As you can see, it is a continuation of Fun Facts which contains amazing, mind-boggling, and seemingly odd science facts that can widen your eyes and mouth, and makes you question about life, and perhaps change the way you view life, the world, the...
The lava lake is a rare volcanic feature and there were only four active lava lakes found on this planet Earth. It is rare because this kind of volcano must continuously supply lava to the surface and few are chosen to acquire this kind of ability. These few are Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, Ethiopia's Erta Ale Volcano, Congo's Nyiragongo and the most studied by scientists is Mount Erebus in Antarctica. It was surprising and amazing for me to know that volcanoes exist in a cold frozen place.
The reason why the lake's surface is not cooled into solid rock is because of convection. Below is the process of convection depicted.
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The hot magma from the deep magma chamber rises to the top of the lake then spreads outward. As it cools, it gets denser so it sinks and the convection cycle continues. But the fresh magma that goes up is not a continuous stream but rather a blob. Just like the image of a blob inside the lava lamp showed above.
But the intriguing feature of this lava lake which baffles the scientists is its constant release of a gas plume. It is actually unusual behavior for a typical volcano to consistently producing gas. But not for humans. Girls also release gas every day. They are just good at hiding. Anyway, every after 10 minutes or so, the total amount of gas rises and falls, and also its composition switches on the same cycle. The researchers theorized these differences are probably generated from the deeper part of the volcano.
Another interesting fact about Mt Erebus is its magma containing a rare type of rock: phonolite, which is 100 times vicious than the common basalt rock of every volcano has like Kilauea and Erta Ale. Such that, it affects the fluid dynamics inside the magma chamber and the lake.
So there you go. Earth's freezing continent where penguins live also has volcanoes. Ninety-one in total but two are found active.
