Speaker 1: My La. Welcome to Stuff 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: rivers 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 weekend. 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 hike that I'd done twenty years ago
Speaker 1: and I always wanted to do again. I always wanted
Speaker 1: to you know, be able to bring my my wife
Speaker 1: on the trip, and then you know, bring my son
Speaker 1: on the trip. And Uh, if anyone out there is
Speaker 1: considering going to the island of Hawaii, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: this particular walk. It's it's very popular. It's not not
Speaker 1: a trade secret or anything. It's a three point three
Speaker 1: mile loop. It takes you around down and then straight
Speaker 1: across Kilauea Ekey Crater. Uh. Today it just just like
Speaker 1: you know it was twenty years ago. It's this beautiful
Speaker 1: landscape of black cracked volcanic terrain, um with with vegetation. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know at the top. So the hike itself gives
Speaker 1: you this this wonderful transformation. You get to walk through
Speaker 1: almost this kind of rainforest setting. Uh. Then you you know,
Speaker 1: you go down uh the edge of the crater, and
Speaker 1: then you go into the bottom of the crater, where
Speaker 1: it's like another planet. It's it's truly unlike anywhere else
Speaker 1: I've been, just a really unique and beautiful place. One
Speaker 1: of the things I remember that we talked about in
Speaker 1: our episodes on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was about
Speaker 1: how you can track sort of the length of time
Speaker 1: since the last eruption or or major disturbance by how
Speaker 1: far vegetation has re encroached on the on the volcano
Speaker 1: and that you know, so there's this horrible eruption in
Speaker 1: what was of Vesuvius, and it turned the area there
Speaker 1: and too, I'm sure you know, eliminated most life within
Speaker 1: a certain radius from the uh from the eruption site.
Speaker 1: But then you get to see just like over the years,
Speaker 1: the trees and all the vegetation just pours back in
Speaker 1: the greening of the of the cone. And and there's
Speaker 1: something I always found beautiful about that because it's like
Speaker 1: the trees don't know, yeah, the tree that it's it's
Speaker 1: always it's it's kind of interesting in both directions. Because
Speaker 1: you see footage of of of the volcanic activity that
Speaker 1: took place in this crater back in nine and you know,
Speaker 1: you see the plant the plants are just hanging out
Speaker 1: that they don't you know, they don't care. They're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm still doing Okay, I haven't been
Speaker 1: the leaves have not been burnt from me yet, so
Speaker 1: you will sue me in the foreground. And then likewise,
Speaker 1: you go back there today and you see the you know,
Speaker 1: the plants making their comeback. Um, right at the fissure point,
Speaker 1: right at the place where where all of this volcanic
Speaker 1: activity was was happening, where this lava fountain was shooting
Speaker 1: high into the sky. It's beautiful. Yeah. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: if you go to to 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 um 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 d 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: of Kilauea ekey. UH. There's some great photography. UH. There's
Speaker 1: also some wonderful footage If you go on YouTube and
Speaker 1: you look for the eruption of kilawaa n nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: This is like a wonderfully old school documentary piece about
Speaker 1: uh this event with all sorts of just glorious unreal
Speaker 1: footage of of of you know, churning lava, spewing lava
Speaker 1: fountains and so for work, which is wonderful to watch
Speaker 1: either before or after you, you know, physically visit the crater.
Speaker 1: I also love the dragnet style department of interior seal
Speaker 1: that appears right at the beginning. Yeah, and 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 nine 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 like 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. The National Park Service describes this occurrence
Speaker 1: as quote a noisy whirlpool of red hot liquid lava
Speaker 1: 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 landscape 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 collapse, 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 to sort of get to the point of
Speaker 1: the episode, though, I guess, yeah, the idea of a
Speaker 1: lake of lava, a sea of lava, or you know,
Speaker 1: certainly think of any footage you've you've seen of lava
Speaker 1: flows when when rock becomes more or less like a liquid,
Speaker 1: we can't help but imagine the fantastic possibilities, 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 large 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 steement 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,
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.
Speaker 1: Um And then I guess this sort of thing happens
Speaker 1: in a lot of video games. 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 stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bad, guys said, Yeah, I mean, you look at
Speaker 1: other movies where where does the bad guy build his
Speaker 1: layer and it's in a volcano of course, right. Um.
Speaker 1: We even talked about one recently on the Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: There was the Hercules movie where we had we had
Speaker 1: the villain uh using a hideout in a volcano, and
Speaker 1: of course the final showdown takes place within the volcano
Speaker 1: over a lake of lava. Oh yeah, what was the
Speaker 1: funny thing about the sword there or something? Oh, there
Speaker 1: were multiple funny things going on, but yeah, that they
Speaker 1: had that was where the rainbow sword. You know, he
Speaker 1: had a rainbow sword, and then there was the sword
Speaker 1: that could 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 bruse 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 sort of surfing in it.
