Comments

  4. Alex says

    Those are some amazing pics. I’m sure there’s an image of jebus in there somewhere.

  5. CG says

    Really awesome! Thanks for sharing those, I particularly like #7 in the set although it’s tough to say why.

  9. firemancarl says

    I agree with all your posts and I was thinking the same thing. Is Bobby watching? nah, he’s to busy talking to his imaginary friend.

  10. CSue says

    Ah, Tonga: land of interesting postage stamps. :>

    I wonder if they’ll figure out some way to issue stamps with bits of lava on them? If anybody can, they will.

  11. Jazmin says

    That is so bloody cool!

    Sometimes I hope I’m wrong about life after death because I really want to be reincarnated as a scientist. The biggest problem would then be deciding on which science to study.

    I’m so glad that the inter-tubes exist and I’m able to feed “the elephant’s child” a little taste of this amazing universe.

  13. Wowbagger, OM says

    The Tongans must have done something to anger God. What’s their position on gay marriage?

  16. D McComb says

    “Those are some amazing pics. I’m sure there’s an image of jebus in there somewhere.”

    I’ve already seen #6 passed off as “the mighty shaft of God.” !!!

  17. Parvis says

    Off-Topic:

    Scientology spokesman confirms Xenu myth:
    http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=9996728
    But then complains that it was “offensive” even to ask the qustion in the first place:

    TD: Right. For you to talk to me, you as somebody who is not a Scientologist to talk to me about what my beliefs are or to ask me to explain any core religious belief, that’s an offensive concept. Nobody should ever be asked to do that.

  19. says

    IT’S THE END TIMES,
    RUN FOR IT!!!!

    Goddam Coast to Coast radio said I had a couple more years to fuck everything up.

  25. Dahan says

    Random Mutant,

    Someone should warn you that PZ has stated that he takes a dim view of the whole “First!” meme. I’d suggest not going down that road again.

    Unless of course you were just saying it was your first post ever at Pharyngula.

  27. says

    For those in the short bus, Jindal was badmouthing volcano science funding in his response to Obama’s economic speech. He was roundly derided for the tone, delivery and falsehoods contained therein.

    I wonder how much CO2 is released and whether the ash compensates by reducing sunlight? There’s no doubt that volcanic gases and debris can be of such large volume as to cause global effects. I’ve seen that in my own lifetime (St. Helens). You get a few big volcanoes going off at any frequency and you could pretty much kiss the climate and atmosphere goodbye.

    Are we sure somebody isn’t testing underwater weapons?

    Enjoy.

  30. eddie says

    A giant bombardier beetle phallus!
    Run for it!

    Re DM OM, jindal said that volcano monitoring was a waste of money. The douche.

  35. Lithified says

    An now a 7.9 earthquake in the same area. A tsunami warning was issued, but the wave was relatively small.

    http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/

    The obvious question is whether there is any connection between the two. Interesting stuff…

  37. cactusren says

    Fantastic pictures! I have a friend who is currently on a ship somewhere near Tonga doing seismic surveys. She’s obviously a bit hard to reach right now, but I’m sure this is pretty exciting for her research group. I hope they’re close enough that they get to see this!

  40. Lee says

    @27: “I wonder how much CO2 is released and whether the ash compensates by reducing sunlight? ”

    On CO2, very little. Amospheric {CO2} is being monitored in real time, at a couple dozen sites around the globe, and even after major eruptions like Pinatubo you simply cant see any impact on the global concentration.

    Ash, and more importantly sulfate aerosols, can have a major impact. Pinatubo caused the world to cool for 2-3 years – but the aerosols wash out within a few years so the impact is short lived.

  41. Felix says

    Creotards rejoice! More fossils destroyed in eruption! More gaps to fill with myth! Evolutionists despair! Dawkins opens secret underground production facility to counteract development by systematically churning out missing links for worldwide gaps in fossil record!

  42. WTFinterrobang says

    Next thing you know, the fundies will be saying they see PZ’s…I mean Satan’s face in the steam and ash.

