Interesting curiosities and facts about Volcanoes
Volcanic eruptions are phenomena as beautiful as they are destructive. Mentions of monstrous eruptions and the devastation they caused have been preserved in legends. Fortunately, nowadays people have learned to predict in advance when the next volcano wants to once again expel hot magma flows. Here are 50 interesting facts about volcanoes..
There are about 900 active volcanoes on earth.
Most of them are asleep, but they can wake up at any moment.
There are different criteria according to which a volcano is classified as active.
According to one scheme, it is considered as such if it has erupted at least once in the last 10,000 years and, according to another, whether there has been at least one eruption during the recorded history of mankind.
There are many more volcanoes at the bottom of the seas and oceans than on land.
Since many of them are sleeping, it is impossible to calculate their exact number. Different sources give numbers from 1500 to 4500.
Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Russia (5642 meters) is a stratovolcano.
He’s been asleep for a long time, but volcanic activity continues in his bowels, and it’s possible he’ll wake up at any moment.
The 2,462-meter-high Mayon volcano in the Philippines is one of the most active in the world,
having erupted more than 50 times in the last 400 years. In 2018, he threw a lava fountain at a height of more than 700 meters, and the glow was visible hundreds of miles away.
The most active volcano in the world is Kilauea,
in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Its eruption is continuous since 1983.
Australia is the only continent that does not have a single active volcano.
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The highest volcano above sea level is Ojos del Salado, located in Chile.
It rises to a height of 6,893 meters, but fortunately it has been dormant for many thousands of years.
In the early 17th century, a famine broke out in Russia and Europe,
caused by three abnormally cold years, there were almost no crops. Modern historians have come to the conclusion that the cause of this cold climate was a volcanic winter caused by the eruption of the Peruvian volcano Huaynaputina.
At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, 1,600 km east of Japan, there is an extinct volcano called the Tamu Massif.
It is the largest on Earth and one of the largest in the entire solar system, its sole is approximately 450 by 650 km.
The most famous eruption in history can be called the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD,
when warm ashes buried the ancient Greek city of Pompeii beneath it.
The height of most volcanoes changes from time to time as a result of eruptions.
There are only five volcanoes in the world with a permanent lava lake in the crater.
One in Antarctica, the Republic of Vanuatu and Hawaii, and two more in Africa.
Mount Fuji, or Fuji – perhaps the main symbol of all Japan.
It’s also a volcano.
Underwater eruptions are generally less destructive in terms of consequences than terrestrial ones.
However, they can cause powerful tsunamis.
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The Hawaiian volcano Mauna Kea is the highest mountain on earth,
if you count from foot to top – up to 10,203 meters, although it is only 4,205 meters above sea level. For comparison, the height of Everest is 8,848 meters above sea level, but only 3,350 meters from the bottom up.
Another volcano in Hawaii, Mauna Loa,
has a height of 9,800 meters from foot to top (4,169 meters above sea level), and in terms of foot area and volume (75,000 km³) is the largest of all active volcanoes on our planet.
Mount Olympus on Mars,
reaching a height of 26,000 meters from base to peak, is an extinct volcano. It’s the highest peak in the entire solar system.
Volcanoes can be millions of years old.
The aforementioned Mauna Loa, for example, last erupted in 1984 and formed about 700,000 years ago! It was his activity that largely led to the emergence of the Hawaiian Islands themselves.
A sufficiently powerful eruption of a super volcano is capable of destroying human civilization,
or at least throwing it back to the Stone Age. Volcanic eruption in Hawaii
The highest volcano in Europe is Etna,
located in Italy, 3295 meters high.
Volcanoes can have many craters, not just one.
The aforementioned Etna has about 400 of them, and then one of them, then the other erupts lava, on average once every 3 months.
The volcanic slopes are distinguished by very fertile soil,
as it is saturated with minerals and various microelements.
In 1883, the ancient Krakatoa volcano exploded in Indonesia,
completely destroying the 10.5 Km² Island on which it was located. As a result of the explosion, 165 settlements were destroyed, 130 suffered severe damage and the number of casualties exceeded 36,000 people. The explosion was so strong that pieces of incandescent rock rose 50 to 55 km into the atmosphere, debris spread across the area within a 500 km radius around Krakatau, and the shock wave knocked down windows and knocked down the doors of many homes in Jakarta, 150 km from the site of the eruption km.
