Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What's the most powerful volcano in the Solar System?

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What's the most powerful volcano in the Solar System? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Jorge, have you ever seen hot lava in real life?
0:12
Speaker 1: I've been to see the volcanoes in Hawaii. Yeah. How
0:15
Speaker 1: close did you get to the actual lava? Pretty close, like,
0:18
Speaker 1: you know, a few feet. I touched it with the stick.
0:20
Speaker 1: You actually touched the lava with a stick? And did
0:25
Speaker 1: you love it? I did, although I'm not in love
0:28
Speaker 1: it with it? Thank goodness for that. It is pretty
0:30
Speaker 1: hot stuff though. Hi. I'm or hammy cartoonists and the
0:48
Speaker 1: creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist.
0:52
Speaker 1: I'm the co author of the book We Have No Idea,
0:55
Speaker 1: and I'm a big fan of chocolate lava kicks. Well,
0:58
Speaker 1: so much information there. First of all, you wrote a book.
1:01
Speaker 1: I did. I wrote a book with this friend of mine.
1:02
Speaker 1: You should check it out. It's pretty funny. What's the
1:04
Speaker 1: call again? And where can I prochase it? It's called
1:06
Speaker 1: We Have No Idea. It's about all the grand mysteries
1:10
Speaker 1: of the universe, everything we don't know about science and
1:14
Speaker 1: physics and the universe, everything that we love talking about
1:16
Speaker 1: on the podcast. And I wrote it with you, and
1:19
Speaker 1: it's filled with fantastic, hilarious little doodles. And cartoons that
1:23
Speaker 1: explain the physics and also make you laugh, just like
1:26
Speaker 1: this podcast. Oh well, cartoons and comics, Sign me up.
1:29
Speaker 1: And also you like chocolate lava cake? What it's that
1:32
Speaker 1: chocolate mead out of lava or is it lava mede
1:35
Speaker 1: out of chocolate? It's lava made out of chocolate. I
1:37
Speaker 1: guess you know. It's a cake that you bite into
1:39
Speaker 1: and this molten chocolate flows out, burns your tongue, but
1:42
Speaker 1: it's so delicious you don't mind. Basically just undercooked chocolate cake. Yeah,
1:46
Speaker 1: those sort of super popular, while deck I guess they're
1:48
Speaker 1: still popular with me. They still are. But welcome to
1:51
Speaker 1: our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production
1:53
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio in which we take a big
1:56
Speaker 1: bite of the lava filled deliciousness of the universe and
2:00
Speaker 1: try to explain all of it to you. We think
2:02
Speaker 1: about all the crazy stuff that's out there. We zoom
2:05
Speaker 1: down to the tin, these little particles that are jiggling
2:07
Speaker 1: and wiggling and made out of strings. We talk about
2:10
Speaker 1: the whole shape of the universe and its future and
2:13
Speaker 1: what might happen to it and to you. And we
2:16
Speaker 1: do all that while making some banana jokes. Yeah, and
2:19
Speaker 1: hopefully without burning your tongue, because physics is pretty hot.
2:23
Speaker 1: Understanding the universe, learning about it. It's all pretty amazing
2:27
Speaker 1: and hot stuff. It is hot stuff, and we like
2:30
Speaker 1: to see it explode out of your mind and flow
2:32
Speaker 1: out through your life. And I love hearing from listeners
2:36
Speaker 1: that they have had their excitement for physics tickled by
2:39
Speaker 1: listening to the podcast. Yeah, we like to talk about
2:42
Speaker 1: all of the small stuff out there in the universe
2:45
Speaker 1: and all of the huge stuff out there that you
2:47
Speaker 1: can find and you can discover, and especially we like
2:50
Speaker 1: to talk about extreme things in the universe. We definitely
2:54
Speaker 1: do because we love to ask questions about like how
2:56
Speaker 1: hot can something get, or how big can something be,
2:59
Speaker 1: or how small can we see things? These extremes of
3:03
Speaker 1: the universe are what tells us what's possible. There are
3:05
Speaker 1: the places where the actual rules of the universe might
3:09
Speaker 1: be revealed, and so we love to explore these crazy extremes. Yeah,
3:14
Speaker 1: we have a whole series of extreme podcast episodes and
3:17
Speaker 1: that's where you que the heavy metal Guitar Music, Extreme
3:21
Speaker 1: Universe Teaching sponsorship from Mountain Dew right there. I wish,
3:27
Speaker 1: but yeah, we have episodes about the coldest thing in
3:29
Speaker 1: the universe, the biggest thing, the shiniest thing, all kinds
3:33
Speaker 1: of the biggest, most extreme things. I don't think we've
3:36
Speaker 1: done the shiniest thing yet. That's a great idea. Well,
3:38
Speaker 1: I guess we have the brightest. We do have the brightest,
3:41
Speaker 1: and we have the fastest spinning thing, and the hottest thing,
3:44
Speaker 1: and the coldest thing, and the emptiest thing, and the
3:46
Speaker 1: densest thing, and all the thingiest things out there in
3:50
Speaker 1: the universe. Right we still haven't done the silliest thing
3:52
Speaker 1: in the universe. Silliest thing in the universe. I'm not
3:55
Speaker 1: sure that's a physics podcast topic, isn't it. What if
3:59
Speaker 1: you define eiliness in physics terms, You know what, probably
4:02
Speaker 1: there is some concept in physics that has nothing to
4:05
Speaker 1: do with silliness but is called silliness anyway. It's like
4:09
Speaker 1: another court charge or something, silliness, silliness and boringness. This
4:14
Speaker 1: one has two sillies, and that one has negative one
4:16
Speaker 1: and a half borings. And there's the the whit Sun rule,
4:20
Speaker 1: which says that no two nerds should have a silly
4:22
Speaker 1: podcast at the same time. We're breaking that rule right now.
4:26
Speaker 1: It's what it's all about. So, yeah, we like to
4:27
Speaker 1: talk about extreme things, and so today on the podcast,
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Speaker 1: we'll be tackling the question what's the most powerful volcano
4:39
Speaker 1: in the Solar System? Now, Daniel, powerful doesn't end with
4:42
Speaker 1: an E S T. Oh, Yeah, that's true. The most
4:45
Speaker 1: dramatic ist okano in the Solar system, most powerful ist
4:50
Speaker 1: power is well, you know, that's a linguistic problem. You know,
4:53
Speaker 1: some of these adjectives you can't add E S T
4:56
Speaker 1: to them, but you're still extreme because you're still the
4:58
Speaker 1: most something. I guess adding the most helps grammatically speaking. Alright,
5:04
Speaker 1: So the question is what's the most powerful volcano in
5:06
Speaker 1: the Solar system? Now, Daniel, I think you picked this
5:09
Speaker 1: word very carefully because you didn't say what's the hottest
5:12
Speaker 1: volcano or largest volcano? You said the most powerful volcano.
5:15
Speaker 1: I did. I thought about powerful volcano because there's lots
5:19
Speaker 1: of different ways to describe volcanoes, right, you know, And
5:21
Speaker 1: I'm not that interested in like the biggest volcano if
5:24
Speaker 1: it's like inert and not doing anything anymore, it's basically
5:27
Speaker 1: just like a dead volcano. So I wanted to know
5:30
Speaker 1: about like the most dramatic, the one that's going to
5:32
Speaker 1: explode the most, the one that's like really gonna blow
5:35
Speaker 1: up in your mind. So I thought about most powerful
5:38
Speaker 1: volcano buries. Yeah, exactly, the one with the worst indigestion, exactly,
5:44
Speaker 1: the rudest. Alright, Well, it's a pretty big solar system.
5:49
Speaker 1: I imagine there are a lot of volcanoes in it,
5:51
Speaker 1: and so we'll talk about all of the ones here
5:53
Speaker 1: on Earth, all the ones in the Solar system. But
5:56
Speaker 1: as usually, we were wondering how many people out there
5:59
Speaker 1: maybe had an answer to this question. So thank you
6:01
Speaker 1: to everybody who volunteers to answer these random physics questions
6:04
Speaker 1: from me with no preparation. Really appreciate it, and if
6:08
Speaker 1: you would like to participate, don't be shy. I promise
6:10
Speaker 1: it's fun. Right to me two questions at Daniel and
6:13
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com and you'll hear your guesses on the podcast.
