[profound (OP)]

I have seen many reports of this volcano with everyone just standing round and doing hand wringing
and "observing' while this volcano was predicted well in advance to blow but no one has bothered to do anything about it.

I find it really stupid and idiotic that not one of these 'scientists' had the wit to stop it .

All they are interested in is 'observing' it an academic exercise and doing the usual hand ringing in front of the cameras.

[Kryptid]

How do you propose to stop a volcano from erupting using current technology?

[Bored chemist]

It seems that Profound doesn't understand that it's big.
You can't just stick a cork in it.

[evan_au]

Some people dislike science because it claims to do so much, and others dislike it because it can't doesn't do enough.
- Profound seems to be in the second camp....
- Like the Italian government, which jailed a group of geologists for failing to predict an earthquake...

Most people just don't realise that this incredible creation around us is:
More powerful than we can handle:
- We use geothermal energy (eg in Iceland) - but a volcano will just melt the geothermal energy plant
- A large earthquake release far more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb
- We use electricity, but a lightning bolt will just short-circuit the transmission lines and blow up any electronics attached to it
- We can generate proton collisions in the LHC with energies in the TeV range, but there are cosmic rays striking the Earth every year with energies a million times higher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-energy_cosmic_ray

Smaller than we can handle:
- We can't directly see structures within the living cell with light, and yet we are made of cells
- We know that there are structures within the proton, but even our biggest particle accelerators have trouble peering inside

Bigger than we can handle:
- The James Webb telescope (if it ever gets into operation) will help us see parts of the universe that have faded from our view

More complex than we can handle:
- We can predict the weather out to a week using present technology, but beyond that, it is overwhelmed by chaos
- We can read the genome of a cell, but we are just starting to deal with the genome of a cancer
- The complex interactions of an ecosystem are beyond us

We even have trouble dealing with problems of our own creation:
- Pollution
- Inadequate fresh water supplies
- Habitat destruction
- Ocean acidification
- Although some have now improved like acidic rain and ozone destruction

So we are making progress, but our current capabilities are miniscule compared to the complexities of the universe...
We need a realistic perspective of where we are...

[wolfekeeper]

Yeah, it's like plate tectonics! Everyone always talks about it, but nobody ever does anything! 🤷‍♂️

🤪

[profound (OP)]

How do you propose to stop a volcano from erupting using current technology?

What is a volcano?

high pressure and heat from below causes pressure buildup which  strong enough to melt,bend rocks and cause fissures.

How do we stop it?

Simple.

Just drill a few oil pipeline holes a few hundred meters below the surface into the main stem which feeds the volcano and release the pressure/excess lave into the sea or a unused area of the island.

It can't explode because the pressure has been released.Just like a boiler pressure valve.

[profound (OP)]

How do you propose to stop a volcano from erupting using current technology?

What is a volcano?

high pressure and heat from below causes pressure buildup which  is strong enough to melt,bend rocks and cause fissures and explosions due to said pressure.

How do we stop it?

Simple.

Just drill a few oil pipeline holes a few hundred meters below the surface into the main stem  which feeds the volcano and release the pressure into the sea or a unused area of the island.

It can't explode because the pressure has been released.Just like a boiler pressure valve.

[Kryptid]

What is a volcano?

high pressure and heat from below causes pressure buildup which  strong enough to melt,bend rocks and cause fissures.

How do we stop it?

Simple.

Just drill a few oil pipeline holes a few hundred meters below the surface into the main stem which feeds the volcano and release the pressure/excess lave into the sea or a unused area of the island.

It can't explode because the pressure has been released.Just like a boiler pressure valve.

Ironically, doing that could actually trigger an eruption. Magma contains dissolved gases under high pressure that can come out of solution suddenly when that pressure is reduced.

[Colin2B]

Yeah, it's like plate tectonics! Everyone always talks about it, but nobody ever does anything! 🤷‍♂️

🤪

Yeah, I agree. All you have to do is drill some deep holes and put big pegs in, that’d stop it.

[profound (OP)]

What is a volcano?

high pressure and heat from below causes pressure buildup which  strong enough to melt,bend rocks and cause fissures.

How do we stop it?

Simple.

Just drill a few oil pipeline holes a few hundred meters below the surface into the main stem which feeds the volcano and release the pressure/excess lave into the sea or a unused area of the island.

It can't explode because the pressure has been released.Just like a boiler pressure valve.

Ironically, doing that could actually trigger an eruption. Magma contains dissolved gases under high pressure that can come out of solution suddenly when that pressure is reduced.

so?    let them come out at high pressure.whats the big deal?
 

