruptions. The 1886 basaltic eruption was an aberration.
What about Solfatara in Campi Flegrei?
Is it always like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLG-BgvnRV8 ?
Etna has started Paroxysm in the morning: https://www.facebook.com/linda.mcilroy.16/videos/2241256276332391?idorvanity=203414436363404
The gasrich lava fountain resembles a bit the recent Kilauea fountains, although with much lower scale.
The live webcam doesn’t show the lava fountain now, it’s hidden behind a steam plume. Uncertain whether there still is a lava fountain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFkl981opWI
The fountain is likely still there, just not visible because it’s much colder and shrouded in scoria. Etna’s fountains are often invisible in daylight due to the high gas content of a half-subduction stratovolcano, half-alkaline shield volcano, and overall lower temperatures or higher viscosity of the crystal rich trachybasalt.
Actually that fountain is probably already as big as the Kilauea fountains. For the same volume Etna fountains are way bigger. 600 meters is nearly double the E23 fountains and a new record at Kilauea but anything under 1000 meters is only a warm up at Etna. Back in 2021 it went over 1000 meters in over half of the 57 paroxysms that year, and over 2000 meters at least once if I remember. And its got over 1000 since then too, in 2022 and last year. But paroxysms at Etna erupt less magma than Kilauea is doing right now. 2021 was rarely over 3 million m3 at Etna, which is on tbe low end of Kilauea this year.
I dont know if it us possible for Kilauea to have a totally magmatic lava fountain 1 km tall under normal conditions. Maybe if it was evolved a bit or rose very fast from the deep source. Otherwise 600 might be close to the limit but I think we will see that tested this year, the south vent might actually be dead this time and fountains have been getting bigger each episode…
The definition of a fountain gets a bit confusing with Etna, those 2 km incandescent parts are sometimes just glowing scoria being carried up by the buoyant plume. But Etna’s are definitely taller anyway.
Yes a plinian eruption is just a lava fountain that is torn into particles small enough to float and draw in air. At this rate after last week I actually wouldnt be surprised to see Kilauea flirt with that boundary soon. There is a factor I hadnt considered which is the pressure to erupt at such elevation might actually further increase fountain height beyond only how open the vent is. Kilauea Iki peaked close to the end, and Pu’u O’o had its most powerful fountains in 1986 too.
An ideal plinian eruption starts with fregmented tephra from the crater/caldera’s base, either by phreatomagmatic fregmentation, by gas-explosive fragmentation or by the explosion of viscous magmas (Dacite/Rhyolite/Phonolite/Tephrite). Viscous magmas can’t do lava fountains. They can at most do lava domes or slow creeping thick lava flows.
An ideal lava fountain starts with liquid magma/lava flying vertical or with steep angle. This can only degassed basaltic and silica-poor alkali magma do.
Etna is at the summit a “mixed volcano” that combines explosive and effusive elements. Many Strombolian explosions of Etna are purely grey with ash, bombs and pumice. Some small summit eruptions can be purely effusive. But usually Paroxysms combine effusive and explosive elements. F.e. a lava flow and a black Strombolian ash cloud. Sometimes lava fountains can have explosive features with bombs and ash.
Most plinian eruptions are actually fluid magma though, VEI 4s at mafic stratovolcanoes. And of the couple of rhyolitic eruptions in recent time only one (Novarupta) didnt have a significant or even majority effusive component.
Viscosity of the magma is important but its 100% the actual gas content that matters. We hust saw Etna do a small scale lateral blast, and it is a basaltic volcano that erupts pretty fluid lava. There are also more volcanoes on land erupting viscous magma than basalt and very few explode with any regularity, they just get noticed when they do. Obviously explosive domes exist but I would go so far as to say the composition and viscosity almost doesnt matter compared to volatile content. Water being present is included as volatiles, but that was already well factored in.
Yes, there are a lot of factors. Erta Ale range rhyolites are almost entirely effusive for example, Alu, Dalafilla, and Bora Ale, have erupted rhyolites/trachytes during the last few thousand years in a Hawaiian or strombolian manner, with no distal ash whatsoever and making pumice ramparts the same way basalt fissures would, with the tephra falling within 50 meters of the vent (Alu fissure-fed lavas). This is likely because the rhyolite is very hot (likely sharing room with basalt), and also gas-poor due to its tholeiite/transitional basalt origin and being stored at very shallow depth.
