Science cannot know how long an eruption will last because it is inaccessible – World

These questions, which citizens or the media can ask themselves, are very difficult to answer, since the eruptive process is due to a natural phenomenon that occurs inside the Earth and to which there is no access, Soler recalled. .

He has commented that, if such questions are answered “I don’t know”, the social judgment will be to ask “then what is that guy doing there”, but it is necessary to understand that the interior of the Earth is more inaccessible than space and that knowledge is had indirectly.

“No one has been able to have an approach” to the interior of the Earth and, therefore, it is not surprising that real knowledge is scarce, in the sense that there are no physical observables that can be measured directly, said Vicente Soler.

Thus, he explained, when it is said that magma approaches the surface it is because that is what some parameters indicate, but no one has seen its journey in the depths of the planet.

In the case of the new volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma, whose eruption began last Sunday in the municipality of El Paso, the process is at “cruising speed” and, in the words of Vicente Soler, you almost have to “cross fingers to keep it that way. “

In the current state of affairs in the La Palma eruption, there are geophysical and geochemical observable parameters that allow an “approximate” idea of ​​the state of the system and, thus, it is known that it is in a state of great tension, but the fact that do not grow is a fact that suggests that the process continues.

But from there to assert that it will last 25 days or that it will not suffer a stoppage or a new eruptive center will open is something that science is not in a position to answer “today”, has reiterated this volcanologist from the Higher Center for Scientific Research of Spain.

Vicente Soler has insisted that the interior of the Earth “cannot be touched directly.”