6:17
Speaker 1: What could be more fun than get a difficult physics
6:22
Speaker 1: questions in front of thousands of people? You know, you'd
6:24
Speaker 1: be surprised. When I used to walk around campus and
6:26
Speaker 1: ask people, it was almost never people said no, like
6:29
Speaker 1: everybody was up for their lecture whatever. I wonder how
6:32
Speaker 1: they would feel if you told them how many people
6:34
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast and whether or not that number
6:37
Speaker 1: would impress them or make them feel bad for us.
6:41
Speaker 1: There's definitely a reason why I try not to look
6:43
Speaker 1: like a famous podcaster when I walk around campus. Yeah,
6:45
Speaker 1: well I see that's some purpose. It's just my natural look. Anyway,
6:50
Speaker 1: Is there a look for successful podcasters? Like? What are
6:52
Speaker 1: we supposed to look like? I don't know, but this
6:54
Speaker 1: definitely isn't it that? You know? Or maybe the more
6:57
Speaker 1: successful you are, the less you know dress you have
7:00
Speaker 1: to look? Right? I mean I feel like in l
7:02
Speaker 1: A that's true, Like the more successful you are, the
7:05
Speaker 1: more like you don't care how you dressed. Maybe I
7:07
Speaker 1: dressed like Seth Rogan, right, so I might as well
7:09
Speaker 1: be Seth Rogan. But you know, we have one listener,
7:11
Speaker 1: Mark Fearing, who's also a cartoonist, and he once drew
7:15
Speaker 1: our portraits just based on hearing our voices. Like what
7:18
Speaker 1: his mental image was of us? Wow? And what do
7:21
Speaker 1: we look like? Well? I looked like this big barrel
7:24
Speaker 1: chested guy wearing like a tweed vest and pontificating with
7:28
Speaker 1: a big pipe coming out of my mouth. So I
7:30
Speaker 1: look pretty pretentious? And how did he get it right
7:32
Speaker 1: for me. I think he didn't know that you have
7:34
Speaker 1: a Chinese background. Didn't somebody want to say that we
7:36
Speaker 1: looked like the guys from what is that of the Concord?
7:40
Speaker 1: Fly to the Concord? Yet? Well, last show is hilarious,
7:43
Speaker 1: so I would be glad to be compared for that
7:45
Speaker 1: show at any level. But anyways, we're talking about volcanoes
7:48
Speaker 1: and we were going to ask people on the street,
7:51
Speaker 1: but they thought was the most powerful volcano in the
7:53
Speaker 1: Solar System. Here's what they had to say. I don't know,
7:56
Speaker 1: but I'll just give stuff. It's on t Tom. The
8:02
Speaker 1: most powerful volcano in the Solar System is actually me
8:06
Speaker 1: after a night of binging on Taco Bell. No, I'm kidding. Actually,
8:12
Speaker 1: I think it's on a moon, one of the icy
8:16
Speaker 1: moons that's got a bunch of heat generated by gravity
8:20
Speaker 1: from Jupiter Saturn and something like that. That is a
8:25
Speaker 1: good one. I don't know about specific volcano, but I
8:29
Speaker 1: have a haunch it would be on Jupiter's moon aisle.
8:33
Speaker 1: So we're not talking about the highest volcano. Olympus mons
8:37
Speaker 1: on Mars is extinct. So I'm thinking that gravitational tides
8:41
Speaker 1: on a moon of a gas giant would drive tremendous eruptions,
8:46
Speaker 1: maybe a water volcano on Europa or a methane volcano
8:50
Speaker 1: on Titan. I'd say the most powerful volcano in the
8:53
Speaker 1: Solar System would be the volcanoes on Io because when
8:58
Speaker 1: they go off, they shoot, we clear out into space
9:02
Speaker 1: that then gets sucked up to form a ring around Jupiter.
9:07
Speaker 1: So I would say the most powerful volcanoes are the
9:10
Speaker 1: ones on Io. I would guess that that would probably
9:13
Speaker 1: be on Venus, but I don't know what the name
9:16
Speaker 1: of it is. I know that the moons of Jupiter
9:20
Speaker 1: have a pretty strong volcanoes an active. But I also
9:29
Speaker 1: know that Mars has one big volcano and that one
9:33
Speaker 1: is not active. It is probably in the Sun. There's
9:37
Speaker 1: the dead one on Mars, Olympus Mons, and then um
9:43
Speaker 1: around Saturn there's the moon Enceladus, which is ejecting like
9:47
Speaker 1: ice and stuff into the space. And that's kind of
9:51
Speaker 1: like a volcano, all right. I like the person who
9:54
Speaker 1: said that they're the most powerful volcano in the Solar system.
9:57
Speaker 1: That person needs to find a new Taco truck. I
10:00
Speaker 1: don't want to be around that person. That is not
10:02
Speaker 1: a good sign, my friend, But nobody said any volcanoes
10:05
Speaker 1: on Earth. People just like assumed that the biggest, craziest,
10:08
Speaker 1: most powerful volcanoes are somewhere else. I guess I think
10:12
Speaker 1: you said in the Solar System, So that kind of
10:14
Speaker 1: tips you off that, you know, to get to the
10:17
Speaker 1: extreme stuff you have to go outside of the planet. Well,
10:19
Speaker 1: I'd like to know what's the most powerful volcano in
10:21
Speaker 1: the universe, but we have no idea what's out here
10:24
Speaker 1: beyond the Solar System. So that's sort of just like
10:27
Speaker 1: the limits of what we could probe right in the universe. Huh.
10:31
Speaker 1: I mean, there must be a more powerful volcano somewhere else,
10:34
Speaker 1: just because there are so many planets. Is there a
10:36
Speaker 1: theoretical limit to the biggest volcano? Do you know what
10:39
Speaker 1: I mean? Like, at some point, wouldn't it collapsed into
10:42
Speaker 1: a star or something? Theoretical limits could like a whole
10:44
Speaker 1: planet be a volcano. You know, that's pretty cool. And
10:47
Speaker 1: if so, then what's the biggest volcano planet? You could
10:50
Speaker 1: have done? Dune done new podcast episode idea. I guess
10:53
Speaker 1: I'm getting ahead of ourselves, but yeah, so let's tackle
10:56
Speaker 1: this question, Daniel, and I guess the first question is
10:58
Speaker 1: about them monology. So you said you post the question
11:02
Speaker 1: is the most powerful volcano and not the hottest, not
11:04
Speaker 1: the Burke is So what does that actually mean? Well,
11:07
Speaker 1: when I was first thinking about this, I was imagining
11:10
Speaker 1: dramatic explosions, right. We all know about like Mount Saint
11:12
Speaker 1: Helen's or other big explosions in history that have killed
11:16
Speaker 1: lots of people, have been very dramatic and pumped a
11:18
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff into the atmosphere. So that's sort of
11:20
Speaker 1: what I had in mind at first. But it turns
11:22
Speaker 1: out there's two very different kinds of volcanoes. There's the
11:25
Speaker 1: ones that like explode and blow their top like we're
11:28
Speaker 1: talking about, and they have like one really big eruption.
11:31
Speaker 1: But then there's sort of the slow and steady kind
11:33
Speaker 1: of volcano that sort of leaks lava continuously over many
11:37
Speaker 1: many years, like the one you visited in Hawaii, and
11:39
Speaker 1: those could actually be much more dramatic and influential on
11:43
Speaker 1: like climate. So there are two types, yeah, exactly. So
11:46
Speaker 1: the kind in Hawaii, for example, is called a shield volcano.
11:50
Speaker 1: This is the kind of volcano that sort of slowly
11:52
Speaker 1: leaks lava, Like the volcanoes in Hawaii don't just explode
11:55
Speaker 1: and then stop there's a continuous flow of lava, and
11:58
Speaker 1: that's because this lava doesn't have a lot of silica
12:00
Speaker 1: in it, so it's very fluid, so it doesn't like
12:03
Speaker 1: build up and then explode. And what you get then
12:05
Speaker 1: is this it's called a shield volcano because it basically
12:08
Speaker 1: just sort of like flows down hill and spreads out.