Speaker 1: I I had completely forgotten about this whole this whole
Speaker 1: sequence in the movie where they add this bit where
Speaker 1: they try to defeed the dragon by um covering him
Speaker 1: with molten gold. Oh, I don't remember that either. I
Speaker 1: did see that movie somehow. Yeah, I just saw it
Speaker 1: last year, and I kind of blanked out on all this,
Speaker 1: But then after I read about it, like, okay, I
Speaker 1: vaguely remember that because it's kind of a pretty scene
Speaker 1: where the dragon gets covered in gold, but then it
Speaker 1: cracks the gold and he's free from the gold. They
Speaker 1: ripped that straight out of the end of Alien three,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, what do they cover liquid lead or something? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the lead works and they covered 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 rode in barrels. They
Speaker 1: were kind of I think everybody was corrected everybody, but
Speaker 1: the Bilbo was like sealed up and then I think
Speaker 1: they were all, you know, pretty seasick in there. But
Speaker 1: um but I do remember that happening now. I also
Speaker 1: read on TV Tropes that there's a there's a book
Speaker 1: in the Culture series by n In Banks that Look
Speaker 1: to Windward, which is what I have, but I haven't
Speaker 1: read yet. It's apparently mentioned that lava rafting is an
Speaker 1: extreme sport that citizens of the Culture participate in on
Speaker 1: unfinished habitats. So it sounds that sounds on brand with
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that people of the culture would do.
Speaker 1: It's a moderately extreme sport. Yeah, yeah. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: that's worth pointing out about about these examples and plenty
Speaker 1: of other examples, is that very often, whether you're playing
Speaker 1: a video game or watching a movie, you find something
Speaker 1: kind of interesting about molten lava. In in fiction, molten
Speaker 1: lava only seems dangerous if you come into physical contact
Speaker 1: with it. So if you fall into it or um
Speaker 1: or it's poured over you that sort of resinc you know,
Speaker 1: into the lake of lava, then you're oomed. But if
Speaker 1: you're just standing next to it or in close proximity
Speaker 1: to it, you're fine, which of course would not be
Speaker 1: the case because lava is extremely hot, as we'll get
Speaker 1: into in this episode. Yeah, that is funny. So they
Speaker 1: treated as like it's like Hollywood acid. It's as if
Speaker 1: it only harms you by direct contact chemical reaction. But
Speaker 1: of course, you know, a real lake of lava or
Speaker 1: river of flowing molten lava that would be so hot
Speaker 1: that it is superheating the air directly above it. So
Speaker 1: like that would be, you know, being above a lake
Speaker 1: of lava. I don't know exactly how hot it would be,
Speaker 1: but it would be to some extent like getting right
Speaker 1: next to a heating element of a broiler. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking pretty hot, and we'll bust out some temperatures
Speaker 1: here in a bit, but it's it's a fire chive
Speaker 1: from sort of the floor is lava scenario, whether you're
Speaker 1: talking about the Netflix game show or just the the
Speaker 1: good old fashioned childhood version of this where the floor
Speaker 1: is now we're imagining it is lava, and you can
Speaker 1: as long as you don't touch it, you're mine. If
Speaker 1: you make the jump from from the love seat to
Speaker 1: the couch without touching the floor. Then you're fine. I
Speaker 1: think the more act. If you want to play the
Speaker 1: same game, but you want it to be more accurate,
Speaker 1: it should be like the floor is spikes. There you go,
Speaker 1: You know, like spikes. They don't hurt you unless you
Speaker 1: actually like get on them and put your weight on them.
Speaker 1: What kind of gory kids are playing the floor is spikes? Though,
Speaker 1: you know somehow it's worse. It's worse. I want my
Speaker 1: kids imagining wholesome charring down to the bone, complete just
Speaker 1: incineration of their flesh turning into a puff of carbon
Speaker 1: that goes up into the air. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the weird things about this is that I know that
Speaker 1: Flora's Lava is the most popular of the childhood games.
Speaker 1: Did you play Flora's Lava as a child? Oh? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know if most often we said
Speaker 1: it was lava or we said that it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, swamp water with alligators in it, or or whatever.
Speaker 1: But 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 an 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 pit underneath Eternea, or it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a never ending pit. I don't know even
Speaker 1: though if they describe it as such, or maybe I
Speaker 1: just had this idea of a never ending pit in
Speaker 1: my head and just assume that that's what it was.
