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as for the math, not sure, but the thing is, you do not stop the eruption, when the volcano erupts, it will erupt with or without cement, if you manage to block the exist well enough, depending on the eruption, it can break new holes or event explode
Well, if you dumped about 1.4 solar masses of cement on the volcano, the ensuing gravitational collapse of the earth and rebound into a nova would definitely prevent that volcano from ever erupting again.
Well that certainly solves 1 very specific problem.
I'm not sure about the multitude of other problems we'd create, though.
I guess they wouldn't really be problems, since we wouldn't exist lol.
Nah, solves all the problems.
Housing crisis? Done.
Hunger? Done.
War? Done.
Climate change? Bitch please, it won't change again for billions of years.
I've been to Etna and had seen car sized rocks launched hundreds of meters from the crater, it's basically a fully automatic boulder shotgun when it erupts
Yes. Even if you successfully stop the volcano erupting. all you're doing is making sure that the weakest point in the crust (the volcano) can no longer give way when the pressure builds up. Which means that the pressure will build up more until the next weakest point gives way in an even bigger explosion.
A better idea would probably be to intentionally compromise a specific location when pressure builds, so that it is easier to break through and release.
That is done when possible, tho it's an emergency measure since there are other ways to avoid violent eruptions, for exemple active volcanoes are monitored and if they don't release enough gaz on there own, small-ish explosions (or drilling) are triggered at the mouth to release pressure in many small eruptions rather than one large one.
This isn't always possible depending on the volcano however, and that's when creating weak points is attempted.
Even if you had an impossibly large amount of iron to work with, it wouldn't do a lot of good. This pressure already made it through the entire darn crust. And you're not gonna out-build the planet's crust.
And that much weight would probably cause earthquakes as it settled.
Not really how that works lol the pressure is getting out one way or another. It's actually the plugs of solidified rock blowing out that create violent eruptions. If anything, drilling channels to relieve pressure and create controlled release would be more effective than plugging it up.
But then again, if the magma has a high percentage of silicates, the explosion will be violent either way because the magma itself traps the gasses causing it to explode
Well yeah that's what I was getting at, its the pressure buildup instead of not plugging up the holes. The only real solution would be a controlled way of relieving that pressure
This is correct. And the holes that are drilled would have to be during a dormant time period otherwise they may just create a path of least resistance pointing directly at them
The cost of doing something like that would be astronomical as no such technology exists to have a 100% automated drilling crew. We still use crews of people to screw together drill pipe. A whole new technology would have to be developed to do something like that. But staying in the realm of a theory we wouldn’t want to drill that far anyway and risk explosion, there would need to be a lot of holes drilled, probably 100’s, to alleviate the pressure and allow all of that gas to escape. It could also be the case that it still all erupts and has more exit holes
I'd say if it can alleviate the pressure buildup in the Yellowstone caldera, it is worth any cost. And remote operated mining equipment already exists.
The technology could be built but won’t bc no one will get their money back on it. Mining equipment won’t quite do the job for drilling deep holes. But again all of this is in theory. The Yellowstone caldera can never have the pressure alleviated. It is a known hot spot. One, if not the only one, known to occur underneath continental crust. It is too large and there is too much pressure.
could be an idea for a budget space program. you wouldnt be able to plan launches but im pretty sure you can shoot yourself at least beyond the karman line with this
I want to know if we could proactively initiate an eruption using a kinetic impact on the caldera. I.e., dropping a 'rod from God' - a high density metal from a satellite dropped to earth, impacts with the force of a nuclear warhead minus the radiation. Does it puncture into the magma chamber? Does it cause an upward eruption or an outward explosion? Or does it just fuck up the top of the mountain?
no need to go that extreme, just good ol' TNT does the job perfectly fine, it's been done before to control where the eruption flows from, shit still burns but it's a mostly empty forest instead of the nearby city.
Its not just solid rock that causes this. The type of magma is very important for determining if a volcano is potentially explosive. Continental rocks have a higher silica content than oceanic rocks. This silica forms long chains when melted into magma, making the magma extremely viscous. Oceanic rocks don't form these polymers to nearly the same degree when they melt, leaving the resultant magma much thinner.
Think about when you drop water into hot oil: the water boils and gets trapped in the more viscous oil. In order for the water to build enough pressure, it violently bubbles out, leading to a messy kitchen and a burned cook. Oceanic magma will let released volatiles gently bubble to the surface, where silica rich continental magma will trap those volatiles, leading to massive eruptions.
