[Rockhounds] Drillers break into magma chamber

[pmodreski at aol.com]

Of course, they didn't actually drill into "THE" magma chamber that feeds Kilauea Volcano, it is just probably a small body of magma that was intruded, as a dike or other small intrusion, off to the side somewhere, and has been slowly cooling and crystallizing since the intrusion event. 

And actually, there is a story that when a magma intrusion episode took place in Iceland, near the site of a geothermal steam plant, some lava or ash was actually erupted out of one of the geothermal drill holes.  (I just tried to check this online, this was at the Krafla power plant in central Iceland, I did find a description of steam explosions that blew out one of the drill holes and formed a crater, in the 1970s:)

 

“Well No. 4 was being drilled at this site here when suddenly an underground steam explosion managed to get its way to the surface.

People drilling the hole with a giant rig were just able to pull it out of the way and get to safety when the steam exploded and dug a crater that's more than 100 feet deep and about as wide.”

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16780339


You've got to be careful doing this kind of stuff!  The drillers in Hawaii, luckily, only hit a "calm" body of non-gassy cooling lava that didn't come into any violent contact with groundwater.

Pete

-----Original Message-----
From: Kreigh Tomaszewski <Kreigh at tomaszewski.net>
To: Rockhounds at drizzle.com: A mailing list for rock and gem collectors <rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Tue, 1
6 Dec 2008 9:45 pm
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] Drillers break into magma chamber 


Hi Pete, 
 
Since a successful geothermal energy company found the magma chamber in their exploration, your pioneering research must have worked in the long run. 
 
Time to stop wondering -- it works. 
 
Take a bow. 
 
Kreigh 
 
 




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