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Rock Face of Kilauea Volcano Collapses
jurt1235 writes "The rockface on the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii recently collapsed over the course of about four hours. The collapse was predicted. The USGS has some great pictures of nature in action. The new rockface, which most likely will fall again, is already being build up by the vulcano." From the CNN article: "The plume, 6 feet in diameter, sent up a tower of steam as it hit the water and began forming a ramp of new land. The collapse of solidified lava shelf and sea cliff Monday was the largest since Kilauea Volcano began its current eruption in 1983."
(ducks)
You are not the customer.
"The new rockface, which most likely will fall again, is already being build up by the vulcano."
Vulcano? Is this a translation from Latin?
...is this in any way News for Nerds?
do.what.promptcmds
The new rockface, which most likely will fall again, is already being build up by the vulcano.
This should read:
The new rock face, which most likely will fall again, is already being built up by the volcano.
Have the Slashdot editors been replaced with ESL monkeys?
Or perhaps, are there no open source apps with spelling and grammar checking?
Or perhaps, do they just not care because idiots like me will probably continue coming here out of habit, regardless of how bad the writing and editing is?
The Wikipedia entry has some cool information on lava and some awesome pictures. Here's one of a "lava fountain."
Or perhaps, are there no open source apps with spelling and grammar checking?
There are plenty. Don't blame OSS for the editors' Engrish.
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's CLOBBERIN' TIME! ... oh THAT rock face... *ducks*
Vulcanos do exist... But only on the planet Vulcan. Live long and prosper.
Indeed, Open Office is my favourite. Though sadly there still is no open source sarcasm.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
I recall reading once that the cliff created by volcanoes lava flow could eventually break off causeing an underwater landlslide that could potentially wipe out the pacific rim, and the US west coast. I wonder how this all plays into things.
I come here for the high quality spelling and grammar corrections in the comments.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
The rock face of Kilauea didn't collapse. A shelf on the coastline formed by lava flows from Kilauea collapsed. Kilauea is located fairly far inland and has no chance of collapsing without taking a decent portion of the island of Hawai'i with it.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Often one or two overballed tourists get too close and die. Anything like that this time? It may take a few days before anybody would realize they are missing I suppose.
Table-ized A.I.
Anal retentive spelling and grammar corrections are a slashdot tradition. Keep the faith alive!
For a (usually up to date) view of the nearby lava vent that is the source of all this try http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/cam/index.htm It is currently showing yesterday's image.
This should read:
Or perhaps, do they just not care because idiots like me will probably continue coming here out of habit, regardless of how bad the whining and complaining is?
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
I was kinda wondering about that. I only looked at the pictures, and all I saw were some coastline lava flows. Some damn nice ones, but nothing like what the title and summary suggested.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Well, as the volcano does its thing, it creates new land. Yes, it'll take some time to be useful land, but, new land it is.
... in Hawaii. That's gotta be worth something!!
New land
Who owns it?
If my 2 3/8 acre lot suddenly got bigger on on side, somehow, would I own it? My neighbor?
Would I have to pay increased taxes on my suddenly-newer lot?
Does anyone know how this all works?
Perhaps we can have Martin Fink tell them how it is.
"Rock Face of Kilauea Volcano Collapses" almost had me lunging for CNN in the hope of spectacular footage of Hawaii sliding into the ocean beneath mile-high plumes of steam and lava, while the USA's west coast falls into panic before the approaching tsunami.
"Biggish Lumps of Lava Miles from Kilauea Fall Into Sea" would be a more accurate description. Maybe the editors can use that for next week's dupe.
Reading the article made me curious about being killed by volcanos in general. I googled this site. Pretty interesting read, but it doesn't satisfy my "how painful would it be to jump into a lava flow" curiosity
Cooled lava flows may look stable to walk on, but the crust may be thin, which would expose the hiker to a falling into a lava tube. There may even be flowing lava under a thin crust of aa lava. Falling into an active lava tube will be instant death.
http://www.volcanolive.com/safety.html
The collapse happened on Monday 28th. How is this NEWS?
Apparently a good part of Mauna Loa did collapse and the resulting tsunami was a few hundred meters high.