Speaker 1: You know, we're really getting on a tangent. But I
Speaker 1: will say I think a lot of the terror of
Speaker 1: the idea of a bottomless pit comes at the idea
Speaker 1: of people imagining the very beginning of a fall where
Speaker 1: you're accelerating towards terminal velocity, and it's that feeling of
Speaker 1: you're going faster and faster as you followed out and
Speaker 1: it's really scary. But actually, pretty quickly you hit terminal
Speaker 1: velocity and then you would you would basically equalize, so
Speaker 1: the acceleration stops, and then you're just floating in the
Speaker 1: air forever. So it is like a it is like
Speaker 1: a sensory deprivation tank that you just get to stay
Speaker 1: in for for the rest of your life. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: we could keep going on this, but uh, but I
Speaker 1: thought that this all might be a good place to
Speaker 1: jump off and talk about the idea of lava boats,
Speaker 1: both in terms of what we might loosely think of
Speaker 1: as actual lava boats, and we'll break that down a
Speaker 1: little bit, but we'll also even get into some considerations
Speaker 1: of what could be possible if you were just really
Speaker 1: insistent on on creating a human constructed vessel that can
Speaker 1: withstand a lake of lava. Well, how might you go
Speaker 1: about that? We'll get into that as well. Thank now, Rob,
Speaker 1: I know that what you have in mind when you
Speaker 1: say a lava boat is what we're talking about is
Speaker 1: a boat that can float on lava. But my brain
Speaker 1: went in a different direction with this, which was not
Speaker 1: a boat floating in lava, but a boat made of lava,
Speaker 1: or more specifically, of a type of volcanic rock known
Speaker 1: as pummice. Will you go on this strange journey with me?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, when you decided to do a
Speaker 1: whole episode about lava boats, you take what you can get.
Speaker 1: This is kind of this is kind of the This
Speaker 1: American Life, um uh principle of podcasting. You know, you
Speaker 1: know an American and This American Life. You know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna have a certain theme, and not every segment of
Speaker 1: the episode is going to really match up with whatever
Speaker 1: that theme happens to be. But but you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a guiding principle for the episode. Well, I
Speaker 1: think this one puts us in places that are that
Speaker 1: are just as awesome and weird as looking at the
Speaker 1: lake of lava and imagining floating on it. Let's do it,
Speaker 1: Let's go there. Okay. So pummis is a very unique
Speaker 1: and interesting rock which has the strange distinction of being
Speaker 1: so low in density that it can often actually float
Speaker 1: on the surface of water. If you you may have
Speaker 1: observed this yourself, if you ever had like a pumice
Speaker 1: stone in the bathtub or something. But if you've never
Speaker 1: seen this, you can look up plenty of video. It
Speaker 1: exists all over the internet. Or you can even try
Speaker 1: it for yourself. You can get a handful of pumice stones,
Speaker 1: throw them into a bathtub or you know, tub of water,
Speaker 1: sink full of water, and there's a very good chance
Speaker 1: that they will float like styrofoam, though you may get
Speaker 1: some duds. I think not all pumice stones float, but
Speaker 1: a lot do. Now quite famously, almost all rocks sink
Speaker 1: in water. So how why is this one different? How
Speaker 1: does this rock end up being the one that is
Speaker 1: able to float on the water surface. Well, pummice is
Speaker 1: a type of igneous rock, igneous meaning formed in fire.
Speaker 1: So this is a rock that's usually a byproduct of
Speaker 1: violent or explosive volcanic eruptions. And I say violent or
Speaker 1: explosive as opposed to the slower, more gentle volcanic eruptions
Speaker 1: that you would typically see producing the things we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, the rivers of molten lava on
Speaker 1: the surface, or the stuff you'd see in the famous
Speaker 1: lava lake footage from Hawaii. A lot of the Hawaiian
Speaker 1: eruptions we picture are are the more gentle types of eruptions,
Speaker 1: but more explosive or violent volcanic eruptions, which those are
Speaker 1: the ones you'll typically see producing more of a kind
Speaker 1: of uh an ash cloud like a column rising into
Speaker 1: the sky. Very sudden eruptions um these are more likely
Speaker 1: to release a lot of pummice. I think. Another characteristic
Speaker 1: of pumice forming eruptions is that they tend to happen
Speaker 1: in places where the magma is richer in silica, which
Speaker 1: tends to make it more viscous. So you can think
Speaker 1: about the different kinds of magma here. The magma that
Speaker 1: leads to a highly pummus forming eruption is usually going
Speaker 1: to be thicker or stickier magma. But how does it
Speaker 1: turn into a rock that can float? So if you
Speaker 1: imagine molten rock trapped underneath the Earth's surface, this magma
Speaker 1: down there is actually not just composed of melted rock.
Speaker 1: It also contains various fluids in solution, so it might
Speaker 1: contain dissolved water, vapor or c O two sometimes I
Speaker 1: think sulfur dioxide, and these gases are are all kept
Speaker 1: dissolved in the magma because the magma is under very
Speaker 1: high pressure. It's underneath the ground. So you can think
Speaker 1: about the way that the CEO two dissolved in a
Speaker 1: carbonated beverage stays in solution until the can or the
Speaker 1: bottle is opened, and then the release of pressure allows
Speaker 1: some of that CEO too to start coming out of solution,
Speaker 1: turning back into gas, and to start, you know, it
Speaker 1: starts floating to the top of the drink in the
Speaker 1: form of bubbles. That's because you have undone the pressure
Speaker 1: of the closed container. And it turns out that the
Speaker 1: process leading to the formation of pumus during a volcanic
Speaker 1: eruption is actually pretty similar to what happens when you
Speaker 1: open a carbonated beverage, except it involves an extra step,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the freezing of that that frothing
Speaker 1: foamy product. So the process goes like this. You've got
Speaker 1: magma trapped beneath the earth surface and it's got all
Speaker 1: this gas dissolved in it, and the gas again is
Speaker 1: kept in solution by high pressure, and then there is
Speaker 1: a volcanic eruption in effect that the soda can is opened,
Speaker 1: the magma rushes to the surface where there is rapid
Speaker 1: depressurre ization. And now because the pressure is lower, the
Speaker 1: dissolved CO two and water and other gases they bolt
Speaker 1: from solution and they start wanting to turn into gas,
Speaker 1: forming into bubbles. But at the very same time that
Speaker 1: the pressure is relieved and the gas wants to come
Speaker 1: out of solution and turn into bubbles, the magma is
Speaker 1: also cooling really rapidly. In effect, it is freezing the
Speaker 1: rock in place, and so what you end up with
Speaker 1: is a rock that is filled with what geologists called vesicles.
