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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."
The Wikipedia entry has some cool information on lava and some awesome pictures. Here's one of a "lava fountain."
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.
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?
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
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
Or, for those who want a hilarious animated version of it, see this This Week In God episode. (skip to 1:20 if you need to).
It wouldn't necessarily decimate Hawaii. Most of the seismic activity is on the east side of Mauna Loa, meaning the most likely coast to see the debris would be the southeast coast of the Big Island, where the voclanic activity is currently centered. A tsunami from the big island would have to travel northwest to do damage to the other Hawaiian islands.
-JMP
All right, I'm gonna get some serious flames for this, but here goes nothing...
I've had some exposure to Scientology from different perspectives. My first introduction was, actually, Operation Clambake and some similar WWW resources. Since then, I've met some actual Scientologists and discussed the religion and the controversies it creates. And, full disclosure, I'm seeing a woman right now who works for the Church of Scientology. For real.
First point: My girlfriend is part of a religion that believes that millions of years ago, an alien overlord killed a bunch of aliens by detonating thermonuclear bombs in volcanos. OK, that's just crazy. BUT... my mother, a devout Catholic, believes that 2000 years ago, the Romans nailed some Jew to a tree in Jerusalem, and that his friends entombed him in a cave with a big boulder over the entrance, and that three days later he walked out again under his own power.
Now, you can make the obvious argument that Catholicism is a screwed up and silly as any religious, but I'd like to give them a little more credit than that. Let's continue...
Second point: Scientology sues people for copyright infringement and spreads bad PR about them if they speak ill of Scientology. But it was less than 100 years ago that Catholicism had a list of "banned books", and some even scarier intellectual practices. Less than 500 years ago, they had a thing called The Spanish Inquisition that harassed, tortured, and executed thousands of innocent people, many of whom were trying to do good for the human race in science and philosophy. Less than 1000 years ago, that same church initiated several wars called the Crusades that killed hundreds of thousands of people, wiped out whole cities and crippled empires, and has been partially responsible for centuries of tension and conflict between Arab Muslims and the Western world.
So really: Yeah, on Slashdot, suing someone for copyright infringement is morally on par with executing babies en masse by dropping them in vats of acid. But there are a lot of really, REALLY popular and respected religions that have historically done far, far worse. As in, actual evil things, not just harassing people with lawsuits.
Third point: When was the last time that Scientologists exerted political pressure to get a pro-life justice on the Supreme Court, or to push public schools to teach Intelligent Design theory or allow teachers to have class prayers? When was the last time a Scientologist suicide bomber strapped on an explosive belt and blew up a nightclub in Tel Aviv?
I guess my point is that everybody who talks about how scary and awful Scientology is forgets that religion IN GENERAL can be held responsible for enormous evils. And if you add up the scorecard from the last couple of hundred years alone, Scientology is practically blameless, compared to what Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam have perpetrated.
Yes, the culty stuff is scary and freaky. Yes, they have a siege mentality about criticism of the religion. But you know what? I'd challenge any of you who criticize Scientology based on a harsher standard than you apply to other religious to actually meet and get to know some of them--they're not bad people, and most of them are pretty goddamned normal folks.
All right, flame away.