12:10
Speaker 1: You get this very flat sort of volcano shape, not
12:14
Speaker 1: you're like typical cone volcano. It's very broad and flat,
12:17
Speaker 1: so it's sort of like a shield laying on the ground.
12:20
Speaker 1: But it's still unpredictable, right, Like you can build up
12:23
Speaker 1: pressure in them, and sometimes you know, the top collapses,
12:26
Speaker 1: Like I've been up there to the top of some
12:28
Speaker 1: of the ones in Hawaii, and you know, the things change,
12:30
Speaker 1: Like one year I went and there was this whole landscape,
12:33
Speaker 1: and then the next year I went and the landscape
12:35
Speaker 1: was gone. Yeah. Absolutely, And they're constantly producing more landscape. Right,
12:38
Speaker 1: it's like a continuous flow, but you're right, it's variable.
12:41
Speaker 1: It's not like exactly continuous, you know, And these things
12:44
Speaker 1: definitely have cycles where they're more active and less active.
12:47
Speaker 1: The one kil auo in Hawaii, it produces like two
12:51
Speaker 1: points seven cubic kilometers of lava which spread out covering
12:55
Speaker 1: like a hundred square kilometers over about a thirty year period.
12:59
Speaker 1: But it has ups and downs and times right when
13:01
Speaker 1: it's producing more in times when it's producing less. But
13:04
Speaker 1: they're not like really the dramatic explosions that you're used
13:08
Speaker 1: to seeing, like in cartoons, for example. You don't like
13:10
Speaker 1: the giants prays of lava. That's not this kind. Yeah, exactly.
13:14
Speaker 1: So shield volcanoes put out a lot of lava, but
13:17
Speaker 1: sort of like in a more continuous, slow flow because
13:20
Speaker 1: of the kind of lava they are, and you know
13:22
Speaker 1: in history they've been very important, Like there's one in
13:24
Speaker 1: Siberia that probably caused like the Permian extinction, an event
13:28
Speaker 1: that killed like seventy of all species on land and
13:31
Speaker 1: spread its lava across like an enormous area of the earth.
13:35
Speaker 1: So I don't mean to put down shield volcanoes like
13:37
Speaker 1: they're very powerful, they're very important, but they don't have
13:40
Speaker 1: like this sort of momentary, dramatic explosion the way the
13:44
Speaker 1: other kind of volcanoes that we call like strato volcanoes are. Wait,
13:48
Speaker 1: so that one in Siberia, how did it kill so
13:49
Speaker 1: many species? Well, just spread lava across like a huge
13:54
Speaker 1: plane where species where it wasn't just the lava, it
13:58
Speaker 1: also released a lot of mercury into the amosphere and
14:00
Speaker 1: raise the temperature of the Earth by like ten degrees,
14:03
Speaker 1: which can upset a lot of ecosystems, but it's definitely
14:06
Speaker 1: can affect, like you know, the course of life on Earth,
14:09
Speaker 1: all right. So then the other kind is called the
14:11
Speaker 1: sword volcano. The other kind it's called a strato volcano.
14:14
Speaker 1: Strato because there's like lots of layers in it. It's
14:16
Speaker 1: like layers of magma and then other kinds of rock
14:19
Speaker 1: and sort of builds up slowly. And this kind of
14:21
Speaker 1: volcano is much more eruptive because that has a different
14:23
Speaker 1: kind of lava. The lava has more silica in it
14:26
Speaker 1: and more dissolved gas, and so it's sort of like stickier.
14:29
Speaker 1: It's goo eier, and so it doesn't like flow out
14:31
Speaker 1: of the crack and the earth is easily. It tends
14:34
Speaker 1: to be more like build up and then when the
14:35
Speaker 1: pressure builds up underneath it and then it blows. And
14:38
Speaker 1: so this sort of good leads to like a much
14:40
Speaker 1: more dramatic explosion. Right and gassier too, Right, Yeah, exactly,
14:45
Speaker 1: it releases enormous quantities of rock and lava and also
14:49
Speaker 1: gas and smoke, and they can also have big effects
14:52
Speaker 1: on climate. And we'll talk about a few examples later on. Alright,
14:55
Speaker 1: So those are the two kinds here on Earth or anywhere?
14:58
Speaker 1: Does that apply to all other planets to those are
15:01
Speaker 1: the ones that we have studied best on Earth, And
15:03
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the ones and other bodies in the
15:05
Speaker 1: Solar System. You'll see that they're not really a fair
15:08
Speaker 1: classification for talking about what's happening on other planets because
15:12
Speaker 1: the process is really very very different. You're not even
15:15
Speaker 1: always talking about lava. Sometimes you have very low gravity
15:18
Speaker 1: environments and so it doesn't like build up the same
15:21
Speaker 1: way it does here on Earth. So volcanoes on Earth
15:23
Speaker 1: are pretty different than volcanoes on Io or on Titan
15:27
Speaker 1: or in other places. I see, they're more alien. But
15:29
Speaker 1: the way that geologists sort of rank volcanoes or talking
15:32
Speaker 1: about volcanoes power, they use this metric they measure like
15:35
Speaker 1: how much stuff comes out of the volcano, like what
15:38
Speaker 1: volume of stuff has it emitted at a single time
15:41
Speaker 1: or over time. Because you just said that there are
15:43
Speaker 1: kind of two kinds, like one that's steady and flowing,
15:47
Speaker 1: and the other kind that it's more explosive. Yeah, so
15:50
Speaker 1: it's sort of a judgment call, but you integrate over
15:52
Speaker 1: the eruption. And if it's a shield volcano and the
15:54
Speaker 1: eruption is sort of continuous, then you can measure its
15:57
Speaker 1: power just by the volume of lava produced. If it's
16:00
Speaker 1: an erupting streado volcano, then you can measure its power
16:03
Speaker 1: by the volume of stuff produced in that eruption. And
16:06
Speaker 1: then you know it goes quiet for a while, and
16:07
Speaker 1: so you sort of know when the eruption ends. But
16:10
Speaker 1: I guess even if it's the erupting kind, the strato
16:12
Speaker 1: volcanous one, the fact that it's not erupting, it's not
16:15
Speaker 1: because there's no lava sort of coming up from the ground.
16:17
Speaker 1: There is, it's just building up, right, Exactly, Both kinds
16:20
Speaker 1: have sort of a steady flow of lava exactly. Both
16:23
Speaker 1: of them are places where there's like a big pool
16:25
Speaker 1: I think actually it's called magma before it comes out
16:28
Speaker 1: of the ground and then it's called lava. But they
16:30
Speaker 1: have this pool of magma underneath where there's like a
16:33
Speaker 1: crack in the crust and it's sort of getting closer
16:36
Speaker 1: to the surface and that pressure can build up. And
16:38
Speaker 1: that's one problem with this metric of measuring a powerful
16:42
Speaker 1: volcano basically by the volume of its greatest explosion. There
16:46
Speaker 1: could be a volcano out there that's like about ready
16:48
Speaker 1: to go and it's much more powerful than any volcano
16:51
Speaker 1: on Earth. It just has never blown up, and so
16:53
Speaker 1: we don't know that it's there. And I guess, you know,
16:56
Speaker 1: maybe just to take a step back where it's all
16:59
Speaker 1: this lava coming, it's just the molten center of the
17:01
Speaker 1: Earth or is it a particular layer? And why does
17:04
Speaker 1: it come up? Doesn't gravity pull it down? Yeah? Well,
17:07
Speaker 1: you know, the Earth is many, many layers, and you
17:09
Speaker 1: have the crust and then underneath that you have the mantle.
17:12
Speaker 1: But the crust is not of uniform thickness, right, And
17:15
Speaker 1: so there are places, for example, when the tectonic plates meet,
17:18
Speaker 1: where there are gaps and it's easier for things that
17:20
Speaker 1: are molten inside the Earth to come up. For example,
17:23
Speaker 1: a lot of the volcanoes on Earth are actually underwater
17:27
Speaker 1: and they exist where these tectonic plates meet in the ocean,
17:30
Speaker 1: and so you can get a lot of volcanoes there.
