Placeholder Image

字幕列表 影片播放

  • You cannot be a super villain if you don't have a secret lair inside a volcano.

  • Preferably one with a cauldron of bubbling lava you can slowly lower 007 into once you

  • finish monologuing at her and leave the room laughing maniacally, confident in her impending

  • demise.

  • But it turns out that volcanoes with active lava lakes are incredibly rare.

  • Of the roughly 1,500 active volcanoes worldwide, we only knew of seven with lakes of bubbling

  • lava.

  • Until July of 2019, when scientists announced they had found an eighth, and it is the most

  • supervillain-y one yet.

  • It's called Mount Michael, and it's located on one of the South Sandwich Islands about

  • 1,000 miles from Antarctica.

  • The mountain is mostly covered in glacial ice, perfect for covering in guard wolves

  • with lasers on their heads.

  • No one has ever summited Mount Michael on account of stratovolcano's steep sides.

  • If no one's ever been to the top of the volcano to peer in, you may be wondering how

  • we know Mount Michael has one of the world's few lava lakes.

  • It was only discovered thanks to decades of satellite imagery.

  • Thermal anomalies were first spotted in the 1990s and again in the early 2000s, but the

  • image quality and processing techniques weren't advanced enough to prove there was a lava

  • lake conclusively.

  • But from 2003 to 2018, multiple missions collected better data allowing researchers to conclude

  • that Mt. Michael was home to a lake of lava about 70 to 150 meters across, and potentially

  • as hot as nearly 1300 degrees celsius.

  • This volcano is pretty remote, so it doesn't pose much danger to anyone,

  • you know besides secret agents.

  • But studying it may help us predict the hazards posed by other lava lakes, some of which are

  • near populated areas.

  • One such volcano is Kilauea on the big island of Hawai'i, and its lava lake contributed

  • to serious destruction as recently as 2018.

  • In late April of that year, it spilled out from the summit, then a few days later the

  • lake began to drain as magma moved downslope underground.

  • Eventually the magma broke through the surface, and by early June over 20 fissures had opened

  • up, dumping lava out in huge quantities.

  • This continued for months, destroying over 700 homes, displacing thousands of people,

  • and blanketing over 35 square kilometers of land in lava.

  • When volcanoes erupt, it's not the tsunami of fire you might imagine and sometimes it's

  • possible to outrun or even outwalk the molten rock.

  • When volcanoes do kill it's likely the avalanches of rock and ash called pyroclastic flows,

  • or mudflows called lahars that will get you.

  • But another volcano that's home to a lava lake has killed with superfast lava.

  • Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a steep-sided stratovolcano,

  • periodically containing a lake of particularly low-viscosity lava that's currently about

  • 400 meters deep.

  • In 1977, the crater wall holding the lava lake inside broke, sending lava traveling

  • as fast as 100 kph barreling down the slopes, destroying nearby villages and taking lives

  • with it.

  • So any new lava lake we discover offers a chance for further study and clues on how

  • to avoid disasters in the future.

  • We still don't know why some of them persist, it could be the lakes are connected to a cache

  • of magma deep underground, or the gases coming up from underneath are hot enough to keep

  • the rocks molten.

  • It would help if we could find more of them to study.

  • Some scientists have suggested that we might have luck discovering them beneath the oceans,

  • where the majority of the world's volcanism occurs.

  • If we can only find these 8 lava lakes on the surface, maybe diving under the waves

  • will be our next step to study this rare phenomenon.

  • Supervillains may be trying to destroy the world, but every-day villains are trying to

  • steal your identity, and there's way more of those guys.

  • That's why I use a VPN.

  • NordVPN has double data encryption.

  • And for a short time, they're offering 75% off a 3-year plan at nordvpn.com/SEEKER

  • This makes your subscription just $2.99 per month, which is an amazing deal to watch shows

  • and events that aren't available where I live.

  • And for an added bonus, use code SEEKER to get an extra month of Nord for free!

  • For more geologic videos like this, check out this video on the mysterious Earth blobs

  • wrapped around the Earth's core.

  • So, would you live near an active volcano?

  • I bet Dr. Evil makes a terrible neighbor.

  • Let us know in the comments, make sure to subscribe while you're down there, and I'll

  • see you next time on Seeker.

You cannot be a super villain if you don't have a secret lair inside a volcano.

字幕與單字

單字即點即查 點擊單字可以查詢單字解釋

B2 中高級

關於這個亞南極熔岩湖,我們知道的都在這裡了。 (Here’s Everything We Know About This Sub-Antarctic Lava Lake)

  • 3 1
    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
影片單字