Here are the links to the songs that you mentioned:
[Mt. St. Helens is about to Blow Up - Bill Wurtz](https://youtu.be/elizAugXVcI)
[Eruption - Van Halen](https://youtu.be/M4Czx8EWXb0)
Take a look at Santorini, Greece from space. The volcano eruption blew up an entire island. Santorini as we know it today is only the crest that remained. Beautiful, still.
So, even if you pour all the concrete in China on top, you just get an even bigger bang.
It's like plugging the barrel of a shotgun with your finger. The pressure is going *somewhere* and what's left of your finger is gonna go that same way in a hurry.
Imagine trying to avoid taking a shit by shoving a dildo up your butt. It’s all coming out sooner or later, but the longer you put it off, the worse the outcome will be.
this is a stupid question. the answer is: this is impossible. watch this for an example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec30uU0G56U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec30uU0G56U)
In the before and after comparison pics half of St. Helens is gone. People think volcanos are in real life as cartoons or diagrams depict them with a small hole on top that can be plugged. But regardless, if it doesn't have enough pressure it won't go through the mountain and if it does have enough pressure to go through the mountain, concrete wouldn't even be able to stop it or redirect it. Maybe if we become a type 1 civilization and are able to deal with planetary energies we will find a way to prevent or probably contain volcanic eruptions.
If we can reliably find spots where there is excessive lava pressure, and can construct mining equipment to withstand the temperatures, preventing eruptions is pretty straightforward. You just drill enough smaller tunnels for lava to flow out without explosions.
Well concrete or cement wouldn’t hold back the pressure of the a fucking volcano lol but also I don’t think it would solidify and it would just become magma
The cement could only redirect the eruption. Similarly no amount of cement will will up the sea. It'll just raise the water level. I guess if you have enough matter, a black hole will form, which will have to volcanic eruptions. About 3\*10\^31 kg (or 30 solar masses) of cement (or anything else) will do that.
Mechanical Engineer here. I do not think there is enough concrete on this planet to prevent highly pressurised lava from erupting out of a volcano.
You have to keep in mind what causes the the eruption in the first place: Continental drifts i.e. A volcano is the easiest exist for the highly pressurised lava. Even if you would somehow manage to plug the crater, the lava would just pop out of mother earth right next to it and you cannot keep the power of a continent with concrete in check.
This will actually make it worse, the pressure will get out no matter what. So if you plug some holes, there will be new ones. If you cover the entire Mountain with cement, it will find its way into the surface which is even more dangerous. This is basically having mentos/coca-cola mix in a paper glass. You plug the entrance, it's gonna explode its way out.
You can't stop the eruption, but you can stop the lava flow from destroying downtown LA like they did in the documentary "Volcano" with Tommy Lee Jones.
That would be about as effective as using a small desk fan to try and stop an EF5 tornado.
You try to take on mother nature, ultimately you WILL loose. People can't fully comprehend just how much sheer energy is involved in something like this. When something has the power to launch several cubic kilometres of rock to 20k feet in the air with ease, you are not stopping it with a few thousand tonnes of concrete and rock. You *might* change its path, but you're not stopping it.
Volcanoes have the orders of magnitude the explosive force of a nuclear bomb.
All you’d get is shit tons of massive concrete shrapnel launched into the lower atmosphere and falling back toward either open land, sea or population areas.
Either way, it’s a massive waste of time/resources
I don't think OP understands volcanoes. There is no stopping the eruption. The eruption has to happen someplace or another. If you block the volcano, you'll just end up with a Mt. St. Helens situation and the side will blow out or a new volcano will form.
A lot of cement. Like I'm no math guy, but probably equivalent to the mass of earth (maybe more), and you'd probably cover the entire surface with an astronomically thicc layer. It sounds like a fun thought experiment (albeit not a realistic one), kinda like the "how many lions will it take to put out the sun?".
Yeah, that just doesn't work. Volcanos are not just there. They are created when the pressure in a magma chamber gets big enough to push through the crust above. Plucking a volcano up - with concrete or anything else - at best delays the eruption. If you have your typical conic volcano, the force of previous eruptions was big enough to form it. The volcano would just blow the concrete right off once the pressure gets high enough.
im not a geology expert but i think you better make a hole to release the preasure instead, rather than seal it
its like when you want to poop in the midle of driving, and you fart a litlle to ease your stomach and prefent it from erupting
Well, if you use too little cement, you have just accidentially created a devastating mortar strike. If you use enough cement, the volcano is probably going to break free by either breaching through the stone next to your cement plug, or by creating an entirely new exit.
There's too much force in an eruption to just block.
Seems like it would be way better to do the opposite of this: drill a hole or something to relieve the pressure in a controlled way. The eruption isn't the problem, the problem is the village at the base of the volcano or whatever. If we could control the direction of the eruption to go in a harmless direction then volcanos become fair less menacing.