17:33
Speaker 1: So typically they're just places in the Earth, where this
17:35
Speaker 1: sort of the Earth's crust is thinner and this molten
17:38
Speaker 1: magma can bubble up. I guess that's all that stuff
17:40
Speaker 1: is under pressure, right, because on top of all that
17:42
Speaker 1: lava molten center of the Earth, there's a bunch of
17:45
Speaker 1: tectonic plates pressing down at it, and so if you
17:47
Speaker 1: have a crack, then it's going to leak out some
17:50
Speaker 1: of that lava being squeezed underneath. Yeah, the reason that
17:53
Speaker 1: it's liquid is because of the pressure. When you have
17:55
Speaker 1: some heat from like radioactive decays of isotopes from the
17:58
Speaker 1: inside of the Earth, but mostly it's gravitational pressure. I
18:02
Speaker 1: think about why is the Sun hot. The Sun is
18:05
Speaker 1: hot because it's being squeezed, and then that squeeze and
18:08
Speaker 1: creates fusion. The Earth doesn't have fusion, but it's still
18:10
Speaker 1: being squeezed and that creates an enormous amount of pressure,
18:13
Speaker 1: and that pressure can create friction, and that's why you
18:16
Speaker 1: have liquid inside the Earth. All right, Well, let's get
18:18
Speaker 1: into what are the most powerful volcanoes, not just here
18:22
Speaker 1: on Earth but in the Solar System. But first let's
18:25
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Alright, we're talking about the hottest
18:40
Speaker 1: volcanoes in the solar system, Daniel, the most powerful volcano,
18:47
Speaker 1: who has the most influence on the course of history, Yeah,
18:50
Speaker 1: or who can just blow the most stuff into the atmosphere,
18:54
Speaker 1: Because that's really how they measure it. They're not like
18:56
Speaker 1: how many people did you kill or how many square
18:59
Speaker 1: kilometers did you cover with your lava? And just like
19:01
Speaker 1: what's the volume of stuff that you blew up out
19:04
Speaker 1: of the top of the mountain. But you just told
19:06
Speaker 1: me a little earlier that powerful is measured by the
19:08
Speaker 1: amount of lava flow, which could be like steady and
19:12
Speaker 1: not that exciting. It could be, but you measured by
19:14
Speaker 1: the volume of lava. But I guess what I mean
19:17
Speaker 1: is you could have a really powerful volcano but it's
19:19
Speaker 1: just using kind of constantly. It's never exploding or throwing
19:23
Speaker 1: things up into the atmosphere, But it could still be
19:25
Speaker 1: the most powerful one. Yeah, if it's producing a lot
19:28
Speaker 1: of lava, then by this definition, it would be the
19:31
Speaker 1: most powerful. It wouldn't be very dramatic and it wouldn't
19:33
Speaker 1: be exploding, but it still would be the most powerful.
19:36
Speaker 1: Or do you mean, like, are we sort of adding
19:38
Speaker 1: an element of drama to the word powerful, Like the
19:40
Speaker 1: most lava in the shortest amount of time. No, I think,
19:43
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, you just measure how much stuff
19:45
Speaker 1: has been produced, and so Kilauea, for example, has been
19:49
Speaker 1: producing stuff for a long time. So it racks up
19:51
Speaker 1: like a good amount of lava, like three cubic kilometers,
19:54
Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot, right, But it turns out
19:57
Speaker 1: that even these shield volcanoes that are constantly leaking what
20:00
Speaker 1: seems like an impressive amount of lava don't hold a
20:03
Speaker 1: candle to these strato volcanoes, which can release just so
20:07
Speaker 1: much more stuff in a short amount of time. All right, Well,
20:10
Speaker 1: let's get into what have been some of the most
20:12
Speaker 1: powerful volcanoes in our history here on Earth, and I
20:15
Speaker 1: guess Mount St. Helens is kind of at the top
20:18
Speaker 1: of the list, at least in terms of the consciousness
20:20
Speaker 1: of the population. Yeah, it's one that people can talk
20:23
Speaker 1: about and think about because it happens sort of in
20:24
Speaker 1: recent history. We have like television footage and pictures and
20:28
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, so people sort of connect with it.
20:31
Speaker 1: It's pretty small event on sort of like the top
20:33
Speaker 1: list of volcanic eruptions and Earth's history. However, so it's
20:37
Speaker 1: the deadliest and most economically destructive in US history, But
20:41
Speaker 1: it's not actually that impressive. Only three cubic kilometers of
20:45
Speaker 1: stuff was blown off the top of the mountain. I
20:47
Speaker 1: guess the US is not that old. I mean it's
20:49
Speaker 1: like two d years old compared to you know, the
20:51
Speaker 1: age of the Earth. And so to say that the
20:53
Speaker 1: most it's the biggest one in US history doesn't go
20:55
Speaker 1: back a lot pretty far. No, it's just a blink.
20:58
Speaker 1: I mean, that's very impressive, like imagine, and three cubic
21:01
Speaker 1: kilometers of lava. It's a lot of stuff, right, It
21:04
Speaker 1: blew off the whole top of the mountain. The top
21:06
Speaker 1: of the mountain is now like a one mile wide crater.
21:09
Speaker 1: So this is nothing to sneeze at. It's just not
21:12
Speaker 1: that big compared to other crazier events in Earth's history.
21:15
Speaker 1: And Mountain Helens was a strato volcano that kind of
21:18
Speaker 1: builds up and then explodes. Yeah, and there were some
21:21
Speaker 1: hints that it was going to explode. There was like
21:23
Speaker 1: an earthquake a couple of months before and the cracked
21:26
Speaker 1: the volcano and there was like steam coming out and
21:28
Speaker 1: people could see the top of the mountain changing shape.
21:31
Speaker 1: It was like bulging. So people were pretty well clued
21:34
Speaker 1: in that something was going to happen, and there's a
21:36
Speaker 1: lot of like vulcanologists that were around watching it. Unfortunately,
21:39
Speaker 1: a lot of them underestimated the power of it. Some
21:42
Speaker 1: of them tragically died in the lava flow because they
21:44
Speaker 1: were too close. They didn't live long and prosper they
21:47
Speaker 1: did not exactly. No, So it killed like almost sixty people,
21:50
Speaker 1: and it destroyed a bunch of homes. And I guess
21:53
Speaker 1: maybe and people didn't think that it was going to
21:55
Speaker 1: blow up or you know where. They just sort of like, oh,
21:58
Speaker 1: look it's blowing out smoke and it looks woolen. Let's
22:00
Speaker 1: take more pictures. Yeah, they thought it was going to
22:02
Speaker 1: blow but just not that bad. You know, they didn't
22:05
Speaker 1: expect it to be as dramatic as it was. They
22:07
Speaker 1: underestimated its power. Classic mistake. All right, So that's Mount St.
22:11
Speaker 1: Helen's in. What else do we have in our history? Well,
22:15
Speaker 1: the most powerful recorded volcano in all of human history, right,
22:18
Speaker 1: which is you know, not that long we're talking maybe
22:21
Speaker 1: ten tho years is only a couple hundred years ago
22:24
Speaker 1: in Indonesia, there was this volcano, Mount Timborra, which blew
22:27
Speaker 1: up in eighteen fifteen, and it's famous because it deleted
22:31
Speaker 1: a whole summer. It's called the Year without a Summer.
22:35
Speaker 1: What I can relate to that experience this past summer,
22:39
Speaker 1: This past year feels like it was raised. It blew
22:42
Speaker 1: up so much material into the sky, went all around
22:46
Speaker 1: the world that it's basically caused a volcanic winter. This
22:50
Speaker 1: happened in April, and so basically summer just never came
22:53
Speaker 1: because the sun was blocked. You had like winter, spring
22:56
Speaker 1: back to winter, and then roll right into fall. We
23:00
Speaker 1: had like snow in New York in June. The whole
23:03
Speaker 1: temperature of the Earth dipped a measurable amount because of
23:07
Speaker 1: this one volcano. So when they say like when it
23:09
Speaker 1: snows in July as a saying that it could happen,
23:13
Speaker 1: and it has happened exactly, and it affected you know, crops,
23:16
Speaker 1: and hundreds of thousands of people died as a consequence
23:19
Speaker 1: of this volcano. People like died of starvation. A lot
23:22
Speaker 1: of people died in the immediate aftermath because it was
23:24
Speaker 1: very dramatic. You know, Mount Saint Helen's blew three cubic
23:27
Speaker 1: kilometers of debris. This one blew two hundred cubic kilometers
23:32
Speaker 1: of debris up into the air. I guess that's kind
23:35
Speaker 1: of what happens, right when you blocked the sun, things
23:37
Speaker 1: get cold. Yeah, you basically put a shroud. The whole
23:40
Speaker 1: earth basically got a big shroud and we couldn't get sun,
23:44
Speaker 1: so we couldn't have summer. It was a pretty crazy event.
