The Infinite Monkey Cage - Volcanoes

Episode Date: February 12, 2018

Volcano!Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by comedian Jo Brand and Volcano experts Professor Tamsin Mather and Professor Clive Oppenheimer. They look at the very latest technology that is used to predict the next big volcanic eruption, as well as the history and importance of volcanoes and volcanic activity on our planet. Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. This is the BBC. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. It is the last episode of the series, so we thought we'd return to our favourite subject at the end of the world. Are you ready for the next mass extinction? I said, are you ready for the next mass extinction? Yes!

The near list predominantly on the right there. So we are going to examine the main culprit for five out of six mass extinctions on the planet Earth, as well as the reason that Brian was delayed at the Charles de Gaulle airport for 17 hours in 2010, which he considers a greater tragedy than those five mass extinctions because they ran out of little brandy miniatures. Today we are discussing the science of volcanoes.

How have they influenced the history of our planet, from the origin of life to the great mass extinctions, and do they still pose a threat today? We'll also be dealing with forensic volcanology, which is basically somewhere between Silent Witness and Up Pompeii. Please yourselves. Though, to be honest, the main reason we're doing this show is that last week, Robin learned how to pronounce this Icelandic volcano.

I-ya-jit-fa-li-ya-kol. What was that again? I-ya-jit-fa-li-ya-kol. And that is, by the way, why in the next series we're going to be dealing with... Is that Norwegian for a device that measures the distance between two particles in a crystal? Yes, it is. I think we should just check the pronunciation of that, because we do have an actual Norwegian saying that word properly.

Minoritetsladningsbærediffusionskoeffizientmålingsapparatur. Nothing like it. It is actually, it is genuinely Norwegian for a device that measures the distance between two particles in a crystal. They've got a single word for that. I got one of them for Christmas. It's really useful. What do you call it in your house?

When I'm pissed, I call it... LAUGHTER Surely, Joe, you call it... I used it to measure the distance between London and... LAUGHTER That wasn't quite right in the middle. After that, I'll tell you what, then we'll go off to... So, to help us understand the implications of volcanoes

and their pronunciation, we are joined by three volcanologists of note, and they are... I'm Clive Oppenheimer. I'm a professor of volcanology at the University of Cambridge, and my favourite volcano is Mount Erebus in Antarctica. It's a pretty chilly place, but I do go there in the British winter, so I escape the weather here for about six weeks

by going way, way south. I'm Tamsin Maidah. I'm a professor of earth sciences at the University of Oxford. My favourite volcano is Villarica volcano in Chile. It's a stunningly beautiful volcano with an ice cap. It's pumping out gas all the time, so you can make great measurements there. And when you finish your day of measurements,

you can slide back down the ice cap with all your equipment, which is a lot of fun, as long as you don't get out of control and end up with a bruised bottom. And hello, I'm Jo Brand. I'm afraid the third volcanologist of note couldn't make it tonight. So I've stepped in briefly. And my favourite volcano is Popocatapetl on the Isle of Wight. And this is our panel!

Tamsin, we always begin these shows, well, usually with a kind of definition. Now, in some ways, people might think this is odd, but I do want you to define what is a volcano? Well, I guess to have a volcano you kind of need a source of heat in a planet and something to melt so on earth uh main mainly volcanoes are melt are from melting the mantle which is the layer below the crust in the earth so we get when you melt the mantle you get magma um first of all basaltic magma and if that magma then finds its way up through the crust

you get a volcano or volcanism and then you mentioned that the structure of the earth you go to the crust and the so could you if you just describe a cross section through the earth what could you just give us a that's a one minute introduction to geology as it were clive and which bits are playing roles in developing a volcano? Yeah so when you see a volcano erupt obviously it's telling you that it's hotter down in the earth's interior than it is at the surface and that heat is coming from the radioactive decay of things like uranium and thorium and potassium inside the earth. There's also heat left over from its initial formation and very early history from all the bombardments that formed it and so on.