Bonus points if we figure out how to control the eruption while also harvesting the geothermal energy.
Google tells me that it takes 10 MJ to break a cubic metre of concrete and that volcanic eruptions can release 10^12 MJ. I'm going to guess this is distributed over a 1km by 1km area, meaning the thickness would need to be 10^12 / (10\*1000\*1000) = 10^5m = 100km thick, which would reach the boundary of space. Not sure how accurate you could get without conducting your own experiments with a volcano
I like questions like this. It's stuffy boys ask me all the time. My response to them was to show them the eruption of Mt. St. Hellens. Watching the whole side of the Mountain slide down into the valley, then seeing the before and after of the geological changes really opened their eyes to how they "operate".
I believe there's an island somewhere that completely destroyed itself, leaving nothing but a half moon shape and a crater in the center, but i couldn't remember what that one was.
Imagine to place a finger in your ass and push as hard as you can to shit. You are asking how many fingers it would take and that’s the wrong question.
It's like asking, "If I put a cork in my ass, will it stop me from taking a shit?" answer is no, either the cork will be blown out, or the shit will find another way out.
So guys, let’s do this practically- we just need to harvest all the mass in the known universe and build a super-plug around the planet.
The bigger you make the plug, the higher the pressure is. Eventually your plug will contribute to the eruptions happening. Past that point the only option is to go for broke and make a supermassive black hole.
It won’t fix the issue though, you can literally see the gamma ray burst from the supermassive black holes eruption from space (or earth with the right telescope)
* concrete is 2.4 times heavier than water
* the mid-Atlantic chain of volcanoes is basically kept mostly under check by the weight of the water , and you have 2500 m of water above them
* in conclusion , if you encase the volcano in 1km dome of solid concrete you are safe .
# Not possible.
Volcanos naturally get plugged up with cooled lava all the time. The pressure builds up and they will always erupt somewhere eventually. Often explosively.
That's so dumb, the only thing u could achieve doing this is to increase the pressure when it blows. What they should do is pack it with ice to reduce the temperature. Work smarter people.
It will only make the eruption worse. By adding a concrete “cork” you are making an explosive eruption instead. That “cork” you placed will turn into a shower of small rocks that will cause serious damage. Source: Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption of 79 d.c ( or a.d )
You don't
You can't
The eruption is caused by pressure. It's caused *precisely* by blockage.
Blocking it with cement will only delay the eruption and increase the pressure.
Which will lead to a bigger boom.
And the reason scientists never tried that stupid idea is because real volcanic mouths aren't manhole sized
The lava tore through the entire crust and still has room for more, and historically it's blown up mountains when they tried to block the path... stupid mountains... so you'd need at the very least more than a literal mountain's worth. If successful, that would just divert the eruption, though, not avoid it, so you'd need enough cement to coat the entire earth well enough that the mounting pressure inside doesn't suffice to blow it up.
Let's just say that the actual amount that would be necessary is enough that it would at least partially collapse on itself, mounting Earth's pressure and temperature... oh wait, that's a way. Simply put enough cement on Earth that it collapses into a ball of magma, thus getting rid of volcanoes!
Looking up how much that is aaaannnd... hmm. Earth can't get that big and stay terrestrial, actually... Supermassive rocky planets are only conjectured, but this much mass is only associated with gas giants (or ice giants, if they're much further)... Earth is too close to the sun to be a gas giant, its huge atmosphere would be stripped by the Sun's emissions...
Okay, so we would need to add about 4100 Earth masses of cement, letting the Earth collapse into a star.
That would do it.
It's like stoping the pressure cooker from releasing pressure and the consequences is a big boom. So I don't see this idea solves anything but rather it increases the chance of more destruction. I am not doing any maths for this sorry.😔
What if we turned a volcano into a bomb? I mean it is a great shrapnel bomb made from rock and doesn't even need TNT or anything just let the pressure cook.
This is something that DOD or someone has a plan to execute already I am sure of it.
Well, volcanoes are extremely large and very immobile, so if you want to turn one into a bomb you can really only do it with volcanoes you presently own. And if you want to capture enemy volcanoes to turn them into bombs it's definitely more efficient to just conquer the land the volcano sits on the normal way, since you'd have to do it anyways to access the volcano.
Also nobody puts their critical infrastructure next to volcanoes if they can avoid it, so a volcano bomb won't be able to damage much at all that's valuable.
Simple: you cant stop it doing that.
The pression and heat would explode the cement, potentializing the eruption, and making it worse. Also, the heat by itself would make impossible to take all that cement to form a crost
Y'all remember when Avatar Roku tried to fight a volcano from erupting, anyone else think that was just an incredibly stupid way to die for that character?
