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Science

Rock Face of Kilauea Volcano Collapses 180

Posted by Zonk from the ocean-making-friends dept.
jurt1235 writes "The rockface on the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii recently collapsed over the course of about four hours. The collapse was predicted. The USGS has some great pictures of nature in action. The new rockface, which most likely will fall again, is already being build up by the vulcano." From the CNN article: "The plume, 6 feet in diameter, sent up a tower of steam as it hit the water and began forming a ramp of new land. The collapse of solidified lava shelf and sea cliff Monday was the largest since Kilauea Volcano began its current eruption in 1983."
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Rock Face of Kilauea Volcano Collapses More

Rock Face of Kilauea Volcano Collapses

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  • Oh, man. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @08:31PM (#14175786) Homepage Journal
    That's a lot of new Thetans.

    (ducks)

    • Yep, and now your "Fair Game"... In fact, I see Mr Cruz coming up behind you now...

    • Re:Oh, man. (Score:5, Informative)

      by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @09:16PM (#14176000) Journal
      Funniest post I've seen on Slashdot in a fair while.

      For anyone who didn't get it you might read the wiki page for Scientology [wikipedia.org]. However, to spare you from going through an entire page on that "religion", here's the related excerpt:
      ...the story of Xenu, the galactic tyrant who first kidnapped certain individuals who were deemed "excess population" and loaded these individuals into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). These space planes were supposedly exact copies of Douglas DC-8s except with rocket engines. He then stacked hundreds of billions of these frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days, telling them lies of what they are and what the universe should be like and telling them that they are 3 different things: 'Jesus, God, and The Devil. The traumatized thetans subsequently clustered around human bodies because they watched the motion picture together, making them think they are all the same thing, in effect acting as invisible spiritual parasites known as "body thetans" that can only be removed using advanced Scientology techniques. Xenu is allegedly imprisoned in a mountain by a force field powered by an eternal battery. He is said to be still alive today.

      Space planes and nuclear weapons. The basis for any worthwhile religion.

      [insert comments about WMDs and Bush searching for Xenu here :)]

      • Re:Oh, man. (Score:5, Informative)

        by fbg111 ( 529550 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @09:28PM (#14176051)
        However, to spare you from going through an entire page on that "religion", here's the related excerpt:

        Heh, better yet, download the really funny Southpark Episode on scientology from Xenu.net [xenu.net] (free and legal, thanks to Matt Stone and Trey Parker). This is the one that asks Tom Cruise to come out of the closet ~forty times...
        • Anybody else notice that in the credits of that episode, everybody was named John or Jane Smith? *scratches head*

          • Re:Oh, man. (Score:4, Informative)

            by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @10:14PM (#14176230)
            It was a joke on how the "church" of scientology has sued people in the past who have posted their secret church doctrin. They made their names John and Jane Smith as a joke about trying to protect themselves from a lawsuit.

      • Re:Oh, man. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by interiot ( 50685 )
        Or, for those who want a hilarious animated version of it, see this [comedycentral.com] This Week In God episode. (skip to 1:20 if you need to).

      • Re:Oh, man. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dotwaffle ( 610149 ) <slashdot@nOsPam.walster.org> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @10:28PM (#14176274) Homepage
        How the fuck do supposedly intelligent people believe this shit???

        • Re:Oh, man. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MoralHazard ( 447833 )
          All right, I'm gonna get some serious flames for this, but here goes nothing...

          I've had some exposure to Scientology from different perspectives. My first introduction was, actually, Operation Clambake and some similar WWW resources. Since then, I've met some actual Scientologists and discussed the religion and the controversies it creates. And, full disclosure, I'm seeing a woman right now who works for the Church of Scientology. For real.

          First point: My girlfriend is part of a religion that believes
          • It's okay if your religion does fucked up stuff because *gasp* other more mainstream religions have done fucked up stuff too!

            Your girlfriend must be a damn good lay.

          • Re:Oh, man. (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Dun Malg ( 230075 )
            Dude, saying "but catholicism did it too" is probably the worst justification you could choose for the actions/beliefs of a religion. Even the Heaven's Gate cult has a better track record than the catholic church.
            • "Catholicism did it, so it's OK" is not the point, and I really tried to make that clear. Sorry if you missed it.