And volcanism is an expression of that heat getting out of the surface as Tamsin was saying. So you have the crust which is this kind of thin layer at the outer part of the earth and beneath that is the mantle which is kind of the largest.

And then the core. And then the core. The core, which is made of iron and nickel and sulphur. And the outer part of the core is really the only substantial region of the Earth's interior that is liquid. And it's currents in the outer core that generate the Earth's magnetic field. And then the inner part of the core is solid, and over time the core is

solidifying and crystallizing and that's another source of heat into the earth's mantle from the latent heat that is released on crystallization and that's also helping the the mantle which is a solid rock to convect on geological time scales and drive a lot of the volcanism that we see at the surface of the planet so it moves really really slowly about the sort of speed that your fingernails grow. So it's not convection how we think of it, like in a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, when you see you put your milk in and you get the swirling sort of sensation. But it's really, really slow movement. That's what happened when I went in for the 5k charity run in my local park, two and a half centimetres a year.

I came last, but never mind. Jo, are you someone who... I mean, we're talking about these kind of things, and obviously both of these guys, they've been travelling around, they go up close to volcanoes. Are you someone who is one for an adventure holiday, for, you know, snorkelling around thermal vents and climbing up volcanoes? Love an adventure holiday for you know snorkeling around thermal vents and climbing up volcanoes love an adventure holiday no it's an adventure for me going to the fridge to be honest with you

so no i'm i am very interested uh in in well in volcanoes and kind of science generally but i can't actually i don't have a memory so i'm very interested while people are talking about it and then as soon as they've stopped i'm on to the next thing because I've forgotten what they've said but I did I did actually do my research and I read up but I was one of the things I love about science is abbreviations of scientific departments can I just tell you there's a there's an institute in the Philippines called Fivlox Do you know what that is? Filvox. Filvox.

Oh, I read it. I was going to say I'm anorexic, but that's the wrong word. The other one. Anyway, I was thinking, what's it called? FIVLOX. Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. See, I think that's a bit of a ridiculous abbreviation. Why can't they just call it the Volcano Department?

Because it's in the Philippines. Eh? So it's the Philippines. It's not ridiculous they've called it the Philippines Institute of Volcanoes. They need to say PVD. It's because it begins with PH. Philippines Volcano Department.

I prefer... It's not our fault, is it? It sounds like a better job doesn't it Where do you work? Down the volcano department That sounds pretty cool doesn't it As opposed to Pivlops You're at an international conference and everybody's there And everybody's just called it the volcano department Where do you work?

The volcano department That's fine isn't it I don't care Just show me some slides of volcanoes Then they'll tell me where they're from oh, the volcano department as well. Yeah, but that's what we know. That's fine, isn't it? I don't care. If someone then tells me, just show me some slides of volcanoes, fine. Then they'll tell me where they're from. But it is volcanoes. Who's?

Well, you were saying before, weren't you, Clive, about you have various acronyms, don't you, for some of the organisations you have? Yes, I try to think of what my last grant proposal that I'll submit to a funding council will be, which really takes the mickey in the way that the acronym spells out. I went, they're not all polite

so I'll keep it to myself. There was a conference I was at where a team from another country had come up with the Airborne Remote Sensing Experiment. See, they're quicker, aren't they? Radio 2 audience, they'd still be thinking. No, Radio 4 audience. Much quicker than I am.

If you had one, which you're very nice not to say, but it did start off with volcanic activity, and then you can guess the rest. It was a call for volcanic activity and geology and... ..nation's rock. Neologisms. Can I be the first person to say this won't get into the edit, but when I was touring a very long time ago near Newcastle,

there was a college opening up and they were trying to call themselves the Central University of Northern Tyneside. Unfortunately, someone noticed. That's a bit... Shall we get back onto the site? Yeah, sorry, sorry. Tam's and volcanoes, I suppose they have a reputation

for being a bad thing. We think of them erupting and the damage that they cause. But they are a necessary integral part of the Earth's... The system, the climate system, aren't they? So they play a key role. Well, they're very long geological timescales. They sort of played a role in maintaining our planet as well as sort of maybe the more headline-grabbing,