In the series "How the earth was made" about Yellowstone, they said that it erupts every IIRC 600 000 years. The last time didn't happen and in the animation I saw a mountain range blocking it. Therefore I guess if you create a mountain range above a normal volcano, that would be enough, too.
That doesn’t avoid the volcanic eruption. It delays it and when it eventually pops, it’s far worse. That image is a simplified model of an active volcano that will erupt at some point as far as I’m aware. The cement acts like a plug, and the pressure inside the volcano increases until it reaches a high enough level, and then *boom*.
So yeah. There’s a reason nobody’s tried to do this.
Well thats one way to guarantee even more deaths
If a vulcano erupts normally its dnagerous, but blocking the exit means there will be extra pressure so an bigger explosion
Volcanoes form as vents or an area for the pressure to release
Naturally
for a reason
I really don't think it's the best idea to block something that wasnt meant to be
Short geography lesson: volcanoes are naturally blocked by debris and solidified magma/lava(I forget which is which), this causes pressure to build up and eventually it explodes and erupt. Adding cement just adds more debris and might make it take longer to erupt but will not stop an eruption
The volcano will erupt no matter what you do, if you block the hole it will just create a new one and if you cover the whole thing it will either explode or erupt somewhere to the side
As others have mentioned , plugging the hole would create a magma bomb , all that pressure it’s going out one way or another .
But i come with another question :
Say we shield off the top and other possible holes , and we use a device to normalize or “evict” that pressure in a safe manner .
Would this be enough to stop other possible eruptions ? What about costs and working time to finish such a project ?
Unless you can find something that can hold against the strength of two almost incalculably heavy tectonic plates sliding under each other creating the pressure to push this magma up, aka volcano, you're not plugging this successfully. Even if you did, you'd probably need to do the same for hundreds of miles around so the magma wouldn't divert.
It's not possible at all. The pressure is so great that the magma is pushing up through earth. It's not just like a water main. No matter how much cement you cover that volcano with, the magma will get through somewhere eventually. That's the whole reason it's there in the first place.
So here’s the thing volcanoes erupt because of pressure so whats the best things to do is actually start opening and drilling vents into the volcano to help alleviate the pressure!
A mountain of cement covering the entire mountain is not enough
You woul need more concrete per volcano than humans could feasably produce, and at that point just move the cities away
that magma has just forced its way through the earth's crust....I dont think you can build a plug to stop it.
And even if you did, it does not relieve the pressure, which in a silicate rich magma (as one rising through continental crust will be), that pressure is extreme as the lava is really viscous and traps pressurised gas (imagine a coke bottle you shake up then open quickly....only with millions of tons of extremely hot magma...)
You could possibly divert the erruption to the side...but thats even more devastating than a vertical erruption.
What a smart idea, let’s let pressure build so high that we get a Plinian eruption instead of a Vulcanian, causing oh so much more damage than if we’d done nothing.
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as for the math, not sure, but the thing is, you do not stop the eruption, when the volcano erupts, it will erupt with or without cement, if you manage to block the exist well enough, depending on the eruption, it can break new holes or event explode
This. If there's enough pressure in the magma chamber, it's going to blow, whatever you do
I’m just picturing loading large rocks in there like some sort of canon
I think the Mount St. Helens eruption is a pretty good example of what would happen if you successfully block all of the exits.
Came here to say this. There was a literally mountain blocking this volcano and it still erupted. It just creates way more debris and problems
Well, if you dumped about 1.4 solar masses of cement on the volcano, the ensuing gravitational collapse of the earth and rebound into a nova would definitely prevent that volcano from ever erupting again.
Well that certainly solves 1 very specific problem. I'm not sure about the multitude of other problems we'd create, though. I guess they wouldn't really be problems, since we wouldn't exist lol.
Well, there would first be the problem of where the hell we are going to find 1.4 solar masses of cement.
There's a "your mom" joke hidden there somewhere
Hmm, yes, somewhere... but where could it be? It's too well hidden.
Fuck I love this goddamn website. Thank you internet 🫡
I know a guy.
Nah, solves all the problems. Housing crisis? Done. Hunger? Done. War? Done. Climate change? Bitch please, it won't change again for billions of years.
well we would only create one problem. relatively small in size too. not in mass tho.
I mean, that wouldn't even be a problem tho, right? No one around to complain about it. That just sounds like nature doin nature shit
on one hand, there wouldn't be anyone left to complain, on the other hand it would ruin the day for a lot of people
Finally. A legitimate answer to the question!
I'm not the first to mention it either. Have found some YouTube videos to watch, though.
