Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a Vault episode. This one originally published on February.
Speaker 1: It's called Sailor on a Sea of Lava. That sounds fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's grab a lava boat, jump on and go for
Speaker 1: a ride. Welcome. Just about to blow your mind, the
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and Robert. Are we gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: hot lava today? Oh? Yeah, yeah, We're definitely gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about hot lava. Um. This was This is an
Speaker 1: episode that I was inspired for us to put together
Speaker 1: because I mean, lava is always cool. Was we'll get
Speaker 1: into in a minute. They're like lava, lakes of lava,
Speaker 1: verse of lava. It pops up in a lot of
Speaker 1: our favorite uh science fiction and fantasy franchises, but of
Speaker 1: course in the real world, it's also incredibly interesting. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's something almost kind of holy about being
Speaker 1: either in the presence of lava or being in places
Speaker 1: where lava has recently been and standard terminology insert. The
Speaker 1: term for molten rock when it's still bottled up below
Speaker 1: the Earth's surface is magma, and the exact same stuff
Speaker 1: is called lava once it breaches the surface in an eruption.
Speaker 1: So if it's on the surface of the Earth, basically,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at it, if you're watching it form
Speaker 1: a river across the black fields of rock, it is
Speaker 1: now lava. Right, yes, Now, I recently had the privilege
Speaker 1: this just was just last week actually, um, just a
Speaker 1: little over a week ago. I had the privilege of
Speaker 1: getting to hike the Kilauea Ekey Trail in Volcano National
Speaker 1: Park in Hawaii with my family and with some friends. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a that I've done twenty years ago and
Speaker 1: I always wanted to do again. I always wanted to
Speaker 1: you know, be able to bring my my wife on
Speaker 1: the trip, and then you know, bring my son on
Speaker 1: the trip. And Uh, if anyone out there is considering
Speaker 1: going to the island of Hawaii, I highly recommend this
Speaker 1: particular walk. It's it's very popular. It's not not a
Speaker 1: trade secret or anything. It's a three point three mile loop.
Speaker 1: It takes you around down and then straight across Kilauea
Speaker 1: Ekey Crater. Uh today just just like you know it
Speaker 1: was twenty years ago. It's this beautiful landscape of black
Speaker 1: cracked volcanic terrain um with with vegetation, uh, you know
Speaker 1: at the top. So the hike itself gives you this
Speaker 1: this wonderful transformation. You get to walk through almost this
Speaker 1: kind of rainforest setting. Uh. Then you you know, you
Speaker 1: go down uh the edge of the crater, and then
Speaker 1: you go into the bottom of the crater where it's
Speaker 1: like another planet. It's it's truly unlike anywhere else I've been,
Speaker 1: just a really unique and beautiful place. One of the
Speaker 1: things I remember that we talked about in our episodes
Speaker 1: on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was about how you
Speaker 1: can track sort of the length of time since the
Speaker 1: last eruption or or major disturbance by how far vegetation
Speaker 1: has re encroached on the on the volcano, and that
Speaker 1: you know, so there was this horrible eruption in what
Speaker 1: was of Vesuvius, and it turned the area around there
Speaker 1: into I'm sure you know, eliminated most life within a
Speaker 1: certain radius from the from the eruption site. But then
Speaker 1: you get to see just like over the years, the
Speaker 1: trees and all the vegetation just pours back in the
Speaker 1: greening of the of the cone. And there's something I
Speaker 1: always found beautiful about that because it's like the trees
Speaker 1: don't know ya, the tree that it's it's always it's
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting in both directions because you see
Speaker 1: footage of of of the volcanic activity that took place
Speaker 1: in this crater back in and you know, you see
Speaker 1: the plant the are just hanging out that they don't
Speaker 1: you know, they don't care. They're like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm still doing Okay, I haven't been the leaves have
Speaker 1: not been burnt from me yet, so you will sue
Speaker 1: me in the foreground. And then likewise, you go back
Speaker 1: there today and you see the you know, the plants
Speaker 1: making their comeback, um, right at the fissure point, right
Speaker 1: at the place where where all of this volcanic activity
Speaker 1: was was happening, where this lava fountain was shooting high
Speaker 1: into the sky. It's beautiful. Yeah. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: if you go to two Ikey Crater today Kilauea Ekey Crater,
Speaker 1: you can you can walk across it. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: all perfectly safe. Um. The lava that was underneath your feet,
Speaker 1: it's all completely solid now, we're thought to be. Probably
Speaker 1: has been completely solid since the I think the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: they say. But but all this was different in the past.
Speaker 1: Hawaii is, of course a young island formed from five
Speaker 1: separate shield volcanoes. If you were to travel back in
Speaker 1: time a million years, the island wouldn't be there at all.
Speaker 1: Travel back to the mid nineteen fifties, and this particular
Speaker 1: crater was there, but it contained an entire forest at
Speaker 1: the bottom of it. Um, and this would have been
Speaker 1: roughly eight hundred feet or two hundred and forty four
Speaker 1: meters down into the crater. But then in nineteen fifty nine, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was this, uh, this eruption event, spectacular eruption from
Speaker 1: a half mile fissure in the crater wall. And then
Speaker 1: in seventeen separate episodes, lava gushed from this event, lasting
Speaker 1: five weeks total, flooding the crater, with lava halfway up
Speaker 1: that eight hundred foot crater wall, so forming the the
Speaker 1: iconic set piece of many wonderful movies and video games,
Speaker 1: especially to the Lake of Lava. That's right, um, And
Speaker 1: there's some stunning images of this uh um I included
Speaker 1: one in our notes here, Joe. These just come from
Speaker 1: the UH from MPs dot gov. You can you can
Speaker 1: look up all sorts of information there about the eruption
Speaker 1: and of Kilauea ekey. Uh. There's some great photography. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also some wonderful footage if you go on YouTube
Speaker 1: and you look for the eruption of Kilawaa nine nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: This is like a wonderfully old school documentary piece about uh,
Speaker 1: this event with all sorts of just glorious unreal footage
Speaker 1: of of of you know, churning lava, spewing lava fountains
Speaker 1: and so forth, which is wonderful to watch either before
Speaker 1: or after you, you know, physically visit the crater. I
Speaker 1: also love the dragnet style department of interior seal that
Speaker 1: appears right at the beginning. Yeah, and the the narrator
Speaker 1: reminds me of the narrator from a lot of the
Speaker 1: old Walt Disney Goofy shorts, where like Goofy is doing
Speaker 1: different sports, so you expect Goofy to show up at
Speaker 1: some point as a volcanologist, but he does not. Gorsh
Speaker 1: that would shore your bones. So anyway, this is a
Speaker 1: spectacular event. A fountain of lava shot her feet into
Speaker 1: the air, dropping gouts of magna at times the size
Speaker 1: of bathtubs. Are described as being the size of bathtubs,
Speaker 1: and the resulting lake a lava was was most impressive.