perturbing our planet. So just to take an example, there's a sort of balance in terms of the carbon cycle, the natural carbon cycle, that is, not sort of since we've been... But for the last sort of balance in terms of the carbon cycle, the natural carbon cycle, that is, not sort of since we've been, but for the last sort of 500 million years, a balance between volcanic emissions, putting carbon dioxide out into the atmosphere,

and then weathering, taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And if the temperature goes up, the weathering rate increases, you take a bit more carbon dioxide out, the temperature goes down, the opposite happens. And you've got your volcanoes pumping out your carbon dioxide all the time so it's like part of a thermostat if you like that uh that keeps the temperature much more stable than it would be otherwise over geological time scales can i ask because you mentioned the carbon dioxide there

which is one of the things which is sometimes brought up by people who are arguing against a lot of contemporary climate change science is well i don't know why they're going about what humans do it's all the volcanoes fault we should be shutting them down i mean can you kind of explain a little bit about why that thinking may not be well best of luck shutting the volcanoes down first thing to say although i'm sure some people would like to feel they were that powerful um but uh but so first of all we can't shut the volcanoes down. So that's off the table. We can do something about what we're doing to the planet. Actually, carbon dioxide is a really interesting one from a volcanological perspective or volcano perspective is because it comes out really, really deep in the Earth's crust compared to the other gases that we have in magmas.

So it's much more difficult for us as volcanologists to measure. But we're doing a better and better job at accounting for, if you like, all the carbon dioxide coming out of the world's volcanoes. And we're still nowhere near the amount of carbon dioxide that humans' activities are putting out into the atmosphere. So we're not off the hook, I'm afraid. And how big a shift Clive did these the big volcanic eruptions cause in the climate temporarily? If we look at the last 100,000 years or so there are a number of volcanic eruptions that have been considerably larger than than things

that we've seen in modern times and And these eruptions can change the climate, not from the carbon dioxide emissions, but from the sulfur dioxide emissions, which end up oxidizing in the stratosphere and forming minute particles of sulfuric acid that can intercept some of the incoming sunlight. So there's a net cooling at the Earth's surface. And so this is something that we see with very large events like Krakatau in 1883, the eruption of Tambor in 1815. But if we look on geological timescales, there are also huge lava outpourings

that have modulated the climate on somewhat longer time scales. So what are the, in terms of first of all human history, what are the key very large eruptions that we've experienced? We've been through quite a few and in fact one of our best archives of data on past volcanism is in the the ice cores in antarctica and greenland and we see the fallout of this sulfur dust sometimes we find the ash as well so an eruption in indonesia the dust will be transported in both hemispheres it'll rain out over the polar regions and we can find these layers of sulfur or acid layers in the ice cores. And these show that there are many events that were colossal in, say, the last 2,000 years,

and we have no idea which volcanoes produced them. So we know a handful. We know Krakatau, we know Tambora in Indonesia. We've recently identified a volcano responsible for a huge sulphur layer in the ice cores in the mid-13th century, and that's another Indonesian volcano. But by colossal, can you give us a picture

of what those eruptions were like? Yeah, so, in fact, we use... Colossal is a technical term in volcanology. It's one of those technical terms. A technical term? It is. You see, we're trying to do what Joe's asking for, just to get rid of all the jargon and just use everyday words.

A colossal eruption will involve... We measure the size of an eruption by the amount of pumice, ash, lava that it produces, how much volume or how much mass. And one of these eruptions, like Tambora in 1815, is producing something like 100 cubic kilometres of pumice that is showered across the land surface and the oceans. And to put that in context, if you piled all of that up within the M25,

it would kind of cover the Houses of Parliament. A big bend would poke out of the top. I like it when people do explanations like that. If you piled it up, it would be the size of something you know. And it wasn't a swimming pool. Yeah, I wondered whether it was going to be the size of Wales. That's the usual unit of disaster. Yes, it is.