              There are two core points here:
              1) Attacking Scientology's abuses while ignoring/minimizing the (worse) abuses of other groups diminishes the credibility of the attacker. If you're a bulldog on one particular group but don't seem to be bothered by other, similarly bad groups, it makes me wonder why you've got it in for your chosen foe.
              2) Maligning Scientology for
              • 1) Attacking Scientology's abuses while ignoring/minimizing the (worse) abuses of other groups diminishes the credibility of the attacker.

                Except that nobody specifically ignored or minimized the actions of other groups. Catholicism is essentially silent on the volcano subject. I think cridibility is strained more when you randomly accuse them of giving Catholicism a pass when Catholicism is not germane to the subject at hand.

                2) Maligning Scientology for its outlandish, but harmless, beliefs is silly, bec

          • You make some good points about kookiness, but as far as comparing Jesus' crucifixion to space aliens in DC-8's, I want to point out something pretty obvious. We know there was a man named Jesus, to within a reasonable doubt, at least. Historians such as Josephus mentioned Him. Even if you doubt their reports, the fact is pretty clear that a group known as the Christians sprang up quite suddenly around 33 AD, all of whom talked quite a bit about a guy named Jesus, some even being willing to face persecution
        • I don't know man. I think I'm intelligent, I don't believe it, and I live by myself. Tom Cruise might be intelligent, believes in Scientology, and gets to fuck Kate Holmes. Hm....

          j/k

      • Dear mister nmb3000,
        As a representative of the Church of Scientology. I would like to infor you that we recently came upon and read one of your posts on the social website forthwith known here as 'slashdot'. We saw that you ridiculed the faith, and as you must understand this is intolerable. We have deployed a crack team of lawyers to your residence and that of the website 'slashdot'. In the case that we are unable to disabuse you of these misconceptions, we have teams
      • I always find this funny. To someone who might be otherwise uninformed about things like aerodynamics, evolutionary bilogy, or a host of other areas, this might seem fascinating. I.e. it is a religion for wannabe scientists, but not enough brains to envision what would happen if an object with the aerodynamics of a DC8 tried to enter earth's atmosphere from outer space...
      • ... before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them ...
        Because we all know it's easier to brainwash people once they've been vaporized...

  • No english-speaking editors working at Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @08:34PM (#14175799)
    The new rockface, which most likely will fall again, is already being build up by the vulcano.

    This should read:

    The new rock face, which most likely will fall again, is already being built up by the volcano.

    Have the Slashdot editors been replaced with ESL monkeys?

    Or perhaps, are there no open source apps with spelling and grammar checking?

    Or perhaps, do they just not care because idiots like me will probably continue coming here out of habit, regardless of how bad the writing and editing is?
  • The Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] has some cool information on lava and some awesome pictures. Here's one [wikipedia.org] of a "lava fountain."

  • The Thing (Score:3, Funny)

    by evdubs ( 708273 ) <evdubs@@@phreaker...net> on Saturday December 03, 2005 @08:37PM (#14175822)
    iiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's CLOBBERIN' TIME! ... oh THAT rock face... *ducks*

  • I recall reading once that the cliff created by volcanoes lava flow could eventually break off causeing an underwater landlslide that could potentially wipe out the pacific rim, and the US west coast. I wonder how this all plays into things.
    • I recall reading once that the cliff created by volcanoes lava flow could eventually break off causeing an underwater landlslide that could potentially wipe out the pacific rim, and the US west coast. I wonder how this all plays

      Superman flies around the earth so fast he goes back in time so he can be in two places at once to save both Lois and the whales. Everyone's happy except for Luthor.
    • You're probably thinking of something like the La Palma Wave [wikipedia.org] that scientists say could be caused by the collapse of the Cumbre Vieja volcano.
    • Eventually, part of the Big Island will fall into the ocean and wipe out the Pacific Rim. However, the headline won't be "Rockface falls off into the ocean," it will be "Several thousand acres fall off into the ocean (duck and cover!)" That's how those waves are created.