Speaker 1: I've seen it described in park literature as a quote
Speaker 1: churning lava lake. Eventually enough lava filled the crater that
Speaker 1: the crack was covered up. Then the molten lava drain
Speaker 1: back into the vent at a speed four times faster
Speaker 1: than it filled. Uh. The National Park Service describes this
Speaker 1: occurrence as quote a noisy whirlpool of red hot liquid
Speaker 1: lava and black slabs of solid rock metal. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it didn't get any more metal than this. Um. And
Speaker 1: there's actually footage in that video I mentioned where you
Speaker 1: get to see a shot of a of a lava
Speaker 1: of vortex um and it's it's it's pretty it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: So even though if you visit this particular location today
Speaker 1: you don't get to um, you know, you don't get
Speaker 1: to see this this impressive lake of lava any greater
Speaker 1: you can you can imagine it, like the endscape still
Speaker 1: speaks of it. Uh, the landscape looks like the top
Speaker 1: of of of of a sheet of brownies, you know,
Speaker 1: that is cooled and has therefore um um, you know
Speaker 1: broken as it's kind of collapsed, because that's essentially what
Speaker 1: happened with the with the lake of lava as this uh,
Speaker 1: as the surface drops down and cracks open. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's just a wonderful, dynamic landscape that that not only
Speaker 1: I mean, on one level it feels like a place
Speaker 1: that is not Earth, But on another level, it's like
Speaker 1: it's this wonderful almost holy insight into like just how
Speaker 1: dynamic the planet is and how alive our planet is.
Speaker 1: Now to sort of get to the point of the episode, though,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, the idea of a lake of lava,
Speaker 1: a sea of lava, or you know, certainly think of
Speaker 1: any footage you've you've seen of lava flows when when
Speaker 1: rock becomes more or less like a liquid, we can't
Speaker 1: help but imagine the fantastic possibility these right ships, uh,
Speaker 1: sailing on a sea of lava, boats riding rivers of fire,
Speaker 1: cartoon characters surfing down lava on some sort of fantastic surfboard.
Speaker 1: I think one of the most um you know, obvious
Speaker 1: and perhaps outrageous examples that I can think too comes
Speaker 1: from the first season of The Mandalorian, the Star Wars
Speaker 1: television series, in which we see our heroes ride a
Speaker 1: droid piloted barge down a subterranean canal of lava, which
Speaker 1: I think is also supposed to be part of like
Speaker 1: the sewage system. I'm not sure exactly how this uh,
Speaker 1: how this planet um is really using. It's it's lava here,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a fun it's a fun steam like
Speaker 1: within the fantasy of the show. It's it's really cool.
Speaker 1: It's very you know, it's very hellish. It's kind of like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the river sticks meets lava and and and
Speaker 1: here's here's some sort of a ridiculous droid, you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the back of the barge pushing it along. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I guess this sort of thing happens in
Speaker 1: a lot of video game So I'm thinking, like, surely
Speaker 1: this happens in Mario, right, Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. In
Speaker 1: Super Mario sixty four there's there's at least a couple
Speaker 1: of levels with things floating around in lava, and the
Speaker 1: one for the Super Nintendo I think also when you
Speaker 1: get towards the end, closer to Bowser's palace, there's there's
Speaker 1: stuff floating around in lava a lot. Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: makes sense. You gotta have your you gotta have your
Speaker 1: lava levels, and just about any video game it's bad
Speaker 1: guy stuff. Yeah, it's bad guys, say. I mean, you
Speaker 1: look at other movies where where does the bad guy
Speaker 1: build his layer? And it's in a volcano of course? Right. Um.
Speaker 1: We even talked about one recently on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: There was the Hercules movie where we had we had
Speaker 1: the villain using a hideout in a volcano, and of
Speaker 1: course the final showdown takes place within the volcano over
Speaker 1: a lake of lava. Oh yeah, what was the funny
Speaker 1: thing about the sword there or something? Oh, there were
Speaker 1: multiple funny things going on, but yeah, that they had
Speaker 1: that was where the rainbow sword, well, you know he
Speaker 1: had a rainbow sword, and then there was the sword
Speaker 1: that had that was holding the phoenix in place. There
Speaker 1: was a lot going on in that particular volcanic layer.
Speaker 1: Now I was looking around for other examples of this
Speaker 1: sort of trope. I went to TV tropes dot com,
Speaker 1: which is always a fun place to bruise this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I was reminded that. Um, in The Hobbit
Speaker 1: The Desolation of Smog, this being the second Hobbit film
Speaker 1: from Peter Jackson, there's a scene where Thorn rides a
Speaker 1: wheelbarrow on molten gold, um, you know, sort of surfing
Speaker 1: in it. I I had completely forgotten about this whole
Speaker 1: this whole sequence in the movie where they add this
Speaker 1: bit where they try to defeed the dragon by uh
Speaker 1: covering him with molten gold. Oh, I don't remember that either.
Speaker 1: I did see that movie somehow. Yeah, I just saw
Speaker 1: it last year and I kind of blanked out on
Speaker 1: all this. But then after I read about it, like, okay,
Speaker 1: I vaguely remember that because it's kind of a pretty
Speaker 1: scene where the dragon gets covered in gold, but then
Speaker 1: it cracks the gold and he's free from the gold.
Speaker 1: They ripped that straight out of the end of Alien three,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, what did they cover liquid lad or something? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the lead works and they cover the alien and
Speaker 1: I guess it's lead. It's some kind of molten metal,
Speaker 1: and then you think it's dead, but then it just
Speaker 1: jumps out. Oh yeah, it certainly wasn't in the book.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that in the Hobbit novel at all. No. Well,
Speaker 1: I also don't remember in the Hobbit novel. In the novel,
Speaker 1: did they like ride barrels down the river? Is that
Speaker 1: in there? Yeah, they did ride barrels. I do remember
Speaker 1: the barrel the row where they wrote in barrels. They
Speaker 1: were kind of I think everybody was ever the bilbo
Speaker 1: was like sealed up, and then I think they were all,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty seasick in there. But um, but I
Speaker 1: do remember that happening now. I also read on TV
Speaker 1: Tropes that there's a there's a book in the Culture
Speaker 1: series by an In Banks, so I look to Windward,
Speaker 1: which is what I have, but I haven't read yet.
