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Researchers find new form of Mars lava flow

High-resolution photos of lava flows on Mars reveal coiling spiral patterns that resemble snail or nautilus shells. Such patterns have been found in a few locations on Earth, but never before on Mars. The ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Apr 26, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Evidence of second fast north-south pole flip found

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Earth's magnetic poles flip around every 200,000 years or so, with north becoming south and vice versa. Normally, the process takes 4-5,000 years and it ought to be impossible for the ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 06, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (44) | comments 29 | with audio podcast report

Seventh Graders Find a Cave on Mars

(PhysOrg.com) -- California middle school students using the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter have found lava tubes with one pit that appears to be a skylight to a cave.

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jun 17, 2010 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (39) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

Epic volcanic activity flooded Mercury's north polar region

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since the Mariner 10 mission in 1974 snapped the first pictures of Mercury, planetary scientists have been intrigued by smooth plains covering parts of the surface. Some suspected past ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Sep 29, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (6) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Scientists find microbes in lava tube living in conditions like those on Mars

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists from Oregon has collected microbes from ice within a lava tube in the Cascade Mountains and found that they thrive in cold, Mars-like conditions.

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Dec 15, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (17) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

Deep-sea volcanoes don't just produce lava flows, they also explode

Most deep-sea volcanoes produce effusive lava flows rather than explosive eruptions, both because the levels of magmatic gas tend to be low, and because the volcanoes are under a lot of pressure from the surrounding ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Mar 28, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (6) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Cloudy with a chance of pebble showers: Simulation suggests rocky exoplanet has bizarre atmosphere

(PhysOrg.com) -- So accustomed are we to the sunshine, rain, fog and snow of our home planet that we find it next to impossible to imagine a different atmosphere and other forms of precipitation.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 29, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (26) | comments 12

Geologic map of Jupiter's moon Io details an otherworldly volcanic surface

More than 400 years after Galileo's discovery of Io, the innermost of Jupiter's largest moons, a team of scientists led by Arizona State University (ASU) has produced the first complete global geologic map ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Mar 19, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (8) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Team explains how dinosaurs rose to prominence

A shade more than 200 million years ago, the Earth looked far different than it does today. Most land on the planet was consolidated into one continent called Pangea. There was no Atlantic Ocean, and the rulers ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Mar 22, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (17) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Down the Lunar Rabbit-hole

A whole new world came to life for Alice when she followed the White Rabbit down the hole. There was a grinning cat, a Hookah-smoking caterpillar, a Mad Hatter, and much more. It makes you wonder... what's ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 13, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (27) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

New ancient fungus finding suggests world's forests were wiped out in global catastrophe

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists beleive extinct fungus species capitalised on a world-wide disaster and thrived on early Earth.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Oct 01, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (25) | comments 1

Sandtrapped Rover Makes a Big Discovery

Homer's Iliad tells the story of Troy, a city besieged by the Greeks in the Trojan War. Today, a lone robot sits besieged in the sands of Troy while engineers and scientists plot its escape.

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Dec 03, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (56) | comments 11

Study on effect of electricity on liquids bucks conventional science (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Whether gazing into lava lamps or watching balsamic vinegar mix with olive oil, people have long been transfixed by the seemingly mystical way that droplets of one liquid find each other within ...

Physics / General Physics

created Sep 16, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (17) | comments 4

Lava formations in eastern Oregon linked to rip in giant slab of Earth

Like a stream of air shooting out of an airplane's broken window to relieve cabin pressure, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego say lava formations in eastern Oregon are the result ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 15, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Planet Smash-Up Sends Vaporized Rock, Hot Lava Flying (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 10, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (16) | comments 5

Lava

Lava is molten rock expelled by a volcano during eruption. When first expelled from a volcanic vent, it is a liquid at temperatures from 700 °C to 1,200 °C (1,300 °F to 2,200 °F). Although lava is quite viscous, with about 100,000 times the viscosity of water, it can flow great distances before cooling and solidifying, because of both its thixotropic and shear thinning properties.

A lava flow is a moving outpouring of lava, which is created during a non-explosive effusive eruption. When it has stopped moving, lava solidifies to form igneous rock. The term lava flow is commonly shortened to lava. Explosive eruptions produce a mixture of volcanic ash and other fragments called tephra, rather than lava flows. The word "lava" comes from Italian, and is probably derived from the Latin word labes which means a fall or slide. The first use in connection with extruded magma (molten rock below the Earth's surface) was apparently in a short account written by Francesco Serao on the eruption of Vesuvius between May 14 and June 4, 1737. Serao described "a flow of fiery lava" as an analogy to the flow of water and mud down the flanks of the volcano following heavy rain.

For more information about Lava, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Related topics: volcano