    Personally, I think the only thing I can see is Jon Kowk hugging Eric Holder in front of his high school in photo #10.

  43. Josh says

    Catastrophism, 1.
    Uniformitarianism, 0.

    Or at least, that’s how the creationists will spin this.

  45. LisaJ says

    Wow! That is incredible. I am so jealous of those people taking pictures in the boat (one of the pictures in the link).

  47. hf says

    Didn’t Tonga cause a huge famine that killed most of humanity about 75000 years ago?

    I’m sure there’s an image of jebus in there somewhere.

    You heard it here first: Jebus supports genocide.

  50. Basset_Fan says

    A couple of hours ago I was sitting on a small beach near South Point on the Big Island of Hawai`i when a small helicopter came in low over the water and landed on a small plain just above us.

    A nice young man climbed down from the copter, approached our group and informed us there was a possibility of a tsunami due to a large earthquake near Tonga. He politiely asked us to leave the area, which we did.

    On our way home we heard on the radio the tsunami alert had been cancelled.

    I live about 12 miles from South Point at an elevation of 1,400 feet. This was the second such alert we’ve had in the last week. Waterfront property is highly overrated!

  51. Helen says

    Geoff @ 1

    “I wonder if Gov. Bobby Jindal is seeing it too?”

    Given his attitude, I’m certain he isn’t paying any attention. However, Gov. Palin can see it from her office.

  54. Katkinkate says

    Posted by: hf @ 48 “Didn’t Tonga cause a huge famine that killed most of humanity about 75000 years ago?”

    That was the supervolcano Toba in Indonesia. Isn’t that an island in some of those pictures? The big black mass below the white smoke in No.3-7. Is the volcano beside an island or is that a new island from the eruption?

  56. Menyambal says

    Didn’t Tonga cause a huge famine that killed most of humanity about 75000 years ago?

    That was Toba. Lake Toba in the Indonesian island of Sumatra is the remains of the supervolcano that nearly did for us all. I’ve some Spanish silver dollars that I bought there, and can’t bear to sell them to anybody who doesn’t care where they came from.

    BTW, the Bible doesn’t mention volcanoes. Isn’t that eruption creating land? Isn’t that blasphemy?

  58. debaser says

    Actually Menyambal, Thunderf00t shows an example of creationists using the story of Jonah being swallowed by a fish to be proof that the bible knew about underwater volcanoes (and therefore is scientific) in the “why people laugh at creationists” series somewhere.

  60. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    I love the smell of new crust cooling in the morning–it smells like, orogeny.

    Sniff, sniff. By Josh, you’re right.

  62. Random Mutant says

    Re: Dahan #26… Ooops, mea culpa. Didn’t know PZ’s view on this and anyway, I was wrong!

    Re: Josh #58, ROTFLMFAO!

  64. NewEnglandBob says

    Either the gods are angry or the earth is doing what it has been doing for 4500 million years.

  65. Geoff says

    @Helen #52

    Given his attitude, I’m certain he isn’t paying any attention. However, Gov. Palin can see it from her office.

    If a volcano erupts underwater, do creationist politicians hear?

    Oh I could go all night… heh!

  66. DLC says

    The Hawaiian island chain came into being in a similar fashion, and in fact is still being made today by vulcanism.

    Oh, and– of course I realize it’s humor but can’t resist –If God created the world, then he would have made volcanoes as well. including potential future volcanoes. Oh, and the Toba and Yellowstone super volcanoes. Oh, but wait! Lake Toba never happened because the earth is only 6000 years old!
    See how easy things are when you decide upon willful ignorance ?

  67. Africangenesis says

    DLC,

    I’ve been look for good geology information on this Tonga area, I don’t think these are hot spot volcanoes like the Hawaiian Island arc. Just eyeballing it, it looks like Tonga is on the boundary between the pacific and austrailian plates. One would probably be subducting under the other. It would be interesting to know which, and what the relative motions are.

  68. Krubozumo Nyankoye says

    #14 Not quite. The Galapagos are on the East Pacific Rise which is a spreading center, whereas Tongo is a pair of converging subduction zones. Hence the volcanism is significantly different in the two locations.

