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  • Jeff Karson: Here we go.

  • Abby Tang: This is lava.

  • And this is also lava.

  • One's man-made,

  • and one's, well, coughed up by Mother Earth.

  • But both these scientists are working toward

  • the exact same goal:

  • figuring out how to predict the unpredictable.

  • Arianna Soldati: To be able to make the best decisions

  • about how to keep people safe,

  • it's important to be able to predict

  • what is lava going to do

  • once it starts flowing out of the vent.

  • Abby: One-tenth of the world's population

  • lives within the danger zone of a lava flow,

  • which means knowing how lava works

  • and reacts to elements like water, metal, and ice is key.

  • So on this episode of "Science Skills,"

  • we're going to look at two ways scientists study lava,

  • starting with DIY.

  • This huge furnace behind me

  • is Syracuse University's personal volcano

  • and brainchild of an unlikely scientist and artist duo.

  • That's professors Jeff Karson and Bob Wysocki,

  • and they didn't feel like waiting

  • for a volcano to spit up lava.

  • So they decided to make their own.

  • Jeff: The project originated really

  • when Bob came into my office

  • and said he wanted to make lava.

  • I thought that was a pretty crazy suggestion at that time.

  • But the more we talked,

  • the more we saw that he had

  • a really good idea of what needed to be done.

  • Abby: And the first thing that needed to be done?

  • Figure out what to make the lava in,

  • which is where this came in.

  • The tilt furnace is really the statement piece

  • of the whole operation.

  • It can hold hundreds of kilos of lava

  • and execute experiments about viscosity,

  • morphology, structures, and formations.

  • But she's a little bit finicky

  • when it comes to lava-making.

  • The furnace literally melts itself

  • and tears itself apart over a very short period of time.

  • Abby: These were originally made

  • to melt bronze and aluminum,

  • but the Lava Project has repurposed one of them

  • to melt up to 800 pounds of billion-year-old basaltic rock

  • shipped all the way from Wisconsin.

  • The process takes hours.

  • Bob and his team pile the rocks

  • into a receptacle called the Crucible,

  • turn up the furnace,

  • and gradually bring the rocks up to temperature.

  • If we were doing just lava and melting stuff,

  • the furnace would be on about medium

  • and we would just never turn it down or up.

  • What temperature is medium?

  • Medium is a sound out there that I hear in the flame.

  • I can adjust the furnace blindfolded

  • and tell you what it's doing, and it's all sound.

  • There's just a butterfly valve in here, and --

  • [furnace rumbling]

  • Abby: Oh, you can hear it. Bob: That's it.

  • Abby: We looked this up later.

  • Medium is also somewhere between

  • 2,000 and 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit.

  • So pretty darn hot.

  • Which means these scientists really have to suit up.

  • These suits made of aluminum can withstand radiant heat

  • up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

  • Bob: We used to wear welding leathers,

  • but it dries out from the heat.

  • When you start to smell barbecue, 'cause it's pigskin,

  • you knew that you were too close to something,

  • 'cause you're cooking. Your clothing is cooking.

  • How do you know you're too close with these guys?

  • Bob: You don't. Abby: You don't?

  • Bob: These are the spats.

  • The apron, which I wear around my waist.

  • The jacket,

  • which, put your arms out.

  • Right, because you don't need it in the back.

  • Abby: No. It's like campfire style.

  • Bob: Exactly. And it's just that.

  • Abby: Back half of me is cool, front's warm.

  • Bob: So there's that.

  • And then the helmet,

  • it looks like it's a regular tinted thing like sunglasses,

  • but this is 24-karat gold.

  • Abby: Ooh, fancy.

  • Bob: That is a sheet of it.

  • Abby: What is it about the gold?

  • Is it just the reflective quality?

  • Bob: It's so highly reflective,

  • and it's why you see satellites and stuff,

  • why they have the gold foil on.

  • And is this really similar to some of the stuff

  • that volcanologists would use in the field, right?

  • Same stuff.

  • Yeah, but maybe with a back?

  • Bob: They have a back on it.

