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Two Explorers Descend Into An Active Volcano, and Live to Tell About It
Discover reports on the unlikely adventure of explorers and daredevils Sam Cossman and George Kourounis, who (with caution employed at least in their choice of gear) "rappelled down the crater inside Mount Marum, which is situated on one of 80 islands that make up the Pacific Republic of Vanautu. And they’ve just uploaded video of this up-close encounter with one of the world’s most volcanically active locations." Warning: the linked video may inspire envy and wanderlust, even if it doesn't expose any deep new science.
I watched the video at the link. There definitely were some tricky camera angles at play that made them look closer than they actually were, but there was one shot from immediately behind one of the daredevils, and that one seemed to me to make it pretty clear that they actually were rather close. I also thought it was rather telling that there was only one shot from that angle, whereas there were loads from higher up the cliff with a telephoto lens. Seemed almost to me like the camera guy decided to get the hell out.
FTA: "In the belly of the beast, gases like carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and hydrochloric acid" HYDROCHLORIC ACID GAS? Screw the CO2, the last thing I want anywhere is air that literally eats you alive from the inside out!
As you tacitly requested, here's your daily dose of depression:
BBC: Sulphur mining in an active volcano
tl;dr: the workers can't afford masks, so the gases cack their lungs and dissolve their teeth while they're working in the volcano.
You're welcome.
And I can totally imagine them coming home and their grandparents asking them "Where did you go this year?" in the most obnoxious wasy possible, like all grandparents do. Good luck explaining this one!
Yeah, yeah. Been there, done that. About 375 years ago.
Back when Vesuvius was actively erupting in the 1630s, I decided to take a closer look. While the volcano was still smoldering and active, I hired a local guide to take me to the top, then was lowered into the crater to take some scientific observations and temperature measurements. You wanna read more about it? Here's some info on my book. (Of course, science has progressed a lot since then.)
We didn't have fancy videocameras back then, so I had to make make my own drawings of what I saw.