Volcanos and Bubbles

These live streams of the La Palma volcano are fascinating to watch. A small mountain appeared within a week. Then, the entire side of this newly created mountain collapsed, letting loose a flood of lava. The terrain surrounding the volcano is changing by the minute, and this looks likely to continue for weeks to come. The eruption is getting stronger. There's no sign of any letup in the pressures driving the eruption.

There're several things to note from a geological perspective. One thing I hadn't realized before is that volcanos are not created primarily from lava. They are heaps of rocks and gravel tossed out the central vents. These heaps solidify into solid rock as they cool.

There are two types of vents. Some are primarily ejecting hot gases and loose rocks. Others are oozing with lava. In the case of the La Palma volcano, it started with a small fissure oozing lava on a hillside. Then a fissure opened up a little higher up the hill to let out hot gas, and it was this vent that ended up creating the small cone-shaped mountain that we now have.

With more pressure, the fissures became more energetic. Lava filled up in a cauldron eroded into the mountain, and the gas vent threw rocks ever-father away. When the pressure increased even more, a new fissure opened up between the two original ones. The top of the mountain changed its topography to accommodate for the extra pressure.

Things looked like they would continue as before, only with more force. However, when I checked on the volcano this morning, the entire side of it had collapsed. The cone shape was damaged. A deep furrow had been carved out by the lava flow.

Volcanos don't always build, they tear things down too. Lava flows are erosive. They carve into rock. What is built up over weeks are sometimes destroyed in minutes. Geological time is not always measured in millions of years. A few hours are sometimes enough to change a landscape completely.

This tendency towards catastrophic change is not unique to volcanos. Many things behave this way. Things can look stable for years before they erupt, and when they erupt, the problem may look manageable. The Evergrande debacle in China appears to be of this kind. It has been carefully managed. Damage has been directed outwards. Evergrade itself is being unwound. Banks in China have the full backing of the Chinese state. Everything looked manageable.

But then, like a volcano, the bottom fell out of the Chinese housing market, and there's nothing anyone can do to mitigate the damage. China's housing bubble is too big to save. It's estimated to involve some $60 trillion dollars in assets. Not even China can come up with enough money to prop this thing up.

Reflection in a soap bubble

By Brocken Inaglory. The image was edited by user:Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link