Speaker 1: These are little bubbles and hollows created by the deep
Speaker 1: pre surized to gases that are sort of locked into
Speaker 1: crystal and form because the rock was cooling rapidly at
Speaker 1: the same time that all these bubbles were forming. And
Speaker 1: what you get is a rock that's sort of the
Speaker 1: rock equivalent of if you took the foamy head of
Speaker 1: a beer and froze it. Yeah, and you know this
Speaker 1: is this is something you can actually if you were
Speaker 1: to pick up various lava rocks, you'll find that they
Speaker 1: are lighter than you might think for this very reason,
Speaker 1: because they have all of these little little hollow pockets
Speaker 1: in them. Uh, you know, there were essentially you know,
Speaker 1: little pockets of gas. Yes, though though of course you
Speaker 1: can end up with very different kinds of lava rock,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them are like this, yeah, that
Speaker 1: they they've got this this lower density than other types
Speaker 1: of rock, I think, But it depends on a lot
Speaker 1: of It depends on like the composition of the magma,
Speaker 1: the conditions under which the lava cooled once it was
Speaker 1: on the surface, and things like that. So so you
Speaker 1: can end up with a lot of different products. But
Speaker 1: pummus is one of these, and pummice is is very
Speaker 1: low density, so you can end up with this very
Speaker 1: low density rock that it's that's full of these little
Speaker 1: vesicles that allow it to float on the surface of
Speaker 1: the water. Uh though though I do think over time
Speaker 1: pummice tends to get water logged and lose its buoyancy,
Speaker 1: but that can take a long time, so you can
Speaker 1: get a pummice rock that you know, it remains buoyant
Speaker 1: for for years after after the time it's created. But anyway,
Speaker 1: coming back around to the idea of lava boats, I
Speaker 1: think the really amazing thing about the ability of pummice
Speaker 1: to float is that when large masses of pummice are
Speaker 1: all formed together, they can all float together, leading to
Speaker 1: a phenomenon known as pummice rafts. So as one example
Speaker 1: of this, I was looking at a BBC article from
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen called vast pummice raft found drifting through Pacific Ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really incredibly includes footage that is also quite
Speaker 1: quite fascinating. Oh yeah, well we'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a second. So in August of twenty nineteen, there were
Speaker 1: some Australian sailors that reported the discovery of a gigantic
Speaker 1: raft of floating pummice stones in the Pacific Ocean. This
Speaker 1: was out on the open sea east of Fiji, and
Speaker 1: the story is that it was a couple of Australian
Speaker 1: sailors who were traveling between islands in a catamaran and
Speaker 1: they accidentally piloted into this field of floating stones in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night. So I think that they
Speaker 1: didn't see what they were getting into, but then they
Speaker 1: realized something was up and the raft of stones apparently
Speaker 1: slowed the vessel down and greatly reduced the wave action
Speaker 1: on the surface of the water. And the sailors investigated.
Speaker 1: They looked out in the moonlight and they shine their
Speaker 1: spotlight to try to see what was going on, and
Speaker 1: saw this rock field in the water that extended as
Speaker 1: far as they could see. And at first the pummice
Speaker 1: jammed their rudder, so it made it hard for them
Speaker 1: to steer, and they thought there might be stuck. But
Speaker 1: eventually they were able to get out of the raft zone.
Speaker 1: And when you hear the dimensions of this thing, and
Speaker 1: especially when you see what a giant pumice raft looks like,
Speaker 1: you can imagine how strange and frightening of an experience
Speaker 1: this might have been. So at the time of the article,
Speaker 1: it was estimated that this pumice raft was about a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty square kilometers or fifty eight square miles,
Speaker 1: which the article says is roughly equivalent to twenty thousand
Speaker 1: football fields. Though this is BBC, so I think that
Speaker 1: is what we would we would call soccer, not football.