  • Abby: Yeah, in case the volcano's behind them.

  • Do you want to show us how it works?

  • Yeah, let's go talk about this.

  • Do we need any of the gear?

  • It is sweltering! How hot is it up here?

  • Bob: Well, the bright yellow you see back there,

  • that's about 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

  • So right now the lava in there is too hot.

  • When we dump it out of here,

  • about the meter it falls from the spout to the trough

  • and through the trough,

  • we lose about 275 degrees Fahrenheit.

  • By the time it hits the end,

  • we want to be at 2,150 Fahrenheit.

  • And that's the magic spot for the lava.

  • Abby: Researchers are looking for that sweet spot

  • between 1,600 and 2,200 degrees,

  • the range for natural lava.

  • Knowing the lava's temperature

  • at what time and where is crucial.

  • So the team has an array of 10 digital cameras

  • to capture 3D images of the flow,

  • and a thermal camera,

  • which can read up to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

  • That way, researchers like Arianna Soldati

  • can analyze both the lava's movement and temperature,

  • leading to a key piece of data.

  • Arianna: Viscosity is possibly

  • the most important property in volcanology.

  • It really controls everything,

  • from eruptive style to appearance of the flow.

  • And the main physical property that controls viscosity

  • is temperature.

  • The hotter something is, the less viscous it is,

  • and the cooler it is, the more viscous.

  • So it's really important that we can tell

  • what temperature the lava is,

  • because we want to match that with the viscosity.

  • Abby: With this, the team can study

  • how different variables, like metal or crystals,

  • affect how fast the lava cools,

  • and therefore its viscosity.

  • But there's the lab,

  • and then there's the real world,

  • where unplanned and unpredictable factors come into play.

  • That's where this guy comes in.

  • Ben Edwards: Well, this is a piece of the earth

  • that we call the mantle.

  • Abby: That's a piece of the mantle?!

  • Ben: This is a piece of the mantle.

  • And this is one of the sidelights

  • that make some volcanoes incredibly important to study.

  • Abby: This is Ben Edwards,

  • and he likes to get lava data straight from the source.

  • Here's him collecting a sample from a flow in Russia

  • back in 2013.

  • As you can see, Ben's protective gear

  • has more coverage than what they use at Syracuse.

  • Because sampling from a natural lava flow

  • can be a 360-degree experience.

  • If you're going next to a lava river to sample,

  • even in this suit,

  • like, I was doing this in Russia from a lava river

  • that's maybe 10, 15 meters wide.

  • And after being there for a minute or so

  • making some measurements,

  • I could hear my Russian colleagues saying,

  • "Ben, move back! You're smoking."

  • [laughing]

  • But it was getting hot enough in the suit

  • that even after about 30 to 45 seconds,

  • I had to back up.

  • Abby: When Ben's around to witness an eruption,

  • he's prepared to collect data.

  • A lot of data.

  • Ben: Am I going to focus on

  • taking lots of lava temperatures?

  • Am I going to focus on getting lots of samples of lava?

  • Am I going to focus on using drones

  • and trying to map very carefully

  • how fast the lava's coming out?

  • Abby: To pull a sample out of the flow,

  • Ben usually uses a rock hammer, but ...

  • If I was trying to collect really hot samples,

  • I would probably use some sort of an iron bar

  • that wouldn't catch fire.

  • Like, this is OK for short --

  • Abby: That's made of wood! Ben: Yeah.

  • Abby: Here's a clip of Ben's colleague Alexander Belousov

  • using an iron bar to collect a sample.

  • Ben: He rests the bar on top of a rock,

  • and he uses a lever to pry the sample out.

  • Because it's kind of nonintuitive.

  • It's a lot stickier than it looks.

  • If you're just watching it flow by, it's like,

  • "Wow, that must be pretty fluid,

  • 'cause it's moving pretty fast."

  • Abby: That dollop of forbidden honey

  • is then dumped into a bucket of water.

  • Not just to cool it down,

  • but to cool it down fast, because ...

  • Ben: As the sample cools naturally,

  • it does produce these crystals.

