Speaker 1: And welcome back to the nonprofits. You made it to Friday,
Speaker 1: and it's a volcano. And who better to tell us
Speaker 1: about geological phenomena than our resident geologist Kelly Laughlin. But
Speaker 1: he's not here this week, so we're gonna go to
Speaker 1: Tracy instead.
Speaker 2: Yes, my friends, you have indeed heard true. The end
Speaker 2: is nigh and it is high time you all repent
Speaker 2: for your inadequacies in life, else suffer the wrath of
Speaker 2: Lord Vulcan Laos nominee Aus. Yes, indeed, friends, exhibiting a
Speaker 2: flair for the dramatic, Lord Vulcan Laus nominie Aus, the
Speaker 2: Roman god of fire and smithing, has chosen to show
Speaker 2: his might by causing a fair amount of above average
Speaker 2: seismic activity on the slopes of Iliamna Volcano. The volcano
Speaker 2: has been dormant for many years to US mortals, but
Speaker 2: for Lord Vulcan Laos nominie Aus.
Speaker 3: The forge has barely cool.
Speaker 2: This story is from ABC News by Julia Jacobo on
Speaker 2: July eleven five.
Speaker 3: A lot of jads of jas.
Speaker 4: That is a lot of jays. Amazing, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know if that's a reference that I'm missing,
Speaker 1: or if that's your own Latin nonsense that you tossed
Speaker 1: on there.
Speaker 3: Latin nonsense.
Speaker 2: Oh I think that was like glory be to his
Speaker 2: name or something.
Speaker 1: Okay, so not nonsense, just Latin. So it was very
Speaker 1: intimidating though. I'll say that now. I know that our
Speaker 1: producer loves me, Cynthia, because she keeps giving me science
Speaker 1: stuff to talk about, and that's amazing. But Jonathan, I
Speaker 1: know that we share a passion here. So can can
Speaker 1: you tell us more about some of the data that
Speaker 1: we have about this particular volcano?
Speaker 5: Sure, since this last eruption, the volcano was recorded ejecting
Speaker 5: smoke and light ash in eighteen seventy six, nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 5: nineteen forty one, and forty seven. And that's according to MPs,
Speaker 5: MPs being the I forgot ack anyway, I'll get to
Speaker 5: it in a minute. It regularly tips trips seismographs from
Speaker 5: getting close to an avalanche as well. You know, you
Speaker 5: put a volcano heat lots of glacier snow, and you
Speaker 5: get eventually get a lot of avalanches, which also cause
Speaker 5: a lot of micro quakes or earthquakes if they're big enough.
Speaker 5: And it is summer after all, so things are melting
Speaker 5: a bit, and there is climate change, so but this
Speaker 5: seems to be a bit different. Through the shaking is
Speaker 5: the same, it usually does not last for hours as
Speaker 5: it did on June fifteenth. Iliama is remote located, and
Speaker 5: on this I'm quoting the article for this located in
Speaker 5: the Jigmut Mountains within Lake Clark National Park and Preserve
Speaker 5: National Park Service. There it is remembered and it is
Speaker 5: monitored closely by volcanologists due to its potential hazards. There
Speaker 5: are several communities within a two hundred mile radius. Why
Speaker 5: a two hundred mile radius, you say, Think about Pintubo,
Speaker 5: Think about Mount Saint Helens. During Mount Saint Helens. The
Speaker 5: next day, I walked out to my car and took
Speaker 5: an eighth inch of ash off my windshield before I
Speaker 5: used Winschild wibers because it's gritty and it would scratch
Speaker 5: the glass. So this happened in Marina, California, just north
Speaker 5: of Monterey, some nine hundred plus miles from Mount Saint Helens.
Speaker 5: So yeah, these things can affect things very very far away.
Speaker 5: So in Mount Pinatubo. When it blew in the Philippines
Speaker 5: about a month after I left, put three foot of ash,
Speaker 5: you know, about one hundred miles away. So yeah, that's
Speaker 5: pretty big boom. And so that's you know, that's why
Speaker 5: two hundred mile radius. And there are Pedro Bay port
Speaker 5: Alsworth and Anchorage, Alaska according to the National Park Service,
Speaker 5: that are within that range.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when they talk about the area being affected,
Speaker 1: they're not just saying by like seismic activity or a
Speaker 1: magma flow.
Speaker 4: They're talking about like.
Speaker 1: Ash fallout and other sort of like environmental and weather phenomena.
Speaker 4: Yes, cool, Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1: So Tracy, that's not an expert, what can you tell
Speaker 1: us about in volcanos?
Speaker 3: So here's the deal.
