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Most individuals – in the event that they’ve heard of it in any respect – are conscious of ‘blue lava’ because of the otherworldly images of French photographer Olivier Grunewald. The pictures, which Grunewald captured on the Kawah Ijen volcano on the island of Java in Indonesia, appear to point out rivers of electric-blue lava, incandescent in opposition to a black velvet evening.
Regardless of appearances, nevertheless, it’s not lava that produces the putting blue glow. As an alternative, it’s combusting sulphuric gases, which belch from the volcano’s many fumaroles at temperatures of as much as 600°C (round 1,100°F).
When the recent gases hit oxygen-rich air, they ignite and burn with a neon-blue flame. As they burn, a number of the gases condense into molten sulphur, which continues to burn blue because it spills down the mountainside. In contrast, Kawah Ijen’s precise lava emerges within the acquainted red-orange color you see at different volcanoes.
The flames’ distinctive blue color is brought on by a phenomenon known as digital excitation. When the sulphuric gases burn, the extraordinary warmth ‘excites’ electrons throughout the sulphur atoms. This excited state is extraordinarily unstable and the electrons revert nearly instantly to their ‘relaxed’ state by shedding extra vitality within the type of gentle.
All parts emit attribute wavelengths of sunshine throughout digital excitation, comparable to completely different colors of the seen spectrum. Within the case of sulphur, that color is the eerie blue-violet that tints the flames at Kawah Ijen.
Locals discuss with the phenomenon as Api Biru, or ‘blue hearth’. Though the blue hearth burns across the clock, its flames are tough to make out in daylight; solely as evening falls does the spectacle start to disclose itself.
Api Biru will not be distinctive to Kawah Ijen – Grunewald has additionally photographed the phenomenon on the Dallol volcano within the Danakil Melancholy in Ethiopia. However the Kawah Ijen’s unusually excessive concentrations of sulphur deposits and sulphuric gases make it essentially the most arresting instance and the one one that’s persistently burning.
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Requested by: Myles Dixon, by way of e-mail
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