So while it’s usually highly viscous magmas the ones that cause violent explosions (usually crystal-rich andesites and dacites that have mafic crystals suspended in a rhyolite melt) it’s not just the viscosity leading to more fragmentation that is the main mechanism, though clearly a factor. The high water (gas) content of subduction zones has a lot to do with it. Viscosity also has the indirect effect of increasing the size of conduits, chambers, and intrusions, which means you can erupt a lot more in a given instant and place if you are dealing with a 200-meter-wide pipe of crystal-rich andesite than a 2-meter-wide basalt dike. But you can also get gas-rich basalts or crystal-poor andesites to cause apocalyptic eruptions if you for example, erupt them out of the ring dike of a collapsing caldera.
Thank-you for your corrections and supplements!
Can basaltic magma do a purely plinian eruption without water (Phratomagmatic eruption)?
Effusive eruptions of viscous magmas usually happen without a lava fountain. I can’t imagine a Rhyolite or Dacite lava fountain. Even Andesite has problems, maybe rather does a lava bomb fountain. Usually viscous effusive lava flows just run out of the volcano without any lava fountain. The current eruption of Great Sitkin (Basalt to Andesite) shows how it can happen. https://avo.alaska.edu/volcano/great-sitkin/activity
This is how a viscous lava fountain might look like, dacite erupting on Mount Ibu:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMkfT1e4HQQ
That said the fissure-fed rhyolites of Alu volcano are very unique, and I expect they look a bit different from anything that has ever been recorded.
Regarding full basaltic plinian eruptions, with no water interaction or where water interaction was not an important factor, there are the basaltic ignimbrites of Tofua, Yasur, Gaua, and similar subduction-zone basaltic calderas.
Ibu’s great lava fountains looks for me rather like a hot Strombolian lava bomb eruptions. It’s an explosive lava fountain contrary to effusive lava fountains with mainly liquid material flying out of the crater. Ideal effusive lava fountains shoot liquid lava in the sky that comes down more or less liquid again.
Hot lava bombs can look bright like lava fountains, but are solid or become solid during the voyage through the air.
How can basaltic volcanoes do pure Plinian eruptions without water? Is the Etna eruption 122 BC an example for this?
Where are these rhyolite fissure eruptions? Alu Dalafilla looks like a typical stratovolcano. The lava flows from it are fluid looking for felsic magma but I dont see any flank vents from it.
The fissure eruptions nearby are all black basalt including the most recent 2008 vents which are slightly darker.
Dissolved gas doesnt care how viscous its solvent is, carbonated water will atomize itself spraying out of a small space, thats basically what happens to fluid lava in a plinian eruption.
If theres enough and pressure releases quickly it will be violent, especially if that is H2O or CO2 at 1000 C. Water is a native volcanic gas too and can be a significant component of some magma. Subduction volcanoes are basically an accidental byproduct of the ocean leaking into subduction zones and the water escaping back up…
There is also the depth to consider, the deeper the degassing the faster the eruption at the surface will be.
Etna needs high gas pressure to make eruptions at 3 – 3.5 km above sea level. The magma chamber sits probably below sea level. So a long way with high speed. This can probably only do gasrich magma, so the eruption is an explosive lava fountain; rather a super-Strombolian lava fountain than a normal effusive lava fountain.
Well, now we have a significant pyroclastic flow at Etna!
https://bsky.app/profile/vond.it/post/3lqmirqeobc2l
Looks like the side of the SEC collapsed, it was hard to tell if a new vent opened there and blew it out though or if it was just a landslide. I think something like this has happened a few times though, a new lava flow might start from that area.
Theres still a big plume above, if it was at night there would probably be a huge orange fountain.
That’s what I thought too. One of the AfarTV videos showed a bit more than just a pyroclastic flow, with material erupting out of the flank of the cone, going up not down and quite black in color.
