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Scientists Attempt To Calm Volcano
An anonymous reader writes "Since May 2006, a mud volcano in Indonesia has spewed out up to 126,000 cubic metres of mud a day, flooding an area of more than 4 square kilometres. This unprecedented natural disaster has become so bad that geophysicists now plan to enact an untested scheme to try and slow the flow: dropping concrete balls into the volcano."
This unprecedented natural disaster has become so bad that geophysicists now plan to enact an untested scheme to try and slow the flow: dropping concrete balls into the volcano.
They've got a lot of balls, trying something like that.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I forgot what happened in an old science fiction movie where the scientists tried to calm a volcano. Did the lone scientist inside the volcano turned into a lava monster or was he eaten by the lava monster?
I'm sure you can find plenty here *looks around nervously*
Monstar L
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
There may be some truth to that:
o w
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidoarjo_mud_flow#Fl
Looks like the mud flow started eminating from an exploratory well
The first effort, virgin sacrifices, had no effect. Being scientists, they were in great supply though.
As one of the physicists said "The mud will find another way out". Maybe if they plug the hole, enough pressure will build up to cause a real eruption.
These events happen for a reason. It's the planet's way of staying in balance.
I like how the locals blame the oil companies on the volcano erupting.
Actually, someone fed the Volcano God some cheese. Sherman's lactose intolerant.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Well, at least they're hard as rocks.
Ever have a bottle of soda suddenly start spraying? How well does sticking your thumb over the nozzle help?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
They want to drop concrete balls into it? Do you take concrete balls when you have an upset stomach? Me neither. What they need is a dump truck full of Tums and a concrete mixer full of Mylanta. If that doesn't work you can always use a virgin. But concrete balls? These "scientists" need to get a real scientist--a witch doctor. They're witches and they're doctors. That's a lot of school. And if they can't fix it you can just throw them in there and save your concrete balls for outside a library or something.
Swi
Is it just my filthy internet-corrupted mind, or did anyone else immediately think "dog in a bathtub"
No I'm not linking, go and look it up if you must
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Like I always say:
There's pretty much nothing that can't be accomplished if you have big enough balls.
Teabagging a volcano...
Sounds like a good way to turn a shield volcano into a stratovolcano.
The milk jug analogy is flawed. With holes in the bottom of a milk jug, it's just gravity that lets the water pour out under the force of its own weight, so yes, plugging one hole, or plugging the hole halfway, reduces the rate of flow and doesn't change the pressure -- because there's no pressure in the first place.
Hook up a garden hose to the milk jug and then try it, though, and you've got an entirely different situation. Now you can turn the jug _over_, so that the holes are on the top, and you'll still get water squirting out, just like mud flowing *up* out of a volcano, against gravity. Plug one of the holes in the jug then, and you will indeed get more flow out the other hole.
If the article accurately describes their strategy, they're only going to make matters worse, not better.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
This is a technique which is quite effective for calming an individual, for instance an angry co-worker or customer. I suspect it would be effective on volcanoes as well.
Step 1: adopt the energy level and tone of the individual. For instance if he is nervous and agitated, you should act the same. Appear genuinely interested in his problem.
Step 2: once you've matched his energy level, begin to "come down". Start talking more calmly and rationally. Describe how you will resolve his issue. The individual should start to calm down with you.
For a volcano, this should work as follows:
Step 1: Raise your internal temperature to one or two thousand degrees. This helps you match the heat of the volcano's molten lava. Then, begin cracking, smoking, or spewing small columns of molten rock. This lets the volcano believe you're "on his side".
Step 2: Begin to cool. Allow your lava streams to become glassy and hard. Act like a normal run-of-the-mill mountain, and talk about how great it is to NOT eject molten liquid all over everything.
The volcano should now be calm.
Chuck Norris's balls.
I don't know why I said that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This idea will work about as well as a butt plug would to stop explosive diarrhea.
(not that I have tried that !!!)
Last November they were tossing in live chickens and goats......
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Time to call in Indy for some special consultation. Next thing you know, they'll be dropping natives, snakes, and Nazis into the volcano.