4 .htm
Bad news is that if it happened again, it would decimate Hawaii, but the good news (if you can call it that) is that this sort of tsunami would attenuate before reaching the mainland.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~earles/kohala-tsunami-sep0
Yup, the description kind of sucked, but the link was decent. Before and after photos of the collapsed lava delta from the website linked.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Nothing like an authentic Imu Pit luau to get your chops working.
Have some Hot Rocks candy for desert. Hmmm, is that the Stones Play With Fire from the Hot Rocks CD playing in the background?
Interesting story about this. I recently moved to Hawaii, and some friends related to me a few months ago about their visit to Volcano National Park last January, when they were allowed to actually hike right up to the lava flowing into the ocean. They said they could come as close as 10 feet away before the radiant heat of the liquid rock became too much. And it's a beautiful sight at night, with red streaks of lava on the hillside in the distance, flowing about a half mile across the flat shelf (or bench, as geologists call it) from the base of the hill into the ocean. So of course I wanted to go see this too, b/c how often do you get to see real, molten lava, right out of the earth's mantle??? Anyone who thinks this isn't interesting to geeks should think again!
So I finally got a chance to go with some friends last Friday, day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the park rangers had closed the trail a mile and a half from the lava flow, saying that a bench had collapsed into the ocean several months ago, taking 14 hikers with it, who were never found. I can only imagine that they either drowned, were incinerated, or were buried alive by the landslide, or some ungodly combination of the three. There are also a lot of signs at the park with pictures of a bench breaking off into the ocean and an unfortunate stick figure hiker falling in with it, but the pics are out of scale and make the bench look like a rather small edge of land by the sea, easily steered clear of.
Anyway, it was a disappointment b/c I really wanted to see the lave up close. My friends and I debated a bit about sneaking out across the lava fields anyway, which would have been quite easy to do since the ranger station was over a mile back down the road, and there were no rangers guarding the trail or anywhere near. We figured we would just stay a good 50 yards or more inland, away from these fragile "benches". We didn't care so much about seeing the lave go into the ocean as we did about just seeing it flowing across the ground.
But in the end we decided to turn back and head home, and return another day. Only yesterday did I see in the news that a ~40-acre bench had broken off into the ocean. Holy moly, 40 acres! And that was only three days after we almost snuck out on this exact bench, not realizing its massive size! I also discovered that that bench that took the 14 hikers with it was actually ~12 acres, certainly not easily steered clear of. Further, like an iceberg, the lava flowing across the surface of the bench is only a fraction of the total flow, as most of it flows down the hill, hits the bench at the base of the hill, and seeps into tunnels which spread out over a wider swath than the surface flow, and through which it continues its flow to the ocean. These hollow tunnels, combined with the porous brittleness of hardened lava rock and erosion from the ocean water seaping into the bench causes large sections to crumble and break off periodically.
It's all quite fascinating, but the moral of the story is, kids, when the park ranger at a volcano tells you not to do something but doesn't volunteer the details or say why, trust him anyway and don't do it!
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Burns: This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they'll have written the greatest novel known to mankind. (reads one of the typewriters) "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times"?! you stupid monkey! (monkey screeches)
..when you finally find out how painful it is!! :P
"which most likely will fall again" should be "which is likely to fall again". Unless you like the sloppy language of teenage Americans, in which case, it needs, like, a hundred more "likes" in the sentence.
The term Slashdot Editor is a joke. On you. =)
I thought all sarcasm was Open Source. You just keep improving and revising the phrase until it becomes bug-free:
v1. Have you ever heard of a spellchekcer?
v2. That should me "spellchecker" ^^
v3. ^^ Obviously spellchecker's can't fix everything.
v4. Neithe'r can' obssessiv'e apostrophes's ^
v4.1. That's why I use VI
v4.2. Emacs said this ^^ doesn't need to be capitalized
Wait... that's not progress. Eh, then again, neither was X.org...
[ducks]
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/hazards/oceanentry/deltacol lapse/
The rock face of Kilauea didn't collapse. A shelf on the coastline formed by lava flows from Kilauea collapsed. Kilauea is located fairly far inland and has no chance of collapsing without taking a decent portion of the island of Hawai'i with it.