Speaker 1: It's still soccer fields and amazing. I was looking up
Speaker 1: countries by land area for comparison, and so this raft
Speaker 1: would indeed be larger than a bunch of the world's
Speaker 1: smallest countries. It's roughly the same area as the British
Speaker 1: Virgin Islands or Lichtenstein, but There are various videos you
Speaker 1: can look up taken from people on boats who have
Speaker 1: gotten into one of these rafts, and by the way,
Speaker 1: that is not recommended. Multiple sources I was looking at
Speaker 1: were saying that sailing into a pumus raft area can
Speaker 1: be dangerous and advising people not to try it. But
Speaker 1: people had taken video of this, and it's almost too
Speaker 1: weird to describe. One video I found that was, you know,
Speaker 1: relinked all over the internet. It looks like the ship
Speaker 1: is sitting in an enormous desert or gravel parking lot,
Speaker 1: except the parking lot extends all the way to the
Speaker 1: horizon and it is undulating with waves like the ocean,
Speaker 1: because it is the ocean. Just absolutely hallucinogenic apocalyptic imagery.
Speaker 1: If you can just imagine a moving, rippling parking lot
Speaker 1: that 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: pumice 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 sitesay professor
Speaker 1: named Scott Brian of the Queensland University of Technology saying
Speaker 1: that big pummice rafts like this appear roughly once every
Speaker 1: five years or so in the area due to volcanic eruptions,
Speaker 1: and he interestingly links pumice rafts to historical reports of
Speaker 1: islands in the ocean that people spot on one journey,
Speaker 1: but then later say they can't find again when they
Speaker 1: returned to the same place, So possibly some of these
Speaker 1: observations were actually not land but floating rafts of low
Speaker 1: density rock. That's fascinating because we we've discussed on past
Speaker 1: in past episodes about how various mirages and optical effects
Speaker 1: can can lead to the mis identification of of islands
Speaker 1: where there are no islands. But but here's another possibility,
Speaker 1: at least for for some reasons of the world, right,
Speaker 1: especially in the Pacific, and like these these volcanic chain areas. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: these rafts don't last forever. They disintegrate over time. They
Speaker 1: probably break up into smaller and smaller clusters and then
Speaker 1: end up either sinking or being deposited on shores. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a truly stunning active planet Earth to to see
Speaker 1: these things. And I know what you're all wondering. And
Speaker 1: I know you're thinking, Okay, since we're on the subject
Speaker 1: of lava boats, you're thinking, could a pumice raft function
Speaker 1: as an actual raft function as a boat? For me? Like?
Speaker 1: Could I walk on it? Could I travel on it?
Speaker 1: And I think generally like that would be the It
Speaker 1: seems like they're the perfect scenario, right right, So from
Speaker 1: everything I can tell, the answer to this is almost
Speaker 1: always no. I did find a few pictures of scientists,
Speaker 1: uh the sort of appearing to trudge around on a
Speaker 1: pumice raft and what looks like very shallow water, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell what was going on. There may be
Speaker 1: some kind of special condition involved in this one scenario.
Speaker 1: In general, I think most pumice rafts will no more
Speaker 1: support your weight than would a floating clump of cheetos
Speaker 1: on the surface of a swimming pool. It's just like
Speaker 1: you just go right through it, so don't try it.
Speaker 1: I think what would really be necessary in order for
Speaker 1: it to support you would be some way for it
Speaker 1: to like all be held together into a single mass.
Speaker 1: But this is like, you know, it's like floating packing peanuts.
Speaker 1: It's just like there's nothing to like form a solid
Speaker 1: floor for you. M yeah, you'd have to somehow like
Speaker 1: like lash it all together. I guess, right. Yeah, And well,
Speaker 1: even if you were able to do that, I might
Speaker 1: worry that it's not rigid enough, so like it could
Speaker 1: turn into like a death trap, like you just jump
Speaker 1: into a tarp that's on the water surface and it
Speaker 1: closes around you. Yeah that sounds that sounds horrifying. But
Speaker 1: but but just because the raft won't support anything the
Speaker 1: size and density of a human being doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: these don't carry other biological passengers. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: 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 Bran, the
Speaker 1: same research u who was cited in that BBC article,
Speaker 1: but a bunch of other authors published in pl Os
Speaker 1: one in called rapid long distance dispersal by pumice rafting.
Speaker 1: And here the authors note that actually pumice rafts make
Speaker 1: a wonderful agent for transporting a big variety of marine
Speaker 1: organisms from one place to another, uh for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. 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 of larger
Speaker 1: organisms to hide from predators while they're being transported across
Speaker 1: the water. But anyway, they write, quote here we report
Speaker 1: on a significant recent pumice rafting and long distance dispersal
Speaker 1: event that occurred across the southwest Pacific following the two
Speaker 1: thousand 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 ease and a substantial biomass underwent
Speaker 1: a more than five thousand kilometer journey in seven to
Speaker 1: eight months by by way of this pumice raft. And
Speaker 1: so that they include like some photos of pieces of
Speaker 1: pumice salvage from from some of these floating rafts. And
Speaker 1: it's funny how much life that they're just coated with
Speaker 1: by the end. Like, so they have these photos where
Speaker 1: they identify all the different life forms that are clinging
Speaker 1: to these floating rocks. They've got braz Owen's anemones, mollusks, goose, barnacles, corals, cyanobacteria, macroalgae, uh,
Speaker 1: some other things. I don't even know how to pronounce it.
