When Magma Meets Water | Breakthrough

Today, Jeff and Robert will use the lava oven to find out what happens to liquid rock when it collides with liquid water. They begin by melting 800 lb of basalt rock. The start out is crushed in gravel, and when we see it later and dump it out, it'll be lava that pours out at somewhere between 250 to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Just as it does in nature, there's no difference when I'm working; when I have the leathers on, I'm up there working with the lava.

It is an amazing feeling. Just before the lava tips out of the furnace, it's just really an exciting and pregnant moment. This is remarkable! You see the fabulous convection in there. I'm constantly seduced by the intensity of the orange, and even as it's cooling, the thing still moves. It breathes, it inflates, it finds some limit, it deflates as it breaks out. It'll do this over and over and over, but today they see something unusual.

Almost every flow that we do, I can tell you 90% of what's going to happen. Today, I was caught off guard. Our experiment today illustrates how rapidly heat can be transferred from lava and for that water to then be transformed to steam. Of course, as steam is produced, the water molecules spread out at a space that takes up a thousand more times the space than in water. As it does so, energy is released. The pressure release during drilling could cause water running deep underground to rapidly boil and expand.

Not even rock can contain the explosive expansion of water flash-boiled by magma. The escaping gas would rip to the surface in a man-made freat magmatic eruption.