In this world of ours there are but three lava lakes. Nyiragongo in Zaire, Erebus in Antarctica, and Erta Ale in Ethiopia.

Of the three, Erebus, shrouded in snow and ice, riddled with crevasses and gas pockets, located literally at the ends of the Earth, is considered the easiest to visit.

Nyiragongo, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a unique volcano in that it erupts the fluid and easy-flowing lavas of a shield volcano, but has the extremely steep sides of a stratovolcano. The combination allows lava to spill down the flanks of the volcano at up to 60mph. This volcano is extremely dangerous, and has the most active lava lake in the world.

But today we shall talk about Erta Ale. One of my friends recently visited Erta Ale, which is located in the Danakil Depression, deep in eastern Ethiopia in the Afar region. (That always made me think: the three wise men... did they come from Afar?)
The Danakil Depression is actually caused by the East African Rift, where the continent of Africa is being slowly ripped apart. If the rift is successful, there will be new sea floor between Somalia and the rest of Africa. Good news for the Somali pirates, I am sure.
This part of the rift is especially interesting to geologists because it is part of a triple juction, where three spreading centers join as one. One spreading center caused the Red Sea to open up (much to the chagrin of the Pharaoh). The other caused the Gulf of Aden. Both of these have been busy making seafloor for a while now. The prong that goes down into Africa is the newest, and so far it has succeeded in making the lowest, hottest, and most hell-like place on Earth.



A woman came today to talk about some of the seismic activity that has been going on in this region of the world. Apparently in 2006 there were suddenly a hundred earthquakes here in two days. Within the next two weeks, the total had climbed to 170 separate events. Some of her colleagues were out in the field interviewing people about what they had seen and felt. Periodically the earth would tremble. It began to get worse, and the earth was shaking, and fissures were appearing in the ground around them. The helicopter pilot who had brought them said, "I am leaving. If you want to leave, you are leaving now."

So they went. But two hours later, a gigantic fissure opened up in the very valley where they'd been standing. It was about 50ft across, probably more. ("Little Foot!") Deep in its gaping maw magma was welling, and this magma came up in random other places along the 60km rift zone.

Erta Ale itself sits upon the rift zone. Even as it is being built up by successive lava flows, it is also being torn apart. New lava seeps out its oozing gashes, and every spreading event is punctuated by dike emplacement and curtains of lava erupting out of the ground. My friend climbed to the top of this volcano- it's said to be a relatively mild hike once you get past the stinging sand, sweltering heat, and drooling camels. But it's all worth it for a glimpse of the lava lake:



This volcano has been continuously erupting since 1967. It is believed that its lava lake has been active for almost 100 years.

Thankfully, my friend returned alive and was neither consumed by the volcano nor kidnapped by the militant Afar tribesmen. Sadly, of the two, the latter is probably the most probable. At least these days they don't sell you into slavery as often, as they did to the gentlemen of the 1938 expedition to Emi Koussi in Northern Chad...

...but this is a tale for another time.

The three wise men may not have come from Afar, but Australopithecus afarensis did. So if the majority of physical anthropologists are correct, and A. afarensis was ancestral to both genus Australopithecus and to genus Homo, then it's possible that ALL men came from Afar...
» ranor on 2008-05-01 11:37:22

R:C
I feel so bad because Bickle keeps crying because he's isolated indoors recovering, and Snugglebum keeps crying because he's lonely outside and misses his brother. I'm going to let them have a supervised visit (mostly because I know that if I leave them alone, they're going to start wrestling, which is NOT what Bickle needs right now) but hopefully I'll be able to let them loose on each other on Sundayish.

Would I lock my child in a room by himself to recover from surgery?

Probably. Because for all the times I called my mother overprotective to her face when I was a teenager, it turns out that when the ball's in my court, I'm pretty much the same way.
» ranor on 2008-05-02 10:22:51

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