IIRC when Mount Saint Helens erupted in the 80s it blew the top half of the volcano off.
Comment on checkmate, big geology!!
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Big volcanoes look like this
(Mount Rainier, Washington)
The BIGGEST volcanoes look like this
Or this
Notice how they don’t have that nice big pretty volcano cone shape? It just looks like some drunk geologists scribbled on a map and drew circles around a low lying area with a lake or two in it and called it a “volcano” or a “volcanic zone”.
The reason though is that the BIGGEST and most destructive volcanic eruptions tend to happen with lava/magma that doesn’t flow very well and thus like you getting a stuffed nose, shit gets blocked up. Like many of us, these volcanos don’t solve the problem and go take a decongestant or blow their nose, they just sits there sniveling and stewing, failing to release the pressure that keeps building and building and building.
These eruptions are called felsic reactions (the opposite of mafic, goopy eruptions you have seen footage of from Hawaii). An immense amount of gas is released by magma as it becomes exposed to the surface as the gas is no longer kept in the magma at immense pressures. The magma can’t flow and “pass the gas” so to speak so a plug forms and what you get is a terrifyingly big pressure cooker that just builds and builds like that person on the plane next to you that just keeps sniffing and sniffing and never blowing their nose.
When it finally explodes because the built up pressure overcomes the plug the explosion is so catastrophic it doesn’t leave a clean volcano shape. What you are left with is an uneven low topography dotted with lakes that marks the site of an incomprehensibly large explosion, hence the topography of Yellowstone and the Taupo Volcanic Zone.
pete_the_cat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Yeah and slightly off topic wasn’t the pic of Helens blowing its top taken by a man who knew in advance the explosion would kill him and protected his film? Am i thinking of the right story?
mihor@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Yes. Heroic deed it was.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Such a simple but beautiful act of love to spend your last moments of life doing that knowing that if those photos might help people understand volcanoes and their associated hazards even a tiny better in the future it was worth it.
You could call it tragic, and of course it is, but I prefer to call it badass.
the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Thanks for adding the link. He was a real one, deserves to be remembered
pete_the_cat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I think so
Silic0n_Alph4@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Had to look this up. It was en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Landsburg
RIP
wanderer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s Robert Landsburg although I don’t think his photos are very famous.
The series of photos that were turned into a video were taken by Gary Rosenquist, who survived the eruption.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
So much awesome power in that eruption (with non-awesome human and nature/animal consequences).
mountsthelens.com/history-1.html
This article is a good play-by-play of how the eruption physically progressed, I particularly like this illustration.
jballs@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
So you’re saying we need to cover Wyoming in cement. Gotcha.
Seriously though, cool info!
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
So you’re saying we need to cover Wyoming in cement. Gotcha.
I am sure if you sold it to Wyoming voters as a way to hurt trans people they would happily vote for it and drown themselves in a sea of concrete.
Zron@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If you’re already paying for, just roughly guessing, trillions of tons of concrete, surely you can pay off all 12 people that live in Wyoming.
FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Made me whip out my geology notes I took a few semesters ago, thanks for the fun explanation
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Hell yeah!
FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I’m currently in college getting my major with something in education and that comment, that’s the energy I want to capture
Zacryon@lemmy.wtf 6 months ago
Thank you, kind geology enthusiast.
Really barely comprehensible how immense those volcanic activities are.
On a side note, you’ve listed insane unit after insane unit of death and destruction. And then there is this sentence:
There is evidence that it occurred on an autumn afternoon
That was a cute turn and I laughed. :D
Bombastic@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Lies spread by Big Volcano
Wake up sheeple
interolivary@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Ohhh, I had no idea there were different kinds of volcanoes but it does make sense in hindsight.
Well, I guess this might have been covered in primary or secondary education at some point but it’s been about 3000 years since my last geography class
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
There is a wonderful diverse world of volcanic eruptions! One thing you might not have thought about is how glaciers often form at the top of large cone volcanoes and the way the lava erupting interacts with a large volume of ice can shape the eruption significantly. One of the biggest results are lahars, like muddy, liquidy avalanches but even faster and deadlier.
One of the thing that links all volcanic eruptions and is a good orientation point for comparing between different eruptions and volcanoes is that all magma pretty much comes up from the mantle to the near surface starting at the same chemical composition. If the magma feeds into large underground chambers (batholiths) and is allowed to cool slowly then certain minerals will begin to form and precipitate out like snow that layers up on the bottom of the chamber. What minerals these are depends on how long, how hot, how much pressure, but you can vaguely think of it as a process of distillation where magma progresses from the original “mafic” composition to a “felsic” one as the high temperature mafic minerals crystallize leaving behind the felsic magma mixture.
This is a graph of Viscosity, the more Viscous the Magma the less ability it has to flow like a liquid (and thus the more likely a plug is likely to form inside a volcano). Image
interolivary@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Huh, interesting. I didn’t expect to learn about volcanoes today but here I am! Thank you for the explanation
Rinox@feddit.it 6 months ago
Except Vesuvius, which looks like a volcano, but in 79CE erupted violently sending lave, magma and molten rocks several kilometers away, exactly like the stuffy nose you described. It completely destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, burying them for thousands of years.
