A disaster that "moves" slowly
Dangers and disasters often occur in a split second and catch people off guard. But if there is a catastrophe that "attacks" the human world at the speed of a snail, how should humanity prepare? Don't underestimate this moving disaster, once it appears, it will bring huge losses to mankind.
Mud volcanoes, a special eruption landform, erupting at a rate like a snail, take Indonesia's mud volcano as an example, its coverage rate is only 0.001 square kilometers per day, but it has been erupting for 17 years.
Today, the total area covered by mud has exceeded 1,300 full-scale football fields, and has caused economic losses of more than $70 billion, and many people have been displaced.
But why does such a "volcano" cause such bad problems to people, and where is its harm? Let's start with the basic concept of a mud volcano, a landform formed by a combination of mud, water, gas, and other substances.
Unlike volcanoes, mud volcanoes do not produce lava and are not necessarily driven by magmatic activity. From the appearance point of view, the mud volcano is not as great as the volcano, the smallest mud volcano is only 1~2 meters high, and the highest is only about 700 meters.
Most of the mud produced by mud volcanoes is carried out in the form of "hot water", and the underground material is heated and carried deep into the surface by fluid changes, and then mixed with underground deposits, resulting in mud exudates.
Due to the local pressure imbalance in the subsurface, mud exudates and other mixed minerals are forced to move upwards through geological faults or fractures. Geologists believe that the activity of mud volcanoes is mainly related to subduction zones.
Gradually revealing mud
Today, humans have counted more than 1,100 mud volcanoes, and these mud volcanoes have remained quite stable, not only in their state, but also in their temperature. The temperature of the mud volcano can vary from 2°C to 100°C, depending on the eruption material and the time of the eruption.
In addition, scientists speculate that mud volcanoes may also be caused by perforated structures formed by pressure on the mud bottom. This structure destroys the Earth's surface or seabed. If the exhaust is related to the production of hydrocarbons, hydrated deposits, their temperature may be as low as the freezing point of the ejected material.
In most cases, 86% of the gas released by mud-volcanic structures is methane, with relatively little carbon dioxide and nitrogen. These ejected substances are usually fine solid slurries suspended in water, which may contain salts, acids, and a mixture of various hydrocarbons.
Don't look at the amount of mud volcanoes that erupt in a day, but they can change the landscape over time. In addition, mud volcanoes are mostly liquid and solid during eruptions, and leakage can still occur after entering dormancy.
According to early estimates by scientists, mud volcanoes on land may emit 10~20Tg (1Tg is 1 million tons) of methane per year. In addition, scientists in the statistics of 120 mud volcanoes predict that the hydrocarbons generated by mud volcano eruptions and leakage can reach 35~45Tg per year.
As a result, most mud volcanic activity today appears to be an effective natural source of greenhouse gases and plays an important role in global climate dynamics. Essentially, mud volcanoes are geological features, the processes by which material from the Earth's interior is brought to the surface through geological movements.
In contrast to the height of eruptions that are often several kilometers long, mud volcanoes are mostly only a few centimeters or meters high. Mud volcanoes are also commonly found at convergent plate boundaries, and mud volcanoes occur on continental margins, within continents, and throughout the deep-sea environment.
So today, scientists are once again upgrading the statistics of mud volcanoes, and today there are at least 7,000 mud volcanoes on Earth, and mud volcanoes in different regions are related to local plates and internal activity.
Bound by mud to everything
For a more practical example, look no further than the mud volcano near the Indonesian island of Java. The mud volcano, called Lusi, has been erupting since late May 2006 and has not stopped.
The mud volcano releases 180,000 cubic meters of mud every day, and more than a decade later, the surrounding villages have long been buried in 40 meters of mud, in which 60,000 houses have been destroyed and 13 people have died.
Richard Davis, a geologist at Durham University in the United Kingdom, believes that the eruption of the Lucy mud volcano was driven by pressurized water from deep aquifers, which are located in permeable material below impervious rock layers. Prior to this, natural gas was being developed locally. Because the drill bit used to drill the natural gas well destroyed the original equilibrium pressure, the wellbore also pierced the impervious rock.
Eventually, water gushes out from below and is carried to the ground wrapped in mud. Using existing data, the scientists modeled that Davis and his colleagues estimated that Lucy would live 26 years. So, from the eruption to the present, Lucy still needs years to complete the eruption.
Of course, there are also reservations from scientists, who believe that the eruption of the mud volcano is more due to eruptions brought by tectonic activity. For the local community, the material from the mud volcano has changed the delta downstream, and the large amount of sediment carried by the eruption has also caused problems in people's lives.
If mud volcanoes were just such slow eruptions, the impact on human settlements alone might solve part of the problem. But the problem is that most of the substances that erupt from mud volcanoes are somewhat toxic, especially mud mixtures.
Such mixtures may contain carcinogenic polycyclic hydrocarbons, including other harmful substances such as methane. Over time, the entire environment is wrapped in the foul-smelling mud of the mud volcano. Nature has proved to mankind that disasters do not have to happen very quickly, and that humans are helpless at a slow pace.