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Message
About Krakatoa: first person reports
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:21 pm
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:21 pm
I have been reading a book "Krakatoa: the day the World Exploded" from the library. It's long and includes a lot of botany and history of geologic thought.
Towards the end, it has a lot of first hand reports of what people saw as the island blew up. There were a lot of Europeans there and many kept records.
Unlike what happened to Tonga, Krakatoa had blown up before. Records are scarce, but it was known to be a volcano like so many other volcanoes in the area.
It didn't have a single blow. Earthquakes preceeded it. Sonic booms scared people. The earthquakes felt different from other earthquakes, not that uncommon in the area.
The first look (from a sea captain who was watching it) was a vertical explosion going several miles high. (Sextants have their uses.) then the cloud spread out, then a different kind of cloud, then ash. And a huge amount of pumice was floating on the ocean for miles away. When it happened, it gave natives who had arrived by boat to cut wood to build more boats enough time to swim back to their boat, go home and ask the Dutch local what was happening. He had no idea, but got in his launch and went out to investigate.
It's an interesting read and the read corrects some of the things in the movie.
Towards the end, it has a lot of first hand reports of what people saw as the island blew up. There were a lot of Europeans there and many kept records.
Unlike what happened to Tonga, Krakatoa had blown up before. Records are scarce, but it was known to be a volcano like so many other volcanoes in the area.
It didn't have a single blow. Earthquakes preceeded it. Sonic booms scared people. The earthquakes felt different from other earthquakes, not that uncommon in the area.
The first look (from a sea captain who was watching it) was a vertical explosion going several miles high. (Sextants have their uses.) then the cloud spread out, then a different kind of cloud, then ash. And a huge amount of pumice was floating on the ocean for miles away. When it happened, it gave natives who had arrived by boat to cut wood to build more boats enough time to swim back to their boat, go home and ask the Dutch local what was happening. He had no idea, but got in his launch and went out to investigate.
It's an interesting read and the read corrects some of the things in the movie.
10
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:25 pm to real turf fan
quote:What happens when you kick a blocka concrete?
Krakatoa
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Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:30 pm to real turf fan
If you had a surfboard made of diamonds could you theoretically surf a lava flow?
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:35 pm to Abstract Queso Dip
quote:
If you had a surfboard made of diamonds could you theoretically surf a lava flow?
The surfboard will survive, but you're going to have a bad time.
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:41 pm to Abstract Queso Dip
quote:
you had a surfboard made of diamonds could you theoretically surf a lava flow?
I would think diamonds wouldn’t float on top of lava
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:44 pm to real turf fan
Wasnt it the loudest sound ever recorded up until the A-Bomb?
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:46 pm to real turf fan
It’s actually WEST of Java
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:50 pm to Abstract Queso Dip
quote:
If you had a surfboard made of diamonds could you theoretically surf a lava flow?
Why diamonds. You’d be worried about heat conduction, not hardness.
And it would likely be moving too slow to actually surf.
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:55 pm to fr33manator
Could you surf on a 35 mph wave of molasses?
(Please, serious answers from physicists only)
(Please, serious answers from physicists only)
Posted on 1/16/22 at 9:56 pm to fr33manator
First there were the initial explosions and lava, etc. That was followed by a couple of years of smoldering.
A young man working in the area was sent to the island to see what it would take to survey the island after that activity. He created the map above and concluded that it was too dangerous to send a survey crew to the island which was not that active when he visited it.
Two weeks and a day later, the blew off the face of the earth. He was the last man ever to walk on it. That map is the only map of the island before the big one.
Posted on 1/17/22 at 1:51 am to real turf fan
That’s pretty cool
Posted on 1/17/22 at 1:56 am to real turf fan
Posted on 1/17/22 at 1:58 am to PhillyTiger90
quote:
Wasnt it the loudest sound ever recorded up until the A-Bomb?
