Have a question about volcanoes.?

Question

There are volcanoes all over the planet,above and below the oceans. They are forming new islands right now. My question is - where does all this lava come from? I know it comes from the center of the planet. I mean, over the millions of years, how does all this lava keep coming? How does it form? When lava erupts it flows for a while and eventually cools down and hardens. How does the earth continuely make more lava all the time? Can the planet ever 'run out' of lava?

Answer 1

where does all this lava come from?

~lava is encrusted deep into the surface of the earth. below the core.volanoes are holes that were already there years ago and lava accumulated there.making the other lava travel towards the greatest amount of concentration in lava thus storing all that lava inside a volcano. Lava is molten rock that forms below the surface of the earth. It probably forms between 150 and 50 km down, and we call it magma before it reaches the surface. Once it reaches the surface to erupt and flow down the side of a volcano, we call it lava, even though it really is the same stuff. when the temperature reaches its maximum level of heat it (just like when you boil water) it erupts.

how does all this lava keep coming? How does the earth continuely make more lava all the time?

~The main thing to remember is that the magma that eventually erupts at a volcano as lava or ash comes from beneath the volcano - it isn't generated within the volcano itself. For example, the magma that feeds Hawaiian eruptions probably comes from at least 50-60 kilometers below the surface. The magma may be stored within a volcano for a while prior to an eruption in what is called a magma chamber. The magma chamber may become empty, resulting in deflation of the volcano or perhaps even collapse that generates a caldera, but there is always more magma to come along some days, months, or years later to re-fill the magma chamber and generate new eruptions. The reason that the source of magma down in the Earth's mantle doesn't run out is that there is plenty of heat down there and plenty of rock that can be melted to form the magma.


Can the planet ever 'run out' of lava? NO.

~The reason that the source of magma down in the Earth's mantle doesn't run out is that there is plenty of heat down there and plenty of rock that can be melted to form the magma.

♥

Answer 2

Basically we have one important way that magma is formed and one minor way. It's magma before it spews out onto the surface then we call it lava. Everything involves plate tectonics.

Subduction Zones - at subduction zones the cold dense ocean floor sinks beneath a continent. As it gets pulled under it gets warmer because of something called the geothermal gradient. Basically the deeper you go in the Earth the hotter it is. With the downgoing slab is water which is what we call a volatile. It increases the ability of heat to act on the slab of rock. So it eventually melts and adds to the magma. This is how the vast majority of volcanoes are formed. The pacific ring of fire for example. The pacific plate is being subducted below the Americas and Asia. This is why so many volcanoes surround the Pacific. The lava of a volcano is often not very old in geological terms, it is just the nearby subducting slab of ocean floor being recycled onto the surface after it melts and builds enough pressure to spew out on the surface. Notice that volcanoes don't exist in the center of continents but always near oceanic plates. If they do exist inland they are related to a hot spot in the mantle that is still not very well understood and they will be explosive type volcanoes without lava but with ash.

Another way that might be controversial and is relatively minor when compared is to weight a continent very heavily with ice for example. If this happens it will actually sink into the mantle and we get something called anatexis remelt. Basically the same thing but without subduction and water. Simple put, rocks that solidified as a continent was rising are pushed back down to hotter temperatures and remelted. Continents do rise when weight is removed from either glacial recession or severe weathering, it's called isostatic rebound.

So the earth gets a steady supply of material to make lava. But will it ever run out. Yes it will, most definitely. This has already happened on other planets. Mars for example was tectonically active at one point. It no longer is. It has no supply of material to be added because everything is locked up and cooling. There are no continents and ocean floors but there must have been something like that to cause the giant volcanoes that are still there however extinct.

I hope that helps and is not confusing you more.

Answer 3

Excellent question. There's a lot of volume in the earth and the whole surface of the planet is just a very, very thin skin on this big apple. The amount of lava that's come out so far is insignificant compared to the volume of the planet. So, for all practical purposes, we aren't going to run out of lava.

Answer 4

There's a thing called the rock cycle, it's like the water cycle.
Lots of rocks on the earth and under the sea (on the crust) are constantly (but very, very very slowly) being broken down and some forced underground where pressure and heat add them to the viscous magma that runs far beneath the crust.

That magma (molten rock) is eventually released through weak spots in the crust to spew out as lava, forming more rocks that over millions of years break down and again some of it ends up being subducted (brought underground) to be melted down again.

And as already posted, this rock cycle is only a small amount of the actual molten rock beneath the surface.

Peace

Answer 5

The earth doesn't make more lava all the time. The little that makes it to the surface is but a small trickle of the massive molten core of our planet. In other words, there's plenty more where that came from.

Answer 6

no, the planet cannot come out of lava, it has much stocks as the metals are burning

Answer 7

A volcano is an opening (or rupture) in the Earth's surface or crust, which allows hot, molten rock, ash and gases to escape from deep below the surface. Volcanic activity involving the extrusion of rock tends to form mountains or features like mountains over a period of time.
Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates pull apart or are coming together. A mid-oceanic ridge, like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by "divergent tectonic plates" pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by "convergent tectonic plates" coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching of the Earth's crust and where the crust grows thin (called "non-hotspot intraplate volcanism"), such as in the African Rift Valley, the European Rhine Graben with its Eifel volcanoes, the Wells Gray-Clearwater Volcanic Field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America.
Finally, volcanoes can be caused by "mantle plumes", so-called "hotspots"; these hotspots can occur far from plate boundaries, such as the Hawaiian Islands. Interestingly, hotspot volcanoes are also found elsewhere in the solar system, especially on rocky planets and moons.

