Blowingtheir tops
| Published date | 07 May 2022 |
| Publication title | Mix, The |
Wilson, is touring
New Zealand
delivering his 2018
New Zealand
Rutherford Lecture,
“The Life and Times of
Supervolcanoes”. in
Invercargill, Dunedin
and Wanaka,
on Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday
respectively. The
talks are free, but
registering is advised.
For more information,
visit online at
www.royalsociety.
org.nz/events
Quote 1
New Zealand
has managed
to place, in
its wisdom,
its biggest
economic and
social centre
exactly on top
of a rugby
ball-shaped
volcano.
Colin Wilson
really long name
Standfirst Volcanoes are powerful, mysterious and, too often, deadly.
Bruce Munro asks renowned volcanologist Prof Colin Wilson how long it will be until we know enough to forecast volcanoes’ behaviour.
Quote 2 New Zealand has managed to place, in its wisdom, its biggest economic and social centre exactly on top of a rugby ballshaped volcano
Colin Wilson2
really long name Prof Colin Wilson would not be nearly as surprised as the tourists who were hit by a lava bomb from the Kilauea volcano this week.
On Monday, 23 people aboard a sightseeing boat just off the Big Island of Hawaii were injured, several seriously, when a chunk of hot volcanic lava burst from the water and crashed into the boats seating area.
"As soon as you saw it coming there was no time to move and the worst part was youre in a small boat," Will Bryan, who was on the boat with his girlfriend Erin, told the BBC.
Prof Wilson, however, would not have been in the least astonished.
The professor of volcanology knows from four decades of studying super volcanoes that, big or small, they can be temperamental, erratic beasts.
"Volcanoes are like humans," Prof Wilson says.
"Winston Peters would make a splendid volcano. You just dont necessarily know what hes going to do on a day-to-day basis, or how hes going to react to something. Sometimes you get a massive directed blast and sometimes you get all sweetness and light. Would you predict Winston Peters? No."
Not surprised. And probably not even on the boat.
"There are two schools of vulcanology; the gung-ho types and the cunning cowards," he explains.
"The gung-ho types study active volcanoes. The thing is, when you are looking at a volcanic eruption, my experience is its quite hard to make quantitative observations of any value. And if you misjudge it, as many people have over the years, youre dead.
"Its a valuable style of working. But what Ive done . . . Im in the second school."
A pragmatic coward, perhaps, but what Prof Wilson is...
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