Generally speaking, it’s pretty easy to tell when something is going on with a volcano. When a large volcano is about to blow its top it typically shows signs of unrest many days, months, or even years ahead of time. Add to that the fact that many volcanos are constantly monitored and are popular with sightseers and you can understand why the vast majority of volcanic activity is easy to observe and study. When the Havre volcano produced a massive eruption several years back scientist not only didn’t predict it, they actually almost missed it entirely.
In a new paper published in Science Advances, researchers explain how they first spotted the eruption and discuss the incredible challenges associated with studying a volcano that is erupting on the bottom of the ocean.
`As you can probably imagine, studying anything deep underwater is inherently more challenging that studying something on dry land. Not only is visibility much lower from a distance, but you can’t exactly just walk right up to an underwater volcano to get a better view.- READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [divider][/divider]It’s not often that a whole new chunk of land just comes jutting out of the ocean, but that’s just what happened with a new island in the South Pacific. A large undersea volcano blew its top in late 2014, shooting rock and ash skyward, and once everything calmed down an entirely new island had been formed. Now, NASA is looking at the newly formed landmass for possible hints at how the landscape of Mars behaved billions of years ago.
The new island, which is being referred to by the unofficial name Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, didn’t seem to have a bright future when it first emerged in the wake of the volcano’s fury, but researchers now believe it actually might stick around for quite a while. New data suggests it might even last as long as 30 years.
“Everything we learn about what we see on Mars is based on the experience of interpreting Earth phenomena,” Jim Garvin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explains. “We think there were eruptions on Mars at a time when there were areas of persistent surface water. We may be able to use this new Tongan island and its evolution as a way of testing whether any of those represented an oceanic environment or ephemeral lake environment.”
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