Bogus meter pegged when headline omitted "Mile High Tsunami Devastates LA".... work this around to be Microsoft's fault? Was SCO somehow involved? The RIAA? Hey, let's blame it on overpriced Apple hardware!
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
You think this is what they tell any but the most brainwashed?
You think the Tom Cruises, John Travotas, and Lisa Marie Presleys get fed any of that?
We visited the Volcano National Park 18 months ago. While it was very active at the time - it was an awesome sight. At the end of Chain Of Craters road (see map), there is this sign which explains what happened.
I'm surprised no one else has posted this already.
The related article is here.
Don't you have someone you'd die for?
If it melts Kilauea today, who knows what the warming will do to the Grand Canyon.
FTA: "The plume, 6 feet in diameter"
Who cares! Mabey if it was 600 feet in diamater this would be news... But 6 feet?? Come on! I'm sure 6 feet pieces of land fall into the ocean on a daily basis. Infact me and a couple friends could probably accomplish it! Just because it was recently created by a volcano and still hot this is somehow news?? If I am misguided and this is infact news please enlighten me.
Move along.. Move along.. nothing to see here
Give them the illusion of choice and they will blindly follow for they choose not to make one.
Is it just me, or does the "petunia skylight" have vaguely anatomical connotations?
so what, what does this have to do about computers? What's next, more information on hte Lacy Peterson case?
I was there about two years ago, they had marked trails right up to the main flow (though far away inland from the benches).
I met two guys there who were local Lava Junkies, and visited pretty often - walking in places I thought were a bit unsafe. They were kind enough to show my some of the safer places to walk close to the lava and I got some great pictures as a result.
Read the text from "Close Enough" for a small funny story about them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not to knock any of them, including scientology - but for any religion you need to take what's called a "leap of faith". Intelligent people do this all the time for other religions. Faith has almost nothing to do (no positive or negative correlation) with intelligence.
It's okay if your religion does fucked up stuff because *gasp* other more mainstream religions have done fucked up stuff too!
Your girlfriend must be a damn good lay.
I'm a relatively neutral observer in the whole religious escapades, and believe Scientology and Christianity to be on relatively equal planes of insanity, but for you to try to legitimize one by attacking the other is both hilarious and asinine.
Ad hominem? That would mean that I'm attacking the character of the person making the argument. There is a name for the logical fallacy I'm committing, but I forget what it is.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not legitimizing Scientology--of course its silly, non-factual BS. And it's kind of predatory, too, and I think their legal tactics are morally bankrupt. All I'm saying is that if you're going to judge, you have to use a fair standard. Otherwise, you're just picking on them. Which, in its own way, is just as intellectually dishonest as most of its detractors claim Scientology is.
(Here, I'm hoping to high heaven that this thread won't get me labeled as Slashdot's only proponent of Scientology.)
Let's go back to some basic precepts of ethics and logic: you cannot plausibly indict someone or something for moral/ethical lapses unless you apply a common standard to all actors in equivalent situations. It's difficult to defend the position that "murder is wrong" when applied to an enemy, if you let your friends or allies murder people without question.
The problem here is that very few people who attack Scientology, including the Operation Clambake dude, bother to consider any other religious or philosophical organizations using the same standards. You may think that Scientology and Christianty are both bullshit. That's fine, I believe you. But if you never bother to say anything bad about Christianity, and you take potshots at Scientology, are you surprised that I question your motivation?
I've observed that most of Scientology's outspoken detractors don't have the same level of vitriol for other religions, regardless of the logical equivalence. So I suspect that they have something particular about Scientology to dislike--it's probably the fact that Scientology is a pay-for thing (which smells to me like a scam!), or that it has some rather cult-like attributes like distancing members from family and friends.
But when your fundamental complaint is that Scientology is a psychologically abusive and manipulative organization, and that it pulls peoples' strings like a puppeteer to get their money, why are you complaining that it's theology sounds like science fiction? Tell me that they've hurt people and we can talk. But tell me that Xenu is silly, and I'll tell you that you're taking cheap shots.