AfarTV has nice hi-resolution cameras.
https://youtu.be/1H7D-WJDexE?si=hUwxyz07YxLwjfha
Wow, it engulfed the Valle del Bove. Great video, looks like a lateral blast. First, there’s a reddish cloud, obviously a landslide mixed with oxidised scoria, then the black violently expanding cloud must have been magma that suddenly exploded, that had been intruded under the side of the cone that collapsed…
Is the Valle del Bove a closed area? Or could there have been people walking around?
A lot of very lucky tourists just over the ridgeline…
Ok from this angle it definitely looks like a new vent is responsible for the collapse. Its hard to see any details though. It also puts into perspective how big the SEC actually is, its about the same size as the rest of the summit complex combined and most of it is younger than 2000… 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/live/FFx6rQ3Z4O8?si=kz7mquo9w0zf7wYd
Hopefully there is a video on location. The pyroclastic flow is dangerous but all the usual viewpoints are far away from it.
Google translated from INGV
“The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Etnean Observatory, reports that the
images from the surveillance system cameras show, at 09:24 UTC, a
pyroclastic flow probably produced by a collapse of material from the
northern flank of the South-East Crater. The hot material, from preliminary observations,
seems not to have passed the edge of the Valle del Leone. At the same time, the
explosive activity from the South-East Crater has changed to a lava fountain.
The volcanic tremor has reached very high values with the centroid of the
sources located in the area of the South-East Crater. The infrasonic activity is also high with
events localized in correspondence with the South-East Crater.
The deformation signal of the DRUV station continues the variation trend started
with the activity. The other deformation monitoring networks do not show significant
variations..
Further updates will be promptly communicated.
N.B. Fax numbers are used in case of incorrect reception of email messages”
I hope we get a full update from the chap who Carl visited who lives and works Etna (I think it was Erik Klemeti – but I might have got him mixed up with someone else).
Edward, I think you mean Boris? Erik lives and works in the USA?
Ah yes, Boris 🙂
https://youtu.be/1bng9KIbcZ4
Really huge!
Same live cam now with no eruption, there is a big breach in the side of the SEC, as expected. Its done this a few times, in 2014 was a very similar event.
Most likely lava flows will go this direction soon.
Indeed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bng9KIbcZ4
It’s Pelean style. No collapsing ash column, but a hot pyroclastic landslide from the crater. Was the pyroclastic flow accompanied by sudden explosive eruptions from side/flank vents? It looked a bit like this.
A very big Pyro flow, looked nearly as awsome as Unzen’s killer pyroclastic flow.
I wouldn’t call this Pelean – the mechanism there was a mafic dome/spine collapse. No dome at Etna.
And it wasn’t all that large – it didn’t go beyond the upper slopes of the volcano.
Was it an explosive fissure eruption like Eldgá? It looks as if ash clouds rose on several locations along a line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFkl981opWI
If you begin to watch the video at 11 a.m., you can clearly see a steaming fissure in the flank of the cone. The steam reminds to the steam that preceded Fagradalsfjall’s or Svartsengi’s fissure eruptions. For ~20 minutes the steam intensifies and is around 11:23 followed by an ash cloud. So it was indeed an explosive fissure eruption.
The steaming parts were lava flows, not fissures. What looks like explosions within the pyroclastic flow is really just material from the flow being thrown out. That happened when the bulk of the material hit some obstruction in the topology and was propelled outwards (same thing happens with snow avalanches). It looks like there’s a change in the gradient and some rocky outcrops at that spot. The rapidly heated and expanding air further enhanced the effect.
Or actually, at 10:17 it looks like there was a smaller pyroclastic flow, so maybe not lava. Let’s stick with just saying that the steaming came from previously erupted material, not fissures.
I agree it wasnt a fissure erupting, but the collapse definitely had an eruptive component. The cone was steaming in the area, then after collapsing there was a (weak) directed blast that was probably most of the actual flow.
My guess was an intrusion into the cone that after breaching the surface the whole cone above it became unstable and all slid down. It wasnt a big intrusion though as it seemed to be destroyed and most of the cone on that side is still there.
The collapse scar does have a distinct crater in it, it should be said.
