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community weblog
Video of V3cam being destroyed by lava fountain
(With 2:00 video) The V3 camera was located on the south rim of Halema'uma'u crater at the summit of Kīlauea volcano on the Island of Hawai'i. The camera, located in a hazardous closed area of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, was buried by tephra from an inclined lava fountain between 9:55 and 9:57 am HST on December 6. The story on Big Island Video News
posted by ShooBoo on Dec 06, 2025 at 8:42 PM
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WHOA
posted by supermedusa at 8:57 PM
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> WHOA
nailed it
posted by okayturnip at 9:07 PM
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nothing like a bit of mother nature to demonstrate how fundamentally puny we humans and all of our noise really is.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:07 PM
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Man, the yields on that tile are gonna be wild next turn.
posted by pwnguin at 9:39 PM
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I dunno, man- it just looks like a lot of smoke and dust and OH SHIT
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:47 PM
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WITNESS!!!
posted by neonamber at 9:54 PM
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stick it back in the box and do a warranty return
posted by flabdablet at 10:10 PM
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stick it back in the box and do a warranty return
You won't even need a box. Just carve out a block of lava around it and whack a label on it.
posted by rory at 1:33 AM
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i dunno, it was like that when i opened it
posted by flabdablet at 2:56 AM
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Tūtū Pele wants her privacy.
posted by at by at 6:38 AM
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"nothing like a bit of mother nature to demonstrate how fundamentally puny we humans and all of our noise really is."
Naah. For that you need Astronomy.
https://www.space.com/astronomy/black-holes/the-biggest-black-hole-ever-seen-scientists-find-one-with-mass-of-36-billion-suns
"36 *Billion* Suns like ours. All crammed into one "spot".
posted by aleph at 7:05 AM
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I was expecting TV anchor desk coverage in the video link. This was SO much better.
posted by brachiopod at 7:05 AM
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That was strangely emotionally intense.
posted by gwint at 7:21 AM
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Sometimes it was a little disorienting because it seemed like the camera was moving, of like when sitting in a parked car and the next one over starts moving and for a second it feels like your car is moving.
posted by waving at 7:38 AM
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Strangely emotionally intense is a good description. It went from "huh" to "oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck" imperceptibly.
posted by Spike Glee at 8:00 AM
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I've seen water fountains and steam geysers but it never occurred to me that a lava fountain is a fountain of fucking flying rock.
posted by fiercekitten at 8:44 AM
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Mr supermedusa and I actually got in an argument about how big the flakes of cooling lava were. He thinks as big as a washing machine (very specific!) I think somewhat smaller.
Either way: WHOA
posted by supermedusa at 9:20 AM
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"a fountain of fucking flying" molten "rock".
Geology is just amazing.
posted by Windopaene at 10:03 AM
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Geology rocks.
(though geography is where it's at)
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:17 AM
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For that you need Astronomy.
Behold the majesty of the Pillars of Creation! (CW: pay attention to domain name)
posted by flabdablet at 10:24 AM
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Caught this when you could still pull up the live stream and scroll back. The whole last 15 minutes is really worth watching if anybody has posted it. At about 12min from the end there's a massive breakthrough and the whole character of the eruption changes. From there, it's a steady progression of mesmerizing dread.
You can see the breakthrough twice in this clip, first from V3, the one that is eventually consumed by the lava fountain, and at the end from (pretty sure) V2.
Awe inspiring.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 10:39 AM
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I could see this becoming a meme along the lines of Will It Blend? or Best Hydraulic Press videos- see what a volcano can destroy next.
posted by MtDewd at 10:54 AM
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So very impressive.
It was only recently I ran across possible links between volcanism and solar activity, which sounded to sci-fi to be real, but apparently there are quite a few papers on the subject.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 11:16 AM
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Yeah, Astronomy is just too big. I can't relate to that. Totally cool, but just too much.
I can relate to Geology, (I have a degree in Geology!), millions of years of fossils and erosion. Just so humbling. We are all just dust in the wind...
posted by Windopaene at 11:42 AM
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Like The Time Machine.
posted by Rash at 11:58 AM
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.
posted by billsaysthis at 12:14 PM
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Here's an account of the 1669 eruption of Mt. Etna, for a sense of the human drama that results from such an eruption in a more populated region, including the story of a Priest who thought up a very surprising — and harrowing! — method of diverting the lava flow from his own hometown.
posted by jamjam at 12:15 PM
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You guys realize that we *pour* liquid steel from tubs/buckets bigger than my old apartment into molds and other forms. That's (~800 deg C, 1500 F) about as hot as these magma spurts. Yeah, there's a lot *more* under the ground but it's not coming up at the moment.
Watch the youtube vids. Just takes some of the awesome out for me when I know this is getting schlepped around by minimum wage guys.*
(* Guy I knew, only work available when he got out of prison was "helper" in one of the plants that still did the pours in this country. They're long gone now.)
posted by aleph at 12:52 PM
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> Just takes some of the awesome out for me when I know this is getting schlepped around by minimum wage guys.
Difference being the molten metal at plant is carefully contained rather than spraying upwards through the air. When the containers are breached, people don't hang around because it lays waste like a short-lived volcano would.
posted by at by at 2:28 PM
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We can handle this. Even with accidents. That's what makes it different for me. You do you.
posted by aleph at 2:35 PM
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Dunno 'bout anyone else but my reaction watching this was one of someone constrained without any means of liberating themselves and slowly watching what was first an incredible frontline view of Earth's unimaginable powers, then gradually and ultimately the inevitable realization that I was most certainly about to become incinerated and quite possibly encased as carbon remains for eternity.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 4:53 PM
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You get that feeling around molten steel as well. From what that guy I mentioned said a couple of times.
Wouldn't do it myself. But I suppose he didn't have much choice.
posted by aleph at 6:38 PM
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Ordinary basaltic lava usually doesn't flow faster than a person can walk, but there are also sodium carbonate volcanoes (m.p. 851 °C) and lava from those generally flows faster than a human can run, which has led to considerable consternation on the part of unwary amateur volcanologists, I've read.
posted by jamjam at 9:34 PM
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For a demonstration of just how fast natrocarbonatite flows, here's a video of a small eruption at Ol Doinyo Lengai, the only volcano that currently produces it.
It looks like a mud volcano or black water, but it's rock, and still around 500C at the point of eruption. I assume it must cool down fairly quick since people were getting their shoes that close to it, but if you look at the shots of the cone you'll see the heat shimmer above it, and this page has some night shots of an eruption that show it glowing.
posted by tavella at 9:49 PM
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At 4:56 there's some video of a vent at night -- that black watery lava in daylight is extremely deceiving!
posted by tavella at 9:56 PM
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Out here on Hawaii, a bunch of us watched almost the whole 12 hours of the eruption, switching back and forth between all three cameras, I missed this exact moment for camera 3, but when it was destroyed my friend messaged me "oh no the south cam is having a bad day."
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:57 PM
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I can't decide if I'm disappointed or glad that there's no sound.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:48 AM
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This should do the trick (repeat as necessary):
||: blip blorp whoosh FOOOOOM :||
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:50 AM
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→ stick it back in the box and do a warranty return
As a former mail-order reseller of electronics kit, I have seen worse come back via Amazon returns.
posted by scruss at 12:28 PM
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