Absolutely. Can I just ask a five-year-old divs question? Can you envisage a scenario when all the volcanoes go off together yes really is that oh just envisage can i ask you by the way joe in future not to ask any five-year-old div questions because that is very much my job oh sorry that eruption in 1815 what effect would that have had on the climate so would we have seen a what a one degree two degree drop in average temperatures what would it have been the 1815 eruption had a global a global impact that if you average the the temperatures over a

year so the year 1816, which was popularly known as the year without a summer in North America, the globally averaged reduction temperature is a fraction of a degree, maybe 0.8 degrees, something like that. But it's masking much stronger regional variations in space and time. So in many parts of Europe, Eurasia, Scandinavia, the cooling in the summer was a few degrees, similarly in North America. So what this does is to affect agriculture, and thereby it affects the crop yields, and that affects the grain prices, and then that affects human society, people having to spend more on the basic staples some of the more fascinating um work of i think both of you that i've read where you try to

correlate the eruptions with things that happen yes so i think you know what we're trying to do here really is to contribute to understanding history and um what were the impacts of these volcanically mediated environmental changes on human society. And so this takes you into kind of the general questions of history of how do you explain things with the evidence that you've got. There are always so many factors. And actually in this case of the eruption of Tambor in 1815. The grain prices are very high and there were protests in England. People went on the streets chanting bread or blood because people were really suffering. In Switzerland, many people died from famine. There were migrations. So, you know, on one level, you can come up with a chain of causality. The eruption changed the climate.

The climate affected crops. This affected people. But then you also have to look at what else was going on in history at that time. And the Napoleonic Wars had just finished. So Europe was in disarray. And this is also part of the kind of the template by which environmental forcing plays out. In terms of climate, we're talking there about the kind of some of the more deathly sides. the template by which environmental forcing plays out. Tamza, can I say, because we're talking there about some of the more deathly sides of volcanoes, but also in terms of undersea volcanoes, which you've been talking about the majority,

how much do they play a part perhaps in life as well, the idea of thermal vents, etc.? do we have volcanoes both giving life and taking it away it's a good strap line um well as one of the theories so you have these uh um is these wonderful kind of ecosystems that grow up around the black smokers and you've obviously got uh so that's where you've got the plates spreading apart under the oceans um you have the pressure dropping on the mantle which causes it melt, and then you have volcanism happening at the mid-oceanic ridges. And as you say, that's where, actually, the majority of volcanism on our planet is,

but it's kind of hidden from us underneath the oceans. And when you get seawater circulating through those types of environments, you end up with these really sort of strong temperature and chemical gradients, and that's uh one of the sort of prime candidates for where you might have ended up with uh the sort of weird and wacky chemistry of life uh evolving first off on the planet there are other candidates as well but that's one of them for sure i remember when i was a kid thinking i don't understand why if a volcano under the sea, the seawater doesn't put it out.

And I still don't really understand that, if I'm perfectly honest. Well, I mean, Joe actually hits the nail on the head with these questions, because, you know, it's not obvious, really, why the sea doesn't put the volcanoes out. I mean, actually, one of the very amazing bits of film I've seen is of Hawaii, where the lava quite often flows straight into the ocean and it just pours in. And often you look at this film and nothing happens.

And you expect there's going to be a lot of fizzing and banging and explosions and so on. And what happens is that a layer of bubbles instantly forms at the surface of that lava, and it insulates it from the water, so it doesn't have so much interaction. And there's a very characteristic kind of lava that you find in the deep oceans.

The pressure, it's worth saying, the pressure of the overlying water stops the lava from really fizzing violently and being explosive so you you tend to get lavas that are made up of toothpaste like squiggles that all pile together we call we call them pillow lavas yeah all right can i ask what to one more why don't people that live near active volcanoes move? Well, have you been to Naples and tried the mozzarella there? I mean, it is... Funnily enough, my daughter went on a school trip to Etna

when it was actually, you know, erupting, and said it was very entertaining watching all the BBC staff getting hit with bits of... She's not very nice. No, she is, she's lovely. But, yeah, no, I haven't been anywhere near a volcano, weirdly. I don't know why not, really. You're going to now, of course. I am, because I'm going to measure things.

