The end wrought by Kilauea ’s eruption continues apace , while scientists continue to supervise the ever - evolving volcanic violence . It ’s already put on quite a show : we ’ve had volcanic thunderstormclouds , volcanictornadoes , explosive eruptions at the superlative crater , gamy fire , volcanic fog , and most recently , the grammatical construction ofnew landas the last crack stick out , number 8 , continues to underprice its lava into the ocean .
As first spotted byLiveScience , and explained by theever - remarkableUnited States Geological Survey ( USGS ) , lava start to invade Green Lake – within Kapoho Crater – and by nature began producing quite a large steam plume back on Sunday , June 3 .
“ By 1:30 phase modulation the steam plume had end and by 3 pm , a Hawaii County Fire Department overflight reported that lava had fill the lake and evidently melt all the water , ” the advisoryexplained . That ’s right-hand : an integral lake ’s worth of pee had been wholly vaporised by this invasion of lava .
churn by a lake with lava , by the agency , is n’t as light as you cogitate . It need a boatload of energy , because H2O has an extremely highheat capacity . This means it requires a batch of push per building block of water to increase its temperature by a single point , compare to other substances .
That ’s why it hold a prospicient meter for saltwater to get warm in the 24-hour interval – it needs a honest bit of exposure to sun first for those molecules to vibrate enough . So , with that in mind , here ’s a coolback - of - the - gasbag calculationfor you .
First , let ’s take over the freshwater lake here is full to the rim , and is a perfect hemisphere . fit in to Wikipedia , it’s61 meters(about 200 feet ) deeply , but according tostate file , its 6.1 time ( 20 ft ) cryptical . Just to toy devil ’s advocate , let ’s put its depth at 30.5 meter ( about 100 feet ) . That signify it moderate about 59,423 cubic metre ( 2.1 million three-dimensional feet ) of water , give or take .
free-base on the specific passion equation , and put on the lake temperature is around 18 ° C ( about 64 ° degree Fahrenheit ) , it would ask 20.4 trillion joules of thermic energy to get the full content of the lake to boil .
That ’s roughly the energy relinquish by the explosion of a thousand tons of TNT . But wait – there ’s more .
Aspointed outbyBen Edwards – a prof of geosciences at Dickinson College – to me on Twitter , I did n’t include the heating of vaporization , the Department of Energy required to transform a liquid substance into a gas at a determined temperature . For 1 kg of H2O , it acquire 2.26 million joules to do just that , which hints at how much more vigor it look at to break apart molecular bonds than to simply heat something up .
This would contribute the entire energy prerequisite to 146 trillion joules , or 1.46 x 1014joules . That is roughly 35 kiloton of TNT , far smashing than the energy unleash during small nuclear weapon blasts .
So , if you needed a admonisher of how literally hot lava is , there you have it .
It ’s deserving remembering that as this eruption has move on , it has n’t just involved Theia - predictedfocusing of the lava stream out of just one single vent . The first magma that came to the surface was a colder , older batch with less flatulence .
Now , Kilauea is knock Mickey Mantle temperature , expel lava that is as hot as lava on Earth can realistically get – about1,204 ° C(2,200 ° F ) . At the moment , gas - racy fury is beingfired highinto the sky , and even work up its own infant volcanic cone around Fissure 8 , while much of it continue to be dump in Kapoho Bay along multiple entry peak .
As with the lake invasion , this is creating plenty of laze , which stop hydrochloric acid droplets and glassy volcanic debris . As ever , people are being proceed away from thelazeand the jolly mentally ill Modern delta that ’s being give birth along the lava - smothered coastline .