This is clearly another horrific side effect of Global Warming, which also causes hotter temperatures, colder termperatures, extremely moderate temperatures, the coming ice age, all storms, flooding, droughts, locusts, killer bees, rain on your birthday, and the tragic death of Kurt Cobain.
I think that's exactly right.
Next question: how do you make someone want to believe something? I think the answer is to provide an unacceptable alternative, like "if you don't believe and be saved, your life will be meaningless, and when you die, you will burn in hell." Well, that's the Christian version, I don't know what Scientology says is the punishment for not following their religion, but I'm sure there's one.
It also helps to make things easy for your followers. Scientology appeals to wealthy people (like Tom Cruise) because it gives them an advantage in purchasing the church's expensive publications (I think the rest of us are screwed), and as a result it elevates them above other people. What's not to like about that?
Make it more appealing to obey than disobey, even if it means changing what you believe and forgetting what you know to be true. You would have to be a machine to be completely immune to this.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
It would be really neat if they could do a time-lapse of this over a long period of time to see how the land evolves. Naturally, this would be hard, what with the steam, clouds, tide, and day/night cycles to make photography too inconsistent to capture some of the more rapid changes completely. How about using high-resolution radar to map the topography, and IR cameras to differentiate the lava, water, and "cool" rock. Mount this on a helicopter, and do a few flybys everyday (if they didn't want to take the helos out at night, they could always make deals with the charter aircraft that I'm sure fly around there all the time). Using the radar data, IR images, and GPS, you could construct a detailed 3D representation of the terrain, and create some nice animations of the whole process. Sure, it would probably be expensive, but I think it would be pretty neat.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Have the Slashdot editors been replaced with ESL monkeys?
A million monkeys typing at a million keyboards...but that theory was only for English!
" And don't lust after women. Women == bad news, and lust == adultery."
You won't find christ saying that. Seriously. Go google for it or use wikipedia.
Or are you judging Christianity by what Pat Robertson et al claim about it? That's like saying "all software sucks because look at the crap that Microsoft produces".
Is Tuvalu underwater yet?
Yea reading through the report site, it gets rather tiring. Hawaiians could probably drop the page count of their native dictionary by about 30% just by getting rid of all but one word for "molten rock that comes out of a mountain". Was having separate names for every shape the stuff forms into ever really necessary?
How do you say "holy shit, this is a lot of fucking lava" in Hawaiian?
~
I think it would be great for Xenu to throw all the Scientologists into ...
an opening that looks like everyone's favourite internet celebrity
THIS IS REALLY ONE OF THE PICS
Another thing there are plenty of is people who will fall for the most obvious trolls.
First, Kilauea is not errupting per-say. Kilauea volcano, and the Kilauea caldera, are located within the park itself and the caldera is NOT errupting. Lava is (and has for many years now) been moving from under kilauea caldera towards the Pu'u O'o vent, about 15 or so miles away (as the Nene fly) where the lava both comes out in surface flows as well as moves through lava tubes. While Pu'u O'o does sit on, and is part of, kilauea caldera - and while one could technically say that kilauea volcano is errupting, it is a bit misleading.
Also... the 'rock face' of kilauea did NOT collapse. The rock face is just dandy and totally intact as it is only a mile from me - and has a very nice road all the way around it for people to enjoy.
What REALLY happened is that lava flowing through lava tubes from the Pu'u O'o vent, which sits at about 2500 feet above sea level, is moving down a steep pali (cliff) and out onto the flats near sea level. It continues allt he way to the ocean where it comes out of the cliff side and pours into the ocean. Over time a false chunk of land builds up - often many many acres in size. This new land is called a Lava Bench and it is extremely unstable as it is both very new, has active lava in it, and is being undercut by the ocean water. Over time (anywhere from days, to months) this bench builds to the point where it can't sustain it's own weight and other environmental factors, and at that point it breaks appart in a spectacular burst of lava and explosions and disappears into the ocean.
This has been going on for a very long time now. I personally have witnessed two lava benches collapse only yards from me (one in fact threw red hot lava up into the air, and over my head, to land behind me - needless to say we quickly retreated to a safer position).
