What happens when lava and water meet? Explosive experiments with manmade lava are helping to answer this important question. By cooking up 10-gallon batches of molten rock and injecting them with ...

Lava erupts into cold sea water on the ocean floor at mid-ocean ridges (at depths of 2,500 m and greater), and the resulting flows make up the upper part of the global oceanic crust1.

After the scientists perfect their rock-melting process, the explosive lava-water experiments will start. The tests will involve pouring the lava — called “the melt” — into a slim, 4-foot-long metal ...

In those experiments, water was injected at speeds that range from 6 to 30 feet per second, and the reactions studied. The lava in those experiments was held in insulated steel boxes ranging in ...

Lava isn't like water, snow or mud. It's liquid rock, so it's heavy, sticky and moving underground. It's also nearly 2,000 degrees.

Lava fountains then feed lava flows. After journeying through Kilauea’s East Rift Zone, lava meets water again as the flow enters the ocean. Underwater, lava changes its appearance, forming lava ...

But if the lava lake levels drop too far below the water table, then water in the suddenly non-magma adjacent areas would have an opportunity to inch closer into the cooling areas.