23:46
Speaker 1: It blew off the whole top of the mound. It
23:48
Speaker 1: lost like almost five thousand feet in height, and it
23:51
Speaker 1: like dropped stones that are twenties cimeters wide on the
23:55
Speaker 1: nearby villages. So it was pretty insane. You could hear
23:57
Speaker 1: it happening like a thousand miles away. That's pretty powerful
24:01
Speaker 1: stuff exactly. So that puts Mount St Helens really to shame,
24:05
Speaker 1: all right, So then what else is on our list
24:07
Speaker 1: of most notorious explosions on Earth? So that's as far
24:11
Speaker 1: back as we can look sort of recorded history, but
24:14
Speaker 1: we can look back in the geological record and see
24:16
Speaker 1: evidence of more powerful volcanoes. So there was this event
24:21
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand years ago again in Indonesia, and geologists
24:25
Speaker 1: think this was the most powerful volcanic blast in the
24:27
Speaker 1: last million years. Mount St. Helen's blew three cubic kilometers
24:32
Speaker 1: Mount Tambora in eighteen fifteen blew two hundred cubic kilometers.
24:36
Speaker 1: This one, we think blew almost three thousand cubic kilometers
24:40
Speaker 1: of stuff into the air, causing a volcanic winter about
24:44
Speaker 1: ten years long. Ten years, like no summer for ten years,
24:48
Speaker 1: no summer for ten years, and it cooled the whole earth,
24:52
Speaker 1: and its impact lasted almost a thousand years. Is that
24:56
Speaker 1: sort of related to the Ice Age? The Ice Age,
24:58
Speaker 1: I think is a separate event, but this definitely contributed
25:01
Speaker 1: to the cooling of the Earth, and we think it
25:03
Speaker 1: kills a lot of humans. There's also separately this evidence
25:08
Speaker 1: that humans had a genetic bottleneck seventy thousand years ago.
25:11
Speaker 1: If you look at everybody's DNA who's alive now and
25:14
Speaker 1: try to reconstruct where they came from, it turns out
25:16
Speaker 1: that it looks like the whole human population comes from
25:20
Speaker 1: a very small group of people around seventy thousand years ago.
25:24
Speaker 1: They called this like a genetic bottleneck. We all have
25:27
Speaker 1: like the same ancestors, a group of about like maybe
25:30
Speaker 1: five to ten thousand people that lived about seventy thousand
25:33
Speaker 1: years ago, and so like there's a lot of debate
25:36
Speaker 1: and discussion in the field about whether one thing caused
25:38
Speaker 1: the other. But it might be that this eruption killed
25:42
Speaker 1: a lot of the extent humans only leaving a small population,
25:45
Speaker 1: which then where the ancestors for everybody who's alive today.
25:48
Speaker 1: So we come from survivors of this volcanic exclusion. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,
25:53
Speaker 1: by definition, we all come from survivors. But this almost
25:56
Speaker 1: wiped us out, right. It could have been the end
25:58
Speaker 1: of humanity. Yeah, I mean killed everyone except like three
26:01
Speaker 1: to ten tho people. That's not a lot of people.
26:03
Speaker 1: That's like a small town left to repopulate the entire earth. Yeah, exactly.
26:07
Speaker 1: And they got busy doing it, and it took seventy
26:09
Speaker 1: thousand years, but hey, they did their duty. They got busy,
26:12
Speaker 1: wink wink. It's a big job, but somebody's got to
26:15
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah. And so what's this volcano call. It's
26:17
Speaker 1: called Lake Toba and it's in Sumatra, Indonesia. And that's
26:21
Speaker 1: the most powerful eruption we think in the last million years,
26:24
Speaker 1: just from the like the geological record that we can study,
26:28
Speaker 1: but that we can see too, right, But there'll be
26:29
Speaker 1: things hidden underneath, you know, jungles or the ocean floor. Yeah,
26:33
Speaker 1: That's how they find this stuff is they dig down
26:35
Speaker 1: through layers of sediment and they see like ash laid down,
26:39
Speaker 1: and you can tell like exactly how much was deposited
26:42
Speaker 1: because it's like still there. You see these dark layers
26:45
Speaker 1: in the sedimentary rock, and you can tell what happened.
26:48
Speaker 1: And they also they can look down you know, ice
26:50
Speaker 1: in Antarctica and stuff, and they can measure the global
26:53
Speaker 1: temperatures and the amount of snowfall and stuff like that.
26:55
Speaker 1: That's how they know what the temperature was, you know,
26:58
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand years ago. Alright, what else is on
27:01
Speaker 1: the list? Another really powerful set of eruption has happened
27:04
Speaker 1: right here in the United States about two million years
27:07
Speaker 1: ago in Yellowstone. Yellowstone is famous, of course for these
27:10
Speaker 1: guys are as old Faithful and all sorts of stuff.
27:13
Speaker 1: So you know, there's like a lot of heat going
27:15
Speaker 1: on underneath. But it turns out that the Yellowstone lies
27:18
Speaker 1: over like a hot spot. It's like a thin spot
27:21
Speaker 1: in the crust, and there's all this hot magma that
27:24
Speaker 1: rises up from the mantle very near the surface and
27:27
Speaker 1: sort of heats everything up. What are you saying Yellowstone
27:30
Speaker 1: is a volcano or was a volcano. Yellowstone is a volcano.
27:34
Speaker 1: It's like could blow at any time. And in the
27:37
Speaker 1: last twenty or so years, people have been like measuring
27:40
Speaker 1: the level of this magma and it's been rising and
27:43
Speaker 1: rising and rising. And some people saying, oh, Yellowstone is
27:45
Speaker 1: like do for an eruption. That's hogwash. We don't really
27:48
Speaker 1: know when Yellowstone will erupt again. The last time you
27:51
Speaker 1: interrupted it was about six hundred and forty thousand years
27:55
Speaker 1: ago in a pretty mammoth eruption that released like a
27:58
Speaker 1: thousand cubic colorometers. But over the last two million years
28:02
Speaker 1: it's erupted several times, many of those times just as
28:06
Speaker 1: large as Lake Toba or even larger. Wow, So that
28:09
Speaker 1: could have also maybe taken out our species. Yeah, but
28:12
Speaker 1: I don't know what humans looked like, you know, two
28:13
Speaker 1: million years ago, what the evolutionary tree was, and it's
28:16
Speaker 1: harder for us to predict that and then to calculate that.
28:18
Speaker 1: But yeah, absolutely it definitely affected anybody who's living anywhere nearby.