      IIRC, the fault line runes pretty near the summit of Kilauea.
    • This [mala.bc.ca] seems to conclude that only Hawaii will be devastated.
    • I'm still alive and I live on the west coast. Draw your own conclusions about this collapse.

  • Summary and title is wrong, didn't see that coming (Score:5, Informative)

    by scheme ( 19778 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @08:42PM (#14175852)

    The rock face of Kilauea didn't collapse. A shelf on the coastline formed by lava flows from Kilauea collapsed. Kilauea is located fairly far inland and has no chance of collapsing without taking a decent portion of the island of Hawai'i with it.

  • Dead tourists? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    Often one or two overballed tourists get too close and die. Anything like that this time? It may take a few days before anybody would realize they are missing I suppose.

  • Some other pictures are available too (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @08:48PM (#14175887)
    For a (usually up to date) view of the nearby lava vent that is the source of all this try http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/cam/index.htm [usgs.gov] It is currently showing yesterday's image.

  • I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @08:59PM (#14175921)
    Well, as the volcano does its thing, it creates new land. Yes, it'll take some time to be useful land, but, new land it is.

    New land ... in Hawaii. That's gotta be worth something!!

    Who owns it?

    If my 2 3/8 acre lot suddenly got bigger on on side, somehow, would I own it? My neighbor?

    Would I have to pay increased taxes on my suddenly-newer lot?

    Does anyone know how this all works?

    • Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @10:31PM (#14176282)
      "Who owns it?"

      The federal government. It's all generally a part of Volcanoes National Park.

      "If my 2 3/8 acre lot suddenly got bigger on on side, somehow, would I own it? My neighbor?"

      First off, let's assume for the moment that the process of adding new land doesn't destroy any improvmenets (i. e. lava didn't run down your house). If you're on the wrong side of Kilauea, do you want to know what your property insurance rates look like?

      But beyond that, even after everything had cooled and solidified, this new land generally isn't anything you'd want. It is black rock; it will bake your sorry ass off in the sun (just ask the triathelets in the Ironman, and the parts they run/bike through is much older and much less reflective than the new stuff). Generally speaking, on Hawai'i, there are two flavors of cooled lava: 'a'a and pahoehoe. 'A'a is essentially broken, jumbled black rocks, but very sharp broken, jumbled black rocks (new rocks means no erosion) that can be trecharous to walk on and can kill a new pair of shoes (or your knees and hands when you stumble). Pahoehoe looks like solidifed toffee, a single, solid sheet of EasyBake Oven.

      Not all of the island of Hawai'i is the lush, tropical paradise everybody writes home about. Tropical rainforests (and all that it entails) on the windward side, desert on the leeward, snow on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, and an outright moonscape on the wrong side of the volcanoes. Even outside of the national park there is a whole mess of land that won't be selling any time soon.

      "Would I have to pay increased taxes on my suddenly-newer lot?"

      Probably the other direction; your property value would likely plummet once Pele is done with it.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Hookoa ( 759347 )
      Actually, people don't want lava anywhere near their land. If lava goes over your property, the county laws say your land is automatically unusable. You can't live/build on it. You also can't sell it, or abandon it to the county. Oh yeah, you still have to pay taxes as long as you own it.

  • Major disaster? Nope. (Score:5, Informative)

    by adnonsense ( 826530 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @09:03PM (#14175944) Homepage Journal

    "Rock Face of Kilauea Volcano Collapses" almost had me lunging for CNN in the hope of spectacular footage of Hawaii sliding into the ocean beneath mile-high plumes of steam and lava, while the USA's west coast falls into panic before the approaching tsunami.

    "Biggish Lumps of Lava Miles from Kilauea Fall Into Sea" would be a more accurate description. Maybe the editors can use that for next week's dupe.