  • Abby: The crystals, yeah.

  • Ben: And if you want to see what was in the sample

  • as it was moving down the lava stream,

  • then you want to cool it like that

  • to kind of take all the heat out

  • and basically turn the heat off

  • so that you preserve the sample.

  • And you preserve the crystal content

  • and the sizes of crystals

  • that were actually in the active lava flow.

  • Abby: Crystal size impacts viscosity,

  • so extra growth would lead to inaccurate measurements.

  • To take the temperature of that flow,

  • Ben might use a handheld FLIR camera,

  • like Arianna did in the lab,

  • or a four-channel data logger.

  • Each one of these yellow things

  • is a separate thermal probe.

  • So with this recorder,

  • I can record four temperatures at once.

  • For example, if I'm interested in figuring out

  • how fast the lava's cooling, right?

  • So here's my lava surface.

  • I might want to put one of these in, just barely in,

  • and the other one I might want to have a little bit deeper.

  • So I can put two of these together,

  • and I'm measuring different temperatures now

  • in that same cooling surface.

  • Abby: But you probably won't get those probes back.

  • Ben: I've got wires that are buried in Kamchatka,

  • because once you get two feet of this

  • underneath the lava flow,

  • you're not gonna get it back out.

  • Abby: That's not yours anymore.

  • Ben: No. It's one of the great things

  • about the Syracuse lava lab, right,

  • 'cause I do a lava flow there,

  • and in the end I take my big hammer

  • and I recover my equipment.

  • [laughing]

  • Abby: If you don't have probes to spare,

  • you might try thermal-mapping the flow from above.

  • And so drones are really revolutionizing

  • what we can do to study active earth processes.

  • Abby: You can strap a FLIR camera,

  • a regular camera, or gas sensors to a drone --

  • potentially even all three if you get a drone big enough.

  • Ben: They basically become a volcano-observation platform,

  • as opposed to just a drone.

  • And one can envision even someday

  • a drone that would have some sort of a tool

  • that would hang down that would allow you to,

  • if not sample lava,

  • because it is tough to get your little sample bucket out,

  • and you wouldn't want your drone

  • to get pulled into the lava flow.

  • But you might be able to catch volcanic ash.

  • You could hang a big piece of duct tape

  • that's 20 feet long from the drone

  • and fly it through a diluted ash cloud,

  • and some of the ash particles would stick to the duct tape.

  • Abby: It's just like a fly trap.

  • Exactly.

  • Abby: But until robots officially take over,

  • we'll need humans on the ground,

  • risking their lives and arm hairs,

  • to study lava flows.

  • It's like the lava domes of Montserrat.

  • The only reason we know there've been three or four domes,

  • I can't remember which,

  • is because there've been people watching and sampling.

  • And, "Yep, there's a dome,"

  • and then, boom, "Ope, the dome blew way."

  • "Oh, there's another dome, ope, and it blew," right?

  • And if there wasn't someone there to watch,

  • we might not necessarily know.

  • So, it's important to be in the field

  • for posterity?

  • Well, and for science. Right?

  • If we're trying to understand that volcano

  • and what it does over time to predict it in the future.

  • And that's the challenge we face

  • when we go to older volcanoes

  • and try to understand what we see in the older volcanoes,

  • because there was no one there watching.

  • Abby: Data gathered in the field

  • help shape safety plans for people in specific regions.

  • But applying those learnings around the world

  • would be almost impossible

  • without careful testing in the lab.

  • Arianna: As geologists, we always need that starting point

  • of what happens in the field, what happens in reality.

  • But unfortunately, you know, in nature,

  • there's no repeatability.

  • Every time there's a lava flow,

  • every time there's an eruption, it's going to be different.

  • You have no control over any of the parameters.

  • Here we can vary things in a systematic way,

  • and this allows us to isolate what could be the cause

  • and what could be the effect and tie them together.

  • Abby: Roasting marshmallows is an art form.

  • Arianna: I would say it's a science.

  • Abby: [laughs] All right, all right.

Jeff Karson: Here we go.

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