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Antarctica Erupts!

smithsonianmagazine.com — Dodging "lava bombs," an intrepid photographer documents the strange, icy world of the continent's most active volcano. (Also, watch the volcano erupt)!

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  • incubus13, on 10/12/2007, -2/+44Blue lava is cool !
    • CRasH180, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15I I never thought I would see blue lava. This video is amazing to see. Dugg!
    • Noobuntu, on 10/12/2007, -26/+17Oh noes, global warming !!
    • aknowles5139, on 10/12/2007, -1/+38Youtube link of the video:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6mVOgLK9IA
    • cloakeddagger, on 10/12/2007, -21/+9"Oh noes, global warming !!"

      global warming is not a joke.
    • Neticule, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5@cloakeddagger
      Atleast he will be laughing when he gets incinerated :)

      Anything can be a joke!
    • bobcrotch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Ya it's like alien blood or something spewing out of the earth, really friggin' sweet.
    • DurkaMcDurk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@cloakeddagger
      /sarcasm
    • EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I somehow doubt the lava is blue... More likely a colour swap.

      I may be wrong though. I seriously doubt that in any case.
    • BrainInAJar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13"More likely a colour swap."

      Or even more likely, a digital optical sensor picking up infra-red radiation. Try shooting a tv remote at a webcam, it'll flash blue as well
    • dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4As BrainInAJar Suggested, it's just Infrared. Given the way most infrared cameras work, something as hot as lava is going to be about as bright as it can be on the screen, which would likely flood the sensor a little, giving it the blueish tint. With a "normal" visible light camera (or with the naked eye) it would look much the same, but with normal red lava, and probably would be alot harder to see because of the steam and stuff, otherwise they probably wouldn't have bothered using infrared.
    • Arkz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Blue Lava... or Life Stream... hmmm... i like my idea more
    • autodata, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It's really disturbing how so many people in the comments here think the lava is actually blue.
  • diggfinity, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3End of times.
  • Lean, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I guess it's bad that I had no idea there was a volcano in Antarctica?
    • Ninjab3ar, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11yeah, and they blame global warming for the icecaps melting off.....

      tsk, tsk, tsk Al Gore.....
    • treeburner, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Yeah, lava melts ice to. I mean, im sure it dose a better job of that then we do. Besides, they say that if global warming is real then it will throw the earth into another ice age, then we can warm it back up again. Sounds like a fun game to me.
    • rockets, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yes, it is bad. The sad truth is that the likes of you drives the current global-warming political nutscases.
    • shokk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes, and the US is responsible for the volcano, with all their consumerism and gas guzzling. For shame...
    • treeburner, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Right, man made volcano. HAHA what ever
  • IEatEmoKids, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21Now we're gunna have people saying this is from global warming.
    • captjc, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3It isn't?
    • bobcrotch, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3No don't worry, just go vote for Gore and fill up your SUV on the way to work on Monday.
    • NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Yes, this is from global warming. The INTERNAL kind.
  • undersky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+31an actually well written geological article not about Wii or Apple got to front page? hell must have frozen tonight
    • Wisgary, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29I disagree about the apple thing.

      "On their first clear day, Steinmetz and Bill McIntosh, also of New Mexico Tech, rode snowmobiles up to the crater's rim."



    • Canada4Life, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Fanboys gone wild!
    • Fhionnlaoch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Well, my personal observations are worth null, but I find that a lot of the sciency articles tend to appear around 11pm-2am PST. It's tends to be good time to be on digg.
    • nazsco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1that was a rather scientific comment about scientific posts on digg.
  • bilbus, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1Oh no Global Warming!!! Proof

    Someone call Al Gore
  • Canada4Life, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13That lava looks like flubber.
  • clockworkORANGE, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Anybody know why it's blue?
    • EvilDr.X, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7Because it's cold in Antarctica? Duh.
    • Promantarius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's probably just an altered video, or a video that wasn't captured via the standard means (intense heat gains colour, etc.) I don't know for certain, but I'm fairly sure lava is usually red due to the heat which rules out most alternatives (I don't think rocks and metal turn blue as they burn?)
    • jhshukla, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2copper burns blue-green. but I doubt that the volcano is spewing out copper.
    • UCFMark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm pretty sure it's not blue. Take a look at this picture on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Erebus_Lava_Lake.jpg
      It shows the lava lake of Mount Erebus and the lava is clearly red.
    • dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's not blue, it's been filmed in infrared (I presume) and as such the colour is basically greyscale, and the blueish colour to it is more accidental than anything else. (Try pointing a remote control at a cheap video camera or webcam, the flashing is usually white, but can go blueish when the sensor is flooded a bit.)