As per the question being asked of who owns the new land... it depends on where the lava comes out. The lava tends to have about a 6 to 8 mile wide area that it likes to flow. Sometimes it is entirely on one side, placing it in the park boundries and thus under control of the feds. Other times it swings the other side and flows outside of park boundries, and away from the feds - to spots where we can have much more fun playing with lava.
And play we like to do... besides cooking in lava (die-hard slashdotters may require my question in the interview to Alton Brown on how cooking in lava works, and his flippant reply questioning the type of drugs I was on), dropping steel cable into lava tubes to pull out samples, and other more questionable practices that will go unmentioned here.
However, it was NOT the rock face of kilauea caldera (volcano) that has collapsed... it is merely the cliff side and lava bench which are extremely unstable and EXPECTED to collapse. This one made the news only because it was very very big - but not unexpected, not rare, not the caldera or volcano itself, and certainly not something which is unusual.
If you want more information about our wonderful volcano - and recipes for cooking in it, or poking things in it, or dangers of lava, or even how to walk on the hot stuff... see our portal below:
http://www.instanthawaii.com/cgi-bin/hawaii?Volcan o
Mahalo nui loa!
But taking potshots at scientology is just so easy. I'd consider myself an athiest, but I can understand how followers of most mainstream religeons could believe what they believe based on the evidence presented to them. The bible is old enough that origins have been lost in the sands of time. I've seen enough evidence to consider that Jesus quite possibly existed, even if he was just another cult leader. And apart from a few fundamentalists, it is a widely held belief that the bible and other religious texts aren't actually meant to be taken literally, eg that 'God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days' was just the best description that could be given at the time. I kind of think that the scientology literature is meant to be taken as written, which is kind of stupid.
Many atrocities have been committed in the names of the various religions, and i'd agree that more bad things have been committed in the name of christianity than in the name of scientology, but just how many scientologists have existed, ever? Try thinking about it this way... create a system of point scoring per evil committed in the name of either faith (it probably doesn't matter how you score it, but probably stick to stuff that isn't too far away from the core beliefs of that faith... eg I don't think christianity actually says that witches should be burnt, or that the practice was carried out by any but a few small sects). That will give you a raw 'evil rating' for each faith. Now divide by the number of followers of that faith who have existed, ever, and come up with an number.
From what i've read about scientology, the manipulation and blackmail of people is actually built into it, rather than christianity where, really, all they're saying is be nice to each other.
Non-scientology religions have their problems, but I wouldn't hold anyone in contempt if they did some scientology bashing without batting an eye at any other faith. Afterall, the whole thing could have been put together by a sci-fi author.
We're talking about lava here. Lava kicks butt! Any excuse to talk about lava is worth it, including a measily 40 acre shelf of volcanic rock supporting a lava flow falling into the sea.
global warming.
(ducks)
Insert nerd-appropriate "mind meld" joke here.
The thing about the Xenu story is that the Co$ promises people deep and important secrets once they've reached Operating Clear Super Saiyajin Thetan 5 or whatever the hell they call it. Secrets, they say, that could cause serious damage if told to someone not prepared by years of incredibly expensive courses.
Once you get there, you hear the Xenu story. At which point you either (a) admit to yourself you've spent a fortune just to hear something the Star Trek team would have rejected as too absurd, or (b) go along with it. (b) is pretty rare, as the cult brainwashing along with the good-money-after-bad effect makes it very hard to quit at that stage.
As a result, if you're running a website intended to protect people from Scientology, it makes sense to publish their secret stories. Print them in the open, and ask people if this bloody awful SF is really worth paying all that money for.
If the Scientologists were upfront about the Xenu tale in the same way that Christians are upfront about the Resurrection, I'd agree with you - mocking it as absurd would be a cheap shot. But this is a secret scripture. This is what they want you to spend all your money on training before they'll tell you. In which case, it's not a cheap shot - it's warning people about a con.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Damn lack of an 'edit' button... Come on, at least we should be able to edit our posts as long as we do it before anyone has replied or moderated?
Obviously, this should have been '(a) is pretty rare'.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.