  • A Related Site (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WankersRevenge ( 452399 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @09:06PM (#14175954)
    Reading the article made me curious about being killed by volcanos in general. I googled this site. Pretty interesting read, but it doesn't satisfy my "how painful would it be to jump into a lava flow" curiosity

    Cooled lava flows may look stable to walk on, but the crust may be thin, which would expose the hiker to a falling into a lava tube. There may even be flowing lava under a thin crust of aa lava. Falling into an active lava tube will be instant death.

    http://www.volcanolive.com/safety.html [volcanolive.com]
    • ..when you finally find out how painful it is!! :P
    • I am not a medical expert, but I guess it is really "instant". I heard stuff like that generally produces an enormous shock to the body. Muscles contrat. That causes the blood pressure to instantly rise over a critical level which renders you at least inconcious if it doesn't even damage your brain.

    • Re:A Related Site (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mikael ( 484 )
      There are at least two accounts of people jumping into the hot springs in Yellowstone Park to rescue pet dogs. Snopes has an article about David Allan Kirwan, who jumped into a 200 degree C hot pool [snopes.com]. ESPN has more details [go.com].

      Although since a lava stream is anywhere between 800C and 1200C which is enough to melt most metals below manganese [go.com], you would probably just end up being a large carbon statue.

    • Re:A Related Site (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
      judging from the massive amounts of steam generated when lava reaches water and the fact that the human body is ~80% water i would think death and near total brain destruction would occur faster than your brain could even process the pain of "OMFG I AM IN LAVA"


      then again if it was shallow and/or barely liquid it could be an excruciating few seconds as boiling flesh creates a steam barrier slowing the burning.
  • The collapse happened on Monday 28th. How is this NEWS?

  • Was there three days before it happened... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fbg111 ( 529550 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @09:20PM (#14176025)
    Interesting story about this. I recently moved to Hawaii, and some friends related to me a few months ago about their visit to Volcano National Park last January, when they were allowed to actually hike right up to the lava flowing into the ocean. They said they could come as close as 10 feet away before the radiant heat of the liquid rock became too much. And it's a beautiful sight at night, with red streaks of lava on the hillside in the distance, flowing about a half mile across the flat shelf (or bench, as geologists call it) from the base of the hill into the ocean. So of course I wanted to go see this too, b/c how often do you get to see real, molten lava, right out of the earth's mantle??? Anyone who thinks this isn't interesting to geeks should think again!

    So I finally got a chance to go with some friends last Friday, day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the park rangers had closed the trail a mile and a half from the lava flow, saying that a bench had collapsed into the ocean several months ago, taking 14 hikers with it, who were never found. I can only imagine that they either drowned, were incinerated, or were buried alive by the landslide, or some ungodly combination of the three. There are also a lot of signs at the park with pictures of a bench breaking off into the ocean and an unfortunate stick figure hiker falling in with it, but the pics are out of scale and make the bench look like a rather small edge of land by the sea, easily steered clear of.

    Anyway, it was a disappointment b/c I really wanted to see the lave up close. My friends and I debated a bit about sneaking out across the lava fields anyway, which would have been quite easy to do since the ranger station was over a mile back down the road, and there were no rangers guarding the trail or anywhere near. We figured we would just stay a good 50 yards or more inland, away from these fragile "benches". We didn't care so much about seeing the lave go into the ocean as we did about just seeing it flowing across the ground.

    But in the end we decided to turn back and head home, and return another day. Only yesterday did I see in the news that a ~40-acre bench had broken off into the ocean. Holy moly, 40 acres! And that was only three days after we almost snuck out on this exact bench, not realizing its massive size! I also discovered that that bench that took the 14 hikers with it was actually ~12 acres, certainly not easily steered clear of. Further, like an iceberg, the lava flowing across the surface of the bench is only a fraction of the total flow, as most of it flows down the hill, hits the bench at the base of the hill, and seeps into tunnels which spread out over a wider swath than the surface flow, and through which it continues its flow to the ocean. These hollow tunnels, combined with the porous brittleness of hardened lava rock and erosion from the ocean water seaping into the bench causes large sections to crumble and break off periodically.

    It's all quite fascinating, but the moral of the story is, kids, when the park ranger at a volcano tells you not to do something but doesn't volunteer the details or say why, trust him anyway and don't do it!

