last march an unprecedented swarm of more than 30 000 earthquakes shook a corner of
southwestern iceland and rattled houses in the capital reykjavik 20 miles away
some tremors lasted only a few seconds others punched in at 5.4 on the richter scale
icelanders are used to earthquakes the whole island is a volcanic hotspot but this shook
even the most stoic among them then on march 19th volcanologists reported the world's newest volcano
had burst open unleashing a spectacular fountain of lava from a tear in the earth's crust it's
called i'm only going to say this once gelding a dollar so far the lava hasn't stopped gushing
and neither can we after seeing it from as close as we dared the story will continue in a moment
this is what 2 000 degrees fahrenheit looks like incandescent chunks of molten rock some as big
as cars explode 200 feet in the air hurled upwards by some of the most elemental forces on the planet
at every new cascade of lava the earth rumbles like thunder from an alien world
we watched as lava poured out of the crater changing iceland's map forever
it's incredible we can feel the heat it's over 2000 degrees fahrenheit
and at 500 feet we can still feel yes and if you go bit if you go too close you can burn
we had come to see earth's newest real estate with thor thorterson one of
iceland's top volcanologists even he seemed a little starstruck at nature's fireworks
i've been looking at activity like this for almost four decades and i still get
mesmerized when i see it get mesmerized yes i just sit there i can watch it day in day out
there are not many eruptions in the world where you can get this close in march it
burst into the open in a lonely valley that was once an ancient viking burial ground
getting there felt like we'd stepped back in time prehistoric rocks littered the fields
as our giant four by fours raced along a dirt track climbing the barren hills
it's a good show oh my god it's protected yes at the top sword arson grabbed his gas mask
in case the volcano belched out dangerous sulfur dioxide gas we followed carrying emergency oxygen
it wasn't long before we were on hands and knees searching for volcanic glass
in here we have what we call teflon we are thrown out the vent these little hair-like
pieces here yes you see you see them in here you see and the name pela is here after the goddess of
kelly yeah yes the volcano guard is in hawaii from chunks the size of a car to little pieces
that look like a strand of hair and there's all that coming out of that volcano yes absolutely
the lava flows have been spectacular from the start but the fountaining today was was just
out of the top drawer just 10 out of 10. if there's one person who's on close terms with
the volcano goddess pele it's bruce haughton hawaii's state volcanologist he and thor
darson have chased lava all over the world so when iceland blew haughton wasn't going to let it pass
you go as quickly as you can many eruptions are over within a day or so thor had a inkling from
way back that this was going to be a long one so you you got up and flew in from hawaii i waited i
waited i kai believed him but i waited yeah until i was certain that it had a long life ahead of it
i think it is a beginning of a new eruption period a new eruption period yes and i think
we're going to see many more eruptions in the peninsula over the next let's say 200 to 400 years
that prospect has scientists scrambling to get here
the slow steady lava flow fueling speculation of a new seismic era
most eruptions like the one in 2010 that shut down european air travel pack an explosive punch
this one is a dream it means scientists can collect a treasure trove of data
and home in on the holy grail of volcanology how to predict an eruption
the worst thing you can do ironically in a volcanic eruption is to tell the population
there's going to be an eruption sometime in the next three years and then walk away and leave them
with that but it's it's trying to get to the point where you can offer a few days to a few weeks
warning and that's something so far we don't do that very well is this helping you hit that sweet
spot we hope it will but at the moment we're just gathering the raw material it's not like the moses
bringing the tablets off the mountain you know it's it's something that takes a long time to
to address all of the different lines of evidence eventually you know where we want to take the
science of volcanology is to be able to predict but also in forecast eruptions it took meteorology
over 200 years to come up with a decent weather forecast so we've only been at this for 100 years
not us maybe collectively it's getting close but for the record one of the next generation
of scientists trying to unlock the earth's secrets is texas trained geochemist ed marshall
so this is all still being pushed out yes exactly a self-described lab rat he couldn't believe
his luck to be working at the university of iceland when the eruption happened
now he dresses for the office in a heat protective suit digging past the
cooled rock at the edge of the lava field marshall scoops up the smoldering lava and
douses it in water the flash cooling turns the lava instantly to glass