It is incorrect to say that there is no pressure at the bottom of the milk jug. There *is* pressure due to the weight of water above the holes. This is why the water will come out of the holes at a higher rate when the jug is nearly full than when it's almost empty.
The garden hose analogy is also a tad flawed. If you attach the hose to the jug the jug will wind up being at same the pressure of the hose whether there's one hole or two in it.
An analogy that is actually applicable in this case is that of a large tank with a brittle bottom that is out in a rainstorm. Say that with two holes the water flowing out equals the rain coming in, so the system is stable. Now, plug a hole. The flow rate out is cut in half and the tank starts to fill up. The pressure at the bottom of the tank increases as the weight of water above increases. If that pressure reaches a certain point, the bottom of the tank will form other holes or even catastrophically rupture.
If the scientists had presented this analogy then there would probably have been fear that plugging the volcano could result in an explosive eruption. It certainly would be something I'd be concerned about, although maybe the geophysicists involved somehow know that the pressure won't build up to the point where an eruption will be possible.
Kaopectate. Every time I have a mud volcano spewing from my backside this seems to work.
Hey, guys. Big gulps, huh? Cool. All right! Well, see ya later.
Pun intended. Does anyone else forsee in this the comedy that will likely unfold? I fully expect to read a story next week about a vocano in Indonesia that is firing concrete balls into the orbit and that they're taking our Chinese satellites or that they're pummeling a nearby city. I liken this to sticking your finger in the end of a shotgun barrel.
For reference: Mud volcano
[/sarcasm]
So they demonstrated their theory using a water bottle with two holes cut in the bottom, and showed how covering one hole slowed the rate of water leaving the bottle. That's all good and fine, but we're talking about water that's responding to the force of gravity, not pent-up pressure and geothermal heating. If the weight of the balls can counteract that, great, but if that's their idea of a physically accurate analogy, I think they might be in for some surprises. Here's hoping it works, anyway, despite their faulty physics.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Have they tried a virgin sacrifice?
If they're attempting to stop up the volcano though, I'm sure they'd make a great projectiles.
Uh, when I first heard the term "mud volcano" I immediately thought about what happens when I eat too much Taco Bell.
And the idea of sticking 4 concrete balls with metal chains attached to them into my "mud volcano" is kinda sickening.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
The opposing viewpoint shown in the article reminds me of the 6th networking truth:
"It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving the problem to a different part of the overall network architecture) than it is to solve it." --RFC1925
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Just cram a couple of nukes down it. If you want any how to infomation consult SciFi Channel or any one of a hundred low budget scifi films.
to get the hell away from the problem. If they bottle it up causing a worse problem in 5 or 10 years, they won't care.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
geophysicists now plan to enact an untested scheme to try and slow the flow: dropping concrete balls into the volcano
So basically when the volcano explodes, it won't just throw lava, but we'll also have raining canon balls. Smart!
I like that too. It's much better than blaming some innocent scapegoat.
This calls for the superpowers of TEAM VIRGIN!
Ok, I'll bite. The oil company drilled a borehole next to the volcano. When the borehole exploded it provided a vent for the mud to flow out of. According to This site the oil company was not following standard operating procedure designed to minimize the risk of this kind of event.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
So how, exactly, is this any different from the traditional volcano-god appeasement technique of throwing hundreds of naked virgins into the volcano? Apart from being less exciting.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Aren't we missing the most obvious solution here?
We are geeks after all. And we know what will calm a volcano.
V I R G I N S
O.K., I need 3 Linux nerds, and 3 Linux nerdettes (come on, you know, you mention Linux at a party, you ain't getting laid).
Volunteers?
Free trip to Indonesia.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Just hire Tom Hanks to jump into it. If that doesn't work, at least we'll be rid of Tom Hanks and have a great new You Tube Video!.
