(Press-News.org) University of Queensland researchers have optimised a new technique to help forecast how volcanoes will behave, which could save lives and property around the world.
Dr Teresa Ubide from UQ’s School of the Environment and a team of international collaborators have trialled a new application of the tongue-twisting approach: laser ablation inductively coupled plasma quadruple mass spectrometry.
“It’s a mouthful, but this high-resolution technique offers clearer data on what’s chemically occurring within a volcano’s magma, which is fundamental to forecasting eruption patterns and changes,” Dr Ubide said.
She described magma as the ‘computer code’ of volcanoes, providing information on the eruption style and lava flow.
“The chemical changes that occur within the liquid portion of the magma during a volcanic eruption are quite incredible,” Dr Ubide said.
“The magma is made up of liquid melt, gas and crystals that combine inside the volcano.
“There are often so many meddling crystals that the magma looks like rocky road, and it’s difficult to observe its chemistry.
“To get these crystals out of the way, we blast the cooled melt – which is known as the rock matrix – with a laser like those used for eye surgery.
“Then we analyse the material measuring its chemical make-up.”
Dr Ubide and the team tested the method on samples collected during the spectacular but damaging 2021 eruption on the Canary Island of La Palma, which lasted 85 days.
“The eruption covered more than 12 square kilometres with 159 cubic metres of lava destroying around 1,600 homes and forcing the evacuation of more than 7,000 people – it cost the country the equivalent of around $1.4 billion,” Dr Ubide said.
“To understand how volcanic eruptions may evolve and to provide warnings and advice to people, live monitoring data is critical.
“Earthquakes, ground changes and gas data provide indirect information on what is happening inside an active volcano but the chemistry of the melt is a direct measure of the ‘personality’ of the magma, its behaviour upon eruption and potential impact on populations and infrastructure.
“The information we gathered during this eruption could help inform volcano monitoring and hazard management in the future.”
The team is now trialling a similar technique on volcanic ash, which can be sampled more readily during a volcanic event.
“We are excited to collaborate with volcano observatories to implement the method as a monitoring tool,” Dr Ubide said.
The research is published in Science Advances.
END
Lasering lava to forecast volcanic eruptions
2023-07-05
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Dissolving cardiac device monitors, treats heart disease
2023-07-05
New device shows promise in small animal studies
Not only can it restore normal heart rhythms, it also can show which areas of the heart are functioning well and which areas are not
After the device is no longer needed, it harmlessly dissolves inside the body, bypassing the need for extraction
EVANSTON, Ill. — Nearly 700,000 people in the United States die from heart disease every year, and one-third of those deaths result from complications in the first weeks or months following a traumatic heart-related event.
To help prevent those deaths, researchers at Northwestern ...
Why the day is 24 hours long: Astrophysicists reveal why Earth’s day was a constant 19.5 hours for over a billion years
2023-07-05
A team of astrophysicists at the University of Toronto (U of T) has revealed how the slow and steady lengthening of Earth’s day caused by the tidal pull of the moon was halted for over a billion years.
They show that from approximately two billion years ago until 600 million years ago, an atmospheric tide driven by the sun countered the effect of the moon, keeping Earth’s rotational rate steady and the length of day at a constant 19.5 hours.
Without this billion-year pause in the slowing of our planet’s rotation, our current 24-hour day would stretch to over 60 hours.
The ...
Black Americans may face relatively accelerated biological aging because they tend to experience lower socioeconomic status, more neighborhood deprivation and higher air pollution than White Americans
2023-07-05
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287112
Article Title: Contributions of neighborhood social environment and air pollution exposure to Black-White disparities in epigenetic aging
Author Countries: USA
Funding: This work was supported by National Institute on Aging: R01-AG066152 (CM), R01- AG070885 (RB), P30-AG072979 (CM). Additional support includes Pennsylvania Department of Health (2019NF4100087335; CM), and Penn Institute on Aging (CM). National Institute on Aging: https://www.nia.nih.gov Pennsylvania Department of Health: https://www.health.pa.gov/Pages/default.aspx Penn Institute on Aging: https://www.med.upenn.edu/aging/. ...
