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You are browsing the archive for Volcanoes Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Martian Chronicles.

24 September 2008

Low-Gravity Volcanoes

During my series of posts about volcanoes last month, a reader emailed me and asked what the effect of lower gravity would be on martian volcanoes, and I thought it was such a good question that I decided to answer it here! Most of my answer is based on a (rather large) review paper by Wilson and Head that is available here. One of the first effects of low gravity …

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7 September 2008

Bubbling Lava Lake Video

The Halema’uma’u vent in Hawaii seems to be filling up with a lake of lava! In this video from Sept 5, taken from a helicopter hovering over the vent, you can see the surface of the lava lake bubbling and churning. The press release has lots more information. To stay up to date with the eruptions in Hawaii, check out the Hawaii Volcano Observatory page.

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3 September 2008

Hawaii Field Work – Ground Truth

I posted a while back, right before I left to participate in the NASA Planetary Volcanology Field Workshop, describing what exactly I was going to be doing there. Our goal was to study a set of images and come up with a geologic map of the area, and then actually go to that location (something we can’t usually do for other planets) and see how good our geologic maps were. …

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27 August 2008

What Makes Volcanoes Erupt?

The local newspaper here in Ithaca posts weekly science questions, with answers from experts at Cornell. I’ve answered a couple of questions about astronomy in the past, but that’ not why I’m mentioning it. I mention it because today’s question ties in nicely with my recent volcano – themed posts! So if you want to know why volcanoes erupt, check it out! Edit: It looks like the Ithaca journal link …

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25 August 2008

Hot Lava: Types of Lava

We’ve talked about how lava becomes molten, now let’s discuss how it behaves once it erupts. As liquid rock erupts from a volcanic vent it is glowing hot and can be very fluid. But, it cools rapidly, and as it does so it behaves more like rock and less like a liquid. Depending on the rate of eruption (among other things) there are two main types of lava flow: a’a …

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22 August 2008

Hot Lava: Where does it come from?

You’ve seen it in movies, documentaries, and photographs. Mario and other video game heroes have died countless terrible deaths falling into pits of the stuff, but how much do you really know about lava? Where does it come from? Well, volcanoes. And the lava in volcanoes comes from deep in the earth where everything is molten, right? Wrong! It’s true that as you go deeper into the earth, things heat …

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"Webcam" at Mars

Check this out. One of the engineering cameras on Mars Express (originally used to make sure that the Beagle lander had detached from the orbiter) has been turned back on! So now you can go check out the view from Mars orbit! More detail over at Bad Astronomy. The picture above shows the four giant volcanoes of the Tharsis bulge: Olympus Mons is half in shadow and the other three, …

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18 August 2008

Volcano Pictures!

The folks at the Boston Globe clearly knew ahead of time that I would be making a series of posts about volcanoes, and therefore chose to feature some spectacular eruption photos in their “big picture” section. Check it out! Update: Also, I just noticed that there is an incredible amount of stupid going on in the comments to those photos, with people pointing at the CO2 release from volcanoes and …

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17 August 2008

Shield Volcanoes

I recently returned from a really awesome trip to Hawaii, where I participated in the 2008 NASA Planetary Volcanology workshop! The idea behind the workshop is that planetary scientists who are trying to interpret orbital data of other planets should have some experience doing the same on Earth. Now that I’m back, I have a lot to tell you about volcanoes. Today we will start by talking about shield volcanoes, …

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