Volcanic eruptions: can science tell how long these phenomena will last?

Science cannot answer with certainty questions such as how long the eruption of the new La Palma volcano will last, or whether or not more eruptive mouths will open, the volcanologist from the Spanish Higher Center for Scientific Research (CSIC) Vicente Soler has acknowledged to Efe. .

These questions, which can be asked by citizens or the media, have a very difficult answer, since and to which there is no access, Soler recalled.

He has commented that, if the answer to this type of question is “I don’t know”, the social judgment will be to ask “So what is that guy doing? [señor] there”, but it is necessary to understand that and that knowledge is had indirectly.

“Nobody has been able to have an approach” to the interior of the Earth and, therefore, it is not surprising that real knowledge is scarce, in the sense that there are no physical observables that can be measured directly, said Vicente Soler.

Thus, he explained, when it is said that magma approaches the surface it is because that is what some parameters indicate, but no one has seen its journey in the depths of the planet.

In the case of the new volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma, whose eruption began last Sunday in the municipality of El Paso, the process is at “cruising speed” and, in the words of Vicente Soler, it is almost necessary.

In the current state of affairs in the La Palma eruption, there are geophysical and geochemical observable parameters that allow an “approximate” idea of ​​the state of the system and, thus, it is known that it is in a state of great tension, but the fact that do not grow is a fact that suggests that

But from there to assert that it will last 25 days or that it will not suffer a stoppage or a new eruptive center will be opened “today”, this volcanologist from the Spanish Higher Center for Scientific Research has reiterated.

Vicente Soler has insisted that the interior of the Earth “It is not possible to touch it directly”.

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