Alpha Centauri 2

Community => Recreation Commons => Topic started by: Vidsek on June 29, 2025, 07:29:21 pm

Title: Volcanos
Post by: Vidsek on June 29, 2025, 07:29:21 pm

Seemed time to dedicate a thread to all things magma, lava, tephra, and hydrothermal.  Oh, ok, we'll toss in intrusions and batholiths as well.

Currently, the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawai'i is starting it's 27th episode of this eruption.
And I mean starting right now: early pre-fountaining started this morning about 07:00 island time (four and a half hours ago) and has been growing into very low fountaining.  It will keep building fairly fast and in a couple hours should be spectacular.

https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea

Best views will be the V 1 and V 3 streaming cameras. 

 and   

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 11:54:59 pm

 ;b; ;popcorn ;b;

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 30, 2025, 03:34:46 am

Hey actually, if you intend this as a discussion thread, that's why I moved it into Rec Commons where it'll get more discussion.  Volcanos are cool, so keep it coming. ;b;

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on June 30, 2025, 06:05:49 am

Early evening there, and the orange glow in lava on the ground is visible. I think output increased compared to earlier in the day. One of the cams showed the top height of the lava spurt, where the other one's view cut it off. But recently I saw the lava occasionally exceed the view of both cams. And V2

offers a nice view of the breadth of the flow.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on June 30, 2025, 02:47:40 pm

I pulled up the video late last night, and found no orange rivers, no orange fountains of lava, only some residual glowing spots. Ran back the video and found the high fountains of lava stopped just before 20:00 HST. Per report https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hans-public/notice/DOI-USGS-HVO-2025-06-30T00:11:56+00:00

"Episode 29 of the ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption ended abruptly at 7:54 p.m. HST on June 29 after nearly 11 hours of continuous fountaining.

Waning north vent fountains stopped completely at 7:54 p.m. HST, several hours after reaching maximum heights up to 1,100 ft (340 m). Flames were visible at the south vent for a few minutes afterwards. High fountains produced approximately 1.6 billion gallons (6.2 million cubic meters) of lava covering 80% of the crater floor."

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Geo on July 01, 2025, 11:42:57 am

Oh heck, that's way more active then 10 years ago.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 04, 2025, 01:36:49 pm

Interesting contrast: during the day you can see a plume of smoke coming from the vent. At night you only see a little bit, but it's glowing orange from the lava (magma?) below.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 06, 2025, 04:16:15 am

Probable lava fountaining July 7-11, most likely 8-10.

July 5 update excerpt: "Summit inflation continues at this time, along with persistent, low-level seismic tremor. Incandescent glow has been visible at the north vent in overnight webcam views, as well as intermittent minor lava spattering and jetting. These observations indicate that another lava fountaining episode is probable, and the current summit inflation rate suggests it will occur sometime between July 7 and 11, with July 8–10 being the most likely."

https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hans-public/notice/DOI-USGS-HVO-2025-07-05T18:15:27+00:00

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 08, 2025, 05:37:22 am

Some lava has flowed out of the vent and cooled, accompanied by occasional splashing. It's about 1830 local on 7/7. Best view is V3, lower right.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Geo on July 08, 2025, 10:15:30 am

 :P Every time I click on that YouTube link, its nighttime over there.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2025, 12:06:40 pm

So I'm on time for watching this pot boil over?  Lucky me.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 08, 2025, 01:07:47 pm

Quote from: Geo on July 08, 2025, 10:15:30 am

:P Every time I click on that YouTube link, its nighttime over there.

Well, they are UTC -10.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2025, 01:17:10 pm

If it really blows, will night turn into day?  Sorta?

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 08, 2025, 01:39:23 pm

The nighttime view has the benefit of the smoke lit by the orange glow of the magma. Currently V1 has a nice view, 0237 local.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 09, 2025, 03:27:10 pm

Tuned in this morning (July 8, 2318 local), to see a new flow of lava that had started earlier, running out of camera view. Only a bit of low-level jetting, more roiling of lava in the vent. After ~5 min it had stopped. Eventually the lava cooled.

Recently (0423 local) activity has picked up. Not sure when the low-level fountaining started, but there is more new flow running down from the vent, and movement can be seen of lava running downhill. V2 currently showing more of the extent of the flow.

[Edit] 0427, V3 cam view shifted to the right so see more of the flow.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 09, 2025, 03:38:39 pm

I geeked SO hard for volcanos as a child - and that's never really changed.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 09, 2025, 04:36:41 pm

Just tuned back in, ~0530 local, and there's major fountaining going on.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2025, 04:52:11 pm

What is "major" ?  I'm looking right now and I see stuff that would be appropriate to the Vegas strip.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 09, 2025, 05:11:24 pm

Except Vegas doesn't use molten rock. It's major compared to the low-level height it was at earlier this morning, where they didn't have to zoom out.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2025, 05:45:48 pm

I think Vegas using molten lock would be a big improvement for the strip.  In fact I may have even seen that in a disaster movie.  Maybe that was LA.  Big improvement though!