Yes. With your special instrument. Exactly. That I can't pronounce just while we're talking we want to move on to the big mass extinctions but um just um you mentioned your favorite volcanoes and um so could you just very briefly fill in what it's what it's like and why what it's like to be to experience a volcano when it's not only when it's erupting but these lakes of lava and if you just choose your favorite volcano and just tell us what it's like to visit so mount erebus

is in antarctica on ross island so it's kind of due south from new zealand and it was where scott and shackleton had their bases for their attempts to reach the South Pole. So the first thing, actually, is you're quite connected with that relatively recent, you know, it's only just over 100 years ago they were there, they were the pioneers. They were doing all the geology, the mapping that we rely on now that enables us to do our work. And you find very tangible evidence. We found some of the campsites from Scots men who climbed Erebus in 1912.

How high is it? It's nearly 3,800 metres of sea level. So it's very high. And we go out there typically for about a month or so, six weeks in November, so in the austral summer.

And the fortunate thing is that for us, Erebus is only 35 kilometres from the largest scientific base in Antarctica. So although you'd think, well, why do you go all that way when you could go to Etna or Iceland or somewhere? But we have fantastic logistical support in Antarctica. If we need liquid nitrogen for a spectrometer, it arrives in a helicopter. If we need fancy lettuce, that arrives in the helicopter. So we're very well looked after. And it's been incredibly scientifically rewarding to work there.

It's a volcano which has a lava lake, so you look into the moor of the volcano in the crater and you can measure everything very, very directly, the gas emissions, the heat emissions and so on. And you can work 24 hours because it's always sunny. Well, it's not always sunny, but it's always daylight. So if the weather's good, you can really work hard and get fabulous data. And then I'd say the other thing,

which is probably true of many field volcanologists, is that you're just out in the elements, and you really are out in the elements in somewhere like Antarctica, and you're always thinking, how can I today, given where the wind is blowing and what the volcano is doing, how can I today, given where the wind is blowing and what the volcano is doing, how can I get the best measurements I can? So there's something, you almost embody the volcano

in your scientific work. So there's something very visceral about that. So, Jo, have you found that alluring, the idea of having no sleep for 24 hours and standing next to a lake of fire? Sounds like my student years no i do i'd love to go to a to a volcano in the antarctic i doubt very much i ever will but i'd still like to go sounds amazing and if anyone from bbc2 is listening what a lovely christmas

special that would be i just wonder who could I take with me? The Chuckle Brothers, maybe. That's no way to refer to Clive and myself. Your favourite volcano, can we hear a little bit more about that? So Villarica is in the Lake District in Chile, which is a bit like the British Lake District, apart from it's sort of peppered with... There's plenty of lakes, as the name suggests,

but peppered with these volcanoes with these ice these gorgeous ice caps um and we arrived there and it was pouring with rain very much like the british lake district so you couldn't see any of the volcanoes at all and all the locals were saying oh you're not going to see the volcano and we were there for 10 days it was part of my ph. I was really hoping to get some data. And so I felt a bit despondent. And the second night we were there, we'd been invited to a barbecue with a rather frightening Chilean man with a bottle of pisco sour and a very large knife

and an animal on a spit. We were just on the edge of the volcano and suddenly the clouds parted and maybe it was the pisco sour, but it was a kind of biblical moment, this beautiful volcano suddenly presenting itself and we had a fantastic week climbing up the ice cap. Unfortunately, we had to carry everything on our backs.

Because you'd killed the only thing you could carry. You ate it on the first day. In retrospect, it was a tactical error. But you hike up this ice cap and you get to the top and we couldn't actually see the lava lake at the time, but you could certainly smell the gas, sort of mixture of burnt matches and rotten eggs, that sort of lovely sulphur smell.