Speaker 1: It's apparently mentioned that lava rafting is an extreme sport
Speaker 1: that citizens of the Culture participate in on unfinished habitats.
Speaker 1: So it sounds that sounds on brand with the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that people of the culture would do. It's
Speaker 1: a moderately extreme sport. Yeah, yeah. Now. Thing that's worth
Speaker 1: pointing out about about these examples and plenty of other examples,
Speaker 1: is that very often, whether you're playing a video game
Speaker 1: or watching a movie, you find something kind of interesting
Speaker 1: about molten lava in in fiction, molten lava only seems
Speaker 1: dangerous if you come into physical contact with it. So
Speaker 1: if you fall into it or um or it's poured
Speaker 1: over you that sort of resinc you know, into the
Speaker 1: lake of lava, then you're doomed. But if you're just
Speaker 1: standing next to it or in close proximity to it,
Speaker 1: you're fine, which of course would not be the case
Speaker 1: because lava is extremely hot, as we'll get into in
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, that is funny. Is so they treated
Speaker 1: as like it's like Hollywood acid. It's as if it
Speaker 1: only harms you by direct contact chemical reaction. But of course,
Speaker 1: you know, a real lake of lava or river flowing
Speaker 1: molten lava that would be so hot that it is
Speaker 1: superheating the air directly above it. So like that would
Speaker 1: be you know, being above a lake of lava. I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly how hot it would be, but it
Speaker 1: would be to some extent like getting right next to
Speaker 1: a heating element of a broiler. Yeah, yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: pretty hot, and we'll bust out some temperatures here in
Speaker 1: a bit. But it's it's a fire guy from sort
Speaker 1: of the floor is lava scenario, whether you're talking about
Speaker 1: the Netflix game show or just the good old fashioned
Speaker 1: childhood version of this where the floor is now we're
Speaker 1: imagining it is lava, and you can as long as
Speaker 1: you don't touch it, you're fine. If you make the
Speaker 1: jump from from the love seat to the couch without
Speaker 1: touching the floor, then you're fine. I think the more
Speaker 1: if you want to play the same game, but you
Speaker 1: want it to be more accurate, it should be like
Speaker 1: the floor is spikes. There you go, you know, like spikes.
Speaker 1: They don't hurt you unless you actually like get on
Speaker 1: them and put your weight on them. What kind of
Speaker 1: gory kids are playing the floor is spikes? Though, you
Speaker 1: know somehow it's worse. It's worse. I want my kids
Speaker 1: imagining wholesome charring down to the bone, complete just incineration
Speaker 1: of their flesh turning into a puff of carbon that
Speaker 1: goes up into the air. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: weird things about this is that I know that Flora's
Speaker 1: Lava is the most popular of the childhood games. Did
Speaker 1: you play Flora's Lava as a child? Oh? Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean I don't know if most often we said it
Speaker 1: was lava or we said that it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: swamp water with alligators in it or or whatever. But
Speaker 1: we definitely played the games of can't touch the floor,
Speaker 1: got to stay on the furniture because it is some
Speaker 1: kind of hazard. See, we would often do and I
Speaker 1: have no idea where we got this. We would do
Speaker 1: the floor as a never ending pit. And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure where we got the idea of a never ending
Speaker 1: pit from. I'm trying to think back on, well, what
Speaker 1: what would I have been watching at the time, Like
Speaker 1: what movies had a never ending pit in them? And
Speaker 1: I don't really remember what specifically we could be referring
Speaker 1: to their this the version of the game played by
Speaker 1: a philosopher's child, you know, the real threat to them
Speaker 1: is that they'll fall forever and be a left alone
Speaker 1: with their thoughts. Well, I would think about this. Maybe
Speaker 1: it had something, you know, maybe it had something to
Speaker 1: do with the Masters of the Universe movie where there's
Speaker 1: like a never ending it underneath Eternia, or it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be never ending pit. I don't know, even though
Speaker 1: if they describe it as such, or maybe I just
Speaker 1: had this idea of a never ending pit in my
Speaker 1: head and just assume that that's what it was. You know,
Speaker 1: we're really getting on a tangent. But I will say
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the terror of the idea
Speaker 1: of a bottomless pit comes at the idea of people
Speaker 1: imagining the very beginning of a fall, where you're accelerating
Speaker 1: towards terminal velocity, and it's that feeling if you're going
Speaker 1: faster and faster as you fall down, and it's really scary,
Speaker 1: but actually pretty quickly you hit terminal velocity and then
Speaker 1: you would you would basically equalize, so the acceleration stops,
Speaker 1: and then you're just floating in the air forever. So
Speaker 1: it is like a it is like a sensory deprivation
Speaker 1: tank that you just get to stay in for for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. Well, anyway, we should keep
Speaker 1: going on this, but uh, but I thought that this
Speaker 1: all might be a good place to jump off and
Speaker 1: talk about the idea of lava boats, both in terms
Speaker 1: of what we might loosely think of as actual lava boats,
Speaker 1: and we'll break that down a little bit, but we'll
Speaker 1: also even get into some considerations of what could be
Speaker 1: stable if you were just really insistent on on creating
Speaker 1: a human constructed vessel that can withstand a lake of lava. Well,
Speaker 1: how might you go about that? We'll get into that
Speaker 1: as well. Thank thank now, Rob. I know that what
Speaker 1: you have in mind when you say a lava boat
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about, is a boat that can
Speaker 1: float on lava. But my brain went in a different
Speaker 1: direction with this, which was not a boat floating in lava,
Speaker 1: but a boat made of lava or more specifically, of
Speaker 1: a type of volcanic rock known as pummice. Will you
Speaker 1: go on this strange journey with me? Oh? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: when you decided to do a whole episode about lava boats,
Speaker 1: you take what you can get. This is kind of
Speaker 1: this is kind of the This American Life, um uh
Speaker 1: principle of podcasting. You know, you know an American and
Speaker 1: This American Life. You know, they're gonna have a certain
Speaker 1: theme and not every segment of the episode is going
Speaker 1: to really match up one with whatever that theme happens
Speaker 1: to be. But but you know, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: guiding principle for the episode. Well, I think this one
Speaker 1: puts us in places that are that are just as
Speaker 1: awesome and weird as looking at the lake of lava
Speaker 1: and imagining floating on it. Let's do it. Let's go there. Okay.
Speaker 1: So pummice is a very unique and interesting rock which
Speaker 1: has the strange distinction of being so low in density
Speaker 1: that it can often actually float on the surface of water.