[alancalverd]

The anti-fracking brigade will complain that you have started an earthquake somewhere else
The farmer who owns the  land with no houses will complain that you have ruined his farm
The fishermen will complain that you have boiled the fish
Some moron will say you are Playing God

I would say that the volcano was there long before any people, so you have no just cause for complaint if you choose to live there, and geotourism is the best way to make a living by doing nothing.

[Colin2B]

Ironically, doing that could actually trigger an eruption. Magma contains dissolved gases under high pressure that can come out of solution suddenly when that pressure is reduced.

so?    let them come out at high pressure.whats the big deal?
 

The big deal is an eruption on the scale of Mt St Helens.
As @Kryptid says the magma below the surface is under high pressure which keeps the gasses in place. As the magma surfaces to the cone there is less weight of material to hold the gasses in and they are released relatively slowly, but still create the violent explosions and ejections of molten rock. If you tap below the cone you are suddenly releasing a much greater pressure and the magma chamber deep down will fizz and you will get a catastrophic explosion. This sudden release is basically what happened at Mt St Helens, the lava doesnt just flow out, it explodes out like a shaken fizzy drink when you release the cap.

[evan_au]

Why has no one STOPPED the Hawaii volcano as plenty of warning was had ?

The scientists couldn't stop damage from the volcano - the best they could do was measure seismic activity, and advise that risks were increasing or decreasing. The risks never really went away.

However, the bean-counters (apologies to all accountants) could stop damage from the volcano. For at least the last 50 years they have looked at maps of geological risk from the scientists, and put increased insurance premiums on areas with higher risk. If individuals ignored the known risks and built anyway, the bean-counters did the second-best thing, and minimised damage to their employers (the insurance companies). The reason most of the people in the affected housing estate were uninsured was because no-one was mad enough to give them insurance.
- That's why most of the population of Hawaii lives under the shadow of Diamond Head crater in Honolulu (extinct), rather than sharing their backyard with a live volcano on the Big Island (read: Still Growing Island).

Back in July 2014 I took a helicopter flight over the erupting volcano on the Big Island, and on the way back we passed over some of the areas affected by previous eruptions.
- You can see an isolated hill, with a road running through the trees. It is completely surrounded by lava flows.

road_through_lava.jpg (132.9 kB . 800x600 - viewed 5699 times)
- We saw other areas with houses surrounded by lava flows.

Houses_surrounded_by_lava.jpg (80.16 kB . 800x344 - viewed 5637 times)

We went for a walk through some (cooled) lava tubes - these are several meters in diameter, and run from the summit of the volcano all the way to the sea (although the roof has collapsed in a number of sections). I read that the recent eruptions in Hawaii have now received fresh lava from the volcano, through the underground plumbing of the volcano.

Lava_Tube.jpg (89.77 kB . 800x600 - viewed 5671 times)
So I say: pick your fights carefully! (And if you aren't sure, ask an expert...)

[Bored chemist]

What is a volcano?

Big.
"Approximate yield of the last eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano." About 1000 PW Hr

"The total global nuclear arsenal is about 15,000 nuclear warheads[20][21][22] with a destructive capacity of around 1460 megatons[23][24][25][26] or 1.460 gigatons (1,460 million tons) of TNT."  About 2 PWHr

from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent

So, the question is, do you want to play with something that has perhaps 500 times as much stored energy as the entire world's nuclear arsenal?

[profound (OP)]

Ironically, doing that could actually trigger an eruption. Magma contains dissolved gases under high pressure that can come out of solution suddenly when that pressure is reduced.

so?    let them come out at high pressure.whats the big deal?
 

The big deal is an eruption on the scale of Mt St Helens.
As @Kryptid says the magma below the surface is under high pressure which keeps the gasses in place. As the magma surfaces to the cone there is less weight of material to hold the gasses in and they are released relatively slowly, but still create the violent explosions and ejections of molten rock. If you tap below the cone you are suddenly releasing a much greater pressure and the magma chamber deep down will fizz and you will get a catastrophic explosion. This sudden release is basically what happened at Mt St Helens, the lava doesnt just flow out, it explodes out like a shaken fizzy drink when you release the cap.

But you have already admitted some of the gas is being released slowly via fissures.Just not fast enough.The pipeline holes would simply improve that under controlled conditions.

i can shake a fizzy drink bottle and instead of taking the lid and causing it to explode as you said above all i have do is slowly rotate the cap and hear the hissing of escaping gas and over a few minutes the gas will be released reducing the pressure.

see?
no sudden release involved.

[evan_au]

Why has no one STOPPED the Hawaii volcano as plenty of warning was had ?