And then we were wearing gas masks and helmets to protect ourselves, there were beautiful ice sculptures around from the wind and the ice. And then there were small explosions going off, very small explosions, I hasten to add. We weren't doing anything too risky. But with very light volcanic rocks, a volcanic foam rock called reticulite actually falling on us, and ash and very small pieces of bright, glassy scoria.

And then, as I say, at the end of it, you've got to pack all your rucksack and sit in an ice chute and uh and slide your way down the volcano i was just wondering how risky a job it is being a volcanologist because it does sound do volcanologists ever fall in yeah it's i think it's up there with working with sharks it is there is an occupational risk and and obviously we don't take that lightly we do you know think quite seriously about what could happen what could go wrong but i mean a lot of the places that you work it's not necessarily the volcano it's the

helicopter that you're going to the volcano that's even worse see when you said the barbecue that first bit i was imagining you just on the rim of a volcano, with, like, you know, sticks with marshmallows on, just, hey, this is great, isn't it? Oh, that marshmallow's caught fire. I've always wanted to do that. I've always wanted to cook my breakfast on a lava floor, and I've still never, ever got to do it.

So you mentioned if you do that BBC Two documentary that Jo's doing this year at Christmas... We could do extra slice on a volcano. Oh, we could. Now, you said that the little ice age may have been caused by volcanic eruptions. But if we go back further, mass extinctions, so the really big, threatening explosions, we said in the introduction that it's thought that five out of six

of the major mass extinctions came from or were caused by volcanic eruptions. So could you speak a little bit more about what they would have been like and also why we think that they were the cause? So this is... When we're talking about this type of volcanism, this is large igneous provinces, so it's not volcanism like Krakatoa or Tambora that we've been talking about.

It's these really extended periods of Earth history this is large igneous provinces. So it's not volcanism like Krakatoa or Tambora that we've been talking about. It's these really extended periods of Earth history where we have, for a million years, it's the peak of it, we have these enormous outpourings of largely basaltic magmas out onto the surface of the planet. So perhaps the sort of most famous that's linked is linked with the demise of the dinosaurs.

So the end Cretaceous, and that's linked with is linked with the demise of the dinosaurs so the end cretaceous and that's the decantraps in um in india but with the end of the dinosaurs you've got this sort of also got this major impact event near in the gulf of mexico at the same time so we've got these two things happening um but one what something that something that um is very interesting is that we actually find coincidence not just with the end Cretaceous mass extinction. We also find coincidence, for example, with the end Permian mass extinction. So that's about 250 million years ago. And the end Triassic mass extinction is about 200 million years ago.

And those were with other periods of really heightened volcanic activity. So for the end Permian, it was the Siberian traps. So if you fly on a daytime flight from London to Tokyo and you happen to be lucky enough to get a window seat, you know, put the blind up and have a look. You fly over an absolutely enormous area of basalt. Very exciting. I mean, who couldn't be excited? These enormous stacks of basalt. Very exciting. I mean, who couldn't be excited? These enormous stacks of basalt,

the trace of this enormous period of roughly a million years of heightened volcanic activity. We don't really exactly understand why, but they seem to line up in the geological record with these mass extinction events. So Clive's already talked about the effects of putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. So if you get it high up into the atmosphere, it can form this veil around the planet that cools the planet down. But volcanoes are also putting out loads of other stuff. They're putting out toxic trace metals. They're putting out carbon dioxide. They're putting out lots of ash.

And all of these things have interactions with the environment. So we don't exactly know what the kill mechanism is, if you like, but there seems to be this correlation with these periods of really big changes in biology in Earth's history. What about... Because we kept saying five out of six are mass extinctions. What was the other one, then? What was the one, the volcano?

What was the equivalent of, I suppose, Leicester at the top of the Premier Division? This moment where this was not expected, and suddenly an extinction came out of nowhere with no volcanic hint. We often call them the Big Five, so it's actually five major mass extinctions in the geological record, not six.

So I've mentioned three of them, and then actually the others are going further back into geological time. So the next one back is like the late all-division mass extinction. And there might have been a big volcanic event going on there, but it's so far back in the geological record, we actually might have lost, by the plate movement or by erosion, the evidence for that major volcanic activity.