28:22
Speaker 1: These eruptions produced enough ash and lava to fill the
28:25
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon. Like these are mammoth events sort of in
28:29
Speaker 1: world history. Kind of makes you wonder what might have
28:31
Speaker 1: been you know, what could humans have looked like those
28:33
Speaker 1: other humans that survived. You know, it could have been
28:36
Speaker 1: taller or better looking, or smarter or more susceptible to
28:41
Speaker 1: volcanic eruptions. Yeah, it's cool to think about how like
28:44
Speaker 1: random moments that could have been different really shaped in
28:46
Speaker 1: the path of life on Earth. You know, the asteroid
28:49
Speaker 1: hits the Earth then kills the dinosaurs, and all those
28:52
Speaker 1: kinds of events, including volcanic eruptions, have really shaped where
28:55
Speaker 1: we are. And we don't know right now if where
28:58
Speaker 1: we are is sort of like what would have happened
29:00
Speaker 1: in most circumstances, or it's just like a totally rare
29:04
Speaker 1: and random occurrence. So it's fascinating to think about all
29:06
Speaker 1: these things and to look at volcanic activity on other
29:09
Speaker 1: bodies to understand like, are we lucky or unlucky? Do
29:12
Speaker 1: we need this kind of volcanoes to sort of like
29:14
Speaker 1: keep evolution fresh? Or has all this volcanic activity prevented
29:19
Speaker 1: things from progressing more quickly right? Or we invest in
29:22
Speaker 1: that giant volcano plug idea. I think if you plug
29:25
Speaker 1: up a volcano, you end up just putting it off
29:27
Speaker 1: and it's a bigger explosion when it happens now if
29:30
Speaker 1: you plug it really good, Daniel. But maybe the biggest
29:33
Speaker 1: eruption in the history of the Earth that we know
29:35
Speaker 1: of have been even further back in history. There's this
29:39
Speaker 1: eruption a hundred and thirty two million years ago, what yeah,
29:44
Speaker 1: down in what's now South America. But this is before
29:47
Speaker 1: South America split off from Africa. This is back when
29:51
Speaker 1: there was like a different set of continents, this continent
29:54
Speaker 1: called Gondwana, which is you know how sort of South
29:56
Speaker 1: America tucks into the little armpit of Africa there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
30:01
Speaker 1: So it used to be a single continent and it
30:03
Speaker 1: was split apart by tectonic activity, and they think that
30:06
Speaker 1: about a hundred and thirty two million years ago as
30:09
Speaker 1: sort of part of that splits. Connected to when that
30:12
Speaker 1: split happened, there was this enormous set of volcanic eruptions
30:16
Speaker 1: right around there. And if you've ever been to like
30:18
Speaker 1: Iguazoo Falls in Paraguay, it's very close to right around there.
30:22
Speaker 1: And so this was a huge event. It probably put
30:24
Speaker 1: out like almost nine thousand cubic kilometers of lava. I
30:29
Speaker 1: guess you you know, these continent ships and these motions
30:32
Speaker 1: and splitting of continents. They all happened because of volcanic activity. Right,
30:35
Speaker 1: It's all sort of like magma and and you know,
30:39
Speaker 1: Earth turning down there and moving things around exactly. So
30:42
Speaker 1: this volcanic activity is very closely connected to these cracks
30:45
Speaker 1: and earth crust, these intersections between the plates. That's why
30:48
Speaker 1: we think, for example, there's probably like a million submarine
30:52
Speaker 1: volcanoes on the ocean floor putting out lava constantly. All
30:56
Speaker 1: these little cracks where these things are happening, and I
30:58
Speaker 1: guess thankfully they're on the water, right, they are underwater,
31:01
Speaker 1: but they actually make a really weird kind of lava
31:04
Speaker 1: because they come out and they cool really quickly when
31:07
Speaker 1: they hit the water. They make these weird blobs and
31:09
Speaker 1: they're called pillow lava. Right. They look kind of like,
31:12
Speaker 1: you know, bubbly. Yeah, they look a little bubbly. And
31:15
Speaker 1: so what the lava looks like depends a lot on
31:18
Speaker 1: what happens when it comes out. Does it like dribble
31:19
Speaker 1: down the side of the mountain and make a bigger
31:22
Speaker 1: Hawaiian island, or does it make a you know, fluffy
31:24
Speaker 1: pillow underwater or does it get like shot out into space.
31:28
Speaker 1: Because they's at the top of a really tall volcano.
31:30
Speaker 1: All right, so that's the biggest one. And what's the
31:32
Speaker 1: name of these volcano of or volcanoes. It's a whole
31:35
Speaker 1: region down there and it's called the Piranha and etan
31:38
Speaker 1: Deca traps, and it's down there still in South America.
31:42
Speaker 1: There's a lot of volcanic activity sort of under Iguazoo
31:45
Speaker 1: Falls and that whole area. This one was like a
31:47
Speaker 1: huge explosion. Are you saying it was like a network
31:50
Speaker 1: of explosions or was it just one chinormous explosion. There's
31:53
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion about that, as you might be
31:55
Speaker 1: able to guess. It's hard to tell exactly what happened
31:57
Speaker 1: a hundred and two million years ago, so the evidence
32:00
Speaker 1: isn't conclusive, and some people think, oh, this was like
32:02
Speaker 1: a network of volcanoes. Some people think it was one
32:05
Speaker 1: mega explosion. Geologists still argue about it at conferences. But
32:09
Speaker 1: I guess it didn't extinguish life on Earth because we're
32:12
Speaker 1: still here. Yeah, it didn't. And interestingly, it doesn't seem
32:14
Speaker 1: to coincide with like mass extinction. So even though it
32:17
Speaker 1: produced a huge amount of lava and probably put a
32:19
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff out into the atmosphere. It didn't kill
32:22
Speaker 1: off a bunch of critters that we know of. What
32:24
Speaker 1: if there are you know, species that we had no
32:26
Speaker 1: idea about. It could be. But you know, they look
32:28
Speaker 1: at the fossil records before and after and you can
32:30
Speaker 1: line up like extinction events with volcanic events sometimes and
32:34
Speaker 1: sometimes there are volcanic events with no extinction events where
32:37
Speaker 1: you see like the same kind of critters alive before
32:39
Speaker 1: and after the eruption. All right, well, that's volcanoes on
32:43
Speaker 1: planet Earth. Let's get into what are some of the
32:45
Speaker 1: most powerful volcanoes in the Solar System and see if
32:49
Speaker 1: we can beat some of the ones here on Earth.
32:52
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, Daniel,
33:07
Speaker 1: we're talking about giant, powerful volcanoes, and they don't just
33:11
Speaker 1: happen here on Earth. They happen on other planets and
33:14
Speaker 1: even in other moods. Yeah, exactly, And our Solar System,
33:18
Speaker 1: it turns out, used to have a lot of volcanic activity.
33:21
Speaker 1: We think the Moon might have had volcanoes, We think
33:24
Speaker 1: Venus might have had volcanoes. We know that Mars used
33:27
Speaker 1: to have volcanoes. In fact, one of the largest mountains
33:30
Speaker 1: in the Solar System is on Mars Olympus Mons and
33:34
Speaker 1: it's a shield volcano, but it's dead. And most of
33:38
Speaker 1: these things, the Moon, Venus and Mars no longer have
33:41
Speaker 1: any volcanic activity. I guess, you know, it's a natural
33:44
Speaker 1: part of just being a planet, you know, like having
33:47
Speaker 1: you know, pimples as a teenager. Like it's a rite
33:50
Speaker 1: of passage almost for all planets, because there all planets
33:52
Speaker 1: start off it's molten, and then they get crusty and
33:55
Speaker 1: cool on the outside, and you know that exhorts pressure
33:58
Speaker 1: and so inevitably, you know, all planets I would imagine
34:02
Speaker 1: get volcanoes. Yeah, I think that's probably true. They're all
34:05
Speaker 1: molten at some point. I guess rocky one. Sorry, I
34:07
Speaker 1: guess you need to be a rocky planet to have volcanoes.
34:10
Speaker 1: You need to be a rocky planet. It also requires
34:12
Speaker 1: a special configuration. You have to have like this crust
34:16
Speaker 1: which holds the magma in but is thin enough that
34:19
Speaker 1: it can like crack and you can bulge, and you
34:21
Speaker 1: also have to have like a liquid core. And so Mars,
34:24
Speaker 1: for example, we don't think it has any more volcanoes,
34:28
Speaker 1: but we don't actually know whether it still has a
34:30
Speaker 1: liquid core. Some people think it's totally cooled, and some
34:33
Speaker 1: people think there's still like magma underneath dying to get out.
34:37
Speaker 1: But the outside trust is too solid to let any
34:40
Speaker 1: volcanoes bubble up anymore, I see, or too thick maybe
34:43
Speaker 1: like it could just be too dense or something. All right,
34:46
Speaker 1: we'll take us through a tour of volcanoes in the
34:49
Speaker 1: Solar system. Well, it's really exciting that there are volcanoes
34:52
Speaker 1: in the Solar System because it means that some of
34:54
Speaker 1: these other bodies are not dead, They're not just like
34:57
Speaker 1: cold places. Volcanoes are a sign of like ACTIVI city,
35:00
Speaker 1: and activity means heat, and the heat maybe means life.
35:04
Speaker 1: It's excited to see other places in the Solar System
35:06
Speaker 1: where stuff is still happening. And so currently in the
35:08
Speaker 1: Solar System, of course we have volcanoes on Earth. And
35:11
Speaker 1: then there's three other places where we've seen this kind
35:13
Speaker 1: of activity, and they're all moons. There's a moon of
35:15
Speaker 1: Neptune which is called Triton. There's Insulatus, which sounds like
35:19
Speaker 1: a salad but it's actually the sixth largest moon of Saturn.