Speaker 1: If you you may have observed this yourself, if you
Speaker 1: ever had like a pumice stone in the bathtub or something.
Speaker 1: But if you've never seen this, you can look up
Speaker 1: plenty of video. It exists all over the internet, or
Speaker 1: you can even try it for yourself. You can get
Speaker 1: a handful of pumice stones, throw them into a bathtub
Speaker 1: or you know, tub of water, sink full of water,
Speaker 1: and there's a very good chance that they will float
Speaker 1: like styrofoam, though you may get some duds. I think
Speaker 1: not all pumice stones float, but a lot do. Now
Speaker 1: quite famously, almost all rocks sink in water. So how
Speaker 1: why is this one different? How does this rock end
Speaker 1: up being the one that is able to float on
Speaker 1: the water surface. Well, pummice is a type of igneous rock,
Speaker 1: igneous meaning formed in fire. So this is a rock
Speaker 1: that's usually a byproduct of violent or explosive volcanic eruptions.
Speaker 1: And I say violent or explosive as opposed to the slower,
Speaker 1: more gentle volcanic eruptions that you would typically see producing
Speaker 1: the things we've been talking about, you know, the rivers
Speaker 1: of molten lava on the surface, or the stuff you'd
Speaker 1: see in the famous lava lake footage from Hawaii. A
Speaker 1: lot of the Hawaiian eruptions we we picture are are
Speaker 1: the more gentle types of eruptions, but more explosive or
Speaker 1: violent volcanic eruptions, which those are the ones you'll typically
Speaker 1: see producing more of a kind of uh an ash
Speaker 1: cloud like a column rising into the sky. Very sudden
Speaker 1: eruptions um that these are more likely to release a
Speaker 1: lot of pummice. I think. Another characteristic of pumice forming
Speaker 1: eruptions is that they tend to happen in places where
Speaker 1: the magma is richer in silica, which tends to make
Speaker 1: it more viscous. So you can think about the different
Speaker 1: kinds of magma here. The magma that leads to a
Speaker 1: highly pumus forming eruption is usually going to be thicker
Speaker 1: or stickier magma. But how does it turn into a
Speaker 1: rock that can float? So if you imagine molten rock
Speaker 1: trapped underneath the Earth's surface. This magma down there is
Speaker 1: actually not just composed of melted rock. It also contains
Speaker 1: various fluids in solution, so it might contain dissolved water,
Speaker 1: vapor or c O two sometimes I think sulfur dioxide,
Speaker 1: and these gases are are all kept dissolved in the
Speaker 1: magma because the magma is under very high pressure. It's
Speaker 1: underneath the ground. So you can think about the way
Speaker 1: that the CEO two dissolved in a carbonated beverage stays
Speaker 1: in solution until the can or the bottle is opened,
Speaker 1: and then the release of pressure allows some of that
Speaker 1: CEO too to start coming out of solution, turning back
Speaker 1: into gas, and to start, you know, it starts floating
Speaker 1: to the top of the drink in the form of bubbles.
Speaker 1: That's because you have undone the pressure of the closed container.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that the process leading to the
Speaker 1: formation of pum us during a volcanic eruption is actually
Speaker 1: pretty similar to what happens when you open a carbonated beverage,
Speaker 1: except it involves an extra step, which is sort of
Speaker 1: the freezing of that that frothing foamy product. So the
Speaker 1: process goes like this, You've got magma trapped beneath the
Speaker 1: earth surface, and it's got all this gas dissolved in it,
Speaker 1: and the gas again is kept in solution by high pressure,
Speaker 1: and then there is a volcanic eruption in effect that
Speaker 1: the soda can is opened. The magma rushes to the
Speaker 1: surface where there is rapid de pressure ization. And now
Speaker 1: because the pressure is lower, the dissolved CO two and
Speaker 1: water and other gases they bolt from solution and they
Speaker 1: start wanting to turn turn into gas, forming into bubbles.
Speaker 1: But at the very same time that the pressure is
Speaker 1: relieved and the gas wants to come out of solution
Speaker 1: and turn into bubbles, the magma is also cooling really rapidly.
Speaker 1: In effect, it is freezing the rock in place, and
Speaker 1: so what you end up with is a rock that
Speaker 1: is filled with what geologists called vesicles. These are little
Speaker 1: bubbles and hollows created by the depressurized gases that are
Speaker 1: sort of locked into crystal and form because the rock
Speaker 1: was cooling rapidly at the same time that all these
Speaker 1: bubbles were forming, and what you get is a rock
Speaker 1: that's sort of the rock equivalent of if you took
Speaker 1: the foamy head of a beer and froze it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know this is this is something you can
Speaker 1: actually if you were to pick up various lava rocks,
Speaker 1: you'll find that they are lighter than you might think
Speaker 1: for this very reason because they have all of these
Speaker 1: little little hollow pockets in them. Uh, you know, there
Speaker 1: were essentially, you know, little pockets of gas. Yes, though,
Speaker 1: though of course you can end up with very different
Speaker 1: kinds of lava rock, but a lot of them are
Speaker 1: like this, Yeah, that they they've got this this lower
Speaker 1: density than other types of rock, I think, But it
Speaker 1: depends on a lot of It depends on like the
Speaker 1: composition of the magma, the conditions under which the lava
Speaker 1: cooled once it was on the surface, and things like that.
Speaker 1: So so you can end up with a lot of
Speaker 1: different products. But pummice is one of these, and pummice
Speaker 1: is is very low density. So you can end up
Speaker 1: with this very low density rock that it's that's full
Speaker 1: of these little vesicles that allow it to float on
Speaker 1: the surface of the water. Uh though though I do
Speaker 1: think over time pummice tends to get water logged and
Speaker 1: lose its buoyancy, but that can take a long time.
Speaker 1: So you can get a pummice rock that you know,
Speaker 1: it remains buoyant for for years after after the time
Speaker 1: it's created. But anyway, coming back around to the idea
Speaker 1: of lava boats, I think the really amazing thing about
Speaker 1: the ability of pummice to float is that when large
Speaker 1: masses of pumice are all formed together, they can all
Speaker 1: float together, leading to a phenomenon known as pummice rafts. So,
Speaker 1: as one example of this, I was looking at a
Speaker 1: BBC article from twenty nineteen called vast pummice raft found
Speaker 1: drifting through Pacific Ocean. Yeah, this is really encreidly and
Speaker 1: includes footage that is also quite quite fascinating. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get to that in a second. So in
Speaker 1: August of twenty nineteen, there were some Australian sailors that
Speaker 1: reported the discovery of a gigantic raft of floating pumice
Speaker 1: stones in the Pacific Ocean. This was out on the
Speaker 1: open sea east of Fiji, and the story is that
Speaker 1: it was a couple of Australian sailors who were traveling
Speaker 1: between islands in a catamaran and they accidentally piloted into
Speaker 1: this field of floating stones in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: So I think that they didn't see what they were
Speaker 1: getting into, but then they realized something was up, and
Speaker 1: the the raft of stones apparently slowed the vessel down
Speaker 1: and greatly reduced the wave action on the surface of
Speaker 1: the water. And the sailors investigated. They looked out in
Speaker 1: the moonlight and they shine their spotlight to try to
Speaker 1: see what was going on, and saw this rock field
Speaker 1: in the water that extended as far as they could see.