Seriously though, by adding these concrete balls, isn't that like putting shot into a black powder gun? The reason this is happening is to release pressure. Backing up the volcano and building up more pressure can't be a good thing. Especially with such conveniently sized plugs... I can just imagine the first report of someone being killed by man-made volcano debris.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
...muzzle loader.
rj
Have they tried burping it? It might have a little gas trapped it its belly. That and a story should get it to calm right down.
Balls thoroughly licked mud volcano
Haven't we learned from cartoons that this is a really bad idea? Shortly after dumping the balls into the volcano, it's going to contract, then spit them out. The will fly high into the air, then crash into the people, stuck running in place, who threw them in.
Think of the poor cartoon creatures that will be harmed!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The volcano will be angered by this and most likely erupt immediately spewing giant concrete balls into the nearby towns causing many more deaths and destruction than the volcano would have.
First thing that popped into my head...imagining a helicopter flying over "plopping" them into a smiling volcano".
Earth - 1 | People - Zip
You had me at merlot
best off with more government controls. Unless you want "real" freedom...
Kharma is like a boomerang. Mine is broken.
And once the pressure builds up enough on those balls, there might be a shower of concrete balls on the surrounding countryside.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
My first thought is the build up of pressure; they covered it in the article:
FTA
"But he points out that reducing the size of the channel is likely to increase the pressure, just like squeezing the end of a hose. "I would predict that the mud would probably exit at the other holes, or farther along," says Swarbrick. This would just transfer the problem to somewhere else. "The mud will find another way out," he says."
Either there are going to be:
1) Flying balls (not FSM)
2) Leakage from other areas
3) More pressured release from the current opening; (no tube girl pics; please).
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the Universe and Man, the Universe always wins.
My Dad calls this "shovelling shit against the tide."
And in this case, it's almost literal.
--
BMO
would be to explode a deeply placed high explosive device, in the range of kilotons. The idea is to breakup the the flow channels, and let it collapse on itself and clog itself up. The explosive does not have to be nuclear, but it needs to be both large and deeply located. Correct placement would help as well.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The main issue that they have to deal with is the pressure inside the mud volcano. How long this mud volcano continues to erupt is anybody guess, since it's eruption period depends on the pressure of the gas (maybe also water, I am not sure on that) that creates this mud eruption. This might continue for years or decades if they can't stop it now.
a -may-continue-to-erupt-for-months-maybe-years-1242 9.html
Here is a interesting blog about this mud volcano.
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mud-volcano-in-jav
Is a volcano without fire still a volcano?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Are they TRYING to piss off the volcano god?
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Great balls of fire!!!!
John McPhee's book The Control of Nature has a large section on Icelanders' attempts to divert lava flows from a town and harbor. It's a heck of a good read if disaster science turns you on.
http://www.johnmcphee.com/controlofnature.htm
If they turn the place into a health spa, they can have lots of tourism and make more money from selling mud, than from selling the rice that used to grow there.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain ...
...
Too much love drives a man insane
You broke my will, oh what a thrill
Goodness gracious great balls of
great big balls
Awww, screw it, you go, Jerry Lee!!! WOOT!
.. served me with a restraining order
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Don't do it! It's a trick!
It's Bush's fault!
If Bush and Cheney hadn't sent Haliburton in to drill, this never would've happened.
Well, atleast it's happening in a Java environment, and since Java is so slow, they still have some time to ponder this idea before they set it into action.
(Sorry, had to be said)
-E
Its a mud volcano. By definition, there is no lava. Skipping even the summary these days, are we?
"We're gonna fill Capitol Hill's shit pit with concrete." says Dr. Wulf B. Snerkfart, senior director of the Anti-Shit League. "That should calm down that shit volcano, and then we'll drop large iron anvils on the White House, which is probably the shittiest place on Earth. We also have plans to drop screaming, horny monkeys on top of Bill O'reilly."
Attempts to contact Congressional leaders lead us to a couple of five cent hookers and a guy named Rod who stores his saliva to overthrow his Martian overlords.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The key to the "throw the virgins into the volcano" trick seems pretty clear to me. It's a cheap ploy by the local volcano appeasment committee to convince the winsome wenches to prove their vacant virginity through deleterious deeds.
