Microscopic bubbles in lava could help scientists predict eruptions

New research has found that microscopic bubbles found in ancient lava could tell the stories of some of Earth's most violent volcanic eruptions, and could help researchers forecast the

next major eruption. Experts have long hoped for a way to use these minuscule bubbles which are found in erupted lava and ash to recreate the conditions. The hope was to analyse these

bubbles which would give an indication of the heat and pressure of the volcano at the time of eruption, which could help forecast future blasts. However, there has never been an accurate way

to show how many bubbles will form and the actual amounts of bubbles measured in erupted rocks. Researchers from Rice University and the University of Texas Austin (UT) have spent half a

decade analysing those differences in so-called Plinian eruptions. Plinian eruptions are some of the biggest volcanic eruptions and are named after Roman author Pliny the Younger who

described the blast of Pompeii in 79AD. Some examples of a Plinian eruption include Mount St Helens in 1980, the Philippines’ Mount Pinatubo in 1991 or Chile’s Mount Chaiten in 2008. Rice

University's Sahand Hajimirza, a postdoctoral researcher, said: “Eruption intensity refers to both the amount of magma that’s erupted and how quickly it comes out. “The typical

intensity of Plinian eruptions ranges from about 10 million kilograms per second to 10 billion kilograms per second. "That is equivalent to 5,000 to 5 million pickup trucks per second.”

READ MORE: YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO WILL GIVE OFF 'LOTS OF SIGNS' BEFORE ERUPTION Dr Hajimirza added: “The total bubbles would be around a septillion. “That’s a one followed by 24

zeros or about 1,000 times more than all the grains of sand on all Earth’s beaches." The research builds on the fact that magnetite crystals - an iron oxide mineral which forms when an

igneous rock melts - no larger than a few billionths of a meter could change how bubbles form at various depths. Dr Hajimirza said: “When bubbles nucleate, they can form in liquid, which we

call homogeneous nucleation, or they can nucleate on a solid surface, which we call heterogeneous. “A daily life example would be boiling a pot of water. When bubbles form on the bottom of

the pot, rather than in the liquid water, that is heterogeneous nucleation.” He stated magnetites are likely present in all Plinian magma, which would give an indication of how much pressure

was present shortly before an eruption. Ultimately, the team hope the research could one day be used to forecast eruptions, the research published in the journal Nature Communications said.

Dr Hajimirza continued: “Forecasting eruptions is a long-term goal for volcanologists, but it’s challenging because we cannot directly observe subsurface processes. “One of the grand

challenges of volcano science is improving eruption forecasting by better integration of the observational data we have with the quantitative models, like the one we developed for this

study.”