Speaker 1: And at first the pummice jammed their rudder, so it
Speaker 1: made it hard for them to steer, and they thought
Speaker 1: they might be stuck, but eventually they were able to
Speaker 1: get out of the raft zone. And when you hear
Speaker 1: the dimensions of this thing, and especially when you see
Speaker 1: what a giant pumice raft looks like, you can imagine
Speaker 1: how strange and frightening of an experience this might have been.
Speaker 1: So at the time of the article, it was estimated
Speaker 1: that this pummice raft was about a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: square kilometers or fifty eight square miles, which the article
Speaker 1: says is roughly equivalent to twenty thousand football fields, though
Speaker 1: this is BBC, so I think that is what we
Speaker 1: would we would call soccer not football, well, it's still
Speaker 1: soccer fields and amazing. I was looking up countries by
Speaker 1: land area for comparison, and so this raft would indeed
Speaker 1: be larger than a bunch of the world's smallest countries.
Speaker 1: It's roughly the same area as the British Virgin Islands
Speaker 1: or Liechtenstein. But there are various videos you can look
Speaker 1: up taken from people on boats who have gotten into
Speaker 1: one of these rafts, and by the way, that is
Speaker 1: not recommended. Multiple sources I was looking at were saying
Speaker 1: that sailing into a pumus raft area can be dangerous
Speaker 1: and advising people not to try it. But people had
Speaker 1: taken video of this, and it's almost too weird to describe.
Speaker 1: One video I found that was, you know, relinked all
Speaker 1: over the internet. It looks like the ship is sitting
Speaker 1: in an enormous desert or gravel parking lot, except the
Speaker 1: parking lot extends all the way to the horizon and
Speaker 1: it is undulating with way is like the ocean, because
Speaker 1: it is the ocean. Just absolutely hallucinogenic apocalyptic imagery. If
Speaker 1: you can just imagine a moving, rippling parking lot that
Speaker 1: goes as far as you can see. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's almost it's like they sailed into a tool video
Speaker 1: or something. It's and it does seem to stretch to
Speaker 1: the horizon. It's just yeah, it's like it's it's if
Speaker 1: you can imagine the sun coming up and you find
Speaker 1: yourself in this boat on such a sea. It's like
Speaker 1: something out of a rhyme of the ancient mariner. Oh
Speaker 1: totally like, yeah, you just want to get out of here.
Speaker 1: Unhand me, gray Beard loon um. But according to this
Speaker 1: BBC report, the geoscientists that they consulted said that the
Speaker 1: pumics raft discovered in August nineteen was probably created by
Speaker 1: the eruption of an underwater volcano near Tonga earlier that month,
Speaker 1: and the rocks in this raft very greatly in size.
Speaker 1: A lot of them appear to be sort of marble
Speaker 1: or pebble sized, but others are big, you know, the
Speaker 1: size of basketballs. And another weird thing is that this
Speaker 1: is apparently not even that unusual. The article sites a
Speaker 1: professor named Scott Brian of the Queensland University of Technology
Speaker 1: saying that big pummice rafts like this appear roughly once
Speaker 1: every five years or so in the area due to
Speaker 1: volcanic eruptions, and he interestingly links pumice rafts to historical
Speaker 1: reports of islands in the ocean that people spot on
Speaker 1: one journey but then later say they can't find again
Speaker 1: when they returned to the same place. So possibly some
Speaker 1: of these observations were actually not land but floating rafts
Speaker 1: of low density rock. That's fascinating because we we've discussed
Speaker 1: on past in past episodes about how various mirages and
Speaker 1: optical effects can can lead to the miss identification of
Speaker 1: of islands where there are no islands. But but here's
Speaker 1: another possibility, at least for for some reasons of the
Speaker 1: world right especially in the Pacific, and like these these
Speaker 1: volcanic chain areas. Now, these rafts don't last forever. They
Speaker 1: disintegrate over time. They probably break up into smaller and
Speaker 1: smaller clusters and then end up either sinking or being
Speaker 1: deposited on shores. But yeah, it's a truly stunning active
Speaker 1: planet Earth to to see these things. And I know
Speaker 1: what you're all wondering, And I know you're thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: since we're on the subject of lava boats, you're thinking,
Speaker 1: could a pumice raft function as an actual raft function?
Speaker 1: As a boat for me, Like could I walk on it?
Speaker 1: Could I travel on it? And I think generally like
Speaker 1: that would be the It seems like they're the perfect scenario,
Speaker 1: right right, So from everything I can tell, the answer
Speaker 1: to this is almost always no. I did find a
Speaker 1: few pictures of scientists, uh the sort of appearing to
Speaker 1: trudge around on a pumice raft and what looks like
Speaker 1: very shallow water, but I couldn't tell what was going on.
Speaker 1: There may be some kind of special all condition involved
Speaker 1: in this one scenario. In general, I think most pumus
Speaker 1: rafts will no more support your weight than would a
Speaker 1: floating clump of cheetos on the surface of a swimming pool.
Speaker 1: It's just like you just go right through it, So
Speaker 1: don't try it. I think what would really be necessary
Speaker 1: in order for it to support you would be some
Speaker 1: way for it to like all be held together into
Speaker 1: a single mass. But this is like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like floating packing peanuts. It's just like there's nothing to
Speaker 1: like form a solid floor for you. Yeah, you'd have
Speaker 1: to somehow like like lash it all together, I guess, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And well, even if you were able to do that,
Speaker 1: I might worry that it's not rigid enough, so like
Speaker 1: it could turn into like a death trap, Like you
Speaker 1: just jump into a tarp that's on the water surface
Speaker 1: and it closes around you. Yeah, that sounds that sounds horrifying.
