"Stunning volumes." Cables in the crossfire "So you're getting nearly 20 Sydney Harbours of material flying along the sea floor," Mr Mackay said. That initial bulk scoured the sea floor as it travelled, gathering the equivalent of another seven Sydney Harbours of material and whisking it along too. "That's 12 Sydney Harbours' worth of volume that instantaneously got shot into the atmosphere, then came crashing down again, generating the velocities you need to have these density currents flowing so fast and so far."
Mr Mackay and his colleagues calculated 6 cubic kilometres of rock were hurled into the atmosphere during a single 100-second eruption. The research voyages were led by Kevin Mackay, a marine geologist at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and study co-author. This is according to a study published in the journal Science, which mapped the seafloor and sampled debris left behind by the speedy "density currents" around the volcano.
When the outburst subsided, the enormous volume of pulverised rock that was propelled straight up came crashing down, barrelling down the volcano's sides and tearing across the seabed faster than the legal driving speed limit in Australian states.Īs flows of debris raced along, they destroyed communications cables and coral reefs before finally petering out more than 100 kilometres from the caldera. Now we know the extent of the eruption's devastation below the waves.
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