Obviously this leeds to some pretty lame pick-up/reject lines. "If it were a choice between you and the volcano, I pick the volcano..." Although I wonder how many would really risk it...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Sounds like giant Ben Wa Balls! Could be an effective alternative to throwing a virgin in the volcano. Especially if the volcano is female.
... all your problems start AFTER your balls drop.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
My first reaction was: That will just make it mad.
After reading part of the article, they argue that the speed of escape of one hole doesn't influence the speed of escape in another. This is fine, if you have a volcano with two holes spewing. You might slow one down if the flow of lava there is "annoying".
But Volcanoes in general tend not to show the behaviour of "Mwah there is hole, the lava flow will be proportional to the size of the hole". Volcanoes tend to "want to" spew this much material, and if it can't get out, pressure builds up until something bursts. Volently.
Well that's how a select few Australian people feel, that place is a complete disaster, fuck them all.
I wanna dip my BALLS in it!
Oh boy, is this ever a mistake.
This thing has been spewing thousands of cubic metres a day of fairly foul mud for many months now. There are two alternative explanations of why it started. The one most people around here (cynics all) believe is that the drilling caused the mud flow because the drilling company didn't install casing as they went, which is standard procedure -- especially in a populated area. Casing, after all, costs money. There is an alternative position, that it was caused by an earthquake two days earlier. The earthquake view has been taken up by the Indonesian Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare because (you'll love this) his family owns 50% of the well.
IANA Geologist, but as it happens a friend of mine is in the oil well service business, and there is a method that has worked in the past: pumping, as fast as possible, dense liquid into the well (through a couple of new wells drilled to intersect the source). I mean really, really dense liquid, really a suspension of heavy fine powders with additives to adjust the viscosity. It sinks under the mud and blocks the source. Incidentally, this only works if it was caused by the drilling, not the earthquake nearby. This method would cost millions of dollars (a few mil just for the heavy liquid, because you need a LOT of it).
Here's the problem with the concrete balls. If they get don't work, I would imagine that they could get down far enough that they would interfere with the flow of the heavy liquid, removing that possibility. This looks like the ultimate in "penny wise, pound foolish" to me.
Dean in beautiful downtown Jakarta
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
That's Elbonia!
It fit's the description.
The interesting thing about this is look at the satellite pics and see where they were drilling for oil. Surrounded by peoples houses. Typical 3rd world exploitation imagine getting approval to drill like that in the middle of suburbia in the UK, US, of Aussie.
The subject of Aburizal Bakrie and all the corruption related to this case is even more interesting. Now the corrupted government officials try to call it a "natural disaster" why it was clearly caused by incompetent drilling activities by a company related to one of the ministers, Aburizal Bakrie.
The mudflow was caused by incorrect drilling done by PT Lapindo Brantas. It is due to the corruption related to one of ministers that government is trying to declare it as a natural disaster! Scientific evidence shows that all this was caused by human error!
And Meg Ryan, too!
scientist 1: uh yeah, let's drop these big concrete balls in that volcano
scientist 2: that sounds like a plan
me: uh, yeah let's put a cannon ball into the live cannon?
so you're going to teach mother nature a lesson by arming her?
one thing is certain, the pressure will build up until that concrete ball goes flying into some village.
how could a scientist be so dumb as to think that a force which can move the earth is going to fizzle at the presence of man made obstacles?
They're using their grammar skills there.
A previous experience in Italy shows that something can be done even against lava flows, not just slow mud eruptions. If not at the volcano emission site, at least in the "tubes" that keep lava hot and allow it to travel very far semi-buried under its own crust.
In 1992 a huge eruption from Mount Etna in Sicily (the biggest volcano in Europe) threatened some villages. A lava flow running straight toward them was partially diverted by breaking and obstructing its channel with concrete blocks dropped from helicopters. Once the crust was broken, the lava expanded into a new artificial channel, was exposed to air, cooled faster and slowed down. The village was saved. More info here (PDF, in Italian).
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Theres less than 10-20 miles of hard rock between us and liquid gold, ie molten metals.