Speaker 1: But but but just because the raft won't support anything
Speaker 1: the size and density of a human being doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that these don't carry other biological passengers. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there is plenty of evidence that pumice rafts do exactly that,
Speaker 1: that they may serve as a fast dispersal mechanism for
Speaker 1: many kinds of smaller life forms, especially marine life spreading
Speaker 1: between different zones of the ocean and UH from coastal
Speaker 1: regions to other coastal regions, sort of island to island,
Speaker 1: for example, I was looking at one paper by Brian
Speaker 1: at All. I think this is actually Scott Bryan, the
Speaker 1: same researcher who was cited in that BBC article, but
Speaker 1: a bunch of other authors published in pl Os one
Speaker 1: in called rapid long distance dispersal by pumice rafting. And
Speaker 1: here the author's note that actually pumice rafts make a
Speaker 1: wonderful agent for transporting a big variety of marine organisms
Speaker 1: from one place to another. UH for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've got these little vesicles in them, all,
Speaker 1: these little hollows and holes and bubbles which make a
Speaker 1: great place for tiny organisms and larvae of larger organisms
Speaker 1: to hide from predators while they're being transported across the water.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they write, quote here we report on a
Speaker 1: significant recent pummice rafting and long distance dispersal event that
Speaker 1: occurred across the Southwest Pacific following the two thousand and
Speaker 1: six explosive eruption of home Reef volcano in Tonga uh
Speaker 1: And they say, according to their their research, they found
Speaker 1: more than eighty species and a substantial biomass underwent a
Speaker 1: more than five thousand kilometer journey in seven to eight
Speaker 1: months by by way of this pummice raft. And so
Speaker 1: that they include like some photos of pieces of pumice
Speaker 1: salvaged from from some of these floating rafts. And it's
Speaker 1: funny how much life that they're just coated with by
Speaker 1: the end. Like, so they have these photos where they
Speaker 1: identify all the different life forms that are clinging to
Speaker 1: these floating rocks. They've got braz Owen's anemones, mollusks, goose, barnacles, corals, cyanobacteria,
Speaker 1: macro algae, uh, some other things. I don't even know
Speaker 1: how to pronounce it. Like these can become sort of
Speaker 1: these these rafts of life going from place to place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are these are impressive, Like all this just a
Speaker 1: created life on the rock. And I found another interesting relationship.
Speaker 1: This one just hypothetical, I mean the previous Like, it
Speaker 1: is clear that these pumice rafts actually do harbor plenty
Speaker 1: of life forms and transport them around in the ocean.
Speaker 1: But another interesting hypothesis is that floating rafts of pumice
Speaker 1: could possibly have been a good environment for the the
Speaker 1: origins of life on Earth. This has argued, for example,
Speaker 1: in a paper I was looking at from the journal
Speaker 1: Astrobiology by Martin D. Brazier. At all Brazier, I think,
Speaker 1: is a professor at Oxford University, and the paper is
Speaker 1: called pummics as a Remarkable substrate for the origin of life.
Speaker 1: And essentially the authors here argue that floating rafts of
Speaker 1: pumice actually meet a lot of the criteria that we
Speaker 1: would expect for the place for life to first evolve
Speaker 1: on Earth. Uh. They give a number of reasons, they say, uh,
Speaker 1: related to the physical properties of pummis itself. So just
Speaker 1: reading from their abstract, they give four reasons. They say, first,
Speaker 1: during eruption, it develops the highest surface area to volume
Speaker 1: ratio for any rock type. Second, it is the only
Speaker 1: known rock type that floats as rafts on the air
Speaker 1: water interface and then becomes beached in the title zone
Speaker 1: for long periods of time. Third, it is exposed to
Speaker 1: an unusually wide variety of conditions, including dehydration. Finally, from
Speaker 1: rafting to burial, it has a remarkable ability to add
Speaker 1: sorb metals, organics, and phosphates, as well as to host
Speaker 1: organic catalysts such as zeolites and titanium oxides. And then
Speaker 1: they say these remarkable properties now deserve to be rigorously
Speaker 1: explored in the laboratory and the early rock record. So
Speaker 1: this would sort of match with some of the other
Speaker 1: interesting ideas we've talked about how um a lot of
Speaker 1: research trus are thinking good candidate areas for the origins
Speaker 1: of life on Earth would be like areas that repeatedly
Speaker 1: got wet and dry in cycles, or areas that were
Speaker 1: right at the interface of water and dry land, because
Speaker 1: that that kind of change like hydration and dehydration of
Speaker 1: of sort of gatherings of organic molecules could have triggered
Speaker 1: some of the chemical evolution that gave rise to you know,
Speaker 1: the organic molecules you're looking for for the origins of
Speaker 1: life and possibly for the structural formations of cells themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if and if this, if this were the case too,
Speaker 1: this would be another example of volcanoes being both you know,
Speaker 1: creator and destroyer. You know, known for their they're very
Speaker 1: destructive properties, but also we have numerous examples of how
Speaker 1: they bring new things into being being be at the
Speaker 1: creation of of whole island chains or uh, you know,
Speaker 1: creating more land on existing volcanic islands, or are just
Speaker 1: creating fertile soil from which you know, all sorts of
Speaker 1: of plants can grow totally. Yeah, So anyway, I like
Speaker 1: this idea. Maybe in the future will come back to
Speaker 1: more more of the relationship or the possible relationship between
Speaker 1: pumus and the origins of life than now. Another example
Speaker 1: of of what we might call lava boats or or
Speaker 1: lava rafts are sometimes referred to as such. Uh, you
Speaker 1: can also find in the in the real world. Um
Speaker 1: and there's there's actually some fabulous footage of this of
Speaker 1: this phenomenon that that came out in in recent years, UM,
Speaker 1: particularly in regard to two thousand eighteen UH volcanic activity
Speaker 1: at Kilauea. UH. What we're talking about here with lava
Speaker 1: both lava rafts are simply a created lava masses that
Speaker 1: move downstream and lava flows. They look sort of like
Speaker 1: rafts or boats, um. And as they move more lava
Speaker 1: can adhere to them, and they accreed into bigger lava balls.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, the official terminology here is not
Speaker 1: lava boats or lava rafts, it is lava balls or
Speaker 1: accretionary balls. But lava boats kind of took social media
Speaker 1: by storm, especially uh in regard to some of the
Speaker 1: footage that was making the rounds, which is quite impressive.