Speaker 2: I'm going to pass along the sentiment of a man
Speaker 2: that I respect slightly more than the average individual, and
Speaker 2: that is that as a amateur, as a person who
Speaker 2: knows nothing, I believe that gives me license to speculate wildly.
Speaker 2: So if you look on the on Google Maps and
Speaker 2: you look up Iliamna volcano, you notice that it's like
Speaker 2: kinda like ish close to water.
Speaker 3: Not super close.
Speaker 2: So this is my speculation that soon this entire volcano
Speaker 2: will break in half and then magma will emerge and
Speaker 2: it will spill onto this water creating more land for
Speaker 2: America Red, white, and blue, but also creating a super
Speaker 2: large amount of steam that will blanket all of Alaska
Speaker 2: and the northern territories, the Northwest territories of Canada, and
Speaker 2: the Yukon in darkness for the rest of time, as
Speaker 2: is the will of our Lord Vulcan laos nomini aus.
Speaker 2: That is Latin for something that I did look up
Speaker 2: and then closed immediately because I didn't think it was
Speaker 2: gonna come up again. But I don't think there's much
Speaker 2: cause to worry in all seriousness.
Speaker 3: I read through the article.
Speaker 2: The US Geological Survey called it a normal volcano alert level.
Speaker 2: So if we don't trust the people who study this
Speaker 2: all the time and monitor it all the time, who
Speaker 2: are we gonna trust me? I just said, Vulcans doing it,
Speaker 2: So like we have to lean on the experts on
Speaker 2: these sort of things, and.
Speaker 3: They don't think it's much to worry about. So I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna go with what they say.
Speaker 5: I mean, have you ever watched Dante's Peak?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I haven't. What's that about?
Speaker 4: Also?
Speaker 5: So tell us, oh, go ahead and watch it, watch it.
Speaker 2: We have fourteen minutes, and I don't know anything about volcanoes.
Speaker 5: So well, you know there are fifty one. I have
Speaker 5: fun fact, there are fifty one volcanoes monitored in Alaska alone.
Speaker 5: It's the Ring of Fire, you know, that goes ro
Speaker 5: all around the Pacific.
Speaker 4: It's like, that's what I got it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Ring of Fire.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: He must have fallen off a boat in the Pacific
Speaker 5: somewhere anyway, yeah, far north.
Speaker 1: So is there is there something significant about Iliamna? Then, John, like,
Speaker 1: why like, why are we hearing about this one specifically?
Speaker 4: Is there any rhyme or like anything thing particular to it?
Speaker 5: I don't think so. I think just because it's been
Speaker 5: so long, which is not so long in geological time.
Speaker 5: You know, it's been like, you know, one hundred it's
Speaker 5: been sixty some odd years. I guess seventy years. Let's say,
Speaker 5: actually it's been sixty six years. But you know, since
Speaker 5: it's last we're just bree smoke which ashed and smoked.
Speaker 5: It didn't really irrupt, you know. So but it's still
Speaker 5: an active volcano. And so you know, we have other
Speaker 5: active volcanoes in the Ring of Fire, and you know
Speaker 5: there's Mount Rainier and there's of course Mount Saint Helens
Speaker 5: in Washington, Oregon, and there's you know, volcanoes all the
Speaker 5: way up the Andes Mountains in South America and Central
Speaker 5: America and that go up through the Rockies but don't
Speaker 5: really become We don't have any active volcanoes until you
Speaker 5: get up towards Washington State or Oregon, Washington, northern California.
Speaker 5: So you know, that's just there are a lot of
Speaker 5: volcanoes in the United States. Most of them I think
Speaker 5: are in Alaska, but or Hawaii. Hawaii's are also very active.
Speaker 5: Kilaway has been erupting for what thirty years now, something
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 4: I imagine. Then there's probably that's probably where the plates
Speaker 4: are meeting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a couple of small plates in between the
Speaker 5: Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. So there's a
Speaker 5: lot of going on. And wherever you have fault lines,
Speaker 5: you know. It's another thing about luring a fire is
Speaker 5: that those subduction zones and things like that tend to
Speaker 5: have volcanoes popping up as well. Like it might might
Speaker 5: might even be a couple, though I don't remember any
Speaker 5: couple in the coastal ranges of California. But because that's
Speaker 5: San Andrea's fault goes up California. Well, that's ally so
Speaker 5: it's like you can see the fault line. Okay, it's
Speaker 5: overdue for a major eruption anyway, So it actually is
Speaker 5: more regular, and it's those plates are more regular in
Speaker 5: their earthquakes than volcanoes earthquakes.