Its like living on hard dirt floating on water.
It might look safe, but hey, its all still active, not as bad as Venus, but worse than Mars.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Is this in any way related to tubgirl.jpg?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
I remember seing a movie like this too when I was a kid. moments that really shocked/scared me
was when the rest of the scientists were leaving an underground control room, a control panel shorted out, causing a huge door to shut trapping the remaining scientist inside. When the others took the elevator to leave the underound lab where they were monitoring the eruption, a huge boulder ripped right into the evelvator cab through the wall, and the team had to climb out through the shaft. One more scene I vividly remember is the lone trapped scientist watching the eruption on video monitors. Very scary stuff, and I would love to see this movie again!
Superman tried that long ago...
... in Soviet Russia, concrete (shoes) calm crazy scientists.
Ever see a cartoon where the character attempts to plug a leak in a dam by sticking his/her finger in the hole?
This seems about the same. Except the cartoon character is a scientist who should remember cartoons like that and the dam is Indonesia.
Silly people.
Those who have telepathy have no need to RTFA.
How?
"Good volcano... Nice volcano..."
Homer: Oh, boy. It's gonna take a lot of fireworks to clean this place up.
I usually use Imodium. ;)
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
Perhaps if the mud deposit is large enough, there are other areas that could be drilled through to help relieve the pressure. The mud could be chanelled away from more economically important areas. Once enough pressure is released, the original hole could be capped.
I find it interesting that proper precautions weren't taken while drilling, as the wiki article on mud volcanoes mentions they are almost always associated with hydrocarbon deposits. You'd think oil companies would have a lot of experience dealing with these things. I certainly hope anyone who's livelyhood has been damaged by this negligence has the means to mount a lawsuit against the company.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No boom Today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
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Do these people have a plan for what to do in case this goes all wrong?
... or it slowly ooozes out all over?
Such as if they do block up the mouth of the volcano, and then it explodes (catastrophically) out somewhere else nearby?
If these people doing the chain-ball thing are the same people as the original drilling company, then I doubt they have thought about how it could go wrong and how to respond.
We drop in virgin turkeys! I'll split the Noble prize money with you. Just send me you bank name, acctount number, routing number, mother's maiden name and SSN.
Trust me...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Ha. This is going to confuse the hell out of future archeologists! Just think of the face Charlie Brown gets when his mouth turns into a squiggle...
the problem arose when the oil company drilled through a relatively thin clay layer into a very thick mud bearing layer under very high pressure. The clay layer acted as a dike to stop the underlying liquids from migrating upward. Normal drilling technique when such geography is present would have been to insert a liner in the drillhole in order to protect the clay strata from erosion, but this was not employed here. When the drillhole pierced the clay strata, the high pressure mud below it quickly eroded the initial breach into a large breach which followed the drillhole upward to transform it into the mud volcano that now exists.
Of course this changes everything. But maybe venting it in a more convenient place (the location is problematic) will cause the outflow to drop. The geology is everything.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I wonder if this would stop the volcanic bleeding at Ford, GM, and DaimlerChrysler.
hmm the concrete blocks will block an eruption for a little while, more pressure is gonna build up and
"The Volcano is gonna blow!" Big time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sounds like what they need is a little ice-nine.
Who wants to be a virgin aournd a volcano?
TFA describes said mud reservoir as under sufficient pressure that drilling extra vents hasn't reduced the mudflow at all, and the amount of mud being emitted has overwhelmed all previously attempted damming/diversion measures. IANA geologist, but that's got to be a hell of a lot of pressure. I'm not sure any man-made measure (be it throwing virgins down the borehole or otherwise) is going to stop it, and this business of throwing giant concrete balls at it seems like foolishness of the first order.
I'm reminded of a scene from an old TV series, which despite being about submarines, contains perhaps the best line ever about dropping man-made objects into volcanoes:
"I'll carry on working. I don't think [geologist] or his ceramic suppositories will mind my absence."
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
Don't be intimidated by the low user ID. -1 Troll works on him just the same as everyone else.