How would an actual explosive fissure eruption look like compared to this? F.e. the Eldgá event on a smaller scale.
Hekla, Tajogaite are the closest examples.
Eldgja wasnt that explosive, the big tephra vents were because of being under Myrdalsjokull, tbe vents outside it had huge fountains but not explosive level. Still the dominant vent ountained over 1 km tall and that stayed true for most of the whole fissure line, Laki was up to 800 but mostly 300-500, over 1000 is probably a misinterpretation.
Keep in mind only one big of the fissures was fountaining this tall at a time, the rest would have been weaker. Like at Kilauea in 2018 where the easternmost part of the fissure line got stronger first and then sequentially moved west but the first ones got weaker as that happened ahd the eruption looked like it was even slowing on the livestream while Leilani Estates was in the apocalypse… Same at Laki and Eldgja. There was no 20 km long 1 km tall curtain of fire as cool as that sounds. If it was then the eruptions would have barely lasted a week…
The amount of gold retrieved during the ‘rush’ in the area where
I am now sitting, was phenomenal. But here, lava was the party pooper. Old Ordovician streams were buried under metres and metres of this hard, unyielding carpet. With gold the target nothing was going to stop them, and the spoil heaps, which still dot the landscape, attest to their determination. Now composed mainly of quartz shingle and silica boulders all of them high and dry, and all components well rounded from prolonged river abrasion.
https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/?zoom=16&lat=-1.5225&lng=29.25085&themeId=DEFAULT-THEME&visualizationUrl=U2FsdGVkX18H5HH11bOeMQ8j6b5LlIqdFD5BrtAclo6kCklXb9pye5hAXh30JtJmnEqyIXF8UbYifsHd4ln7AQ3C4pt5AmqIAvl7uLcU%2BQ3pn4AL5KwooIQfJpV6mz2s&datasetId=S2_L1C_CDAS&fromTime=2024-12-01T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&toTime=2025-06-01T23%3A59%3A59.999Z&layerId=1_TRUE_COLOR&demSource3D=%22MAPZEN%22&cloudCoverage=20&dateMode=MOSAIC
And just like Kilauea does Nyiragongo is too is busy as well filling up quite fast its caldera building up its floor lava lake conethrough lava overflows. Nyiragongos magma supply is not that big but this is certainly filling up alot faster than the 2002 – 2021 cycle so coud be in indication of increased magma supply to Nyiragongo.
I think it was missed but there were two mag 3+ quakes at Ljosufjoll again.
We have a small group of earthquakes (20 at the moment) near Stanley Idaho USA over the last 2 days. The quakes are close to the Sawtooth fault, which is west, and about parallel to the Lost River fault that let go in the 1983 Borah Peek mag 6.9 (some articles say 7.3) that killed two children. Largest quake is only 4.0 at this time.
I was stationed in Idaho Falls ID for the US Navy at the time and we did run out of our apartment into the snow during the shaking.
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/eeri/earthquake-spectra/article-abstract/2/1/183/584188/The-Borah-Peak-Idaho-Earthquake-of-October-28-1983?redirectedFrom=fulltext
“Reactors and facilities of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) are located 90 to 110 km from the epicenter of the October 28, 1983 earthquake. Several reactors were up and operating normally when the earthquake struck. These reactors were shut down in accordance with normal procedures. Plant inspections, functional tests and evaluations indicated no significant damage was experienced. Minor cosmetic damage was found in some auxiliary buildings, however.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Borah_Peak_earthquake
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/today/index.php?month=10&day=28&submit=View+Date
“The largest historical earthquake in Idaho. Two people killed, two injured, and considerable damage at Challis. One person injured and extensive damage at Mackay. Maximum intensity VII in the Challis-Mackay area. Total damage from the earthquake estimated at 15 million dollars. System of fault scarps extending for more than 35 kilometers with vertical displacement up to 2.7 meters observed between Mackay and Challis. Landslides, rockfalls and groundwater changes occurred throughout the region, including changes to geyser activity in Yellowstone National Park. The earthquake was felt in Idaho, Washington, Montana, Oregon, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, and parts of Canada.”
Little lost river fault is named for the river that runs through the area.