    Subduction zone volcanism tends to be more explosive because the magmas are more silicic, viscous, and include greater amounts of volatiles such as CO2, OH, H2O. For comparison one can look at the volcanism in Hawaii which is “hot spot” or “magma plume” volcanism, versus the volcanism of Mt. St. Helens which is analogous to the Tonga events.

    This is not a good example of catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism simply because it is uniformitarian in terms of geologic time. We biological critters think 100
    years is a long time. Geologically it’s a microsecond.

    Yes there are two distinct vents erupting in these images,
    that is unambiguous. One of them appears to be on a pre-existing island mass and the other appears to be submerged.

    #41 was spot on in terms of the possible climatological effects of an eruption, only a few very rare types of volcanos produce significant amounts of CO2, sulphide and
    sulphate areosols are much more problematic. Very violent eruptions can inject them into the stratosphere where they may remain for years.

    Too much else to comment on here so I will shut up now.

  69. Bride of Shrek OM says

    My previously discussed “penisdolia” is activating again. No 7 in the series looks like a humungous dick complete with a massive set of cods on it.

    ..what can I say, I can look at the Mona Lisa and make out a penis in it somewhere.

  70. ctenotrish says

    Awesome. My favs are photos six and twelve, one a close up (relatively) and the other from the far distance. Gorgeous pics. Thanks for the link, PZ!

  71. Man of Science says

    Great Googa-Mooga, people! Right there in slide 11 – It’s a huge octopus! His eye is even looking straight at you! His arms are coiled everywhere! See it! See it! Huh? Huh?

  72. Keanus says

    Reminds me of one of the highlights of my childhood, being witness to the eruption of Paricutin in Mexico in 1948. We got to see it during the day and then after the sun went down. It was like nothing I’ve seen since and the memory remains as vivid today as it was then.

  73. Africangenesis says

    According to wikipedia:

    “In the south, the Pacific Plate has a complex but generally convergent boundary with the Indo-Australian Plate, subducting under it north of New Zealand forming the Tonga Trench and the Kermadec Trench.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Plate

    Since the pacific plate is subducting, this should put the volcanoes and Tonga on the Austrailian plate.

  75. ctenotrish says

    @ #16 “I’ve already seen #6 passed off as “the mighty shaft of God.” !!!”

    Oh, thanks, D McComb!! Take my favorite pic and turn it into a mighty shaft!

    Actually, I’m cool with that. Maybe it can be the mighty shaft of Sven DiMilo, though. :) Since I already have the crush going and all . . .

    I thought it looked more like a Teddy Bear. Sigh.

  76. JohnnieCanuck says

    Africangenesis,

    Google Earth shows the Pacific plate moving at 237 mm/yr north of Tongatapu, and 88 mm/yr further south along the zone, so maybe 150 to 200 mm/yr close to Tongatapu.

    The Tonga trench at that point is 8 km deep and Tongatapu is on the crest of the uplift, with 150 km separating crest and trough.

    I’ve not been able to identify the location of the eruption on Google Earth. There seems to be nothing 10 km SW of the island as mentioned in the photo #2 caption. The island in the foreground of photo #13 might be Atata Island which is to the North of Nuku’alofa.

  77. JamesR says

    Krubozumo
    Thank You
    Where can I go to get some more accurate info regarding this that has some good graphics and can be understood by 8-12 year olds? Also is there a place I can get some vials of volcano dust granules rocks etc? My Niece and Nephew have me as their wayward mentor directing them toward science and reason.

    To all who posted the vids and pics
    Great stuff thnks.

  78. DLC says

    Africangenesis @ #68:
    True. it’s a different mechanism causing the volcano.
    I could have been more exact in my language.
    vulcanism causing islands compared to upthrust.

    Bride of Shrek, OM @#70 :
    Given Da Vinci’s reputed fondness for male genitalia I would not be too surprised to find a few subtly added ones in the portrait.