Speaker 1: Well, and speaking of fault lines, there's one too that
Speaker 1: I don't hear a lot about, but I used to
Speaker 1: when I was younger, the San Madrid or New Madrid,
Speaker 1: a little bit south of a little bit south of
Speaker 1: Tracy and I in Missouri. And apparently I also do
Speaker 1: for a sort of event, a seismic event sometime soon.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Tracy, have you heard anything about it?
Speaker 5: When was the last one? You're in eighteen hundreds? It
Speaker 5: was in your early eighteen hundreds, gotcha.
Speaker 2: I've been hearing about that since I was in like
Speaker 2: middle school, because I remember them telling showing me that
Speaker 2: our building was built to be earthquake ready in the
Speaker 2: event that we were to have an earthquake. I was like, ah, okay,
Speaker 2: that's why we have to prepare for earthquakes here in Missouri,
Speaker 2: even though we don't.
Speaker 3: Have them really at it.
Speaker 4: All right, that's it, that's just.
Speaker 5: In case The thing with this moderate's fault is that
Speaker 5: last time it erupted, it was like a it was
Speaker 5: like a an eight on the Richter scale, which is
Speaker 5: like earth shattering. You know, the the entire Mississippi River
Speaker 5: changed course into Louisiana from that. You know, it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, the whole New Orleans land mass was created
Speaker 5: because of it. You know, it's like it's really weird,
Speaker 5: you know, And it was not that long ago, so
Speaker 5: you know, but it's supposedly a little bit more when
Speaker 5: a couple hundred years goes by, it's a little bit
Speaker 5: more on the edge doing it. And now that place
Speaker 5: is all populated. At the time there was no population there.
Speaker 1: That'll be that'll be something you'd think that I then
Speaker 1: will have the hopefully they'll have some sort of methods
Speaker 1: for detecting ahead of time.
Speaker 4: All right, now it's time to move because there are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you'll get it. You'll get a couple of days notice,
Speaker 5: and you'll have all the time in the world to
Speaker 5: drive your way, your way away from it. That's not
Speaker 5: going to affect you. I don't think you can go
Speaker 5: that far. If it's that big of an earthquake, you'd
Speaker 5: have to get over the rocky mountains to put the
Speaker 5: mountains between you and the earthquake. You know, earthquake might
Speaker 5: trigger other faults in other parts of the United States.
Speaker 4: To go geysers and faults and all kinds of stuff, guys.
Speaker 3: Next to nothing.
Speaker 2: I looked up Dante's Peak, and the reason I haven't
Speaker 2: seen it is it came out when I was three
Speaker 2: months in Utero, and it's about it's about volcanoes.
Speaker 3: It's jaws with volcanoes, is my understanding of.
Speaker 5: Shark.
Speaker 3: I mean, at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: With it, you just if somebody comes up to you
Speaker 2: and you're in a beachside town and they say there's
Speaker 2: sharks in that water, maybe just don't go on the
Speaker 2: water that day. And if somebody comes up to you
Speaker 2: and you live next to a volcano and they appear
Speaker 2: to know stuff about volcanoes, and they tell you the
Speaker 2: volcano is about to be bad, go to vacation for
Speaker 2: a week, see.
Speaker 3: If something happens with the volcano, if it doesn't come back.
Speaker 3: This is how much didn't really lose.
Speaker 1: I was really really wondering how you were going to
Speaker 1: tie that back to volcanoes. When when I was like,
Speaker 1: how do we end up on sharks, but you brought
Speaker 1: it back, and that.
Speaker 3: Volcanoes Johnte's peak it.
Speaker 2: I will make up stuff about volcanoes if you, if
Speaker 2: you keep me, if you, if you keep asking me
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 1: Let's let's do this, because I have I thought we
Speaker 1: were going to have a little extra time on this one,
Speaker 1: very little, so I I yeah, so I came up
Speaker 1: with this thought.
Speaker 4: So if magma is molten mineral, right, I know what
Speaker 4: you're talking about, go ahead with me.
Speaker 1: And ice is a mineral, does that make water magma?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 4: Planet simple long temperature?
Speaker 5: Wrong temperature, what's.
Speaker 3: What's the relevancy of temperature?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Talk to to get me there?
Speaker 5: Well, if you, if you, it has to be in
Speaker 5: a melted state. Magma's plastic melted plastic state, that's why
Speaker 5: it's there. And magma is specific to what's internal to
Speaker 5: the to the planet, which is extremely hot, so.
Speaker 2: That the time three feet inside the crust is three
Speaker 2: feet inside the layer that we're on.
Speaker 3: Which I don't think is the crust crust.
Speaker 2: Okay, three feet inside of that is inside the planet,
Speaker 2: and it's not that hot.