Speaker 1: It looks like this big black sort of star destroyer
Speaker 1: type shape in the lava flow making its way sort
Speaker 1: of towards the camera. You're wanting to recreate your Revenge
Speaker 1: of the Sixth scene, this is exactly what you're looking for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you can you can imagine like a burning skeleton
Speaker 1: like jamming on a metal guitar like this standing on
Speaker 1: top of this thing. It's it's very impressive. It should
Speaker 1: have its own due warrior. Yeah, so this is this
Speaker 1: is awesome footage. You know, definitely try to look it
Speaker 1: up if you're you're interested. And it also can help
Speaker 1: sort of illustrate what sometimes we sometimes encounter with off
Speaker 1: of fields in which an upper rigid crust rests or
Speaker 1: you could even say, floats on a layer of fluid lava.
Speaker 1: But this would be, you know, an even more stark
Speaker 1: example of that of that that situation. Now, from here
Speaker 1: I thought we might move on into the discussion of
Speaker 1: sort of I guess speculative lava boats and you you
Speaker 1: mean boats more literally? Now, yes, Now we're getting into
Speaker 1: the idea of like a a vessel that humans made,
Speaker 1: and in this case, that humans make and then like
Speaker 1: set adrift in a lake of lava and then attempt
Speaker 1: to climb into said vessel and maybe make a voyage
Speaker 1: halfway across the lake take me there, Yeah, perhaps to
Speaker 1: defeat Bowser or something. I don't know. But so, if
Speaker 1: you haven't watched the two thousand sixteen documentary Into the Inferno,
Speaker 1: I think we we we both would highly recommend this.
Speaker 1: It's It was written and directed by Werner Herzog and
Speaker 1: featured British volcanologists Clive Oppenheimer. Both of these gentlemen were
Speaker 1: guests on our show back and I believe this was
Speaker 1: like late in promotion of their documentary Fireball Visitors from
Speaker 1: Darker Worlds. I think UH Into the Inferno was the
Speaker 1: documentary they had done right before this one, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: dealing with with the volcanoes, and Uh, it's it's it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: If you get a chance to watch it, you definitely
Speaker 1: should if you're interested in volcanoes or you know it's
Speaker 1: the work of Werner Herzog. Uh, you know, definitely worth
Speaker 1: picking picking up. UM Into the Inferno features footage of
Speaker 1: volcanologist Maurice and Kadia Kraft Uh French husband and wife duo.
Speaker 1: The Crafts were pioneers in the film documentation of volcanoes,
Speaker 1: notable for there's sometimes very you know, close proximity UM
Speaker 1: filming of lava flows, a lot of very dangerous at
Speaker 1: times looking footage. Uh and Saturday they did both perish
Speaker 1: in a pyroclastic flow on mountains and in Japan. But
Speaker 1: these were the where there was a couple that that
Speaker 1: loved volcanoes and I was reading a little bit about
Speaker 1: them in Fire in the Earth, Fire and the Soul
Speaker 1: The Final Moments of Maurice and Catia Kraft by John Calderazzo,
Speaker 1: published in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment In and
Speaker 1: In this the author notes the following quote, and this
Speaker 1: is speaking of Maurice here he loved to say how
Speaker 1: fantastic it would be to one day build a special boat,
Speaker 1: a kind of titanium arc, to put in on a
Speaker 1: lava flow off. They'd ride down a steaming mountain, flying
Speaker 1: the French flag and waving to all their friends as
Speaker 1: they rode a glowing river into the sea. Well, on
Speaker 1: one hand, that's beautiful, but I'm also amused by the
Speaker 1: the addition of the French flag. Well you know they
Speaker 1: were French, why not. But now I don't think we're
Speaker 1: supposed to to take this claim this lava for France.
Speaker 1: Um legan is. You've got to get on. It's literally
Speaker 1: getting out on the ground floor of new uh of
Speaker 1: of of New Land. Now, I don't think we're meant
Speaker 1: to take this, you know, real seriously, these were two
Speaker 1: individuals who simply loved volcanoes, loved volcanic activity. They lived
Speaker 1: for volcanoes. Uh Caldaraso quotes them is saying that volcanoes
Speaker 1: were like are like blind wild animals that one must observe,
Speaker 1: like a quote mad witch doctor. I think the idea
Speaker 1: is like it's it's got indigestion. You need to watch
Speaker 1: it for a very long time to see what what's
Speaker 1: what's going on with it? Um. They also talked about
Speaker 1: how normal mountains are dead and that they prefer the
Speaker 1: living mountains of volcanoes. When you love volcanoes so much,
Speaker 1: you have to slag normal mountains, right, So, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to, you know, to say that
Speaker 1: they could just be you know, they're being a little poetic,
Speaker 1: like we love volcanoes so much that if we could
Speaker 1: ride a ship on the on the floor of lava,
Speaker 1: we would. But at the same time, it's still a
Speaker 1: terrific vision. Uh you know, this high tech vessel sailing
Speaker 1: across lava. I was looking around. I imagine somebody has
Speaker 1: has explored this more in science fiction, especially like pulp
Speaker 1: science fiction of the old days, Like there has to
Speaker 1: be some story about like a uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: volcanic planet and there being some sort of a volcanic ship.
Speaker 1: I would be shocked if this is not shown, if
Speaker 1: this nes not appeared in uh in Doctor Who at
Speaker 1: some point or another. So so if if you're wondering, well,
Speaker 1: could could this exist? Could we make something like this? Well? Luckily,
Speaker 1: volcanologist and science writer Robin Andrews chimed in on this
Speaker 1: very topic for a seventeen Forbes dot Com article titled
Speaker 1: Here's how to make a boat to sail over deadly
Speaker 1: lava and and he he uses, uh, the dreams of
Speaker 1: the crafts of particularly Maurice Craft is kind of the
Speaker 1: jumping off point for this as well. Okay, what's his
Speaker 1: plan here? Okay? So um, he points out, there's, first
Speaker 1: of all, you've got to take into account those temperatures
Speaker 1: like like first and foremost. They may ignore the temperatures
Speaker 1: in the movies, but you need to be aware of them. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, he writes that lava flows tend to
Speaker 1: run one thousand degrees celsius or one thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 1: thirty two degrees fahrenheit on average, and lava lakes can
Speaker 1: exceed that to a max of of of of somewhere
Speaker 1: around eleven hundred degrees celsius or two thousand and twelve
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. So it's it's really hot. You can if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be anywhere anywhere close to that, for certainly
Speaker 1: for a boat ride. If you're gonna build a boat,
Speaker 1: you have to take into account that, um, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be that hot. You're gonna need physical protection. You're also
Speaker 1: going to need some sort of containment suit or uh,
Speaker 1: you know, oxygen just supply so that you're not just
Speaker 1: breathing in toxic gases that are either going to kill
Speaker 1: you dead out there on the lake or just like
Speaker 1: permanently damage your body. So he says, Okay, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna build this boat, it probably needs to be steel,
Speaker 1: as steel melts at one thousand, three hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or two thousand, five hundred degrees fahrenheit. So
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to be in a boat
Speaker 1: that melts in the lava lake. You want to be
Speaker 1: in a boat that that doesn't quite melt and that
Speaker 1: almost melt. Yes, by the way, so some of this
Speaker 1: may may sound from like familiar territory. Of of course,
Speaker 1: we did an episode on the One Ring from from
Speaker 1: The Lord of the Rings discussing just what sort of
Speaker 1: metal would melt or be destroyed in Mount Doom, but
Speaker 1: would not melt or be destroyed in a medieval forge.