Speaker 1: Like these can become sort of these these rafts of
Speaker 1: life going from place to place. Yeah, these are these
Speaker 1: are impressive, Like all this just acreated life on the rock.
Speaker 1: And I found another interesting relationship. This one just hypothetical,
Speaker 1: I mean the previous like, it is clear that these
Speaker 1: pumice rafts actually do harbor plenty of life forms and
Speaker 1: transport them around in the ocean. But another interesting hypothesis
Speaker 1: is that floating rafts of pumice could possibly have been
Speaker 1: a good environment for the the origins of life on Earth.
Speaker 1: This has argued, for example, in a paper I was
Speaker 1: looking at from the journal Astrobiology by Martin D. Brazier.
Speaker 1: At All Brazier, I think, is a professor at Oxford University,
Speaker 1: and the paper is called pummics as a Remarkable substrate
Speaker 1: for the Origin of life, And essentially the authors here
Speaker 1: argue that floating rafts of pumice actually meet a lot
Speaker 1: of the criteria that we would expect for the place
Speaker 1: for life to first evolve on Earth. Uh. They give
Speaker 1: a number of reasons, they say, uh related to the
Speaker 1: physical properties of pummice itself. So just reading from their abstract,
Speaker 1: they give four reasons. They say, first, during eruption, it
Speaker 1: develops the highest surface area to volume ratio for any
Speaker 1: rock type. Second, it is the only known rock type
Speaker 1: that floats as rafts on the air water inner face
Speaker 1: and then becomes beached in the title zone for long
Speaker 1: periods of time. Third, it is exposed to an unusually
Speaker 1: wide variety of conditions, including dehydration. Finally, from rafting to burial,
Speaker 1: it has a remarkable ability to add sorb metals, organics,
Speaker 1: and phosphates, as well as to host organic catalysts such
Speaker 1: as zeolites and titanium oxides. And then they say these
Speaker 1: remarkable properties now deserve to be rigorously explored in the
Speaker 1: laboratory and the early rock record. So this would sort
Speaker 1: of match with some of the other interesting ideas we've
Speaker 1: talked about how um a lot of researchers are thinking
Speaker 1: good candidate areas for the origins of life on Earth
Speaker 1: would be like areas that repeatedly got wet and dry
Speaker 1: in cycles, or areas that were right at the interface
Speaker 1: of water and dry land, because that that kind of change,
Speaker 1: like hydration and dehydration of of sort of gatherings of
Speaker 1: organic molecules could have triggered some of the chemical evolution
Speaker 1: that gave rise to you know, the organic molecules you're
Speaker 1: looking for for the origins of life and possibly for
Speaker 1: the structural formations of cells themselves. Yeah, and if and
Speaker 1: if this, if this were the case too. This would
Speaker 1: be another example of volcanoes being both you know, creator
Speaker 1: and destroyer. You know, known for their their very destructive properties,
Speaker 1: but also we have numerous examples of how they bring
Speaker 1: new things into being being be at the creation of
Speaker 1: of whole island chains or uh you know, creating more
Speaker 1: land on existing volcanic islands, or just creating fertile soil
Speaker 1: from which you know, all sorts of of plants can grow. Totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, I like this idea. Maybe in the future
Speaker 1: will come back to more more of the relationship or
Speaker 1: the possible relationship between pumus and the origins of life. Now,
Speaker 1: another example of of what we might call lava boats
Speaker 1: or or lava rafts are sometimes referred to as such. Uh.
Speaker 1: You 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 boats,
Speaker 1: lava rafts are simply a created lava masses that move
Speaker 1: downstream and lava flows. Uh. 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 lava
Speaker 1: fields in which an upper rigid crust rests or you
Speaker 1: 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 and sixteen documentary Into
Speaker 1: the Inferno, I think we we we both would highly
Speaker 1: recommend this. It's It was written and directed by Werner
Speaker 1: Herzog and featured British volcanologists Clive Oppenheimer. Both of these
Speaker 1: gentlemen were guests on our show back And I believe
Speaker 1: this was like late in promotion of their documentary Fireball
Speaker 1: Visitors from Darker Worlds. Yeah, I think, uh, Into the
Speaker 1: Inferno was the documentary they had done right before this one,
Speaker 1: right yeah, dealing with with the volcanoes and uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's wonderful. If you get a chance to watch it,
Speaker 1: you definitely should if you're interested in volcanoes or you know,
Speaker 1: it's the work of Verna Herzog. Uh, you know, definitely
Speaker 1: worth picking. Picking up Um Into the Inferno features footage
Speaker 1: of volcanologist Maurice and Kadia Kraft Uh, French husband and
Speaker 1: wife duo. The Crafts were pioneers in the film documentation
Speaker 1: of volcanoes, notable for there's sometimes very you know, close
Speaker 1: proximity UM filming of lava flows, a lot of very
Speaker 1: dangerous at times looking footage. Uh and Saturday they did
Speaker 1: both perish in a pyroclastic flow on mountains and in Japan.
