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Mt. Fuji May Be Close To Erupting
SpuriousLogic points out an article at Wired discussing research into pressure levels inside Mt. Fuji's magma chamber, which scientists claim is higher than it was in 1707, the last time it erupted. "The new readings, taken by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, reveal that the pressure is at 1.6 megapascals, nearly 16 times the 0.1 megapascals it takes to trigger an eruption." A series of earthquakes shook the area around Mt. Fuji a little over a decade ago, and a fault line was discovered underneath it. "Since the March 2011 tsunami and the 6.4 magnitude earthquake that followed four days later, Japan has been on tenterhooks, and in May 2012 a professor from Ryukyu University warned that a massive eruption within three years would be likely because of several major factors: steam and gases are being emitted from the crater, water eruptions are occurring nearby, massive holes emitting hot natural gases are appearing in the vicinity." While the rising pressure within the magma chamber is of concern, it is but one factor among many that lead to eruptions.
I am going to Japan in October, so in addition to earthquakes, tsunamis, radiation, ninjas, and godzilla, I now also have to worry about lava??? Damn...
They have indeed had more than enough of natural disasters, as well as self-triggered disasters.
>the pressure is at 1.6 megapascals, nearly 16 times the 0.1 megapascals it takes to trigger an eruption.
I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that 1.6 divided by 0.1 is *EXACTLY* 16.
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From the article: "Regions that would be affected, including Kanagawa, Yamanashi and Shizuoka, plan to hold a test run of an evacuation by 2014, with a meeting of local governments covering progress of the plans and of shelter preparations slated for April 2013." It seems if the pressure is higher than the last time the damn mountain went boom that they would speed up preparations a tad. Wow, laid back disaster relief.
ACK
Pressure vessels get increasingly difficult to build as their size grows.
When a 150 PSI compressor tank goes (and they do, even though they are made out of steel, a lot thicker than a soda pop can) they take away the room with them.
This pressure vessel is probably miles on a side, and the walls don't have good tensile strength - it's just gravity that's holding it down.
In short converting it to Olde English units doesn't help.
could they maybe drill a set of holes and
1 steer the lava to someplace NOT populated
2 prevent the lava camber from going full bore BOOM
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I had a can of Mellow Yellow that didn't get a pull tab installed, so I kept it as an conversation piece. It got left on it's side for a few years, and the contents ate through the aluminum lid. I think the sides of the can were coated, but not the top. Most can machines keep their cans on the side, so they won't last more than a decade or so if not refridgerated.
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There is an amazing new thing out there called an online dictionary. Perhaps you might consider using one?
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They're hooks used in a device called a tenter.
It's possible they're just confused because a number of people seem to mispronounce it as "tenderhooks".
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How exactly do they measure the magma pressure?
I looked through this whole page on volcano monitoring techniques, and it never mentions monitoring the pressure.
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IANAV, but I would guess that a 30cm bore hole wouldn't have much of an effect on a magma chamber that is miles wide.
The new readings, taken by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, reveal that the pressure is at 1.6 megapascals, nearly 16 times the 0.1 megapascals it takes to trigger an eruption
If that's what it takes to trigger an eruption, why didn't it happen 1.5 megapascals ago?
Probably the same reason why even though a cigarette is enough to trigger a gasoline explosion, people still manage to smoke while fueling their cars without blowing themselves up - a cigarette is sufficient to set it off, but it takes a combination of factors to make it happen.
I love looking up an mid-18th century phrase so I can understand a 21st century article about an active stratovolcano that last erupted at the beginning of that18th century.
You didn't know what a tenterhook was either unless you were/are a historic actor fuller specialist or a Chris Mars fan. (A what who when?)
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Godzilla!
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I climbed Mt. Fuji about 4 years ago and all I can think about is whats going to happen to all the people who make a living off the mountain? When you get to the top there is actually a small village on top with shops and homemade food for the people who make it, even at the bottom theres tons of base areas for people to stock up on supplies before the trek. Even along the way there are rest stops and marker points with people to provide services if needed and to sell food. Its a shame to think that all the people located anywhere near that area could possibly lose their entire way of life.
They want to, but Bruce Willis already died in space saving the world from that asteroid.
So who inherits his iTunes collection?
True. Most metal cans (the kind used for packaging, anyway) are coated with a layer of plastic to prevent interaction with the Al/Sn in the metal of the substrate itself. Particularly with acidic contents (tomatoes are the ones that come most readily to mind.) Can *ends* are manufactured separately and joined to the can bodies themselves after filling. Some can ends are coated with plastic over the majority of the surface, but others have perforations and other 'gaps' that allow for proper sealing/seaming between the can and the can end, and for tabs to break through, etc. Any place the plastic coating is missing and an acidic ingredient can come into contact with the metal, corrosion can occur (though slowly).
Source: I'm a market researcher specializing in food/beverage packaging in the US.