  83. siMon says

    #83

    This is what I’m talking about. Science teaches us to appreciate such beauty and to explore it all we can.

    beauty for you but a disaster for other.
    what do you want to prove from melting stone ? origin of life ?

  84. says

    Yikes, at first glance I thought Barb’s sarcasm had gotten the better of her and Survivor Island had taken a direct hit!

    Those are amazing photos – number 10 has to be my favourite it was the first photo to truly elicit a proper “Cor Blimey!” moment!

    I don’t think I would have liked to be in the boat that they were taking the photos from – rather them than me!

  85. says

    Stephanie @6,

    my thoughts exactly.

    That fellow who said there is “no danger to the island residents” will be singing a different tune when he is sucked into a vertiginous abyss of space and time filled with cyclopean structures whose very geometry will utterly blast his mind into howling madness, I tell you. Ïa!

  86. Peter Ashby says

    Reports say there is no danger to Tongatapu because trade winds are blowing the ejecta away from the island. These winds are so reliable the ancient Polynesians would voyage outbound along them knowing they could return home when they changed back. Until they learned to sail into and across the wind this was the main method by which all those tiny specs in the vastness of the Pacific were found and settled. While the rest of our ancestors were hugging the coastlines. The Western branch of the Austronesian family did something similar in the Indian Ocean, all the way to Madagascar.

    Look at a globe some time, most world maps cut the Pacific in half and even crop it so you don’t get a sense of the vastness of it. A full third of the world is the Pacific Ocean.

  88. Knockgoats says

    I wonder how much CO2 is released and whether the ash compensates by reducing sunlight? There’s no doubt that volcanic gases and debris can be of such large volume as to cause global effects. I’ve seen that in my own lifetime (St. Helens). – The Tim Channel@27

    Lee@41 is right about the scale of eruptions seen in historic times – just not enough CO2 to make a difference, and other effects cause short-term cooling (climate models predicted the cooling effects of Pinatubo quite accurately). However, there may in the more distant past have been large-scale eruptions producing enough CO2 to trigger rapid global warming and ocean acidification, and consequent mass extinction – notably the PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) estimated from isotopic studies to have added at least 2000Gt of carbon to the ocean-atmosphere system (but a feedback involving the release of methane from clathrates in ocean sediments probably accounts for most of this); and the Permian-Triassic boundary.

  89. Josh says

    AG is correct with the assertion that what’s going on regarding the Tonga Islands isn’t hot-spot volcanism (the mechanism which generated Hawaii). I’m not gonna go into hot-spots here, but the one that produced Hawaii is located in the interior of the Pacific Plate, not at a plate boundary. In contrast, the Tonga Islands sit on the edge of the Australian micro-plate, right next to the Pacific Plate.

    The Tonga Islands are a pretty sweet example of what’s called an island arc. This is a group of volcanic islands that result from a tectonic plate boundary interaction, specifically in a relationship that forms a subduction zone.

    Broadly, subduction zones occur where two tectonic plates converge, and one plate (the less dense plate) descends under the other. The northern west coast of the United States is an example of ocean-continent subduction, where a portion of the Pacific Plate is diving beneath North America. In the broadest terms, these zones produce volcanoes because the descending plate partially melts as it dives into the Earth and heats up. The material that melts first is the least dense stuff from the diving plate. This newly molten plate material rises as bodies of magma, intruding into the “country rock” of the other plate. It will propagate up along faults and fractures, and occasionally melting areas of “country rock.” When it ultimately reaches the surface, we end up with the Cascades. In this example, though, we’re talking about an oceanic plate (dense volcanic rock mostly) subducting beneath a continental plate (which is gonna be a mishmash of numerous different rock types/densities).

    See, for example:
    URL LINK:pubs.usgs.gov/of/2000/ofr-00-0365/subzon.gif
    URL LINK: http://www.richmond.ca/__shared/assets/Tsunami_-_Fig12411.jpg
    URL LINK: http://www.geosci.usyd.edu.au/users/prey/ACSGT/EReports/eR.2003/GroupD/Report1/images/subduction.jpg
    URL LINK: http://www.richmond.ca/__shared/assets/Tsunami_-_Fig12411.jpg

    In Tonga, we have the edge of the Pacific Plate crumpling under the edge of the Australian Plate, so it’s ocean-ocean subduction (i.e., both plates are oceanic crust (dense volcanic rock veneered with oceanic sediment)). When two plates like this smack into each other, we end up with an island arc.

