Do you know what a volcano is?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

The inhabitants of our planet began to think about what a volcano is and how it appears in ancient times.

Thus, for example, the ancient Romans called a volcano a mountain in which the god of fire Vulcan lived. When he began his dangerous work, smoke came out of the mountain and fire erupted. Kamchadals believed that in the fire-breathing mountains, the spirits of the volcanoes host the souls of the dead, and the smoke is visible when they start to heat their yurts. The Indians of North America, who lived at the foot of the Mazama volcano, believed that its eruptions occurred during the struggle between the good god of snow and the evil god of fire.

And here's how experts explain what a volcano is. A volcano is a hole in the earth's crust, naturally formed as a result of the displacement of tectonic plates, from which hot lava is ejected under enormous pressure, most often accompanied by an explosion, and along with it steam, gases and ash.

On the African continent there is one of the unusual volcanoes of the planet - Oldoinyo-Lengai. Its crater, whose diameter is 400 m, is filled with white matter, but this is not snow, but soda ash. Surprisingly, it rose from the depths of the earth, because this volcano is the only one whose lava contains calcium, potassium and sodium instead of the usual silicon minerals. They call her coldbecause the temperature of this lava is half that of ordinary lava. During the day it looks black, and only with the advent of darkness does it become clear that in fact it is a dark crimson color. Then, gradually cooling down, the lava acquires a white color. Soda is carried away by streams of water into a beautiful lake, as if covered with a pink veil. This is another amazing moment, because the pink blanket is a lot of flamingos that were attracted there by spirulina, one of the few living organisms that live in the "soda" water.

Volcano Hephaestus, located on the Rotten Mountain of the Taman Peninsula, is unique in that it is a volcano that erupts mud fountains. This mud, called peloid, is saturated with boron, bromine, iodine, selenium, due to which it is used as a remedy in medicine. Mud baths are arranged right in the crater of the volcano, the temperature of which ranges from + 12 to + 20 degrees Celsius.

Volcanoes of Iceland have been fighting glaciers for 60 million years. Over the past two centuries, out of 20 volcanoes, almost half have been active at least once. And one of the largest eruptions on this island lasted almost two years during 1821-1823. It was Eyjafjallajokull. By the way, in 2010, by its action, it practically melted a huge glacier of the same name in a few days and at the same time provoked the activity of another volcano - Katla. According to experts, volcanoes and earthquakes, their constant companions, will make themselves felt inover the next 60 years.

What is a volcano in space? In 2005, on Enceladus (a moon of Saturn), the Cassini space station registered active volcanoes. For hundreds of kilometers, they spewed not lava, but fountains of water, which immediately turned into a fog of ice crystals. A little earlier, in 1989, it became known about volcanic activity on Triton (a satellite of Neptune). There, on one of the coldest bodies in the solar system (-240 degrees Celsius), nitrogen geysers activated by solar heat were discovered.

So what is a volcano - a fire-breathing mountain, a mud fountain or a gas geyser?