“The Big Lost River and Little Lost River in Idaho are both “lost” rivers, meaning they disappear underground and feed into the Snake River Aquifer. The Big Lost River is approximately 135 miles (217 km) long, while the Little Lost River is about 49 miles (79 km) long. ”
mac
Cool. I’m looking at Little Lost River on Google Earth. It looks it’s surface connection to the Snake River was severed by post-caldera lava flows.
Yes, if I remember correct way back in the day they used dyes in the rivers to see where they were coming out.
Found an article on Daily Mail today
“Mystery as small, unexpected US town is rattled by dozens of earthquakes overnight.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14781125/US-town-battered-dozens-earthquakes-idaho.html
“A small town in Idaho has been rattled by more than 35 earthquakes in just 24 hours.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) recorded the swarm near Stanley, a town of fewer than 150 people perched along a fault line capable of producing major quakes.
The latest tremor, a 3.5 magnitude, hit at 9:48am PT (12:48pm ET) on Wednesday.”
Etna’s pyroclastic flow reminded me a bit to the deadly one of Mount Unzen that killed the first Volcanocafé on an expedition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvjwt9nnwXY
On Big Island Kilauea is growing to glow. The next episode is likely going to begin soon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqmpkUdMtyA
Were the deadly eruptions of Unzen only VEI1 to 2? https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=282100&vtab=Eruptions
If yes, then they were not much stronger than yesterday’s Etna Pyro flow.
Its notorious for being where the Kraffts were killed, if that didnt happen then the lava dome eruption in the 90s would have just been another of many slow effusive eruptions, it wasnt a spectacularly big or rare event. Merapi, Shevluch, Bezymianny, Santa Maria, they are all doing this right now.
I dont know what this style is called, it is always described as peleean but that is more about major collapses or explosions of the dome, not the typical effusive growth part. And peleean eruptions might also happen without lava domes or viscous magma if an explosion is directed, like at Fuego in 2018.
So lava domes growing quietly dont seem to actually have a name despite there being many active at any moment.
Not all lava dome eruptions are the same either, there is quite a lot of internal variety that doesn’t have a name either. Some eruptions can be fully effusive like Great Sitkin, others are punctuated by powerful blasts like Bezymianny, while Ibu produces frequent tiny explosions and fountains from a ring around the plug, and Shiveluch produces characteristic tower-like spines and is also a lot more into collapsing sideways than the others…
I think it would be cool if a new classification of eruptions emerged now that we know a lot more about them, maybe something similar to how clouds are classified into genera, species, and subspecies. For example, I think one criterion should divide eruptions into fissures, central conduit, and caldera-forming ignimbrite eruptions, since they have different characteristics that reflect the underlying plumbing and are particularly important regarding precursors and the vent distribution.
*Edit: lateral blasts should also make for a 4th unique plumbing situation, since it can really be put in any of the others (maybe fissures since it a somewhat sheet like intrusion that will be involved, but since it doesn’t really intersect the surface…).
Yes the existing one is simple but it is incorrect when applied more technically. I actually have books that say all steep stratovolcanoes are erupting felsic magma because it explodes, using Mayon as an example typically because of its shape when it is as far as I know exclusively mafic or andesitic…
It also makes it seem like a hawaiian eruption is a world away from anything explosive and an auto VEI 0, when the 10+ meter blanket of tephra on the rim of Kilaueas caldera formed entirely in the last few months exists.
To me, there is hawaiian type volcanism, and it grades up to plinian based on gas content and lava fountain intensity, with maybe a cut off being when erupted tephra is small enough to be called ash and liften up by the air.
Lava domes are the same but more viscous. I guess it traps gas better but it also might be harder to actually get it to flow fast enough up the vent to allow explosive decompression. But if it sustains an ash fountain that lifts up from its own heat that is a plinian eruption.
Both sets are capable of strombolian and vulcanian activity. Strombolian is more fluid but also might be defined by being blobs of liquid or brightly glowing lava, but where it is too cold to stick to itself when landing, spattering is weaker strombolian activity in a fluid magma.