I think it was much louder than the A-Bomb. The sound of Krakatoa was heard hundreds if not thousands of miles away.
Edit: yep. The A-bomb is the loudest man made sound, but Krakatoa is the loudest sound in recorded history
LINK
quote:
The combination of the powerful explosions that ripped through the volcano and the subsequent collapse of the rock into an undersea magma chamber resulted in the loudest sound ever recorded.
It clocked in at 310 decibels.
The loudest sound ever created by humans, not by natural causes, was said to be the atomic bomb blasts over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Those clocked in at around 250 decibels. NASA’s highest recorded decibel reading was 204 and that was the first stage of the Saturn V rocket.
310 decibels is loud enough to kill you. Ear drums rupture between 150 and 160 decibels. That means Krakatoa was exponentially higher on the decibel scale as a sound high enough to cause your ear drums to literally explode. A sound exponentially louder than anything likely to have been heard in thousands, perhaps millions of years.
quote:
And all the way in Australia, some 2,800 miles distant, an ocean away, it was reported as far off rifle or cannon fire.
That is roughly the same distance between Los Angeles and New York City. Imagine being on the street in Manhattan and hearing something that was occurring in downtown Los Angeles. It’s almost unbelievable. Almost.
quote:
This sound was so loud that the shock wave was recorded moving around the globe. It circled the globe not once, not twice, but three times before petering out.
The force of the blast was so great, it was reported that an island less than ten miles from the volcano was devoid of all life. Three thousand natives were reportedly killed, most likely due to the force of the shock wave alone.
The sound alone killed them.
This post was edited on 1/17/22 at 2:06 am
Posted on 1/17/22 at 7:41 am to Kafka
There’s also Anak Krakatoa, formed from a Krakatoa eruption often called “ the child of Krakatoa” but I’ve always just called it Krakapinkytoa
Posted on 1/17/22 at 7:46 am to real turf fan
It also cooled the earth off, global warming.
Posted on 1/17/22 at 8:47 am to Abstract Queso Dip
quote:
If you had a surfboard made of diamonds could you theoretically surf a lava flow?
I prefer one made out of kryptonite with dilithium crystals skegs.
Posted on 1/17/22 at 8:53 am to DavidTheGnome
quote:
Three thousand natives were reportedly killed, most likely due to the force of the shock wave alone.
The sound alone killed them.
Which one was it?
Posted on 1/17/22 at 8:56 am to DavidTheGnome
quote:
310 decibels is loud enough to kill you. Ear drums rupture between 150 and 160 decibels. That means Krakatoa was exponentially higher on the decibel scale as a sound high enough to cause your ear drums to literally explode. A sound exponentially louder than anything likely to have been heard in thousands, perhaps millions of years.
Difficult to comprehend how loud 310 dba really is to the human ear. Not much time to listen you're dead when it hits you from the associated shock wave. The decibel scales are logarithmic not linear.
Expressed as Sound Pressure Levels, a jet engine 100 feet away from you is around 140db while Krakatoa 100 miles away was estimated to be around 172db.
Big Bang indeed.
Posted on 1/17/22 at 9:05 am to Abstract Queso Dip
quote:
If you had a surfboard made of diamonds could you theoretically surf a lava flow?
Go turn on your cooktop/range full tilt. Put your hand over it to determine how high your hand is over the flame before it gets uncomfortably hot. Now imagine that instead of being 200 degrees, your range is 2,000 degrees. Whether the surface you are on survives becomes irrelevant if you cook alive on top of it.
Even if you wore something heat proof, lava flows are too slow to surf on.
And hypothetically, if you found one moving fast enough to surf on, the coefficient of friction of lava is staggeringly higher than that of water, and you would be thrown into the molten drink pretty much instantly as you would have zero control.
And that’s enough thinking for me on this Covid infected Monday morning
This post was edited on 1/17/22 at 9:06 am
Posted on 1/17/22 at 9:23 am to Joshjrn
RIP
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