I don't know if that's good for your Leicester City analogy or not. Well, no, I think what's good now is you explained exactly why the sixth mass extinction had no volcanic involvement. It was because it didn't happen. It made it a lot clearer. Why did you tell me there were six mass extinctions, Brian? So does that mean our introduction is actually technically incorrect? incorrect oh it has been for 98 other episodes as well what do we know now what what is changing our technology for being able to predict when there

could be catastrophic events i mean what what have we learned in in the last few decades i think some of the the big advances i mean there've been have been a number of big advances, but maybe the ones that I would highlight have been the sort of satellite technologies. So part of the challenge with volcanoes is there are so many of them around the globe. And, you know, if you want to invest in putting like a seismic network in or putting GPS receivers on to look at the way the volcanoes are changing shape, that's great if you've got good resources and you can actually get to the volcano relatively easily. And the real power with the satellite techniques is that we've got the potential to have a much more global coverage

and we can also look at what's going on at volcanoes where they're quite remote. There may still be a population there and in countries where they don't necessarily have massive resources to pour into monitoring networks. The one you read about a lot is the the yellowstone volcano which is a super volcano which is monitored quite closely isn't it and that's considered to be something that could be a danger at some level yeah i mean of course there are many volcanoes that are potentially dangerous because of their proximity to large populated

areas around the world, whether it's in Latin America or Japan and so on. And then you have volcanoes like Yellowstone, so-called super volcanoes, because they produce really whatever is the next thing up from colossal eruptions. I wondered if it was being used in the same way as colossal but uh i mean what one of the things that is is quite instructive when you look at the largest eruptions of the last decades uh one of them is pinatubo in the philippines in 1991 which taught us pretty much everything we know about how volcanoes can change climate. Was that from FIVOLCS? The FIVOLCS people were involved, it's true. Now they're the ones who work for the volcano department. In the Philippines. And another one is El Chichon in Mexico. These volcanoes were not even in our gazetteer of volcanoes of the world. They weren't recognised to be

potentially active volcanoes. And in some ways it makes sense, because if you think that it will take some time for a volcano to accumulate the volume of molten rock to produce a very big eruption, maybe it takes thousands or tens of thousands of years, then these are volcanoes that are maybe not going to erupt very often. And we won't have had any historical evidence.

So the next big eruption on Earth might be of a volcano we've never heard of. It's just not on our scientific radar. And you are watching at some level. There's nothing we can do about this. That's what our planet does. It's an active planet. Well, I think there is room for human action

because, you know, it's how you prepare for things. We can't stop the volcano erupting, but we can prepare better for when it does. Yeah, we can look at how the global food system works and look at where the vulnerabilities are. What if it takes a major hit in terms of reduced grain production in North America, how much resilience is in the food system to accommodate that.

And, you know, so I think we can engineer ways to get around some of the challenges that we might face. I mean, we sort of saw this not in terms of food security, but in terms of aviation safety. I'm not going to do as good a job as you, after the ifat yucca eruption in 2010 um the um i've got i've got another black mark um after after the in 2010 you know we had um the a the uh the aviation authorities had a zero tolerance policy to ash um and that was found to be unworkable and we had to think they had to think much more care much more much more detail about actually was some ash some ash might be okay because otherwise we're just shutting down the whole of your northern european airspace

and all the economic loss perhaps when we think of it in more of a cost benefit manner then we just we have to think think about risks in a slightly more holistic type of sense. Well, there was the famous British Airways flight. I'm wondering who should read this. It's British Airways flight 9 that I typed in here, which was 1982 near Jakarta. Would you like to read? This is the captain's announcement on that flight

as he flew over the volcano in Jakarta. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress. That's a real announcement, isn't it? It's absolutely genuine.

Here's one we haven't tried before, but good luck, everyone. A wonderfully British sort of announcement as well. Very, very quickly, a friend of mine was on a plane trying to land at Athens Airport that kept getting blown away from the runway. And the pilot went down about three times and pulled out of it at the last minute. And then he did it a fourth time.