Memories of childhood abuse and neglect has greater impact on mental health than the experience itself
2023-07-05
New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London and City University New York, published today (Wednesday 5 July) in JAMA Psychiatry, has found that the way childhood abuse and/or neglect is remembered and processed has a greater impact on later mental health than the experience itself. The authors suggest that, even in the absence of documented evidence, clinicians can use patients’ self-reported experiences of abuse and neglect to identify those at risk of developing mental health difficulties ...
Large sub-surface granite formation signals ancient volcanic activity on Moon's dark side
2023-07-05
DALLAS (SMU) – A large formation of granite discovered below the lunar surface likely was formed from the cooling of molten lava that fed a volcano or volcanoes that erupted early in the Moon’s history – as long as 3.5 billion years ago.
A team of scientists led by Matthew Siegler, an SMU research professor and research scientist with the Planetary Science Institute, has published a study in Nature that used microwave frequency data to measure heat below the surface of a suspected volcanic ...
Finding the flux of quantum technology
2023-07-05
We interact with bits and bytes everyday – whether that’s through sending a text message or receiving an email.
There’s also quantum bits, or qubits, that have critical differences from common bits and bytes. These photons – particles of light – can carry quantum information and offer exceptional capabilities that can’t be achieved any other way. Unlike binary computing, where bits can only represent a 0 or 1, qubit behavior exists in the realm of quantum mechanics. Through “superpositioning,” a qubit can represent a 0, ...
Webb locates dust reservoirs in two supernovae
2023-07-05
Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have made major strides in confirming the source of dust in early galaxies. Observations of two Type II supernovae, Supernova 2004et (SN 2004et) and Supernova 2017eaw (SN 2017eaw), have revealed large amounts of dust within the ejecta of each of these objects. The mass found by researchers supports the theory that supernovae played a key role in supplying dust to the early universe.
Dust is a building block for many things in our universe – planets in particular. As dust from dying stars spreads through space, it carries essential elements to help give birth to the next generation of stars ...
Danish researchers solve the mystery of how deadly virus hide in humans
2023-07-05
Danish researchers solve the mystery of how deadly virus hide in humans
With a new method for examining virus samples researchers from the University of Copenhagen have solved an old riddle about how Hepatitis C virus avoids the human body's immune defenses. The result may have an impact on how we track and treat viral diseases in general.
An estimated 50 million people worldwide are infected with with chronic hepatitis C. The hepatitis C virus can cause inflammation and scarring of the liver, and in the worst case, liver cancer. Hepatitis C was discovered in 1989 and is one of the most studied viruses on the planet. Yet for decades, how it manages to evade the human immune ...
Scientists link genes to diet in inflammatory bowel disease
2023-07-05
A study of the genetic variation that makes mice more susceptible to bowel inflammation after a high-fat diet has identified candidate genes which may drive inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in humans. The findings are published as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife.
Described by the editors as a fundamental study, the work provides a framework for using systems genetics approaches to dissect the complex mechanisms of gut physiology. The authors show how it is possible to use genetically diverse but well-characterised mice to interrogate intestinal inflammation and pinpoint genes influenced by the environment ...
Thousands suffer from tabooed disease. New method makes it easier to identify the right treatment
2023-07-05
Most people have at some point in their life suffered an intestinal infection or food poisoning forcing them to stay close to the bathroom. It is very uncomfortable. Most of the time, though, it passes quickly.
But around 60,000-100,000 Danes suffer from a form of chronic diarrhoea called bile acid malabsorption or bile acid diarrhoea.
It is a chronic condition characterised by frequent and sudden diarrhoea more than 10 times a day. Even though the disease is not life-threatening, it can seriously ...