Volcanology has a very extensive history. The earliest known recording of a volcanic eruption is recorded by a c.6000 BC wall painting of a volcanic eruption. The painting, from the Neolithic site at Çatal Höyük in Anatolia, Turkey, shows a twin peaked volcano in eruption, with a town at its base. The volcano is probably Hasan Dag, which has two peaks.
Mythical explanations
The classical world of Greece and the early Roman Empire explained volcanoes as the work of the gods as science, and alchemy had no explanation for their existence. Grecian myths and tales tell of Atlantis, a fabled island which sank into the sea. Plato (428-348 B.C.) told of the disappearance of a vast island and its powerful civilisation, the Atlanteans, in two of his dialogues, Critias and Timaeus. It is now considered that the island of Thera, now Santorini, in the Aegean Sea, was destroyed by a tremendous series of volcanic explosions around 1620 B.C., with ash falls of up to a foot deep recorded in Turkey. The explosion of Thera sent colossal tidal waves, estimated at 100 feet height, racing across the Aegean, and the southern coast of Crete. Other recordings of the Thera eruption spawned Greek myths, namely the Deucalion, in which Poseidon, god of the sea, took revenge upon Zeus by inundating Attica, Argolis, Salonika, Rhodes and the coast of Lycia (Turkey) to Sicily.
Greeks also considered that Hephaestus, the god of fire, sat below the volcano Etna, forging the weapons of Zeus. His minions, the cyclops with their single staring eye, may be an allegory to the round craters and cones of a volcano. Indeed, the Greek word used to describe volcanoes was etna, or hiera, after Heracles, the son of Zeus. The Roman poet Virgil, in interpreting the Greek mythos, held that the hero Enceladus was buried beneath Etna by the goddess Athena as punishment for disobeying the gods; the mountain's rumblings were his tormented cries, the flames his breath and the tremors his railing against the bars of his prison. Enceladus' brother Mimas was buried beneath Vesuvius by Hephaestus, and the blood of other defeated giants welled up in the Phlegrean Fields surrounding Vesuvius.
Tribal legends of volcanoes abound from the Pacific Ring of Fire and the Americas, usually invoking the forces of the supernatural or the divine to explain the violent outbursts of volcanoes. Taranaki and Tongariro, according to Māori mythology, were lovers who fell in love with Pihanga, and a spiteful jealous fight ensued. Māori will not to this day live between Tongariro and Taranaki for fear of the dispute flaring up again.
Greco-Roman science
The first attempt at a scientific explanation of volcanoes was undertaken by the Greek philosopher Empedocles (c. 490-430 B.C.), who saw the world divided into four elemental forces, of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Volcanoes, Empedocles maintained, were the manifestation of Elemental Fire. Plato contended that channels of hot and cold waters flow in inexhaustible quantities through subterranean rivers. In the depths of the earth a snakes a vast river of fire, the Pyriphlegethon, which feeds all the world's volcanoes. Aristotle considered underground fire as the result of "the...friction of the wind when it plunges into narrow passages."
Wind would play a key role in explanations of volcanoes until the 16th century. Lucretius, a Roman philosopher, claimed Etna was completely hollow and the fires of the underground driven by a fierce wind circulating near sea level. Ovid believed that the flame was fed from "fatty foods" and eruptions stopped when the food ran out. Vitruvius contended that sulfur, alum and bitumen fed the deep fires. Observations by Pliny the Elder noted the presence of earthquakes preceded an eruption; he was annihilated by such in Stabiae.
Christian mythology
The study of volcanology was not advanced much between the days of Plato and Hutton. The Christian world explained volcanoes by a multitude of prescientific notions, but it was also thought they were the work of Satan or the wrath of God, and only saintly miracles could avert their wrath. For this reason the relics of Saint Agatha were paraded in front of lava advancing on Catania in 253 A.D., and miraculously the lava clove in two (down two valleys) and spared the town. Unfortunately the relics of St. Agatha proved ineffective in 1669, with the loss of much of Catania to Etna's lava.
In 1660 the eruption of Vesuvius rained twinned pyroxene crystals and ash upon the nearby villages. The twinned pyroxene crystals resembled the crucifix and this was interpreted as the work of Saint Januarius. In Naples, the relics of St Januarius are paraded through town at every major eructation of Vesuvius. The register of these processions allowed British diplomat and amateur naturalist Sir William Hamilton to document Vesuvius' eruptions, one of the first few 'scientific' studies of the eruptive history of a volcano.

Renaissance observations
Renaissance descriptions of volcanoes vastly improved the state of knowledge, despite the resistance of the Church to scientific explorations of the natural world, especially those which were at odds with Biblical teachings. Nevertheless, nuees ardentes were described from the Azores in 1580. Georgius Agricola argued the rays of the sun, as later proposed by Descartes had nothing to do with volcanoes. Agricola believed vapor under pressure caused eruptions of 'mointain oil' and basalt.
Johannes Kepler considered volcanoes as conduits for the tears and excrement of the Earth, voiding bitumen, tar and sulfur. Descartes, pronouncing that God had created the Earth in an instant, declared he had done so in three layers; the fiery depths, a layer of water, and the air. Volcanoes, he said, were formed where the rays of the sun pierced the earth.
Science wrestled with the ideas of the combustion of pyrite with water, that rock was solidified bitumen, and with notions of rock being formed from water (Neptunism). Of the volcanoes then known, all were near the water, hence the action of the sea upon the land was used to explain volcanism....

Answer 8

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