
Ship spies largest underwater eruption ever - Fifth_Star
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/ship-spies-largest-underwater-eruption-ever
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ohashi
It's interesting to read an article and come to HN hoping to find more
interesting comments only to find one thread with stupid memes.

Is this the largest ever because we're just starting to be able to map this
type of stuff or have we seen a lot of them and this is enormous?

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Gibbon1
Well there is this, "The map of the sea floor, made by the ship’s multibeam
sonar, indicates that as much as 5 cubic kilometers of magma erupted onto the
sea floor."

I think 5 km^3 is a large eruption by any standards. Looking at lists of
modern ones it's a index 6 event which happen every few decades on land. From
the article it sounds like if it weren't close to Mayotte it wouldn't have
been picked up seismically.

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everybodyknows
... gas trapped inside the black volcanic material.

Sudden release of such gases has been suspected in the case of a number of
sudden ship disappearances over the centuries. If a bubble's volume is large
relative to the ship's, the ship will drop to the bottom as the gas forces
water from under the hull. Then the surrounding seas crash onto the decks.

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richjdsmith
There is a no-sail zone quite near the coast of Grenada due to an active
underwater volcano. The volcano is called Kick 'em Jenny and has sunk numerous
boats over the years. On one instance it sunk a boat and killed 60 people.

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gus_massa
Wikipedia link for the lazy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_%27em_Jenny#Maritime_excl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_%27em_Jenny#Maritime_exclusion_zone)
The part about the "sinking hazard" has a [citation needed] anyway. The
Spanish version look more concerned about eruptions than bubbles, and says
that when they detect unusual activity the radius is increased from 1 mile to
3 miles.

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volkk
is this too deep for a tsunami effect? can underwater volcanoes cause
tsunamis?

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cobbzilla
The article says it’s too deep to cause a tsunami, at least where the quakes
are now. If seismic activity starts moving towards land and a big quake is
close enough, a shelf-collapse could cause one.

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foota
That would be scary, seeing as I believe the largest tsunami ever was created
via a similar mechanism.

Edit: not the largest, but large. See:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide)

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orpheline
I read that headline as "Ship spies largest underwear eruption ever"

I can't even say where my mind went, 'cause it hasn't come back yet...

Fridays are hard. Especially on mobile screens.

