I recently fell in love with lava. And it all started when I heard this story.
It was the summer of 1831. Off the coast of Sicily
sailors noticed bubbling, sulfurous fumes, dead fish
and then all of a sudden there was a tiny, rocky island where none had been before
It had appeared right in the middle of an important Mediterranean shipping lane
so four nations sent ships to claim it.
Britain
Spain
France
The Kingdom of Two Sicilies
They all wanted it for a military outpost.
This was a real diplomatic stand-off until...
the island disappeared.
It had sunk beneath the waves and so everyone agreed to forget about it.
But one man didn't forget.
This is Charles Lyell , probably the greatest geologist of that time.
You might say he was in love with lava. Lyle knew that this ghost island was the top of
an underwater volcano. It was built with globs of cooled lava and then sea had eroded those globs away
Lyle said, "Woah, everyone look at this!
"This is evidence of my favorite theory: that the earth has been making and remaking itself
for a long time. And here you can see that lava is one of the things that is constantly
rebuilding our world."
Thinking about lava in those terms really
makes me want to see it in action
And that doesn't count
Unfortunately, most real volcanos are pretty
far away from where I live They're in the so-called the ring of fire
around the Pacific, well beyond the reach of my NPR travel budget
I didn't think I would ever get to see real lava - until I heard about these two guys
in upstate New York who are so infatuated with the stuff, they built their own personal volcano.
So I packed my lunch
And I gave my boss the slip
Wrote myself this theme song
Going on a field trip, yeah!
These are the two men behind the Syracuse University Lava Project
Bob is a sculptor. Jeff is a geologist.
They both want to make lava, but for very different reasons.
Bob creates sculptures that mimic nature like this big old sand dune
When Bob looked at lava -- when he saw the things that lava has made --
he decided to make lava himself But first he needed to reach the rock-melting
temperatures that exist beneath the earth's crust where lava forms
So he got this old bronze furnace - which used to melt metal for statues
and souped it up so it could reach 2500 degrees F
This has been my mistress for the last 3.5 years I know everything about her
It's this weird relationship I have with this machine
He takes basaltic gravel -- that's the stuff that
a lot of the earth's crust is made of and adds it a little at a time
If he adds it all once the furnace won't be able to keep up
Put another 50 pounds in, and see what it does
Like 2 o'clock I'll check it again 1:30 or 2 am
OK
The other half of the team is Jeff Karson. He sees this same lava like Lyell once did.
as the stuff that helped build the world.
Where tectonic plates slide apart, lava burbles up and new crust forms
Where plates collide volcanoes grow and islands rise out of the sea
It's hard to study these processes. They're in remote locations. They're dangerous.
And they're unpredictable
No one gets an engraved invitation to come to a lava flow.
You don't know when exactly when its going to happen
or if its going to behave in a very quiescent or explosive fashion.
It would be so nice to have a safe, reliable volcano you could just keep in the lab.
So when Bob came to Jeff a couple of years ago and said, "Do you want to help me make lava?"
Jeff said yes.
In the time it took him to get back to his office, I think I'd written 2-3 pages
of ideas, of scientific experiments, educational opportunities,
just stuff I wanted to do - I mean I was completely sucked into this instantaneously.
It's taken hundreds of tries to perfect this process
And now I get to see their latest batch. This is my first date with lava so I'm going
to get dressed up
This may be the last time you ever see my eyebrows
That happens all of the time. Usually I put
my hair back because periodically I’ll dip my head in a really hot spot and I’ll notice
A poof and sizzle
Alright so here we are. The lid's on. Lid's on.
I can already feel like its pretty warm. Its about to get a lot hotter as soon as I open the lid
When the lid comes a wall of heat just hits you
I could feel the sweat evaporate off my face, my heart rate shot up.
Sometimes it viciously convects, where - like, if you could heat up chili just before it starts to boil
Its kind of like that.
Over the past two days Bob has been adding more and more basalt,
and now the furnace contains 800 pounds of molten rock.
Alright we're ready to roll here
Temperature's about 1035 degrees as it's poured out
and it's probably gonna lose at least 100 degrees as it just comes down through the metal trough here
See if it'll blow out for us
Oh there we go!
Now Jeff and other geologists can create controlled experiments with active lava flows
Different slopes, different temperatures,
different flow rates, all the different sort of parameters that can affect the way lava behaves and the
way a lava flow looks when it finally solidifies
And Bob can create his art.
And every time it comes out I still think "Wow, it's lava. That's crazy."
And it has all the structures of real lava Pele's seaweed- the paper thin edges of bubbles
named after the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes Pele's hair
It just got cool really fast after they poured it
I dunno Pele's tears or Pele's booger I don't know what that is
And just like a real lava flow, this one retains a lot of heat
This won't be cool enough to really touch until tomorrow some time.
Which gave me an idea.
Well the sun is sinking low And I'm basking in the glow
While that warm lava flow toasts my marshmallow
The fresh lava pour Makes my weary heart soar
Cause I know that it's time to make lava smores.