Answer 4:
Interesting question, although I don't know if I
can give you a definitive response. So, I'll say
maybe (and personally, I think yes!) Here are some
of the difficulties you need to overcome if you
want to get to the mantle through a volcano:
1) Temperature: Volcanoes are obviously
very
hot. The lava/magma is usually at least 1000°C
(~1800°F, about 4-5 times hotter than your oven
when you bake cookies). Just to give some
comparison, various engines in airplanes and jet
fighters routinely hit 1300°C for prolonged
periods of time. However, the problem with our
hypothetical volcano scuba machine is that the
extreme temperature of the lava would eventually
cause our machine and everything inside of it,
including any people, to reach the same
temperature of 1000°C unless we have some way to
cool our machine. So the extreme temperature of
the lava requires that our machine:
a) Be made of some material which is able to
withstand at least 1000°C. This is not so much a
problem.
b) Be able to dissipate the heat that is
being drawn from the lava. (a little more tricky).
2) Corrosive Environment: Imagine we are
trying to make some lemonade: we add water, lemon,
and sugar (which is a solid). However, we mix
everything together and realize that there is no
solid sugar anymore! The sugar has dissolved in
the water. When we try to put our scuba machine
into a volcano, the lava will actually try to do
the same thing and dissolve our machine. In fact,
lava, which is primarily made of silica, is
extremely corrosive, meaning that it tends to
dissolve most everything readily. In jet engines,
we fight this same problem all of the time: sand
in the air is inhaled by the engine and melts when
it gets to the hottest part of the engine. The
molten sand attacks and eats away at everything
inside the engine. Without going into detail,
there are ways that we prevent this molten sand
from destroying our engine. So the extremely
corrosive environment requires that our machine:
c) Be able to stop the corrosive attack of
the lava. (probably could be done)
3) Pressure: The mantle starts somewhere
around 10 km below the surface of the earth. The
Mariana's Trench, the deepest part of the ocean,
is around this same depth as well and has a
pressure of 16,000 psi, over 1000 times the
pressure you or I feel at the surface of the
earth. It was only very recently in 2012 that the
first human was able to be present onboard a
vessel which reached the bottom of the Mariana's
trench. Now keep in mind that lava is much denser
than water (~3 times as dense) and thus you would
expect a much higher pressure than that at the
bottom of the ocean, somewhere in the neighborhood
of 50,000 psi or 3000 times the pressure you or I
feel at the surface of the earth. These are
extreme pressures. So the extreme pressures
require that our machine:
d) Be able to withstand 3000 times the
earth's pressure at the surface. (these are some
high pressures, I don't know what could withstand
this!)
Generally speaking, each of the four
requirements is not particularly difficult to
overcome; rather, it's the combination of all of
them that make the problem so difficult.
Nevertheless, technology is a wonderful thing that
progresses slowly but surely and I do believe that
we will be able to do this in the future!
Click Here to return to the search form.
|