    See:
    URL LINK: http://www.indiana.edu/~g103/G103/week11/conver.jpg
    URL LINK: openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/2717/S279_1_018i.jpg
    URL LINK: http://www.indiana.edu/~g105lab/images/gaia_chapter_13/cont_evol.jpg

    The map in this is a nice bird’s eye view of the Tonga Trench and islands:
    URL LINK: http://www.earthscope.org/es_doc/eno/TM2.pdf

    So, the Pacific Plate is diving under the edge of the Australian (from right to left). The trench is formed by the geometry of the one plate bending under the other. The Tonga Islands are where the magma bodies are reaching the surface and creating volcanoes.

    Figure 6.7 in this has a nice profile across the boundary:
    URL LINK: earthednet.org/Support/ODP/UsingODPMan/Ch6.Investigations.pdf

    Tonga is great. This is one of those places where we can watch virgin crust being produced in real time. Depending on eruption frequency, if this volcano is producing land that’s above the surface of the water, then we’ll be able to see initial soil development and plant growth on these new volcanic terrains, as well as watch wave action weather and erode the new volcanic crust and deposit the detritus from that weathering under the water somewhere else. All of this will be observable in real time during our lifetimes.

    There is a ton more, of course. This is just the most broad-brush treatment of the situation. But seriously–new crust forming right in front of us! Badass.

  90. tsig says

    ” Mrs Tilton-Niggurath | March 20, 2009 5:17 AM

    Stephanie @6,

    my thoughts exactly.

    That fellow who said there is “no danger to the island residents” will be singing a different tune when he is sucked into a vertiginous abyss of space and time filled with cyclopean structures whose very geometry will utterly blast his mind into howling madness, I tell you. Ïa!”

    Sounds like fun!! Bet you could sell tickets.

  91. jimmiraybob says

    I’ve been look for good geology information on this Tonga area, I don’t think these are hot spot volcanoes like the Hawaiian Island arc. Just eyeballing it, it looks like Tonga is on the boundary between the pacific and austrailian plates. One would probably be subducting under the other. It would be interesting to know which, and what the relative motions are.

    This should help. With maps.

    “The Tonga Trench is the site of westward subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the northeastern corner of the Australian Plate (Figure 1).”

  94. Cambrico says

    93: It is the Virgin Mary, you Flying Spagethi Monster worshiper. Don`t you see her rising at the rigth?
    These heathens are blind to the real bulls…. faith.

  97. Grep Agni says

    Does anybody know how deep the water is there? I’d love to know how much water has to be pushed out of the wayof all that ash.

  98. IST says

    Cool pix… I teach no geology whatsoever, and still chose to show my classes today. (never hurts to create some wonder at the natural world). One of them commented that the top of photo 7 looks like the face of (insert name here) from the 300. Led to a nice discussion of pattern recognition. My principal may not be thrilled, since it took time away from an electricity lesson.

    @Greg Apni> Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research
    Volume 176, Issue 4, 15 October 2008, Pages 571-582
    looks at a caldera in that immediate area, and states that the rim is at 150-250m of depth. Not a definitive answer, but at least a baseline.

  99. IST says

    @ Knock> Most of the reports I’ve seen (brief perusal, to be sure) state that the ash is dissolving into the seawater. Since the eruption is underwater, a good deal of the CO2 would as well… this should somewhat balance the pH changes. Chemical oceanography was a couple years ago, someone may have a better answer…

  100. CS says

    I don’t see Jesus in the pics, but I see a lion’s head looking up at the sky at the top of picture #7.
    I wonder what THAT means….

  101. Jelmar says

    lol, if you look at that boston.com page, there is someone called muhammad who last posted a comment full of god and whatnot.