The local police and the national guard stepped in promptly to evacuate a large area around the fissures.
After a few days, they let people back in to collect pets and valuables.

But it sounds like the guy who had his leg cauterized was sitting on his porch watching the show, rather than grabbing his stuff and driving away.

The big deal is an eruption on the scale of Mt St Helens.

The good news for Hawaii is that the lava from their mid-plate hot-spot is very "runny" (low viscosity), forming a very wide and fairly flat "shield volcano". If you drill a hole, you will just get more lava pouring out in more places, and destroying your drilling equipment.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_Hawaiian_volcanoes

Mount St Helens (and the Rocky Mountains in general) are caused by a plate-boundary subduction zone; the lava is much more "sticky" (more viscous), and is prone to explosions (like popping the cork on a champagne bottle).

The really dangerous explosions have very viscous lava, and they don't leave a mountain behind after the explosion - they leave a hole in the ground, like Yellowstone or (more recently) Lake Taupo in New Zealand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_volcanic_eruptions

[chris]

Today we published an interview with UEA volcanologist Jess Johnson with an update on Hawaii's 2018 eruptions...

[Kryptid]

Exposing equipment to the 2,000 degree Fahrenheit temperatures of magma continuously for years sounds tricky. Sure, there are metals with much higher melting points than that, but you don't have to heat a metal all the way to its melting point in order for it to be structurally compromised. It's also possible that the metal will dissolve to some extent in the magma in a similar way that salt dissolves in water. On top of all of that, you'd have to worry about tremors and earthquakes bending or breaking any pipes inserted into the ground there. Volcanoes are very seismically active.

EDIT: I found a study relevant to this. Unfortunately, only the abstract is available for free: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00603755

It says that platinum and rhenium were found not to be corroded by basaltic lava over extended periods. Given that rhenium is significantly harder than platinum, I'd suggest using that for any hypothetical pipes. Unfortunately, both platinum and rhenium are very expensive. Even if you could get the funds to build a large, sturdy pipe of rhenium that was a few miles long, it could still be potentially damaged by earthquakes.

[profound (OP)]

Exposing equipment to the 2,000 degree Fahrenheit temperatures of magma continuously for years sounds tricky. Sure, there are metals with much higher melting points than that, but you don't have to heat a metal all the way to its melting point in order for it to be structurally compromised. It's also possible that the metal will dissolve to some extent in the magma in a similar way that salt dissolves in water. On top of all of that, you'd have to worry about tremors and earthquakes bending or breaking any pipes inserted into the ground there. Volcanoes are very seismically active.

EDIT: I found a study relevant to this. Unfortunately, only the abstract is available for free: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00603755

It says that platinum and rhenium were found not to be corroded by basaltic lava over extended periods. Given that rhenium is significantly harder than platinum, I'd suggest using that for any hypothetical pipes. Unfortunately, both platinum and rhenium are very expensive. Even if you could get the funds to build a large, sturdy pipe of rhenium that was a few miles long, it could still be potentially damaged by earthquakes.

these are minor engineering issues.

you seem to forget drilling for oil all these problems have been encountered and solved including the high temperatures.look it up.

for example if you drill at an 45 angle into one of the lava stems from the sea then the sea water will keep the pipe cool.also you can mold the lave into a pipe  or channel as well ...

one the pressure has gone down you don't need to keep the pipes in place.

see?

i have an answer for everything.

[Colin2B]

But you have already admitted some of the gas is being released slowly via fissures.Just not fast enough.The pipeline holes would simply improve that under controlled conditions.

There are 2 types of fissures.
Lava making its way to the surface via softer rock or fault lines will release pressure slowly as the weight of magma above reduces.
Fissures created by faults propagating from surface down hit high pressure magma and usually result in explosive release.
But as @evan says, there are different types of magna, some less volatile than others.

The good news for Hawaii is that the lava from their mid-plate hot-spot is very "runny" (low viscosity), forming a very wide and fairly flat "shield volcano". If you drill a hole, you will just get more lava pouring out in more places, and destroying your drilling equipment.

Yes, I did wonder about that based on memories of school geography.
I read that the drilling problem would also depend on size of drill. Most drilling eg oil uses a relatively small drill and lava would cool and solidify blocfking the hole, the article I read suggested it would need a hole a few meters across based on the observation that smaller vents block easily; you might even need a larger hole with a viscous lava. As far as I am aware there is no technology’s capable of doing this, the biggest I have come across is the Australian Strata 950 excavator which was used to rescue the Chilean miners. It initially drilled a 33cm wide pilot and then used a special drill bit to increase this to 66cm, which was wide enough to lower a rescue capsule down to pull out the miners one by one.