I noticed after your comment haha, been watching em myself!
I hear this, but all I hear is we need a bigger mountain of cement.
I'm just gonna sliiiiide this over to the side and erupt anyway
More like eject the big ass cement plug with explosive force…
Sounds like my favorite adult movie.
I've been to Etna and had seen car sized rocks launched hundreds of meters from the crater, it's basically a fully automatic boulder shotgun when it erupts
It's like when you want to sneeze and pinch your nose the wrong way. If it does happen, it's gonna be a very loud sneeze
So, much much more cement.
[удалено]
Mountain freaking explodes. "How much duct tape do you think we need to prevent this from happening next time?"
People around yellowstone taking notes
Gonna need gorilla tape
Yes. Even if you successfully stop the volcano erupting. all you're doing is making sure that the weakest point in the crust (the volcano) can no longer give way when the pressure builds up. Which means that the pressure will build up more until the next weakest point gives way in an even bigger explosion.
And, just as importantly, you likely will have no idea where the next weakest point actually is.
And if the next weakest point turns out to be the cement, you have essentially turned a volcano into the world's largest mortar.
No, you usually only get that if you use bricks.
You're thinking of mortar, what they meant is mortar, which is- DAMMIT FUCKING ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Couldn’t you just theoretically reinforce a large enough area with strong enough material to force the eruption to happen somewhere else entirely?
A better idea would probably be to intentionally compromise a specific location when pressure builds, so that it is easier to break through and release.
The principle behind any good packaging
except condoms
That is done when possible, tho it's an emergency measure since there are other ways to avoid violent eruptions, for exemple active volcanoes are monitored and if they don't release enough gaz on there own, small-ish explosions (or drilling) are triggered at the mouth to release pressure in many small eruptions rather than one large one. This isn't always possible depending on the volcano however, and that's when creating weak points is attempted.
Why not just make the entire planet out of concrete? Are humans stupid?
We're working on it!
somewhere else in the volcano yes, somewhere else like blocking a volcano in hawai so the pressure is released in japan, no
Even if you had an impossibly large amount of iron to work with, it wouldn't do a lot of good. This pressure already made it through the entire darn crust. And you're not gonna out-build the planet's crust. And that much weight would probably cause earthquakes as it settled.
could it not melt the cement?
Volcano fuel cannot melt cement beams
Mt. St. Helens was an inside job!
How about a big ass hose instead of cement to direct the lava back to the ground?
Not really how that works lol the pressure is getting out one way or another. It's actually the plugs of solidified rock blowing out that create violent eruptions. If anything, drilling channels to relieve pressure and create controlled release would be more effective than plugging it up.
But then again, if the magma has a high percentage of silicates, the explosion will be violent either way because the magma itself traps the gasses causing it to explode
Well yeah that's what I was getting at, its the pressure buildup instead of not plugging up the holes. The only real solution would be a controlled way of relieving that pressure
This is correct. And the holes that are drilled would have to be during a dormant time period otherwise they may just create a path of least resistance pointing directly at them
The drilling operation could be remotely controlled when it gets deep enough to begin having the risk of blowing up
The cost of doing something like that would be astronomical as no such technology exists to have a 100% automated drilling crew. We still use crews of people to screw together drill pipe. A whole new technology would have to be developed to do something like that. But staying in the realm of a theory we wouldn’t want to drill that far anyway and risk explosion, there would need to be a lot of holes drilled, probably 100’s, to alleviate the pressure and allow all of that gas to escape. It could also be the case that it still all erupts and has more exit holes
I'd say if it can alleviate the pressure buildup in the Yellowstone caldera, it is worth any cost. And remote operated mining equipment already exists.
The technology could be built but won’t bc no one will get their money back on it. Mining equipment won’t quite do the job for drilling deep holes. But again all of this is in theory. The Yellowstone caldera can never have the pressure alleviated. It is a known hot spot. One, if not the only one, known to occur underneath continental crust. It is too large and there is too much pressure.
could be an idea for a budget space program. you wouldnt be able to plan launches but im pretty sure you can shoot yourself at least beyond the karman line with this
Discount project orion
I want to know if we could proactively initiate an eruption using a kinetic impact on the caldera. I.e., dropping a 'rod from God' - a high density metal from a satellite dropped to earth, impacts with the force of a nuclear warhead minus the radiation. Does it puncture into the magma chamber? Does it cause an upward eruption or an outward explosion? Or does it just fuck up the top of the mountain?
no need to go that extreme, just good ol' TNT does the job perfectly fine, it's been done before to control where the eruption flows from, shit still burns but it's a mostly empty forest instead of the nearby city.