so when we take hot lava and we flash cool it into a glass we preserve all of the chemistry that is
locked away in the liquid lava it's still warm now what will you learn from this so from these
samples we can study their compositions and learn where the lava came from and what's happened to
it on the way to the surface and how far down are we talking in this case about nine miles
that's the deepest in thousands of years this eruption is really a conduit to the earth's mantle
that we haven't been able to touch in iceland in historic time
as we talked the 30-foot lava wall continued to crack and crumble pushing slowly towards us
you first came out here when this first started to erupt that's right what what did this valley
look like then well this valley that we're in now had no lava in it at all and what we're seeing is
lava slowly coming out of the vent and just filling up the area around it like a bathtub
how soon would that wall make it here uh it depends it could be here in uh by the end of
the day potentially 20 to 30 feet in about a day yeah yeah that's right that's incredible
it's not just scientists who've been transfixed by the eruption this is a country that names its
children after volcanoes so no surprise that more than 90 thousand have made the pilgrimage to see
it and who could pass up a ready-made barbecue there are lava dogs lava s'mores lava selfies
at dusk the crowds grew thicker so one night we decided to join them look at that
don't see that every day no you don't wow we had asked kristin jones daughter head of iceland's
earthquake monitoring to come along she told us most eruptions in iceland start with a big bang
not this one instead the earth unzipped itself in almost a straight line lava boiled up spreading
to two vents then nine now vent number five is the only one still active on this southwest peninsula
john's daughter told us that wasn't the only surprise we have not seen an eruption on the
peninsula for 800 years 800 years yes so this is something that i was not expecting
to happen in my lifetime how how long can this keep up we don't know that's the honest answer
we are not seeing any signs of a decrease so we don't know just when we thought we had seen it
all the volcano had another idea we watched as a huge stream of lava slithered down a new path
into the valley when we went to take a closer look we couldn't believe our ears
it sounded like broken glass it was a molten lava fall
we're about 10 feet away i'm not sure i can get much closer
yeah i'm not sure i can get much closer than this it's about 10 feet away burned your face
but it was hard to turn away you can see also over there like you can see the glow inside
with more active volcanoes than almost anywhere else on earth seismologist kristen young's
daughter told us it's not hard to be moved by iceland's volcanic arsenal and to see what she
meant we traveled inland we are now flying along the the western volcanic zone so each one of those
craters there has been a volcanic eruption out of one of those craters yeah exactly we flew along
a deep trench that stretched for miles john's daughter told us iceland straddles the border
of two tectonic plates the friction between the plates creates earthquakes and an opening for lava
to escape so this is a fissure so you can see there's a whole lot of opening happening here
now would this be a place where during a quake the lava would come from these fissures might do might
do we flew past mountains of ash 10 000 years old more remnants of past eruptions we were heading to
kotla one of the island's most violent volcanoes its center covered with a vast glacier twice
the size of manhattan if this were to blow is this one of the most explosive volcanoes on the island
yes it is would this stop air traffic all over europe like the uh the last one dude it might too
when's the last time it erupted it erupted last time in 1918 but before that it had
eruptions quite regularly every 50 years so it's long overdue it's long overdue so
is it smart for us to be here right now
yawn's daughter assured us that kotlow was showing no signs of waking up just then six
seismic monitors record kotlas every hiccup part of an extensive network that includes gps sensors
and satellite images i'm mostly interested in what is happening underneath the ground the stuff that
we don't see how do we put together that image of what's happening on the ground and how do we
forecast the or predict what's going to happen next and so what's going on right now that's
helping you get closer to that goal absolutely so with every eruption we learn something about
the structure of the volcanoes and not only in iceland but it this has also an impact worldwide
in the land of fire and ice the volcano bug bites hard
this latest eruption is the perfect recruitment tool for a new generation of volcanologists
chasing lava one scientist told us it shakes you to your core
streaming now on paramount plus what did 60 minutes plus
find to be the most dangerous part of their trip to iceland
we're getting out of here don't come there's too much gas go to 60 minutesovertime.com