In the Company of Volcanoes

- Dr. Alison Graettinger “If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s never to stick your hand into a viscous material” I came across that quote again in the signature of a colleague's email. It is from the 2004 Van Helsing movie. The movie is a bit cheesey, but that advice is very sound. So what does viscous mean? The term viscosity is not a word that most people use every day, but a really useful one if you want to know anything about a fluid or anything that flows. It gets used by your mechanic when discussing different types of oils to put in a car’s engine. Or occasionally in movies involving evil scientists, monsters and gooey things (see above). Even TSA has to have a basic understanding of viscous things as they limit all things that pour, spreads or smears. This covers a range of things that, while they behave like fluids (which means they deform under a force), you might not immediately think of them. Unfortunately, TSA is as just as likely to take away your hair gel...

- Dr. Janine Krippner We are fortunate that there is a large availability of volcanic eruption videos online for all of us to enjoy (see below warning), and we can learn a lot from them too. When I am looking at my satellite images of dome collapse block and ash flow and column collapse pyroclastic flow deposits on Shiveluch and Mount St. Helens volcanoes I have videos of these processes running through my mind. This is a short guide to what you are seeing in these incredible videos. WARNING: There are very dangerous and life threatening hazards associated with retrieving this footage, and here at In the Company of Volcanoes we strongly discourage anyone from trying to take your own. It is never, ever worth risking your life. --- This video shows the dome at Unzen volcano undergoing a partial collapse in 1991. This shows how a near-solid body of rock rapidly fragments down to smaller pieces of rock and ash, creating a billowing ash plume rising from the block and ash...

-Alison Volcanoes in Space! Sounds awesome right? Volcanic activity is one of the major forces that shape the surfaces of planetary bodies, along with meteorite impacts, tectonics (deformation of the planets crust) and action by an atmosphere (wind, water etc). Aren’t there lots of volcanoes on Earth that we need to understand? Why yes, there are, and studying volcanoes on other planets helps us understand Earth volcanoes. One of the reasons I love studying things not on Earth is that they help us question our own basic understanding and assumptions about how things work on Earth. Science is a process, our understanding comes from constantly asking questions and seeking new sources of evidence and ways to test our ideas. The first step to understanding natural processes, such as volcanic eruptions, is we first have to make a few observations and come up with a really simple model of what is happening. That lava flow came out of the ground, therefore lava comes from undergrou...