6 myths about volcanoes debunked

Brut India

No, volcanoes don't spew smoke. No, volcanoes aren’t more active today than they were in the past. Here are six myths about volcanoes debunked.

Transcript

00:00Volcanoes erupt when the system becomes really, really pressurized.

00:14Every volcano operates on its own timescale because you could get little fractures in

00:18the rock that's above where all the magma is stored, and that would release enough gas

00:23to take the pressure off the magma chamber.

00:27Sometimes magma just sits.

00:28It sits and it sits and it kind of matures underground, but there is no clock.

00:34We can't predict eruptions because there's no schedule.

00:42Volcanoes are not any more active today than they've always been.

00:46As far as you rewind, in fact, even further than life itself, volcanoes have been doing

00:50their thing.

00:51Every day, on average, there's about 45 volcanoes around the world that are erupting.

00:57We're not seeing any sort of increase in volcanic activity.

01:01We're just hearing a little more about it because of social media.

01:09They're not smoking.

01:11What's happening is the volcano is releasing gases from inside the Earth's crust.

01:17So we're talking like hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and

01:23good old H2O, water vapor.

01:25Oak is essentially carbon that is released when something burns.

01:31With volcanoes, they're not burning things.

01:34That's a totally different process.

01:46What it is is really small, tiny little particles of pulverized rock.

01:52And that rock gets pulverized during the eruption, right?

01:56You have an explosion happening with tons of force, and that will crush the rocks that

02:01make up the volcano.

02:03And then when that ash gets pushed out of the volcano, it can travel hundreds of miles

02:08and blanket the ground, cars, roofs of buildings.

02:18Most lavas, the fastest they can possibly move on average is about 16 miles an hour.

02:24But that's a fast flow.

02:26Usual flows are closer to like six to eight miles per hour.

02:29A healthy, able-bodied adult can outwalk a lava flow most of the time.

02:35It can destroy property all day long because you can't move a house out of the path of

02:40a lava flow.

02:41You're more likely to be injured by what we call pyroclastic currents or pyroclastic flows.

02:48Those are superheated clouds of rock and gas that tumble down the mountainside from

02:54big eruptions.

02:55They can reach speeds of several hundred miles an hour.

02:59Those are what buried Pompeii back in the eruption in 79 AD.

03:09Volcanoes each have their own distinctive magma chambers that are fueling the volcano

03:14itself.

03:15So it's kind of like, you know, each one has its own gas tank, just like each car has its

03:19own gas tank.

03:20Now, of course, in a case like the island of Hawaii, the big island where you've got

03:24volcanoes right next to each other, we're not entirely sure on how the different systems

03:30are interrelated.

03:31So it could be that when one volcano is erupting, if they share a magma source at all, then

03:37the other volcano might not erupt.

03:45Sorry to tell you, but no, not in the way you think.

03:49Day to day, volcanoes actually emit less than 1% of all carbon dioxide produced on Earth.

03:57Most of it comes from us.

04:00Volcanoes actually help cool our climate.

04:03When we have a really big volcanic eruption, I'm talking like super volcano levels, that

04:08actually releases a lot of really small particulate material into the atmosphere, which serves

04:14as an insulating blanket for the planet.

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