Vulcanian seems to be mostly ashy, either old rocky material or new magma. It seems to be basically the same thing as a phreatic eruption but driven by magmatic gas buildup than groundwater flashed to steam.
Surtseyan is just a hawaiian eruption in shallow water, no pressure to contain the steam, eruption rate isnt high enough to be plinian, tge magma isnt viscous enough to stop water intrusion. I dont know if there is an important difference between a dry plinian eruption and a phreatoplinian eruption, the second is probably more explosive but it was still likely going to be something like that anyway.
Viscous or gas poor magma honestly just doesnt really interact with water at all most of the time. Ioto, Home Reef, Lateiki , St Vincent, Kelud, have all erupted gas poor lava domes into very shallow water in the 21st century and barely anything has happened. Although St Vincent and Kelud did blow those domes up subsequently…
Kilauea has not broken even with E23, so it will probably erupt within 24 hours. The fact the precursor activity so far has been strombolian gas jet fountains instead of lava overflows probably gives a hint that E24 will have huge fountains again. If it doesnt erupt within 24 hours its pretty plausible we see a new fountain record.
Now* broken even.
HVO says that the initial activity for the next episode has started and it should occur today or tomorrow.
Video of Etna the other day, 100+ a lateral blast feeding that flow
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Ah2sFv88W/
Yeah, a micro Mount St. Helens (~2.5 km^2 effected versus ~600km^2). Cloud was clearly not just kicked up dust. There is a reddish slide quickly followed by the black blast cloud which interestingly does look to start somewhat lower on the slope than the landslide.
Incidentally I wonder how long it is before at some volcano we have a mass tourist casualty event. Even a pretty small eruption in the wrong place could cause problems. Like if that had hit a zone with tourists, even a pretty weak pyroclastic flow is *really* bad to be caught in.
Just in general location is as important as size with volcanic eruptions. The VEI 4 eruption of Mount Pelee killed nearly 30,000 (admittedly in modern times, most of that would be eliminated by evacuation). The VEI 6 eruption of Hunga Tonga killed 7.
Incidentally I wonder how long it is before at some volcano we have a mass tourist casualty event. Even a pretty small eruption in the wrong place could cause problems. Like if that had hit a zone with tourists, even a pretty weak pyroclastic flow is not really compatible with life.
Just in general location is as important as size with volcanic eruptions. The VEI 4 eruption of Mount Pelee killed nearly 30,000 (admittedly in modern times, most of that would be eliminated by evacuation). The VEI 6 eruption of Hunga Tonga killed 7.
The red ash cloud reminded me to Pu’u O’o’s collapse 2018. It was the same oxydized iron dust.
Yes, it looks like an intrusion blew up, the cloud is black unlike the earlier flow which was red, and there are also bombs flying out with give the cloud the cypress-like shapes. Perhaps a sill intruded under the cone during the paroxysm and gouged a portion of it like a spoon, then blew up as a result of the decompression. It would be interesting to know if there were any warning signs of the cone collapsing or not.
I remember it was just the flank steaming, which got stronger and then suddenly collapsed. There was lava fountaining at the top end of the steaming area, but lava never flowed that way before the collapse, although there was probably a lava flow out of the new scarp afterwards if not there will be next time.
I dont know what shape the intrusion was but a sill seems the best fit. It isnt nearly viscous enough to form a cryptodome.
Etna after the collapse.
Also, I have a question: whats the chance the whole SEC collapsing? Could it happen with the next paroxysms?
Well that looks like a pretty large crack going down to the left from the part that blew out. Also will the lava reach the surface differently now. The next paroxysm will be interesting to watch.
So lava did erupt on that side after the collapse, but not out of the collapse scarp. Interesting.
This image shows clearly what happened. Look at the fault scarp! A thick layer came loose from the side of the cone and went crashing down. It was when the bulk of this material hit the base of the cone, where the gradient changes, that the big black cloud expanded. Look again at the video. The initial flow ran on top of the layer that collapsed, then right before the black cloud appeared, you can see that a black mass is coming down inside the brighter cloud, and when it reaches the base of the cone, the black cloud was thrown out. I don’t think this was a lateral blast, just a matter of a large mass of loose material with a lot of momentum having to rapidly change direction.