Scientists risk their lives to sample volcanic lava

There are few things quite as tense as watching one volcanologist mutter, "Oh my god. He's crazy. He's crazy," while watching another volcanologist scramble around the edge of a caldera.

It only gets more tense when you realize that the volcano in question is Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—which has some of the fastest-moving lava flows ever recorded. The key feature of Nyiragongo is that lake of lava in the center of the crater that you see in the video. In January 1977, the lava lake was 2000 feet deep. When the volcano erupted later that month, the lake emptied dry in less than an hour. Lava was clocked at 40 mph.

Video clip from the BBC's "Journey to the Center of the Planet"

More about the program this came from.

Via EstudandoGeologia and Chris Rowan

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: geology • Science • volcanoes

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beemoh

“Lava was clocked at 40 mph.”

The police are getting really cheeky with where they put those speed cameras.
http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

Clearly the scientist was fronting some bad juju and angered the god of the lava lake.
elchip

That’s some cojones there.
- joeposts
  
  Nah, he wussed out, IMHO. Didn’t even dip his toe in!
  - awjt
    
    That was a box of hot dogs, not a camera in a protective casing. That’s why he hung out there for 5 minutes, because he had to roast all of them.
snagglepuss

…They make heat suits large enough to enclose balls that big ?
http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

should have borrowed TopGear’s Toyota

http://www.carztune.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Top-Gear-with-Toyota-Hilux-near-Volcano1-500×388.jpg
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Kristofer-Peterson/100003624673897 Kristofer Peterson
  
  They borrowed Hammond. On the other hand, someone might want the toyota back.
  - human remains
    
    He’s not even a real hamster.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7CnMQ4L9Pc&feature=related
fuzzyfuzzyfungus

While I am certainly impressed at the nerd’s nerve, I have to wonder if they are really approaching the problem properly…

The fine folks over in mechanical engineering, or even a decent robotics hobbyist forum, probably have a few ideas for getting close to lava that only run you a few thousand bucks if they catch fire, rather than having to replace an entire geologist…

Catacopter is probably too furry for this one; but if a human in a tinfoil suit can survive, a fair few ROVs should also be able to.
- http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
  
  The problem is that the cheaper robotics components that most bots are made off won’t survive operation in these conditions. Solder will melt, plastic too, gears will be filled with ash and frankly tires and treads won’t be able to move around on this surface.
  
  You’d have to build a lot of proprietary components to have the dexterity needed to get in and out and grab what you need via remote control and will cost a ton.
- jwkrk
  
  Something like this…
  http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/danteII/
iCowboy

Nyiragongo’s an especially dangerous volcano as it often erupts from fissures along the flanks rather from the main crater. Eruptions develop quickly, producing large amounts of lava and thick clouds of carbon dioxide which have asphyxiated many people. In a country with chaotic government and poor communications this is a recipe for disaster.
In 2002, Nyiragongo erupted under the city of Goma, burying nearly a fifth of the city. The city’s airport was also partially buried. If you go to Google Maps http://goo.gl/maps/SwvC you’ll see the top (northern) part of the runway is buried under rusty brown lava.
perch

I’m curious, why do they want/need a sample right from the lake itself? Once it cools, it’s the same stuff pretty much, minus maybe some trapped gasses. But you’ve got those blowing around everywhere.

I mean, getting it would be nice, but I can’t see why anyone would risk their life like that just to get a chunk of the hot stuff.
- http://religionsetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Joshua Zelinsky
  
  There are a variety of reasons. You do sometimes want gases (as you surmised). Also, after it erupts it can get mixed in with other debris and the like easily from around, so you don’t have as a good an idea what the initial composition was. Also, composition when still hot is connected to what sort of flow you get where details may be lost after cooling, and getting a better understanding of that could help predict the types of eruptions better and the give a better idea for what size evacuation zones are needed.
  
  (Disclaimer: This is my memory on the subject from an explanation given to me a few years ago by someone who did this, and I may have had some alcohol in my system at the time. There’s a decent chance I’m either completely wrong or am forgetting some other basic issue.)
  - iCowboy
    
    That’s pretty much it.
    
    Grabbing lava from as close to the vent as possible and then quenching it in a bucket of water turns the lava to glass which keeps the composition almost identical to that being erupted.
    
    If they left the lava to cool naturally its composition would change since the different minerals in the lava crystallise at different temperatures, some of the high temperature minerals don’t travel far from the vent so a sample taken further away would be misleading.
    
    Knowing the composition of the erupted lava at source lets you know if the magma’s composition is changing through an eruption because the magma chamber has been fractionated, whether new magma is erupting from deeper in the Earth or if magma has been sitting around for a while at shallow levels.
- Aaron Pietruszka
  
  Volcanologists like to collect lava samples at regular intervals (with precisely known “times of quenching”) in order to track the changes in the chemistry of the lava over the course of an active eruption. For example, scientists have been studying the Pu’u ‘O’o eruption of Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii this way since it began in January 1983. These short term fluctuations in lava chemistry help us to understand things like the origin of the magma from partial melting of the Earth’s mantle, the geometry of the sub-volcanic magma plumbing system, and ultimately, the ability to predict the behavior of current and future eruptions from active volcanoes (thereby reducing volcanic hazards).
  - perch
    
    Oh, interesting! Thanks!
http://religionsetspolitics.blogspot.com/ Joshua Zelinsky

A few years ago I was at an event that had a lot of grad students from different fields. One of them apparently had just gotten back from collecting lava samples while wearing that sort of protective gear and all. Apparently it is very hard to move in and you end up heating up a bit from that effort before you even start getting hot from the heat around you.

It really put things into perspective. I mean, I sometimes complain about having to teach first semester calculus when the students don’t want to learn, or complain about how my LaTeX won’t compile. Put things in a totally different perspective about what sort of things grad students can be stuck doing.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

How did Frodo survive Mt. Doom without a heat suit?
- fuzzyfuzzyfungus
  
  Frodo is marked as an essential character until the end of the Mt. Doom questline. He can’t be reduced below zero HP.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Plus Halflings are very tough in the fibre, I deem.
http://twitter.com/AntiBoredomTeam Dan Century

Eventually old “Lava Sleeves” Magillicutty will learn his lesson, but not this day.
xzzy

I knew he was going to survive, because no one wants to be eulogized by a hamster.
- exile
  
  ”He’s not a real hamster” – Stewart Lee (2009)
Matt Staggs

My testicles retreated inside my body watching this film.
http://www.karljones.com karl_jones

If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let ‘em go, because man, they’re gone.

– Jack Handey
Gary61

Obligatory comment, cuz nobody’s said it yet:

‘That’s hot.”
http://volcans.blogs-de-voyage.fr/ Claude Grandpey

This is just for the show. From a scientific standpoint, what this man did was useless. He definitely took unnecessary risks.
Daneel

“Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!”
howaboutthisdangit

The fools! They angered the gods because they didn’t bring a virgin with them.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  A team of scientists that doesn’t include at least one virgin?
  - CH
    
    But did they offer that virgin to the gods? No! They just went for the lava without giving anything back. Fools!
http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael

Emergency procedures for vulcanologists who find themselves trapped by an eruption:

1) make protective lava-suit from lava* [1]
2) make lava-airplane from lava [1]
3) have cake every morning! [1]

* If there is an existing, but non-functioning lava-airplane, you may try to make a smaller, functioning lava-airplane from parts of the larger lava-airplane [2]

[1] Sendak, M. “A Novel Method for Sudden, Unanticipated Evacuation”, Proceedings of the International Virgin Sacrifice Society, 1970 (see illus.)

[2] Aldrich, R. ‘Fenix Flight”, Lava Aviation Quarterly, vol 128, 1965 (republished in a longer, but modified form, 2004)
- jwkrk
  
  Duck & Cover…
  
  http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/149714/duck-cover
Henry Pootel

Fortunately the dinosaurs hadn’t respawned yet else the hike back to camp would have been dangerous too.
snagglepuss

The Mole People are PISSED.
okalokee

Are there ANY nature shows out there anymore that don’t have Hollywood-dramatic soundtracks and narration? *sigh*
Ito Kagehisa

You don’t do that for science – you could design a catapult & retrieval system easily.

You do that to prove something to yourself.
timquinn

Could it be, I wonder, that the speaker is just full of poo? That the interviewer and he had a little discussion just before the camera turned on that went something like this;
BBC: “hey, listen. I paid this huge license fee for this stupid dramatic music. Do you think we could take some thrilling footage I could attach it to?”
Scientist: “Not much going on around here, We got this thing under pretty good watch and know what is going to happen, Heck most guys put on the heat suit just to climb the up to the ridge and take a piss in the lava lake for a thrill. It is pretty pathetic really.”
BBC: “Hm? I’ve got this great lens that makes everything look far away. Would you mind hamming it up a little for the camera?”
matthew conway

okay, stupid question: this lava is full of heat. where does the heat come from?

(obviously the vulcanologist is full of win….)
- http://daniel.friesen.name/ Daniel Friesen
  
  Serious question, or rhetorical?
penguinchris

Dunno about other field sciences, but geology is often all about taking stupid risks. And it’s no coincidence that geologists who do field geology are usually interested in relatively extreme sports like climbing mountains and whatnot as well.

If there’s something you want to sample or just to see up close, you’re going to go do it no matter what. Part of the process of becoming a geologist is learning how to manage risk in the field. It’s important because often you don’t have the option of going back someplace with proper climbing equipment or whatever, and being able to look at or sample something hard to reach is often absolutely key to your research.

I almost can’t believe some of the stuff that I’ve done in the field. When you’re there, all you’re thinking about is getting to what you need to see. It’s more important than anything. This sort of short-circuits the normal part of your brain that would prevent you from doing risky things.

Serious injuries are relatively rare, though I’m sure they happen. Every geologist has stories of their series of field injuries of course, often made worse than they have to be because you want to push on and complete your field work even while injured. Often injuries result from goofing off and taking risks outside the context of things you actually need to do. That’s certainly true in my case – my only relatively serious incidents were the result of goofing off (and I nearly killed someone when an enormous boulder dislodged from a place I was climbing and fell right next to someone so I don’t take these incidents lightly! – part of the learning process.)
Velocirapt42

I know the point of this is: Brave Scientists but I couldn’t help hearing a possible internal monologue inside the suit: “Goddamn African research tech job, I wanted to study gorillas, fucking economy. Man, I’m hungover. I can’t see anything out of this suit. I can’t believe I have to climb up this huge cliff and I haven’t even had a cup of coffee. Oh well, get the sample… Oh my god, this lake is full of LAVA!!! FUCK!!! RUN!!”
Repurposed

I used to live with a volcanologist. The number of documentaries, books and reading materials he had that were ‘Dedicated to the memory of….’ (usually a partner, sometimes the author) should tell you a lot about the profession.
http://twitter.com/Bradagan1 Bradford Frotten

Sorry but the man was dumb, simple as that!