And on the intercom, he said to all the passengers, I'm really sorry about that. I just bottled it. They all sort of did that airplane. How professional. You've got what you want to hear from your pilot. Final question. In terms of mass extinctions,

in terms of the end of civilisation, what do you reckon? Is it volcanoes that are going to do it or is it going to be something that gets in our way before then? I don't think it's going to be volcanoes, no. I mean, we've lived through some very big events as a species already and I think, yeah, we're probably a greater existential threat to ourselves.

Andy? I think I'd probably agree with that. Volcanoes would be more spectacular, though, wouldn't they? Yeah, it's nice if you're kind of going, whoo-hee-hee, as you go, yeah. Joe, do you think volcanoes would be a nice way to go? Volcanoes plus raining doughnuts. I know we're trying to draw it too close,

but I just want to say, Clive, because you'd looked at how volcanic eruptions have influenced art and actually inspired some of the most beautiful paintings in history, which can be correlated to volcanic eruptions. I think Turner was an example. That's right. The sulphur dust that conveil the planet in the stratosphere leads to amazing atmospheric optics,

so very, very vivid sunsets. Even after the sun has set, the sun will then light up this dust maybe half an hour or so later. And this is said to have inspired Turner, who was painting after the 1815 eruption of Tambora. And the other one that is often suggested to be volcanically stimulated is Monk's Scream, which, of course, has these very lurid colours.

Some people reckon that's also volcanically influenced. See, so it's not all bad. So if a volcano ends the world, we might get some really good artwork out of it first. So we asked the audience a question, if your final act could be set in stone for all eternity as a

result of volcanic eruption, how would you like to be remembered? And most of them we have been unable to read. Carving the words, nothing is set in stone. To have a strawberry with me to see if it survives. Ah, there's a niche joke in the Monkey Cage audience. At a computer, pressing Control, Alt and Delete. Punched over my still incomplete thesis,

my boson's still stubbornly insisting there's infinite energy. That's a technical joke from Will, who's clearly a physics PhD student who is struggling with the infinite energy of bosons. This is what I love about physicists' jokes. Now, the next punchline will not necessarily be effective, but it is intellectually rigorous. In a D-Ream-like pose,

knowing things can only get better. Thank you very much to our panel of Tamsin Mather, Clive Oppenheimer and Joe Brand. And remember, if you've been affected by all this talk of the end of the world, then you shouldn't be, because the laws of nature dictate that existence is necessarily finite and you're lucky to be here. The BBC have a helpline number if you want to ring it.

That's what it's going to say. It's going to say, you're lucky to be here. Very upbeat ending. This is the end of this series. And this is episode 99. We will be back with a new series with... Can you work it out, Brian? Using your maths.

Episode 100, yes. And we'll be asking, what do humans know that we didn't know when the show began in 2009? So that will include the confirmation of the existence of black holes for detection of gravitational waves, the Higgs field, the wave function of the strawberry, and the pronunciation of...

Goodbye! APPLAUSE In the Infinite Monkey Cage Without your trousers In the Infinite Monkey Cage Turned out nice again. Well, Adam Rutherford, that was a marvellous episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage, wasn't it? It was, Hannah Fry. Not necessarily the best ones, because I think the best ones are the ones that you were on. I like the ones that you were on.

Yes, but if you enjoyed those episodes of the Infinite Monkey Cage that I, Adam Rutherford, and you, Hannah Fry, were on, it turns out that we've got a whole eight series worth of just us. Yes, we do. The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, our very own science podcast in which we investigate your questions. Questions like, does Kate Bush have a secret sonic weapon that she's trying to use to kill all of humanity?

We did answer that question. What about what would happen to Hannah if we threw her into a black hole? Specifically me. I wasn't particularly happy about that question. What about what would happen to Hannah if we threw her into a black hole? Specifically me. I wasn't particularly happy about that episode. That's The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, which you can download from... Your podcast providers. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change.

We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts.