Gizmorama - March 10, 2014

Good Morning,

A study says that volcanoes can go from dormant to active in just months.

That seems really fast to me. Well, I guess that's plenty of time to get to safety, right?

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Study: Volcanoes can go from dormant to active in just months --*
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Volcanoes such as Oregon's Mount Hood can go from dormant to active in just a few months, an Oregon State University geologist says. Magma sitting 2 to 3 miles beneath Mount Hood has been stored in near-solid conditions for thousands of years but the time it takes to liquefy and potentially erupt is surprisingly short -- perhaps as little as a couple of months, geologist Adam Kent said. Hot magma from deep within the Earth's crust rising toward the surface can elevate the temperature of the stationary magma to more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, and such mixing of the two types of magma triggered Mount Hood's last two eruptions -- about 220 and 1,500 years ago, Kent said. "If the temperature of the rock is too cold, the magma is like peanut butter in a refrigerator," he said. "It just isn't very mobile. For Mount Hood, the threshold seems to be about 750 degrees centigrade (1,300 F) -- if it warms up just 50 to 75 degrees above that, it greatly increases the viscosity of the magma and makes it easier to mobilize." The hotter magma from down deep warms the cooler magma above, making it possible for both to mix and to be transported to the surface to eventually produce an eruption, he said. However, he noted, Mount Hood's eruptions are not particularly violent, as instead of exploding the magma tends to ooze out the top of the peak. "What happens when they mix is what happens when you squeeze a tube of toothpaste in the middle," he said. "A big glob kind of plops out the top, but in the case of Mount Hood -- it doesn't blow the mountain to pieces."


*-- 'Potentially hazardous' asteroid to make close pass by Earth --*
WOODSTOCK, N.Y. - An asteroid the size of three football fields, classified as "potentially hazardous," will make a close pass of the Earth late Monday, a U.S. astronomer says. However, asteroid 2000 EM26 poses no threat this time around and at its closest at 9 p.m. ET will pass the Earth at just under nine times the distance to the moon, he said. Still, at more than 800 feet wide and traveling at 27,000 mph, it has been defined as a potentially hazardous near-Earth object large enough to cause significant damage in the event of an impact. The Slooh robotic telescope service, which connects land-based telescopes to the Internet for access by the broader public, will capture images of the asteroid making its flyby. "On a practical level, a previously unknown, undiscovered asteroid seems to hit our planet and cause damage or injury once a century or so, as we witnessed on June 20, 1908 and February 15, 2013," Slooh astronomer Bob Berman in Woodstock, N.Y., told Britain's The Guardian. He was referring to the so-called Tunguska event in Siberia in 1908 and the meteor that exploded of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. "Every few centuries, an even more massive asteroid strikes us -- fortunately usually impacting in an ocean or wasteland such an Antarctica," he said. "But the ongoing threat, and the fact that biosphere-altering events remain a real if small annual possibility, suggests that discovering and tracking all NEOs (near-Earth objects) as well as setting up contingency plans for deflecting them on short notice should the need arise, would be a wise use of resources."

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