Here is an excerpt from an article called "Social Impact of an Eruption of Mount Fuji"
(www.hiroi.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index-katudo-kyodo-kenkyu-hujisan-shakaiteki-eikyo-english.pdf)
"The current study focuses only on possible damage from ashfall in an eruption of Mt Fuji
that is comparable to that in the Hoei Eruption. If there are other volcanic disasters such
as landslides, lava flow and pyroclastic flow, the damage will be even greater. The
important message sent out by this study is that even ashfall alone can cause severe
damage: the social and economic impact will likely be felt by the entire nation, not just
restricted to a local area around the mountain.
The following topics will be important from a policy science perspective:
1) socioeconomic impact of interruptions to transportation and logistics including the
expressways (Chuo, Tomei, Metropolitan), bullet trains, metropolitan and other train
networks, and domestic as well as international air services;
2) verification of the primary and secondary types of damage postulated by this study;
3) closer study of damage to the manufacturing industry caused by the uncertainty
perceived by suppliers and customers and damage to the tourism industry due to
cancellations by consumers; and,
4) study of ash removal methods (based on experiences in past ashfalls) and their
feasibility.
The present paper is an interim report of the work to create an eruption scenario based on
the interview-based surveys. It is our plan to conduct questionnaire studies of
businesses, survey researches, interviews of local agencies in the areas of past ashfalls,
and expert surveys in disaster-related fields. The scenario will be refined through
critiques and discussions as a re sult of these further works.
As far as the specific effects and implications of ashfall are concerned, the current study
has based itself on interviews with disaster-prevention practitioners in companies,
different levels of governments, and lifeline services. The following effects are left for
future study:
- implications on sewage-system overflow, flooding of rivers (problems in
drainage when ashfall is followed by rain );
- estimated volume of ashfall that will settle on riverbeds (estimating the
probability of flooding) ;
- effects of volcanic ash on wireless communications and radio waves;
- effects of volcanic ash on water quality;
- effects of volcanic ash on outdoor precision equipment and automobiles
and other machinery;
- effects of volcanic ash on boilers and combustion systems (since ash
affects airplane engines); and,
- indoor pollution by volcanic ash and its effects on precision equipment
indoors.
It is, strictly speaking, important to conduct empirical studies in engineering and physical
science on these topics, but apparently not too much has been done in this area. When
more is known about these topics, the present scenario of ashfall damage equivalent to
that in the Hoei Eruption could be further refined."
There would also be the difficulty of keeping the hole from plugging as the magma cooled on its way to the surface. Or what to even drill the hole with... I'm not aware of any drilling equipment that can reliably drill into liquid rock.
Lastly, even if you do solve the above problems; there is a word for venting magma to atmosphere: Volcano.
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They probably figured it out based on the pattern and quantity of ejecta. i.e. to launch boulder of this size this distance and to cover this area with this much ash then, assuming the lava reservoir was roughly the same size as it, the pressure needed to be X.
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Last I had looked it up, they measured height variation, and with an estimation of the size of the magma vessel and the expected overhead mound of rock/dirt they would evaluate what kind of pressure was required to obtain the difference.
It's no worse than in Canada where we measure height in feet/inches, distance in KM, people's weight in lbs, deli meat in grams, liquid in liters, dry baking ingredients in cups, indoor temperatures in F, outdoor temperatures in C...
Yeah, everyone knows the proper way to relieve pressure is to sacrifice a virgin.
I'm so glad you are not working with flammable materials anywhere near me. Liquid gasoline, yes. Gasoline *vapors*, on the other hand, can go off on just a spark or lit cigarette if conditions are right. Most of the time, the vapors won't be thick enough, particularly if you handle the gasoline properly (but somebody smoking near gasoline *already* isn't handling it properly; how can he be trusted to do anything else right?)--but it can happen. My mother didn't raise me to be a statistic.
Yes, they good boom very nicely
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bU-I2ZiML0
As far as I am aware, even the nuclear bunker busters can only go a couple hundred feet deep (~50m). The Fuji magma chamber is about 56km below the surface.
So, hey. Nobody is going to mind if we set off about a thousand nukes, will they?
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The deepest holes man has drilled were around 12 km. or 40,000 ft. and of a tiny diameter. Drilling near hot magma is going to melt the bit before it gets anywhere near puncturing the wall of rock containing it.
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Well, you could nail the side with a bunker-buster or something and just blow it open. Less controlled, but more controlled then just letting it do it when/where it wants.
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IANAV but like everyone else on /. I sometimes indulge in armchair quarterbacking... The simple answer is that Japanese science and engineering--which is incomparable on the subjects of seismology and volcanology--isn't up to the task. Japanese scientists suspect that there are at least two magma chambers. A deeper one at around 20km and a shallower one around 8 or 9km. They're still talking about suspicions of what the magma system looks like. Even if you could overcome the engineering hurdles of drilling a hole into the magma system that doesn't seal itself back up right away or worse be faced with the opposite problem and piercing the system would cause it to pop like a balloon you still need to know where to drill. That answer is probably not magma chamber(s) itself anyway.
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