Speaker 1: But these were these were this was a couple that
Speaker 1: that loved volcanoes, and I was reading a little bit
Speaker 1: about them in Fire in the Earth, Fire in the Soul.
Speaker 1: The Final Moments of Maurice and Katia Craft by John
Speaker 1: uh Caldarazzo, published in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
Speaker 1: in and In this the the author notes the following
Speaker 1: quote and this is speaking of Maurice here he loved
Speaker 1: to say how fantastic. It would be to one day
Speaker 1: build a special boat, a kind of titanium arc to
Speaker 1: put in on a lava flow off. They'd ride down
Speaker 1: a steaming mountain, flying the French flag and waving to
Speaker 1: all their friends as they rode a glowing river into
Speaker 1: the sea. Well, on one hand, that's beautiful, but I'm
Speaker 1: also amused by the though the addition of the French flag.
Speaker 1: Well you know they were French, why not. But now
Speaker 1: I don't think we're supposed to to take this quick
Speaker 1: claim this lava for France. Um vegan is you've gotta
Speaker 1: get on. It's literally getting on on the ground floor
Speaker 1: of new uh of of New Land. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: think we're meant to take this, you know, real seriously,
Speaker 1: these were two individuals who simply loved volcanoes, loved volcanic activity.
Speaker 1: They lived for volcanoes. Uh Caldaraso quotes them is saying
Speaker 1: that volcanoes were like are like blind wild animals that
Speaker 1: one must observe, like a quote mad witch doctor. I
Speaker 1: think the idea is like it's it's got indigestion. You
Speaker 1: need to watch it for a very long time to
Speaker 1: see what what's what's going on with it? Um. They
Speaker 1: also talked about how normal mountains are dead and that
Speaker 1: they prefer the living mountains of volcanoes. When you love
Speaker 1: volcanoes so much, you have to slag normal mountains, right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's safe to, you know, to
Speaker 1: say that they could just be you know, they're being
Speaker 1: a little poetic, like we love volcano so much that
Speaker 1: if we could ride a ship on the on the
Speaker 1: flow of lava, we would. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's still a terrific vision. Uh, you know, this high
Speaker 1: tech vessel sailing across lava. I was looking around. I
Speaker 1: imagine somebody has has explored this more in science fiction,
Speaker 1: especially like pulp science fiction of the old days, Like
Speaker 1: there has to be some story about like a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a volcanic planet and there being some sort
Speaker 1: of a volcanic ship. I would be shocked if this
Speaker 1: is not shown, if this neess not appeared in uh
Speaker 1: in Doctor Who at some point or another. So so
Speaker 1: if if you're wondering what could this exists? Could we
Speaker 1: make something like this? Well? Luckily, volcanologist and science writer
Speaker 1: Robin Andrews chimed in on this very topic for a
Speaker 1: seventeen Forbes dot Com article titled Here's how to make
Speaker 1: a boat to sail over deadly lava and and he
Speaker 1: he uses, uh, the dreams of the crafts of particularly
Speaker 1: Maurice Craft is kind of the jumping off point for
Speaker 1: this as well. Okay, what's his plan here? Okay, so, um,
Speaker 1: he points out, there's, first of all, you've got to
Speaker 1: take into account those temperatures, like like first and foremost.
Speaker 1: They may ignore the temperatures in the movies, but you
Speaker 1: need to be aware of them. Uh. First of all,
Speaker 1: he writes that lava flows tend to run one thousand
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or one thousand, eight hundred thirty two degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit on average, and lava lakes can exceed that to
Speaker 1: a max of of of of somewhere around eleven hundred
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or two thousand and twelve degrees fahrenheit. So
Speaker 1: it's it's really hot. You can if you're gonna be
Speaker 1: anywhere anywhere close to at for you, certainly for a
Speaker 1: boat ride. If you're gonna build a boat, you have
Speaker 1: to take into account that, Um, it's gonna be that hot.
Speaker 1: You're gonna need physical protection, You're also going to need
Speaker 1: some sort of containment suit or uh, you know, oxygen
Speaker 1: just supply so that you're not just breathing in toxic
Speaker 1: gases that are either going to kill you dead out
Speaker 1: there on the lake or just like permanently damage your body.
Speaker 1: So he says, Okay, if you're gonna build this boat,
Speaker 1: it probably needs to be steel, as steel melts at
Speaker 1: one thousand, three seventy degrees celsius or two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred degrees fahrenheit. So you know, you don't want to
Speaker 1: be in a boat that melts in the lava lake.
Speaker 1: You want to be in a boat that that doesn't
Speaker 1: quite melt and almost well, yes, by the way, so
Speaker 1: some of this may may sound from like familiar territory.