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 09, 2025, 06:02:18 pm

...The one about an eruption starting from the LaBrea tar pit, and the emergency manager guy using busses and whatever was at hand for barriers to channel to lava to the ocean, I bet.  Pretty good movie...

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2025, 06:05:17 pm

Don't remember if it was a good movie, but it had good sfx!

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 09, 2025, 06:07:29 pm

It did.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2025, 08:38:55 pm

You know, there's a game in this.  Plate tectonics is a subject I've looked at for gaming purposes in the past.  Some of my master plans for SMAC-like games, have eschewed goofy mindworm and mind powers plots, preferring hard science problems instead.  Who says you have to colonize a planet that's stable and nice?  SMAC touches on this, you've got your volcanic eruptions and thermal boreholes.  But I've thought of dialing that up to Eleven, and making it THE game.

I'm not sure how I feel about terraformers.  Scientifically, there's a lot to criticize.  But game mechanically, raising land is great stuff.  It just doesn't end up being that relevant in SMAC, because it's just one subsystem among many.  The deformable and destructable map has proven to be one of the enduring value adds of SMAC though, compared to the competition.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 09, 2025, 08:47:31 pm

Outpost, I think it was called, roughly contemporary w/ AC, had a demo that was all outrunning a lava flow with enough modules to establish a viable new (space) colony on higher ground.  I wish I could find it, now - it was fun.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2025, 09:01:46 pm

1994, not really contemporary.  Found some YouTube videos of it.  2D isometric engine, not what I'm imagining we could do now in 3D.  GOG has something called Outpost 2: Divided Destiny for a few bucks.  Came out 1997, so that might be considered contemporary.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 09, 2025, 09:03:52 pm

I'm sure Outpost2 is what I remember.

-There seemed to be a fair number of colonize-a-planet games in the mid-late 90s.  You can guess which one I liked best...

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 09, 2025, 09:13:20 pm

Just to get this back on the same page...

Quote from: Lord Avalon on July 09, 2025, 03:27:10 pm

Tuned in this morning (July 8, 2318 local), to see a new flow of lava that had started earlier, running out of camera view. Only a bit of low-level jetting, more roiling of lava in the vent. After ~5 min it had stopped. Eventually the lava cooled.

Recently (0423 local) activity has picked up. Not sure when the low-level fountaining started, but there is more new flow running down from the vent, and movement can be seen of lava running downhill. V2 currently showing more of the extent of the flow.

[Edit] 0427, V3 cam view shifted to the right so see more of the flow.

Whoah - it's going a lot higher than this morning.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2025, 10:03:13 pm

I guess staring at this "lava lamp" could be construed as relaxing.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 09, 2025, 10:05:49 pm

Sound would help that, I think - but yeah.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 10, 2025, 09:05:06 am

From yesterday's update https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hans-public/notice/DOI-USGS-HVO-2025-07-09T18:27:16+00:00

"Episode 28 of the ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption began just after 4 a.m. HST today, July 9, 2025. High fountaining is continuing at this time, with maximum fountain heights reaching nearly 1200 feet (365 meters)."

Vegas schmegas.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2025, 03:02:33 pm

I've been informed that people may be getting testy about my comments about Vegas and may not have any idea what I'm on about.  To clear the air, these little mini video windows as appear in my browser on my laptop, don't communicate any sense of scale at all.  To me they could look like lava lamps, bird baths, Vegas fountains, something on a hillside, something on a proper mountain, something at the crest of Mt. Everest, or something on Olympus Mons.  Additionally, I misread someone's initial comment that they may have thought the plume was too small.  My reaction was waaaat, it looks big enough to dominate the Vegas strip.  But I didn't say that explicitly, because I didn't think there was some reason I should have to.

Anyways, please know that people don't react to visual stuff in front of them the same way, for a whole bunch of reasons.  It's not like there's a human up there for scale.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 10, 2025, 03:05:22 pm

 ;b;

-Looks like the former vid has wrapped up liveness, and the second has just smoking going on.  Oh pooh.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2025, 03:10:02 pm

I'm tempted to deliver a hundred cracks about Old Faithful, another point of comparison that was initially on my mind.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 10, 2025, 05:48:25 pm

Upper vid live again now, and currently a better view - still mostly smoking, but you can see the lava flows downhill...

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 12, 2025, 11:25:29 pm

Smoke ever since, and little else - but it's smoking out of adjacent cracks now in the lower vid, and there's a little looks-like-snow, too, in front of the camera - I believe pressure must be rebuilding now.

Title: Re: Volcanos
Post by: Lord Avalon on July 13, 2025, 07:08:13 am

From the Sat morning update:

"Episode 28 of the ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption ended just before 1:30 p.m. HST on July 9, 2025. Summit inflation resumed immediately and continues today. Low-level degassing and seismic tremor also persist. Current inflation data indicate episode 29 is likely to start between July 16 and 19."

https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/volcano-updates#hvo