      As for copper, it's not really blue at all, it;s a pretty clean green, but it's also only when it's BURNING, as in fire, not melting like lava.

      Naked eye (or with a normal colour camera) it would look much like the wikipedia image, white ice/snow, red lava. (Which cools to a blackish rock).
  • AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -2/+2o.O The lava looks so ...unearthly?

    Wild.
  • Atlantics, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Bunnies!!!

    ...nvm digg me down.
  • nocturne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13direct link to video:

    http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/media/2006/video/volcano_erebus-small.mov
  • fober, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3Al Gore just jizzed on his keyboard.
    • AndrewDB, on 01/10/2008, -5/+0You sure he didn't on that mountain, because I could of swore that looked unlike Lava.....
  • rjpaez, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6someone should mirror this quick (the video)...
    • dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There's a youtube link somewhere on the page....
  • maxhrk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1blue lava.. hmm... i am sure that will make game developers having a wild idea about blue lava right now..

    i am sure in forseeing future there will be a rpg all about this BLUE LAVA thing. :p

    • asurroca, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Brilliant idea... it will be called... Blue Lava
  • Noctem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My girlfriend spent 6 months in Antarctica at McMurdo last year (From the end of February to mid-September, their winter), and Mac Town (mcmurdo slang) has a lot of ash all over it from the volcano, and Erebus was constantly spewing smoke. That eruption was friggin' wild, blue lava - Just, wow. She's gonna be upset that she missed this when she sees this video & article - Thanks a million!
  • marinist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Blue lava...that's not the typical Hawaii eruption, and somehow fitting for the antarctic.
    I looked this up, and this lava cools to a light blue-green rock called phonolite.
  • khyberkitsune, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Assuming the lava really *IS* blue....

    The only way that could occur is if the lava is really that hot, kinda like lasers. Red sucks, blue is nice, white would give you 4th-5th degree welder's burns.
  • rowlodge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1pretty cool, like science fiction...
  • bamapachyderm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Mt. Erebus Observatory site:
    http://ees.nmt.edu/Geop/mevo/mevo.html
  • MrTea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hey, some theorize that a volcano eruption (in Indonesia) caused the little ice age. Let's cross our fingers folks!
  • zim312, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The Antarctic MX4, one of the most advanced surveillance cameras in the world, has enhanced optical sensitivity to volcanic phenomena, making it highly specialized for viewing active lava lakes. Incorporating infrared filtering technology, the Antarctic MX4 produces images in which lava lakes appear to glow electric blue. The resulting images allow volcanologists to observe lava circulation, explosion details and distribution of lava cooling bombs.
  • KiloCharley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3 nah, that's just hell pukin' up some bad smurfs
  • GhostFreeman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1blue lava...cool
  • TheADOGuy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1
    link dead
  • Myztry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Of course the lava is blue. How else do they get blue lava for lava lamps :)
  • shortarabguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Though they grow or shrink depending on how much heat the volcano emits, inside they maintain a temperature of about 32 degrees."
    That's Celsius, right...?
    • dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They said warm, so I presume so. Compared to the rest of Antarctica, 32 degrees F is pretty warm, but I still think it sounds more like celcius. Certainly not Kelvin... 32 degrees K is damn cold...
  • 01vanillabean, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The middle photo of the stack - up to 60 feet high or 20 metres, is interesting. How much of the stack is previously molten rock and how much snow/ice build up? I guess with the katabatic winds there the stacks must be mainly lava rock with a snow/ice coating?
  • nawitus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Run for your lives, it's the global warming!
  • DrScott, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No, it's just the blue fire from Orcarina of Time that you can put into a jar.
  • technonoob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2um old news..... 12-18-05
  • PaulLev, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Closest we have on this Earth to being on another planet. http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2007/01/not-snakes-chronology-protection-case.html
  • osakaguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hot lava death!
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