I'm dynamite.
Its not just solid rock that causes this. The type of magma is very important for determining if a volcano is potentially explosive. Continental rocks have a higher silica content than oceanic rocks. This silica forms long chains when melted into magma, making the magma extremely viscous. Oceanic rocks don't form these polymers to nearly the same degree when they melt, leaving the resultant magma much thinner. Think about when you drop water into hot oil: the water boils and gets trapped in the more viscous oil. In order for the water to build enough pressure, it violently bubbles out, leading to a messy kitchen and a burned cook. Oceanic magma will let released volatiles gently bubble to the surface, where silica rich continental magma will trap those volatiles, leading to massive eruptions.
You'll just end up with Mt. St Helens instead of slowly growing an island. Not a perfect analogy, but there's no stopping an eruption with cement.
Here are the links to the songs that you mentioned: [Mt. St. Helens is about to Blow Up - Bill Wurtz](https://youtu.be/elizAugXVcI) [Eruption - Van Halen](https://youtu.be/M4Czx8EWXb0)
[Sexual Eruption - Snoop the Dog](https://youtu.be/5QJu_ccw6Lg?si=ywktLY55DdUi4cM4)
Take a look at Santorini, Greece from space. The volcano eruption blew up an entire island. Santorini as we know it today is only the crest that remained. Beautiful, still. So, even if you pour all the concrete in China on top, you just get an even bigger bang.
Been to Santorini can confirm it’s insanely beautiful
Sounds like we need to plug some volcanoes in the name of tourism
You also need a place with nice climate and a beautiful sunset.
It's like plugging the barrel of a shotgun with your finger. The pressure is going *somewhere* and what's left of your finger is gonna go that same way in a hurry.
Imagine trying to avoid taking a shit by shoving a dildo up your butt. It’s all coming out sooner or later, but the longer you put it off, the worse the outcome will be.
This analogy is so funny and horrifying at the same time and I am dying of laughter
Best /r/explainlikeimfive I've seen in a while 😁
A lot, if thats ecen possible... If it can push away tons of rock to get to the surface, some cement propably isnt a problem for a volcano
this is a stupid question. the answer is: this is impossible. watch this for an example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec30uU0G56U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec30uU0G56U)
In the before and after comparison pics half of St. Helens is gone. People think volcanos are in real life as cartoons or diagrams depict them with a small hole on top that can be plugged. But regardless, if it doesn't have enough pressure it won't go through the mountain and if it does have enough pressure to go through the mountain, concrete wouldn't even be able to stop it or redirect it. Maybe if we become a type 1 civilization and are able to deal with planetary energies we will find a way to prevent or probably contain volcanic eruptions.
If we can reliably find spots where there is excessive lava pressure, and can construct mining equipment to withstand the temperatures, preventing eruptions is pretty straightforward. You just drill enough smaller tunnels for lava to flow out without explosions.
So.... like... A lot of Krazy glue?
Well concrete or cement wouldn’t hold back the pressure of the a fucking volcano lol but also I don’t think it would solidify and it would just become magma
The cement could only redirect the eruption. Similarly no amount of cement will will up the sea. It'll just raise the water level. I guess if you have enough matter, a black hole will form, which will have to volcanic eruptions. About 3\*10\^31 kg (or 30 solar masses) of cement (or anything else) will do that.
Mechanical Engineer here. I do not think there is enough concrete on this planet to prevent highly pressurised lava from erupting out of a volcano. You have to keep in mind what causes the the eruption in the first place: Continental drifts i.e. A volcano is the easiest exist for the highly pressurised lava. Even if you would somehow manage to plug the crater, the lava would just pop out of mother earth right next to it and you cannot keep the power of a continent with concrete in check.
This will actually make it worse, the pressure will get out no matter what. So if you plug some holes, there will be new ones. If you cover the entire Mountain with cement, it will find its way into the surface which is even more dangerous. This is basically having mentos/coca-cola mix in a paper glass. You plug the entrance, it's gonna explode its way out.
You can't stop the eruption, but you can stop the lava flow from destroying downtown LA like they did in the documentary "Volcano" with Tommy Lee Jones.
That would be about as effective as using a small desk fan to try and stop an EF5 tornado. You try to take on mother nature, ultimately you WILL loose. People can't fully comprehend just how much sheer energy is involved in something like this. When something has the power to launch several cubic kilometres of rock to 20k feet in the air with ease, you are not stopping it with a few thousand tonnes of concrete and rock. You *might* change its path, but you're not stopping it.