After the eruption of the Krakatau, a new island immediately began to grow in this location,
called Anak-Krakatau (“Son of Krakatau” in translation). In the mid-last century, it grew 12-13 cm per week. The height of the new Krakatau volcano has already exceeded 112 meters and the last time it erupted in 2020.
The asphalt volcanoes that exist on Earth do not explode lava,
but hot liquid asphalt of natural origin. Cryovolcanoes have been discovered on other planets in the solar system and their satellites, expelling ice, not just water.
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Volcanoes are known to erupt lava.
Lava and magma are the same thing, soon after leaving the bowels of the earth, magma begins to be called lava. Almost the same as an asteroid after entering the Earth’s atmosphere becomes a meteor and, in the case of hitting the surface without burning, it is called a meteorite.
The most geologically active celestial body known to us is Io, one of Jupiter’s moons.
There are about 400 active volcanoes on the surface of Io, all of which erupt regularly.
The lava is viscous and therefore does not move too fast.
Pyroclastic flows, consisting of ash and gas particles heated to 1200-1500 °C, are much more dangerous – they move at speeds of up to 500-700 km / h and can even overcome gorges or rivers, “jumping” on them.
The most powerful eruption in human history is considered to have occurred in 1815.
The Tambora stratovolcano completely destroyed the Tambora civilization and caused a volcanic winter that affected the entire world, so that 1816 was called “the year without summer”. Now Tambora is waking up again, and she has received the third level of danger.
In the United States, there is the Supervolcano Yellowstone,
which occupies a third of the national park of the same name, its area reaches 72 by 55 km. In total, it has already caused three catastrophic eruptions, the first of which occurred about 2.1 million years ago. The probability of the room is now estimated at 0.00014%. If that happens, the very existence of humanity will be threatened.
Most active volcanoes on Earth are concentrated in the Pacific ring of fire,
328 active sources of regular eruptions. This area is often shaken by powerful earthquakes. Part of the Pacific Ring of Fire is located in Russia in Kamchatka.
Most volcanoes are located in Indonesia and the Philippines.
Many inhabited islands are of volcanic origin.
The country of Granada, located on the island of the same name, is entirely located in a volcano extinct in ancient times.
The Mont Pele volcano on the island of Martinique at the beginning of the last century suddenly awakened,
as a result of which the entire local population died in general, except two people.
Volcanic activity and now leads to the formation of new islands.
Near the coast of Iceland lies the island of Suritsey, which is the youngest on Earth. It appeared as a result of an eruption in 1963.
According to scientists, about 75,000 years ago, a particularly powerful eruption of a super volcano caused a very long winter and,
in some places, rains containing sulfuric acid fell on the earth.
The energy released during an average eruption
is comparable to the energy of an explosion of hundreds or even thousands of atomic bombs.
Geothermal energy from sleeping underground volcanoes in Iceland is widely used.
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Vesuvius Volcano, the one that destroyed Pompeii, still does not sleep.
It last erupted in the mid-20th century in 1944.
All islands of the Hawaiian archipelago are of volcanic origin.
In the crater of the African volcano Nyiragongo, 2 km in diameter and 250 meters deep, there is a permanent lake of liquid lava.
Nyiragongo has erupted 34 times in the last century and a half, and its lava is considered the most liquid of all due to its low silicate content. The speed of its streams that descend the slopes of this fire-breathing mountain sometimes exceeds 100 km/h.
No one knows exactly the maximum depth at which an underwater volcano can erupt.
The deepest eruption ever recorded occurred at a depth of about 1200 meters
Two dozen volcanoes on Earth belong to the category of supervolcanoes.
On average, one of them erupts once every 100,000 years.
The oldest documented evidence of an eruption was recorded about 3,500 years ago.
They describe the eruption of the Italian Etna.
Klyuchevskaya Sopka in Kamchatka is the highest volcano in Eurasia.
Its height reaches 4835 meters, this is the highest peak in the entire Far East of Russia.
During the eruption, volcanoes usually release volcanic bombs into the atmosphere.
They are hot pieces of lava that can fly at a height of 15 to 20 km and their size can reach the size of a car.
Powerful eruptions usually affect the climate over several years.
In 1911, the eruption of the Philippine volcano Pinatubo led to a decrease in the average temperature of our planet by about 0.5°C.
The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull was considered dormant for almost 200 years, but in 2010 woke up.
The ashes he threw into the atmosphere forced many European countries to temporarily stop air flights.