    • So I finally got a chance to go with some friends last Friday, day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the park rangers had closed the trail a mile and a half from the lava flow, saying that a bench had collapsed into the ocean several months ago, taking 14 hikers with it, who were never found. I can only imagine that they either drowned, were incinerated, or were buried alive by the landslide, or some ungodly combination of the three.

      They were suffered a combination of being boiled alive and drowning. Th

  • So how do we... (Score:2, Funny)

    by rco3 ( 198978 )
    ... work this around to be Microsoft's fault? Was SCO somehow involved? The RIAA? Hey, let's blame it on overpriced Apple hardware!
  • Is it just me, or does the "petunia skylight" have vaguely anatomical connotations?
  • It would be really neat if they could do a time-lapse of this over a long period of time to see how the land evolves. Naturally, this would be hard, what with the steam, clouds, tide, and day/night cycles to make photography too inconsistent to capture some of the more rapid changes completely. How about using high-resolution radar to map the topography, and IR cameras to differentiate the lava, water, and "cool" rock. Mount this on a helicopter, and do a few flybys everyday (if they didn't want to take the

  • Apalling post (Score:3, Informative)

    by MrIcee ( 550834 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @02:56PM (#14179340) Homepage
    As a resident of the Big Island of Hawai'i - with a house only 15 miles from the active Pu'u O'o vent (and one of the houses actually sits on a cliff looking down into the HVNP (Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park) I feel somewhat compelled to respond to this horrid post.

    First, Kilauea is not errupting per-say. Kilauea volcano, and the Kilauea caldera, are located within the park itself and the caldera is NOT errupting. Lava is (and has for many years now) been moving from under kilauea caldera towards the Pu'u O'o vent, about 15 or so miles away (as the Nene fly) where the lava both comes out in surface flows as well as moves through lava tubes. While Pu'u O'o does sit on, and is part of, kilauea caldera - and while one could technically say that kilauea volcano is errupting, it is a bit misleading.

    Also... the 'rock face' of kilauea did NOT collapse. The rock face is just dandy and totally intact as it is only a mile from me - and has a very nice road all the way around it for people to enjoy.

    What REALLY happened is that lava flowing through lava tubes from the Pu'u O'o vent, which sits at about 2500 feet above sea level, is moving down a steep pali (cliff) and out onto the flats near sea level. It continues allt he way to the ocean where it comes out of the cliff side and pours into the ocean. Over time a false chunk of land builds up - often many many acres in size. This new land is called a Lava Bench and it is extremely unstable as it is both very new, has active lava in it, and is being undercut by the ocean water. Over time (anywhere from days, to months) this bench builds to the point where it can't sustain it's own weight and other environmental factors, and at that point it breaks appart in a spectacular burst of lava and explosions and disappears into the ocean.

    This has been going on for a very long time now. I personally have witnessed two lava benches collapse only yards from me (one in fact threw red hot lava up into the air, and over my head, to land behind me - needless to say we quickly retreated to a safer position).

    As per the question being asked of who owns the new land... it depends on where the lava comes out. The lava tends to have about a 6 to 8 mile wide area that it likes to flow. Sometimes it is entirely on one side, placing it in the park boundries and thus under control of the feds. Other times it swings the other side and flows outside of park boundries, and away from the feds - to spots where we can have much more fun playing with lava.

    And play we like to do... besides cooking in lava (die-hard slashdotters may require my question in the interview to Alton Brown on how cooking in lava works, and his flippant reply questioning the type of drugs I was on), dropping steel cable into lava tubes to pull out samples, and other more questionable practices that will go unmentioned here.

    However, it was NOT the rock face of kilauea caldera (volcano) that has collapsed... it is merely the cliff side and lava bench which are extremely unstable and EXPECTED to collapse. This one made the news only because it was very very big - but not unexpected, not rare, not the caldera or volcano itself, and certainly not something which is unusual.

    If you want more information about our wonderful volcano - and recipes for cooking in it, or poking things in it, or dangers of lava, or even how to walk on the hot stuff... see our portal below:

    http://www.instanthawaii.com/cgi-bin/hawaii?Volcan o [instanthawaii.com]

    Mahalo nui loa!

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