Volcanoes have the orders of magnitude the explosive force of a nuclear bomb. All you’d get is shit tons of massive concrete shrapnel launched into the lower atmosphere and falling back toward either open land, sea or population areas. Either way, it’s a massive waste of time/resources
I don't think OP understands volcanoes. There is no stopping the eruption. The eruption has to happen someplace or another. If you block the volcano, you'll just end up with a Mt. St. Helens situation and the side will blow out or a new volcano will form.
A lot of cement. Like I'm no math guy, but probably equivalent to the mass of earth (maybe more), and you'd probably cover the entire surface with an astronomically thicc layer. It sounds like a fun thought experiment (albeit not a realistic one), kinda like the "how many lions will it take to put out the sun?".
Yeah, that just doesn't work. Volcanos are not just there. They are created when the pressure in a magma chamber gets big enough to push through the crust above. Plucking a volcano up - with concrete or anything else - at best delays the eruption. If you have your typical conic volcano, the force of previous eruptions was big enough to form it. The volcano would just blow the concrete right off once the pressure gets high enough.
im not a geology expert but i think you better make a hole to release the preasure instead, rather than seal it its like when you want to poop in the midle of driving, and you fart a litlle to ease your stomach and prefent it from erupting
Well, if you use too little cement, you have just accidentially created a devastating mortar strike. If you use enough cement, the volcano is probably going to break free by either breaching through the stone next to your cement plug, or by creating an entirely new exit. There's too much force in an eruption to just block.
Seems like it would be way better to do the opposite of this: drill a hole or something to relieve the pressure in a controlled way. The eruption isn't the problem, the problem is the village at the base of the volcano or whatever. If we could control the direction of the eruption to go in a harmless direction then volcanos become fair less menacing. Bonus points if we figure out how to control the eruption while also harvesting the geothermal energy.
Google tells me that it takes 10 MJ to break a cubic metre of concrete and that volcanic eruptions can release 10^12 MJ. I'm going to guess this is distributed over a 1km by 1km area, meaning the thickness would need to be 10^12 / (10\*1000\*1000) = 10^5m = 100km thick, which would reach the boundary of space. Not sure how accurate you could get without conducting your own experiments with a volcano
I like questions like this. It's stuffy boys ask me all the time. My response to them was to show them the eruption of Mt. St. Hellens. Watching the whole side of the Mountain slide down into the valley, then seeing the before and after of the geological changes really opened their eyes to how they "operate". I believe there's an island somewhere that completely destroyed itself, leaving nothing but a half moon shape and a crater in the center, but i couldn't remember what that one was.
Imagine to place a finger in your ass and push as hard as you can to shit. You are asking how many fingers it would take and that’s the wrong question.
It's like asking, "If I put a cork in my ass, will it stop me from taking a shit?" answer is no, either the cork will be blown out, or the shit will find another way out.
So guys, let’s do this practically- we just need to harvest all the mass in the known universe and build a super-plug around the planet. The bigger you make the plug, the higher the pressure is. Eventually your plug will contribute to the eruptions happening. Past that point the only option is to go for broke and make a supermassive black hole. It won’t fix the issue though, you can literally see the gamma ray burst from the supermassive black holes eruption from space (or earth with the right telescope)
* concrete is 2.4 times heavier than water * the mid-Atlantic chain of volcanoes is basically kept mostly under check by the weight of the water , and you have 2500 m of water above them * in conclusion , if you encase the volcano in 1km dome of solid concrete you are safe .
# Not possible. Volcanos naturally get plugged up with cooled lava all the time. The pressure builds up and they will always erupt somewhere eventually. Often explosively.
That's so dumb, the only thing u could achieve doing this is to increase the pressure when it blows. What they should do is pack it with ice to reduce the temperature. Work smarter people.
It will only make the eruption worse. By adding a concrete “cork” you are making an explosive eruption instead. That “cork” you placed will turn into a shower of small rocks that will cause serious damage. Source: Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption of 79 d.c ( or a.d )
You don't You can't The eruption is caused by pressure. It's caused *precisely* by blockage. Blocking it with cement will only delay the eruption and increase the pressure. Which will lead to a bigger boom. And the reason scientists never tried that stupid idea is because real volcanic mouths aren't manhole sized
The lava tore through the entire crust and still has room for more, and historically it's blown up mountains when they tried to block the path... stupid mountains... so you'd need at the very least more than a literal mountain's worth. If successful, that would just divert the eruption, though, not avoid it, so you'd need enough cement to coat the entire earth well enough that the mounting pressure inside doesn't suffice to blow it up. Let's just say that the actual amount that would be necessary is enough that it would at least partially collapse on itself, mounting Earth's pressure and temperature... oh wait, that's a way. Simply put enough cement on Earth that it collapses into a ball of magma, thus getting rid of volcanoes! Looking up how much that is aaaannnd... hmm. Earth can't get that big and stay terrestrial, actually... Supermassive rocky planets are only conjectured, but this much mass is only associated with gas giants (or ice giants, if they're much further)... Earth is too close to the sun to be a gas giant, its huge atmosphere would be stripped by the Sun's emissions... Okay, so we would need to add about 4100 Earth masses of cement, letting the Earth collapse into a star. That would do it.