Speaker 5: So okay, yeah, okay, But what I'm saying is you know,
Speaker 5: like you can go down just three or four miles
Speaker 5: in the temperature starts getting really warm. So and the
Speaker 5: magma's coming up from much farther down than that, and
Speaker 5: it is usually once it hits the surface between three
Speaker 5: and four thousand degrees, so, you know, and then it
Speaker 5: turns into lava. Blah blah blah. Different volcanoes have different
Speaker 5: temperatures and different consistencies of their magma. Their lava magma
Speaker 5: is lava when it comes to the surface. So that's uh,
Speaker 5: you know, that's what I understand it to be. So
Speaker 5: ice turning to water is water.
Speaker 3: What is not water? Also a magma?
Speaker 4: It is a molten mineral, but molten natural material now.
Speaker 5: Here Now, now what is a mineral?
Speaker 4: See I got that here too.
Speaker 1: So a mineral is a naturally occurring inorganic solid with
Speaker 1: a specific chemical composition such as H two oh and
Speaker 1: a definite crystal structure. Ice meets all of these solid
Speaker 1: solid H two oh meets all of these criteria. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now the definition of magma, I was a little bit
Speaker 1: wrong because I said, I said that that magma is
Speaker 1: molten minerals, and that's not I was being charitable to
Speaker 1: my game.
Speaker 4: The definition of.
Speaker 1: Magma is hot, fluid or semi fluid material or below
Speaker 1: or within the Earth's crust from which lava and.
Speaker 2: Other pot is a matter of opinion, it is a.
Speaker 4: Matter it is.
Speaker 1: It is a description that is purely subjective and arbitrary.
Speaker 2: So I decide that things become hot above absolute zero,
Speaker 2: So all things are hot. Therefore all are molten and
Speaker 2: naturally occurring, and within the Earth's crust are magma.
Speaker 5: There we go very scientific.
Speaker 6: I mean, if we're gonna use, if we're gonna use arbitrary,
Speaker 6: if we're gonna use, if you're gonna in your scientific
Speaker 6: like wording, use something, anything that's good is rocks.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, okay, so all the rocks I don't
Speaker 2: think are good are not rocks?
Speaker 3: No, if we're going to use something.
Speaker 5: That's why. That's why science is precise wording. That's why
Speaker 5: science precise wording and definitions. So you know that way
Speaker 5: you you were all talking on the same page. Communications
Speaker 5: issues are always a problem. But you know the other
Speaker 5: thing is, though, when you think about it, communication and
Speaker 5: how you communicate a certain ideas, you're just trying to
Speaker 5: get as accurate as you can to another another brain,
Speaker 5: and so that's difficult, and there's entire studies on that.
Speaker 5: But if you want to argue terms, you go study philosophy.
Speaker 5: There are ninety percent of us arguing with the terms mean,
Speaker 5: you know. But once you get a good grip on
Speaker 5: the terms, you know. I never understood why they use
Speaker 5: Latin and Greek for that myself, because it's like, why
Speaker 5: would we do that?
Speaker 7: It's descriptive And I really feel like I'm see like
Speaker 7: geology specific definitions for magma, and at least what I've
Speaker 7: found on a ten second Google start feel free to
Speaker 7: not believe me, is.
Speaker 2: That magma is defined as molten or semi molten rock
Speaker 2: found beneath the Earth's surface. And I think you can
Speaker 2: just be generous here and say that rock and mineral
Speaker 2: are the same thing.
Speaker 4: I'm looking up the difference between a rock and a mineral.
Speaker 2: Okay, if it's if it's probably going to be a
Speaker 2: rock is some collection of minerals that are found naturally.
Speaker 4: Occurring one or more minerals.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 4: It's when ice cube is a rock?
Speaker 2: Ice cube is ice is a naturally occurring rock?
Speaker 5: I well, you know, and also water does a lot
Speaker 5: of water vapor comes out of erupting volcanoes. Matter of fact,
Speaker 5: there's a lot it's it's but it comes out as steam,
Speaker 5: not as not as rocks. It's not rocks, it's steam.
Speaker 7: Where why why?
Speaker 2: Okay, it's served on the rocks as well.
Speaker 4: Thanks, thank Irish Ice.
Speaker 2: So I'm just gonna say, I feel like.
Speaker 5: This is ice vapors just wants to sin.
Speaker 3: I think he just wants to sin.
Speaker 4: Wants to sin against the vulcan.
Speaker 2: Vulcan is ashamed of you. He made you in his
Speaker 2: image as a lava monster, and you.
Speaker 5: Showbacks. Don't serve Vulcan, they serve Neptune.
Speaker 2: So we'll Seetune protects you from the underwater volcanoes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're there too.
Speaker 1: That's actually a pretty solid flex and that's where we're
Speaker 1: going to ended.
Speaker 4: Thank you everybody for tuning in this week.