Some scientists study life. Some scientists study the weather. Others study space. And some want to know what is in the ground. Based on some games and fictional imagination, some might just assume they know the answer. “Well, isn’t there like diamond ore in the lava or giant earthworms deep inside the ground or something?” We don’t know what miles deep inside the Earth contains. And we certainly do not want to dig holes for the next hundreds of generations. Thankfully, we don’t. Volcanoes have done the digging part themselves. When a volcano erupts, crystals and other minerals flow out of it. So now the digging turns into scooping. In 2021, the Fagradalsfjall volcano went off after 781 years. The gathered samples were tested and sure enough, there were crystals in the lava. A paper published in June revealed the chemical composition of the lava crystals contained a lot of material from different parts of the mantle. The variation was unexpected, and it gave a better idea of what causes volcanic eruptions. “We have a really detailed record of the different types of composition that we can find the mantle now, and it must be very heterogeneous, very variable,” France Deegan, who is a volcanologist, said.
The lava of Fagradalsfjall came from a deep reservoir of magma because Fagradalsfjall exists at a confluence of fault lines which is along a boundary between tectonic plates. It is at a point where both the boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are pulling apart and rubbing against each other. When Fagradalsfjall erupted, molten rock and crystals shot up to the surface. Dr. Deegan and her collaborator worked with other scientists and researchers to study the lava. Their findings concluded that not only were the chemicals varied over time, but also oxygen isotopes were identical across all the samples. This finding contributes to an inquiry that Iceland has low levels of oxygen-18 which is an isotope mostly found in volcanic rock. The samples from Fagradalsfjall are used to describe mixing and melting processes in magma reservoirs and have not been covered in a paper yet. “It’s an absolutely amazing eruption for our field,” said Dr. Marshall, ‘and it’s one of those things that will be studied for a long time.”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/science/volcano-fagradalsfjall-mantle-magma.html
The lava of Fagradalsfjall came from a deep reservoir of magma because Fagradalsfjall exists at a confluence of fault lines which is along a boundary between tectonic plates. It is at a point where both the boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are pulling apart and rubbing against each other. When Fagradalsfjall erupted, molten rock and crystals shot up to the surface. Dr. Deegan and her collaborator worked with other scientists and researchers to study the lava. Their findings concluded that not only were the chemicals varied over time, but also oxygen isotopes were identical across all the samples. This finding contributes to an inquiry that Iceland has low levels of oxygen-18 which is an isotope mostly found in volcanic rock. The samples from Fagradalsfjall are used to describe mixing and melting processes in magma reservoirs and have not been covered in a paper yet. “It’s an absolutely amazing eruption for our field,” said Dr. Marshall, ‘and it’s one of those things that will be studied for a long time.”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/science/volcano-fagradalsfjall-mantle-magma.html
