A rare, lava lake in Antarctica that has fascinated scientists for the last 40 years may hold the key to figuring out how volcanoes work, Live Science reported.
Located in Antarctica's Erebus volcano, scientist have tried and failed to figure out what causes the lake to spew out a constant supply of steam and lava bombs. Harsh conditions around the volcano, which has been continuously active since the '70s, limited periods of research to only the summer time. But now thanks to year-round studies, scientists are closer than ever to demystifying the lava lake's magmatic system.
"We think lava lakes are really the top of a magma chamber, so by studying lava lakes we can see what's happening in the guts of the volcano," Philip Kyle, a volcanologist at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, told Live Science.
There are only four long-lived lava lakes on Earth. They are rare because the volcano would have to constantly pump lave to the lake's surface. Part of the Erebus lake's uniqueness is that it "breathes," or rises and falls. This is due to a never ending supply of gas consisting of carbon dioxide and water that rises and falls every 10 minutes.
Kyle, who has studied Erebus for over 40 years, placed instruments around the volcano to track how often it breathes year-round. The results showed the lava lake has been breathing repeatedly every five or 18 minutes since 2004, Live Science reported.
"The behavior has stayed remarkably constant, which is actually quite unusual for volcanoes," Nial Peters, a University of Cambridge geophysicist who led the research, told Live Science. Other scientists say the breathing resembles a sleeping dragon.
Now that scientists know the dragon is always breathing, the next step is to take the lava's temperature to determine how hot it is, which was never done before due to risk of death, Live Science reported.
The new findings are to be published in the June 2014 issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letter.