Still nothing when compared to the destruction that the “Campi Flegrei” brought 37’000 years ago, completely burying a huge section of the Campanian coastline.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Super cool!!
Aain I love how it looks like a drunk geologist made a scribble on a map and said before passing out “that Campi Flegrei, that’s a BIG one right there!” and you are just left looking at the map being like… what… are you sure that just looks like you randomly circled a huge part of the landscape…?
Rinox@feddit.it 6 months ago
Yeah, it pretty much blew out that whole section of coastline, that big hole is called a “caldera”. It’s still active btw, you can go and check it out if you want. Look for Solfatara di Pozzuoli.
You can also look at the Greek island of Santorini, where the whole western and central part of the island was blown off during the bronze age iirc. Historians speculate the eruption, earthquake and tsunamis caused by the event could have partially influenced the collapse of the Minoan civilization, the rise of the Mycenaeans, turmoil in Egypt and possibly even the fall of the Chinese empire due to a global winter. Crazy stuff
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Are we just a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists sitting in dark rooms with a computer and pinboard, complete with strings between pinned mugshots of lava domes and dikes, muttering to ourselves as we circle vaguely roundish things on maps in red ink and exclaim “ANOTHER!!!”.
No, we walk around out side in the middle of the woods doing it.
Nindelofocho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Thank you that was super informative. Is there anything that can be done to mitigate an impending eruption? Ive always heard that if one of the big super volcanoes goes it could be quite catastrophic for the entire world. Surely theres been some research into like pressure relief holes or something…antacid tabs?
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Surely theres been some research into like pressure relief holes or something…antacid tabs?
I am sure there are lots of geologists who have thought of it, it makes sense right?
The problem is that nobody gives a shit about listening to geologists unless they are talking about where to find oil. Even if a geoengineering project of this scale and magnitude (with such catastrophic consequences if it goes wrong) where possible with near current geological science and hardware this degree of interest and investment of society is only ever committed to visions techbros provide and I don’t think a single techbro has ever taken a geology class and actually remotely paid attention.
It was geologists in the 1970s who first pointed out the obvious connection between human released CO2 emissions and global warming. Nobody gave a shit :)
Nindelofocho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You are right sadly :( but dont discredit yourself so much! A ton of people do listen and a ton of people think yall are cool! I think you’re cool. Its just that those people and I dont tend to be the people that have the resource to make decisions
Jorgelino@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
On the game side of things, while i agree more realistic landscapes would be awesome, making games is really hard work and you need to be careful where you’ll invest your time in if you want to actually get anything finished. The truth is most people who are not geologists can’t tell the difference between a realistic landscape and an unrealistic one.
We have some tools for world generation, though i’m not sure how realistic they are. Mostly a mix of noise functions (Simplex, Perlin, etc) and erosion simulation. But i barely understand how that works, so your “geological sandbox” seems a lot less obvious to me.
Another thing to consider is that in game design, realism will always take a backseat for good gameplay. A map that naturally guides the players where they need to go is usually much more desirable than one that is realistic but unintuitive. Plus when you add magic, gods, or even enough sci-fi, the bar for what counts as a realistic landscape really goes out the window anyway.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Another thing to consider is that in game design, realism will always take a backseat for good gameplay. A map that naturally guides the players where they need to go is usually much more desirable than one that is realistic but unintuitive. Plus when you add magic, gods, or even enough sci-fi, the bar for what counts as a realistic landscape really goes out the window anyway.
Why would a map that reflected natural landscapes be more unintuitive than an awkwardly fabricated one that doesn’t reflect any landscape a person has seen looks like?
sigh and I am really trying not to come off like I am claiming everything has to be realistic to the stupid little details on a geologist would know.
My point was that building landscapes to tell stories in without building the landscape as a story too is a silly thing to do, both for immersion of the player and for overall work.
There is no reason a sort of clay like modeling simulator couldn’t give you an artistically conveyed sense of two continental plates colliding, and if the tools were playful and immediate to use (like I pointed out, just being able to smash continents together by clicking and dragging them in different directions at each other like Besieged but for geology) it would be easier for world designers overwhelmed by a blank canvas to start because their canvas already has a story rather than suffocating blank space.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 months ago
So you are saying we need more concrete?
the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Paving over all of Yellowstone is the only right answer.
Arbiter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, we could build a Walmart there too!
variants@possumpat.io 6 months ago
We will need to send the best managers Walmart has to offer to keep the volcanoes in check
TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
mihor@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
And expedite it, we only have a couple of million years to finish the job.
NounsAndWords@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No no no, we need to dig down to the magma to release the pressure!
psud@aussie.zone 6 months ago
With a valve, I guess, to release the pressure gently
anonymouse2@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
No. Bore through all the way to the other side so all the magma just drains out.
Silic0n_Alph4@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Time to invest in concrete companies. The demand is going to be HUGE!