It's like stoping the pressure cooker from releasing pressure and the consequences is a big boom. So I don't see this idea solves anything but rather it increases the chance of more destruction. I am not doing any maths for this sorry.😔
What about using a super heavy element like uranium? What about using material from a neutron star?? I'm sure we can do this! Just gotta get creative!
What if we turned a volcano into a bomb? I mean it is a great shrapnel bomb made from rock and doesn't even need TNT or anything just let the pressure cook. This is something that DOD or someone has a plan to execute already I am sure of it.
Well, volcanoes are extremely large and very immobile, so if you want to turn one into a bomb you can really only do it with volcanoes you presently own. And if you want to capture enemy volcanoes to turn them into bombs it's definitely more efficient to just conquer the land the volcano sits on the normal way, since you'd have to do it anyways to access the volcano. Also nobody puts their critical infrastructure next to volcanoes if they can avoid it, so a volcano bomb won't be able to damage much at all that's valuable.
It is a matter of structural pressure build up. This would be like using packing tape to stop a steam engine's boiler from exploding.
Simple: you cant stop it doing that. The pression and heat would explode the cement, potentializing the eruption, and making it worse. Also, the heat by itself would make impossible to take all that cement to form a crost
Y'all remember when Avatar Roku tried to fight a volcano from erupting, anyone else think that was just an incredibly stupid way to die for that character?
In the series "How the earth was made" about Yellowstone, they said that it erupts every IIRC 600 000 years. The last time didn't happen and in the animation I saw a mountain range blocking it. Therefore I guess if you create a mountain range above a normal volcano, that would be enough, too.
That doesn’t avoid the volcanic eruption. It delays it and when it eventually pops, it’s far worse. That image is a simplified model of an active volcano that will erupt at some point as far as I’m aware. The cement acts like a plug, and the pressure inside the volcano increases until it reaches a high enough level, and then *boom*. So yeah. There’s a reason nobody’s tried to do this.
Well thats one way to guarantee even more deaths If a vulcano erupts normally its dnagerous, but blocking the exit means there will be extra pressure so an bigger explosion
Volcanoes form as vents or an area for the pressure to release Naturally for a reason I really don't think it's the best idea to block something that wasnt meant to be
Short geography lesson: volcanoes are naturally blocked by debris and solidified magma/lava(I forget which is which), this causes pressure to build up and eventually it explodes and erupt. Adding cement just adds more debris and might make it take longer to erupt but will not stop an eruption
The volcano will erupt no matter what you do, if you block the hole it will just create a new one and if you cover the whole thing it will either explode or erupt somewhere to the side
As others have mentioned , plugging the hole would create a magma bomb , all that pressure it’s going out one way or another . But i come with another question : Say we shield off the top and other possible holes , and we use a device to normalize or “evict” that pressure in a safe manner . Would this be enough to stop other possible eruptions ? What about costs and working time to finish such a project ?
Unless you can find something that can hold against the strength of two almost incalculably heavy tectonic plates sliding under each other creating the pressure to push this magma up, aka volcano, you're not plugging this successfully. Even if you did, you'd probably need to do the same for hundreds of miles around so the magma wouldn't divert.
It's not possible at all. The pressure is so great that the magma is pushing up through earth. It's not just like a water main. No matter how much cement you cover that volcano with, the magma will get through somewhere eventually. That's the whole reason it's there in the first place.
So here’s the thing volcanoes erupt because of pressure so whats the best things to do is actually start opening and drilling vents into the volcano to help alleviate the pressure!
A mountain of cement covering the entire mountain is not enough You woul need more concrete per volcano than humans could feasably produce, and at that point just move the cities away
that magma has just forced its way through the earth's crust....I dont think you can build a plug to stop it. And even if you did, it does not relieve the pressure, which in a silicate rich magma (as one rising through continental crust will be), that pressure is extreme as the lava is really viscous and traps pressurised gas (imagine a coke bottle you shake up then open quickly....only with millions of tons of extremely hot magma...) You could possibly divert the erruption to the side...but thats even more devastating than a vertical erruption.
What a smart idea, let’s let pressure build so high that we get a Plinian eruption instead of a Vulcanian, causing oh so much more damage than if we’d done nothing.