Speaker 1: Of of course, we did an episode on the one
Speaker 1: Ring from from the Lord of the Rings discussing just
Speaker 1: what sort of metal would melt or be destroyed in
Speaker 1: Mount Doom but would not melt or be destroyed in
Speaker 1: a medieval forge. So if you want more metallurgy, uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's episode to go back to. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: but going back here to the work of Robin Andrews. Next,
Speaker 1: he points out that you need an interior lining in
Speaker 1: that boat that's non flammable and also highly heat resistant.
Speaker 1: Otherwise the boat would just simply cook you. I think
Speaker 1: you your skin would stick to it, which is which
Speaker 1: sounds horrifying. Yeah, even if the boat didn't melt, it
Speaker 1: would essentially turn into a frying pan. Right, you're writing
Speaker 1: in a frying pan on the heating element. Yes, So
Speaker 1: he writes the following about possible lining options here. Quote,
Speaker 1: there are a variety of plastics you can use, and
Speaker 1: if you aren't worried about fire started by rogue lava blebs,
Speaker 1: you could even use wet wood. If you want to
Speaker 1: be particularly high tech, grab some halfneum carbide with a
Speaker 1: melting point of around four thousand degrees celsius seven thousand
Speaker 1: two trees fahrenheit and very high thermal resistance. These would
Speaker 1: ensure you don't get a little sizzled inside your boat.
Speaker 1: You could even use half carbide to make the boat,
Speaker 1: but seeing as it's unfathomably expensive, steals a far cheaper
Speaker 1: option here, just looked it up. Half neum carbide is
Speaker 1: said to have a melting point of thirty degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: So you're really good to go there. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: also mentioned that you'd probably need to paddle with similar
Speaker 1: material you know you'd have you'd have to make your
Speaker 1: paddle or your your your pole out of that as well.
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on how ambitious you are. You're
Speaker 1: just happy to be floating um on or down the
Speaker 1: you know, the lake or flow of lava, or do
Speaker 1: you do you feel like you need to actually build
Speaker 1: up speed? Where do you end up? Does this mean
Speaker 1: you just ride this thing until it dumps you out
Speaker 1: into the ocean? Um? Well, I guess it depends. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're just in a lake of of of lava,
Speaker 1: like in a crater like um kilaueaikey, then you might
Speaker 1: just be floating out there until the like the vortex
Speaker 1: sucks you down or until or if it's if there's
Speaker 1: a fountain of of lava going on and told like
Speaker 1: that burns you up or or drops a bunch of
Speaker 1: bathtub sized blobs of lava on top of you. Or
Speaker 1: yeah it's a flow going into the ocean. Maybe you
Speaker 1: ride that out, but that's gonna be there. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be some rapids in there. Well. Another hazard we haven't
Speaker 1: even mentioned yet is that if you actually do ride
Speaker 1: this all the way down to the water's edge, and
Speaker 1: then you plunge into the water where the molten lava
Speaker 1: is hitting the water. Uh. You need to be careful
Speaker 1: there because another totally separate thing I was reading about
Speaker 1: that we haven't even gotten to yet is this stuff
Speaker 1: called las If you have you've read about this rob
Speaker 1: the so called lava haze, No, no, tell me about
Speaker 1: the lays. Well. Unfortunately this has actually led to at
Speaker 1: least a few human deaths in the past. But it's
Speaker 1: this type of steam or haze or mist that billows
Speaker 1: up when molten lava falls into the ocean. I think
Speaker 1: I was reading about it directly in connection with Kilauea.
Speaker 1: Actually it's dangerous for multiple reasons. Number one that these clouds,
Speaker 1: because of some kind of chemical reaction that happens, the
Speaker 1: clouds are full of hydrochloric acid, is like stomach acid,
Speaker 1: which you don't want getting into your lungs. But I
Speaker 1: think it may also have like other types of highly
Speaker 1: corrosive acids, hydrofluoric acid. Of course, lots of carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: But then the another part is that it's full of
Speaker 1: tons of extremely tiny little shards of volcanic glass. That
Speaker 1: get carried up in the steam. So basically, you don't
Speaker 1: want to get anywhere near this stuff. If you ever
Speaker 1: see lava dripping into the water, it's beautiful to observe
Speaker 1: from a distance, but you don't want to go near it.
Speaker 1: So if you're listening to this episode and you're you're
Speaker 1: if you're thinking, well, I could do this, I could
Speaker 1: pull this off. Now, do not, please do not attempt
Speaker 1: this at home, or or or in Volcano National Park,
Speaker 1: or anywhere near any volcano you have you happen to
Speaker 1: be visiting. Please keep a respectful distance. And that's just
Speaker 1: respecting yourself, right right though, Certainly, if you have a
Speaker 1: chance to to to get within a safe distance of
Speaker 1: any kind of volcanic activity to visit you know, Volcano
Speaker 1: National Park or really any any volcanic location, uh, definitely
Speaker 1: check 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 yea,
Speaker 1: but obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Um,
Speaker 1: have you visited some volcanic locations and you have additional
Speaker 1: sightings you would like to share if you seen anything, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like these these the floating pumas 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 topic for the future, to tell us about
Speaker 1: your love about 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. It's production
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