11 February 2008
Holy Smoking Breadfruit, Batman!
Posted by Jessica Ball
Judging from the sudden dropoff of comments, people are a little stumped on exactly what got dropped in a lava flow in Friday’s geopuzzle. So, here’s the answer: Breadfruit.
At least, that’s what the locals said. I was skeptical, since breadfruit is usually pretty smooth, and these appear to have some pretty prominent spiky parts, but there was a garden nearby that had some immature breadfruit growing in it, and it looked pretty much like the impressions. (My guess, to be honest, would have been something closer to this photo, but whatever that thing is seems to be growing on a palm tree, which breadfruit does not do.)
As I mentioned in the comments of the last post, there were also some imprints of tree trunks nearby:
This of course begs the question: If you drop breadfruit onto hot lava, do you get toast?
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology. 
