Bombing a volcano?

By Victoria Jaggard, SCIENCE executive editor

Like most of the internet, I think Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest shows ever made. In a series jam-packed with emotional and complex storylines, the first season episode “The Fortune Teller” doesn’t make many “best of” lists. But I love it because it’s funny as heck while setting up key character dynamics—including a protagonist so powerful he can save a village by diverting lava from an erupting volcano.

As I found out this week, though, you don’t need to be a powerful bender to divert lava. Unlike the Avatar, no one in the real world has been able to totally stop lava in its tracks with wind. But humans have tried all sorts of other methods with varying degrees of success—including more than one attempt at bombing the molten flows to get them to change course.

In 1935 Thomas Jaggar, the founder and director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, called on the Army to drop bombs on channels and tubes (pictured above) that were inadvertently funneling Mauna Loa’s lava toward the town of Hilo. The idea was to disrupt the tubes so that lava would go spilling in a different direction, Robin George Andrews reports. The 600-pound bombs fell in late December, and technically the lava stopped flowing toward Hilo in early January, prompting Jaggar to declare the mission a success. But even at the time, many critics thought it was mere coincidence.

Shockingly, though, explosives did help engineers save an Italian town in 1992, when officials placed strategic dynamite charges around a lava tube coming off Mount Etna (pictured below in a radar image taken in 1994 from aboard the space shuttle Endeavour). In Iceland, authorities were able to quench a 1973 lava flow by dousing it with billions of gallons of seawater. And good old-fashioned barriers have worked to at least slow destruction around other erupting peaks. “They seem to more reliably buy time than bombing does,” says the University of Auckland’s Sophia Tsang.

And the point of it all really is buying time, the experts emphasize. Humans can’t stop a volcano from erupting, but if you can divert a lava flow, you can at least give people time to gather valuables and evacuate. “You can delay things,” says Tobias Dürig, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland. “But in the end, the volcano wins.”

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TODAY IN A MINUTE

Getting ready for kids: There are 28 million Americans from 5 to 11 years old, and approval is expected soon for their COVID-19 vaccinations. A third of parents say they want to get their kids vaccinated right away, which will make a big difference in the nation’s fight against the pandemic. It can’t come soon enough, Nat Geo reports. According to the CDC, nearly 2 million kids have contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and more than 150 have died. Here’s our guide to help kids who are afraid of shots. (Pictured above, a boy getting a COVID-19 vaccine in June in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.)

A new planet? An odd x-ray signal hints that a Saturn-size world could be the first known planet lurking in the Whirlpool Galaxy 28 million light-years away. The signal, which would have to be repeated to get closer to confirming a planet, spotlights a new way researchers can look for planets, Michael Greshko writes.

How crabs moved out of the ocean: An ancient crustacean found in amber may reveal a critical point in the evolutionary history of one of Earth’s most versatile animals: crabs. This 100-million-year-old fossil may be the first known non-marine crab—and it is helping researchers resolve a prehistoric puzzle about when crabs started to move away from the seas, Nat Geo reports.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

Deepest earthquake on record? It’s long been thought that earthquakes occur no deeeper than a few hundred feet below the surface. But scientists believe a temblor struck some 751 kilometers (467 miles) beneath Japan’s Bonin Islands, a depth they have long thought unlikely, if not impossible. While deep quakes don't cause the same kind of devastation as their shallow counterparts, studying these events helps scientists decipher the enigmatic ways our planet shifts far beneath our feet, Maya Wei-Haas reports.

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WE ASKED, YOU ANSWERED

‘Geoengineering’ climate change? Science has created more efficient solar panels, window panes, and electric vehicle batteries. Should scientists experiment to shade a warming planet by lacing our atmosphere with sun-reflecting particles? Nat Geo and Morning Consult polled 2,200 Americans on their views. Overall, 41 percent of respondents supported the idea while 36 percent opposed them (the remainder did not know or select an opinion). There were big age breaks, with 47 percent of those 18-34 supporting these efforts, compared to less than a third of those 65 or older. More than 100 newsletter readers also responded, with their emails breaking into three camps: 1) NO NO NO!; 2) tempting but don’t know enough and we seem to mess up everything we try; and 3) climate is such an emergency we should try, even if there are unknowns. “Dispersing reflective particles into our atmosphere may become a last desperate experiment,” reader Nita Zepeda wrote. “I hope we can develop a better plan.” (Pictured above, a setting sun and Earth’s horizon from the International Space Station.)

This week’s question: When buying a product, how important is energy efficiency, environmentally friendly materials, its carbon footprint, or some portion of the sale being donated to a cause? Or do you decide mainly on price or convenience? Let us know. We’re polling a group of Americans on these questions, and we’ll report the results and a few of your comments in next week’s newsletter. Thanks!

THE NIGHT SKIES

A sea monster for Halloween: Trick-or-treaters can gaze up at a dark, moonless sky this week and find a stellar monster staring back at them. On the next clear night, face toward the east and track down Cetus, the sea monster constellation. You’ll find Cetus swimming underneath the four-star pattern Great Square of Pegasus and constellation Pisces. The second-brightest star in Cetus that marks its nose is Menkar, a monster in its own right. We can easily see this dying giant star with the naked eye, even from light-polluted suburbs, despite it being 220 light-years from Earth. — Andrew Fazekas

Related: The ‘small wonders’ unlocking secrets of the solar system

SMALL WONDERS

THE LAST GLIMPSE

Pack mentality: A group of 11 dinosaurs all died within a few feet of each other 193 million years ago in what is now Argentina. It’s not known how they died, but they probably didn’t reach their second birthday. A team studying these and more fossils, all from the same species, says there’s evidence the long-necked Mussaurus was one of the earliest dinosaurs to move in age-segregated herds. “We have very, very little to no information about dinosaur behavior at the beginning of their history,” says study leader Diego Pol, paleontologist and Nat Geo Explorer.

Subscriber exclusive: See how new technology is reimagining dinosaurs

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