35:22
Speaker 1: And then of course there's Io. Did you just call
35:25
Speaker 1: it Insulata? Because that is literally the Spanish word for salad.
35:29
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out how to pronounce it.
35:30
Speaker 1: I think it's insulatus, isn't it is inseladus enceladus insulatus. Well,
35:35
Speaker 1: I think I'd like a Caesar insulatus please. Well, we'll
35:38
Speaker 1: get that to you straight from Saturn. But wait, So,
35:41
Speaker 1: most of the volcanoes we know about that are active
35:44
Speaker 1: now are in moons. There aren't any in like you know,
35:47
Speaker 1: Venus or Mars or Mercury. None of those places have
35:50
Speaker 1: active volcanoes. Mars we think has some activity going on,
35:55
Speaker 1: like there are Mars quakes, but there are no volcanoes
35:58
Speaker 1: left on Mars. And of course there's this fossil of
36:01
Speaker 1: a volcano, Olympus Mons, it's the largest mountain in the
36:04
Speaker 1: Solar System, is not currently anymore volcano. There's nothing happening there.
36:08
Speaker 1: I guess what makes us special then? Here on Earth?
36:10
Speaker 1: What is it about Earth that let's just still have volcanoes.
36:14
Speaker 1: That's not something we really understand, Like we don't understand
36:16
Speaker 1: the inside of Venus and Mars or Mercury. It's something
36:21
Speaker 1: we're still studying. It's a difficult thing to do, and
36:23
Speaker 1: in fact, we're gonna have a whole podcast about like
36:25
Speaker 1: whether Mars and Venus still have liquid cores and what's
36:29
Speaker 1: going on with them. But it's not something that's easy
36:31
Speaker 1: to understand. There's a lot of discussion and debate. Really,
36:33
Speaker 1: we don't know it. Could it just be luck or
36:35
Speaker 1: is it something about our crust, you know, like our
36:38
Speaker 1: composition of the rock or our atmosphere. It's something to
36:41
Speaker 1: do with the size, right. The size of a planet
36:43
Speaker 1: determines like how hot it gets, how much gravity there is,
36:46
Speaker 1: and also how long it takes to cool. So, for example,
36:49
Speaker 1: Mars is much smaller than Earth, which is probably why
36:51
Speaker 1: it's cooled faster, and the outer crust has formed and
36:54
Speaker 1: been so thick and choked off all of those volcanoes.
36:57
Speaker 1: But also you're right, volcanoes are important. They're big part
37:00
Speaker 1: of like why we have our atmosphere, and so it's
37:03
Speaker 1: interesting to learn all about this because it helps us
37:05
Speaker 1: understand like for other planets and other solar systems, are
37:09
Speaker 1: they likely to have volcanic activity which could produce the
37:12
Speaker 1: atmosphere they need to eventually seed life. Oh, you need
37:16
Speaker 1: volcanoes to make an atmosphere, right, You don't just get
37:18
Speaker 1: it for free. You don't just get it for free.
37:20
Speaker 1: Like if there was gas around when the Earth formed
37:23
Speaker 1: and mostly got blown off because you didn't have like
37:25
Speaker 1: the steady currents you need to have a magnetic field
37:27
Speaker 1: is early on. So by the time things settled down
37:30
Speaker 1: and cooled off and you had like a nice magnetic
37:32
Speaker 1: field to protect your atmosphere, then you need to sort
37:35
Speaker 1: of replenish it the same way like Earth once had
37:37
Speaker 1: water when it was very very young and the formation,
37:40
Speaker 1: but most of that boiled off into space and it
37:42
Speaker 1: needed to be replenished mostly by comets and other things
37:45
Speaker 1: in the same way we need to replenish our atmosphere,
37:48
Speaker 1: and that mostly came I think from volcanoes. I see,
37:50
Speaker 1: and I guess gas planets can have volcanoes, which is
37:53
Speaker 1: or ice planets right there too cold. You can't actually
37:56
Speaker 1: have volcanoes on ice planets like ice law. Yeah, but
38:00
Speaker 1: they are cryo volcanoes. They do not blow out like
38:04
Speaker 1: molten rock. And that's what we think is going on.
38:06
Speaker 1: For example, on Triton, we think solar radiation penetrates the
38:09
Speaker 1: surface and heats up some layers that are below that
38:12
Speaker 1: are darker, so they absorb more of this energy and
38:15
Speaker 1: they get hot and then they blow out through the surface.
38:18
Speaker 1: Well what do they blow If not lava, it's most
38:20
Speaker 1: of like nitrogen gas or some water vapor, or methane
38:24
Speaker 1: or ceo two. Some of these things are called cryo
38:27
Speaker 1: volcanoes because they're still really cold, but it's still like
38:31
Speaker 1: pressurized gas, so it might still be hot. No, it's
38:35
Speaker 1: pressurized gas, but it's like, you know, liquid nitrogen is
38:38
Speaker 1: still really cold, and so if you're blowing out liquid
38:40
Speaker 1: nitrogen into space and it's not gonna warm you up,
38:43
Speaker 1: Oh my god, liquid nitrogen volcano, like a volcano that's
38:47
Speaker 1: not red but like blue or white. Right, yeah, absolutely.
38:51
Speaker 1: This is a pretty exciting moment when they found it.
38:53
Speaker 1: Like Voyager two saw this on Triton in pretty exciting
38:57
Speaker 1: moment to like see this and it rises up like
38:59
Speaker 1: five miles into space because this thing has very light
39:03
Speaker 1: gravity and so you don't get like, you know, bubbling
39:05
Speaker 1: up a volcano like you do on Earth, and these
39:07
Speaker 1: geysers just like shoot out into space. Well, it was
39:10
Speaker 1: so exciting the astrophysicists cry, and that's why they called
39:13
Speaker 1: it a cryo volcano. That joke makes me cry. That's
39:18
Speaker 1: what I'm here for so I feel like you can't
39:21
Speaker 1: call it a volcano. If it's it's not lava. Shouldn't
39:24
Speaker 1: there be another name? Yeah, well they do have another name.
39:26
Speaker 1: They call it a cryo volcano. It's a cold volcano.
39:29
Speaker 1: It's a frozen volcano. Oh, I see they get a
39:32
Speaker 1: derivative name. Yeah, sort of. And this thing happens in
39:35
Speaker 1: other places, so like in Silatus or in Saladust. The
39:38
Speaker 1: Moon of Salads as the same kind of thing. It
39:40
Speaker 1: shoots up icy particles. And Cassini in two thousand five
39:44
Speaker 1: went by and it took pictures and it actually flew
39:46
Speaker 1: through some of these jets because they come from the
39:49
Speaker 1: poles and so they're pretty reliable. You know where they are,
39:51
Speaker 1: and it measured. It has water, vapor and nitrogen and
39:54
Speaker 1: methane and carbon dioxide and stuff like a sur pricing
39:57
Speaker 1: amount of ranch dressing, which is we too much ranch dressing.
40:01
Speaker 1: Everybody always overdoes ran dressing, more crutons, less dressing. And
40:06
Speaker 1: we talked once about the moon Europa, which is a
40:08
Speaker 1: cool place that has like an icy crust, probably with
40:12
Speaker 1: water underneath, like a big water ocean, and sometimes that
40:15
Speaker 1: cracks and you get these geysers of frozen water, vapor
40:18
Speaker 1: plumes that come out that might, for example, I have
40:21
Speaker 1: little microbes in them. So we're sending a mission to
40:24
Speaker 1: Europa to sample of these geysers. And you know, can
40:27
Speaker 1: you call them geysers? Can you call them volcanoes? You know,
40:30
Speaker 1: I don't know cryo geysers, cryo geysers, Yeah, exactly. But
40:34
Speaker 1: there is one that you can definitely call a volcano
40:37
Speaker 1: and is very impressive. And this is a volcano that's
40:40
Speaker 1: on the moon Io, that's a moon of Jupiter. Yeah,
40:43
Speaker 1: Io is a moon of Jupiter. It's the innermost moon
40:46
Speaker 1: of Jupiter. Okay, so this one actually has like love
40:48
Speaker 1: on it. Yes, this is the most volcanically active body
40:51
Speaker 1: in the entire Solar system. They've seen like a hundred
40:54
Speaker 1: and fifty different volcanoes. They think there's even more, like
40:57
Speaker 1: maybe up to four hundred or so. And this thing
40:59
Speaker 1: is really hot because it's so close to Jupiter. Jupiter
41:02
Speaker 1: is like tugging on it and it's basically squeezing it.