Speaker 1: So if you want more metallurgy, uh, that's that's episode
Speaker 1: to go back to. Okay, all right, but going back
Speaker 1: here to the work of Robin Andrews. Next, he points
Speaker 1: out that you need an interior lining in that boat
Speaker 1: that's non flammable and also highly heat resistant. Otherwise the
Speaker 1: boat which is simply cook you. I think you your
Speaker 1: your skin would stick to it, which is which sounds horrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even if the boat didn't melt, it would essentially turn
Speaker 1: into a frying pan, right in a frying pan on
Speaker 1: the heating element. Yes, So he writes the following about
Speaker 1: possible lining options here quote, there are a variety of
Speaker 1: plastics you can use, and if you aren't worried about
Speaker 1: fire started by rogue lava blebs, you could even use
Speaker 1: wet wood. If you want to be particularly high tech,
Speaker 1: grab some halfnium carbide with a melting point of around
Speaker 1: four thousand degrees celsius seven thousand two fahrenheit and very
Speaker 1: high thermal resistance. These would ensure you don't get a
Speaker 1: little sizzled inside your boat. You could even use halfneum
Speaker 1: carbide to make the boat, but seeing as it's unfathomably expensive,
Speaker 1: steals a far cheaper option here, just looked it up.
Speaker 1: Half ne um carbide is said to have a melting
Speaker 1: point of thirty degrees celsius, So you're really good to
Speaker 1: go there. Yeah, And he also mentioned that you'd probably
Speaker 1: need to paddle with similar material. You know you'd have
Speaker 1: you'd have to make your paddle or your your your
Speaker 1: pole out of that as well. I guess it depends
Speaker 1: on how ambitious you are. You're just happy to be
Speaker 1: floating um on or down the you know, the lake
Speaker 1: or flow of lava, or do you do you feel
Speaker 1: like you need to actually build up speed? Where do
Speaker 1: you end up? Does this mean you just ride this
Speaker 1: thing until it dumps you out into the ocean? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends. I mean, if you're just in
Speaker 1: a lake of of of lava, like in a crater
Speaker 1: like um Kilauea ekey, then you might just be floating
Speaker 1: out there until the like the vortex sucks you down
Speaker 1: or until or if it's if there's a fountain of
Speaker 1: of lava going on, until like that burns you up
Speaker 1: or or drops a bunch of bathtub sized blobs of
Speaker 1: lava on top of you. Or yeah, it's a flow
Speaker 1: going into the ocean. Maybe you ride that out, but
Speaker 1: that's gonna be there. There's gonna be some rapids in there. Well.
Speaker 1: Another hazard we haven't even mentioned yet is that if
Speaker 1: you actually do ride this all the way down to
Speaker 1: the water's edge and then you plunge into the water
Speaker 1: where the molten lava is hitting the water, Uh, you
Speaker 1: need to be careful there because another totally separate thing
Speaker 1: I was reading about that we haven't even gotten to
Speaker 1: yet is this stuff called lace. If you you've read
Speaker 1: about this rub the so called lava haze, no, no,
Speaker 1: tell me about the lace. Well, unfortunately this has actually
Speaker 1: led to at least a few human deaths in the past.
Speaker 1: But it's this type of steam or haze or mist
Speaker 1: that billows up when molten lava falls into the ocean.
Speaker 1: I think I was reading about it directly in connection
Speaker 1: with Kilauea. Actually it's dangerous for multiple reasons. Number One
Speaker 1: that these clouds, because of some kind of chemical reaction
Speaker 1: that happens, the clouds are full of hydrochloric acid. It's
Speaker 1: like stomach acid, which you don't want getting into your lungs.
Speaker 1: But I think it may also have, like other types
Speaker 1: of highly corrosive acids, hydrofluoric acid of course, lots of
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. But then the another part is that it's
Speaker 1: full of tons of extremely tiny little shards of volcanic
Speaker 1: glass that get carried up in the steam. So basically,
Speaker 1: you don't want to get anywhere near this stuff. If
Speaker 1: you ever see lava dripping into the water, it's beautiful
Speaker 1: to observe from a distance, but you don't want to
Speaker 1: go near it. So if you're listening to this episode
Speaker 1: and you're you're if you're thinking, well, I could do this,
Speaker 1: I could pull this up. No, do not, Please do
Speaker 1: not attempt this at home, or or or in Volcano
Speaker 1: National Park, or anywhere near any volcano you have you
Speaker 1: happen to be visiting. Please keep a respectful distance. And
Speaker 1: that's just respecting yourself, right right though, certainly, if you
Speaker 1: have a chance to to to get within a safe
Speaker 1: distance of any kind of volcano activity, to visit Volcano
Speaker 1: National Park or really any any volcanic location, definitely check
Speaker 1: it out. I mean, these these are the living mountains.
Speaker 1: These are these are amazing places. And even if you're
Speaker 1: visiting a place that's not quite alive anymore, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of recently dead mountains like that alone haunted by
Speaker 1: a particular energy that you just don't necessarily encounter it
Speaker 1: uh in in other parts of the world totally. But
Speaker 1: obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Um,
Speaker 1: have you visited some volcanic locations and you have a
Speaker 1: aditional sightings you would like to share if you seen anything, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like these these the floating pummis or these
Speaker 1: uh or these these lava balls. Uh, let us know,
Speaker 1: you know, what are some volcanic terrains that you've explored,
Speaker 1: and likewise, what are some volcanic situations you've explored in
Speaker 1: fantasy and fiction that match up with what we've been
Speaker 1: talking about. What are we missing out there in the
Speaker 1: world the why the wide wild world of sci fi exploration?
Speaker 1: If there are some some tremendous scenes of ships sailing
Speaker 1: on a sea of lava and so forth, right in
Speaker 1: and let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, to tell us
Speaker 1: about your lavabout fantasies, or just to say hello. You
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
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