Ash Melts News Today

hazards from volcanic eruptions are pyroclastic at speeds like a jetliner. man: [speaking spanish] jess phoenix: it will obliterate trees. it will take out people. it can even reshape the geology of the area. nobody can outrun a pyroclastic flow. if you are faced with one, you are dead. welcome to violent earth. im liev schreiber. more than 80% of the earths surface was forged by volcanoes. they helped create fertile soil for agriculture, and volcanic gases helped form our atmosphere. ...

major hazards? >> from volcanic eruptions are pyroclastic flows the rock fragments, and gases are moving at speeds like a jetliner it will it can even reshape the geology of the area. nobody can outrun a pyroclastic flow. if you are faced with one, you are dead. welcome to violent earth. im liev schreiber. more than 80% of the earths surface was forged by volcanoes. they helped create fertile soil for agriculture, and volcanic gases helped form our atmosphere. without volcanoes, we wou...

>> i think it could last a long time. this is a significant event for europe and plane travel. you cannot fly a jet plane through ash. i know it looks all compacted and you could fly around it. as it gets more diffuse, away from the volcano itself, theres ash in the sky and you cant see it. ash melts in the jet plane itself. in the engine, it melts and becomes like lava glass. you dont want that in your jet plane because in the jet itself, it will stop running and the plane will fall out of the ...

People reported there were sonic booms going on as well as it came through the atmosphere. >> how often does it happen? >> we go through it every year. they are rarely anything like that. most of the time we see small showers. this was an explosion. >> whats going on in iceland. theres a huge eruption. flights to europe are stopped. how long could it last? >> it could last a long time. this is a significant event for europe and plane travel. you cannot fly a jet plane through ash. i know it look...

>> how often does it happen? >> we go through it every year. they are rarely anything like that. most of the time we see small showers. this was an explosion. >> whats going on in iceland. theres a huge eruption. flights to europe are stopped. how long could it last? >> it could last a long time. this is a significant event for europe and plane travel. you cannot fly a jet plane through ash. i know it looks all compacted and you could fly around it. as it gets more diffuse, away from the volcano...

Of the airports in the uk are closed. >> correct. this is not precautionprecautio. this is a mandatory do-not-fly zone literally, because this is a particle blonwn up many thousands of times. you dont want that going through your cars engine, let alone a jet engine, and this because its ash melts back down into lava and then like glass, like you said earlier, like ob siddian, and then it deposits itself on the back of the jet and the jet engine on the plane can choke itself. >> yep. >> look what...

Engine to a halt. one more picture. even more -- even though the pumice-like nature of this. the problem is when this gets into the internal combustion part of the jet, the melting part of that ash is lower than the temperature of the engine. literally the ash melts back into lava, it could shoot out the end of the jet. by the time it gets shot out of the the end of the jet, it cools down below the melting point of lava and so it just coagulates and just collects on the back of the jet and liter...