41:05
Speaker 1: Remember we talked about like tidal forces. What happens if
41:08
Speaker 1: you get really close to a black hole, It's gonna
41:11
Speaker 1: pull on one side of you more than the other
41:13
Speaker 1: side of you. Well, that happens anytime you get close
41:15
Speaker 1: to any large body. For example, the Moon is doing
41:18
Speaker 1: that to Earth and like squeezing the water on the Earth,
41:21
Speaker 1: and which is why we have tides. It's like the
41:23
Speaker 1: gravity is needing it, right, Like it's sort of like
41:26
Speaker 1: stretching in and compressing in, and that creates heat that
41:29
Speaker 1: warms it up exactly, creates friction internally, and that keeps
41:32
Speaker 1: it hot on the inside. So Io is hot because
41:35
Speaker 1: Jupiter is like kneeding it with its gravity. Boy, it's
41:38
Speaker 1: just got a little racy here, racy and spacey racy
41:41
Speaker 1: at a distance, and so it melts the rock inside Io,
41:46
Speaker 1: and you have like actual lava and you have these
41:49
Speaker 1: really huge eruptions. The new Horizon spacecraft saw one eruption
41:53
Speaker 1: from this spashtar volcano that went up a hundred and
41:56
Speaker 1: eighty miles high. This is like actual lava, actual lava
42:00
Speaker 1: shot out into space. Yeah, hundred and eighty months. Like,
42:03
Speaker 1: we don't get that kind of activity here on Earth,
42:04
Speaker 1: do we. Like the most we get is a couple
42:06
Speaker 1: of miles yeah, exactly. And of course because we have
42:09
Speaker 1: much more gravity, right, so it's easier to launch like
42:12
Speaker 1: tens of cubic miles of hot lava up into space
42:15
Speaker 1: when you're a smaller moon that just isn't as much gravity.
42:18
Speaker 1: It sounds like it has fear of volcanoes and earth. Right,
42:21
Speaker 1: we have millions you said underwater, maybe we have millions. Yeah, yeah,
42:24
Speaker 1: but these seem more powerful, like more dramatic, and it's
42:28
Speaker 1: a denser volcanic environment. Is like more volcanoes per square
42:32
Speaker 1: you know, kilometer or something. And I also features what
42:36
Speaker 1: one geologists called in their paper the most powerful volcano
42:39
Speaker 1: in the Solar System. There was a competition and he
42:44
Speaker 1: gave the medal to this one. What's it called. It's
42:46
Speaker 1: called Luki. It's named after, you know, the trickster god
42:49
Speaker 1: of North mythology. People think it's the most powerful volcano
42:52
Speaker 1: in the Solar system. It's seven hundred times more powerful
42:55
Speaker 1: than Kilauea. For example. It puts out seven hundred times
42:59
Speaker 1: as much lava every year. Wow, that's a lot of lava.
43:02
Speaker 1: It's a lot of lava that's like hotter than Tom Hilton.
43:06
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. It'll burn you. And it's hard to measure
43:09
Speaker 1: these things, like we don't have like great cameras taking
43:12
Speaker 1: pictures of this stuff. What they can do is sort
43:14
Speaker 1: of just watch in the infrared these eruptions of heat.
43:18
Speaker 1: You know, they watch the heat on the surface and
43:20
Speaker 1: they try to convert that heat measurement into like a
43:23
Speaker 1: volume of magma. So you know, there's uncertainties there, but
43:26
Speaker 1: these are definitely big, powerful things hanging out in the
43:29
Speaker 1: surface of Io. You say, we can look at it
43:31
Speaker 1: from here, like you can actually see the heat and
43:34
Speaker 1: the signature, or they need to get up close and
43:36
Speaker 1: have we taken pictures of it. We have taken pictures.
43:38
Speaker 1: We have had like fly bys taking pictures of these
43:41
Speaker 1: things so you can see it. But the best shots
43:43
Speaker 1: we have come from watching it steadily day by day,
43:46
Speaker 1: and you can use like space telescopes, so like Hubble
43:48
Speaker 1: has imaged it. For example. It's a weird volcano because
43:51
Speaker 1: it's constantly leaking lava, but it also tends to erupt,
43:54
Speaker 1: so like every five and forty days there's like a
43:57
Speaker 1: huge outpouring of lava and then it just sort of
44:00
Speaker 1: bubbles around for a while leaking lava. All right, So
44:03
Speaker 1: then that's our winner. That's the most powerful volcano in
44:06
Speaker 1: the Solar system. It's low key in the moon Io,
44:10
Speaker 1: which is a moon of Yeah, and I want to
44:12
Speaker 1: thank Robert Howell, a geologist University of why Ivan, for
44:15
Speaker 1: answering all of my questions about volcanoes. And he wanted
44:18
Speaker 1: me to point out that Locy is not really a
44:20
Speaker 1: shield volcano because the weird composition and the low gravity,
44:24
Speaker 1: the lava that comes out doesn't like really build up
44:26
Speaker 1: into a shield. That he called it a ptera because
44:29
Speaker 1: it's like this vast pool of lava. So if you
44:32
Speaker 1: look down onto it from space, it's just just like
44:34
Speaker 1: lake of lava. But they don't even really understand exactly
44:37
Speaker 1: how it forms. Interesting, it has a gravity assist kind
44:41
Speaker 1: of like there's less gravity there so that maybe you
44:43
Speaker 1: can shoot higher. Yeah, it shoots higher, and it doesn't
44:45
Speaker 1: build up the same way. So like the shape of
44:48
Speaker 1: the volcano, the whole nature of it, you can't even
44:50
Speaker 1: really call it a shield volcano because to be a
44:53
Speaker 1: shield volcano requires basically being on Earth or having a
44:56
Speaker 1: similar gravitational environment. Like the whole shape of it is
44:58
Speaker 1: different than h dynamics of it, I imagine exactly pretty cool,
45:02
Speaker 1: all right, So that's the biggest, most powerful volcano in
45:04
Speaker 1: the Solar System. It's seven hundred times more powerful than
45:08
Speaker 1: kill a whale. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. I would not
45:11
Speaker 1: recommend Io as a family vacation destination. Hawaii is much better. Well,
45:15
Speaker 1: you just don't go when it's erupting. But you know
45:17
Speaker 1: you have a five hunded in your window there you
45:19
Speaker 1: can swoop in and take pictures. All right, we'll send
45:22
Speaker 1: you there. You can go touch the lava. Yeah, I'm
45:25
Speaker 1: sure I'll love it. Stop by first salad on the way,
45:28
Speaker 1: a warm salad. All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that.
45:31
Speaker 1: And think about all the amazing things that are out
45:33
Speaker 1: there in other planets of their moons. Things that we
45:37
Speaker 1: think are big and powerful here are maybe pale and
45:39
Speaker 1: comparison to things that are right in our neighborhood. And
45:42
Speaker 1: that's why we love to throw our minds out there
45:45
Speaker 1: into the rest of the universe to imagine how life
45:47
Speaker 1: here on Earth is different or similar to what's going
45:50
Speaker 1: on out there in the rest of the universe. When
45:52
Speaker 1: aliens come, can we talk to them about volcanoes or
45:54
Speaker 1: will they be amazed that we have these crazy bubbling
45:58
Speaker 1: pots of lava on the surface of our planet. Interesting
46:01
Speaker 1: we could become like a tourist destination. We are the
46:03
Speaker 1: Hawaii of the galaxy. There you go, were the Taco
46:07
Speaker 1: Stand of the Solar system. All right, well, we hope
46:09
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See you next time.
46:20
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained.
46:22
Speaker 1: The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. Or
46:25
Speaker 1: more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
46:28
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
46:32
Speaker 1: favorite shows.