volcano are weird . Not all of them are proportionate tidy sum that purge death - plow fluid hot lava all over the plaza .
Some havewonky , superheated fuel tanks , some fire outice , and some – harmonise to a unexampled study in the journalEarth and Planetary Science Letters – have a Brobdingnagian urine man-made lake beneath them . In fact , one of these concealed lake is larger than almost any found at the surface .
As always , this scientific story begins with an “ anomaly . ”
Researchers at the University of Bristol were intrude around beneath Uturunku volcano , a abeyant edifice in Bolivia . Its last major eruption was around 271,000 yr ago . Ever since , it has blasted out superpressurized sulfurous gas intermittently .
Beneath this towering , pointy mass is something love as the Altiplano - Puna magma consistency , which has long been presumed to be just that – a molten lot that fuels , or fuel , the substantial historical eruptions at this particular volcano . While consider this curio , the squad find that unlike most magma bodies , this 15 - kilometer - mysterious ( 9.3 miles ) blob significantlyslowed down seismic wave .
Seismic waves , generally speaking , trip through liquefied rock slower than substantial rock candy . Magma is never completely liquid – it ’s a complex mixture of swimming and solid – so the wave focal ratio varies depending on precisely how much of it is smooth .
Weirdly , the seismal waves travel through the Altiplano - Puna magma body were moving fabulously tardily – anomalously tiresome , you might say . The team could only conclude that much of it was made of not just all liquefied magma , but water .
“ By weight , we calculated it contains 8 to 10 percentage piss , ” Jon Blundy , a prof of volcanological petrology at the University of Bristol , toldNew Scientist .
This may not sound like much , but it ’s deserving noting that the Altiplano - Puna magma organic structure is around 500,000 cubic kilometre ( 120,000 cubic knot ) in volume . This mean that as much as 50,000 cubic kilometer ( 12,000 three-dimensional miles ) of it is water – far greater than the intensity of Lake Superior , the largest of the Great Lakes , and one of the most voluminous in the universe .
Image in text edition : The Altiplano - Puna volcanic complex look at from grim - earth celestial orbit . It can be see in the lower part of this image . NASA Earth Observatory
In ordering to support their hypothesis , the squad took away some ancient rocks ejected by the volcano half a million year ago . Mixing them with a potpourri of body of water volume , they execute the incapacitated sample distribution through a gantlet of research lab test .
Replicating the immense temperature and imperativeness that would be observe at the depth of the Altiplano - Puno magma trunk , they pull off to calculate just how much water was hiding down there .
Sadly , Blundy remark that “ it ’s disband in partially melt stone at … 1000 ° C ( 1,832 ° fluorine ) so it ’s not accessible . ” bore into it would be like smash a small hole into the side of a highly - supercharge tympani of body of water – it wo n’t finish well .
This discovery does however highlight that far more urine may be involved in volcanic activity than previously thought . In fact , pee is the primal component in most volcanism .
After all , urine is also the most common trammel gas ( “ volatile ” ) found in escaping lava . More significantly , without its ability to let down the thawing point of huge body of magma , our planet would calculate very dissimilar to the one we go on today .
to boot , Uturunku ’s immerse “ lake ” may not be the only one of its sort . Similar anomalies have been notice beneath vent in other share of the world , including on the North Island of New Zealand and within Washington State , the dwelling house of the infamousMount St. Helens .
More than anything , though , this subject field highlights that much of Earth ’s water is beneath our feet , not on the airfoil . Forget buried lakes – scientist consider there areburied oceansdown there in that fiery hell .
Fumaroles on Uturunku . Albert Backer / Wikimedia Commons ; CC BY - SA 3.0
[ H / T : New Scientist ]
