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A figurer role model could help track plenty of floating rock in the ocean , perhaps giving scientist a path to discourage ship captain to rest away .
The sway in question ispumice , which form from speedily cooled lava . The lava cool so quickly that gas bubbles are trapped inside , creating a rock music take with spongelike mess . Pumice is so clean it can swim .
A map of pumice drift from the 2012 eruption of the Havre seamount 180 days after the eruption.
The float rock can occasionally cause problems . Island or undersea volcanoes can create massive amounts of pumice stone in a individual irruption , resulting in immense oodles of rock that can float 100 of statute mile . After the enormouseruption of Krakatoa in 1884 , pumice muckle clog harbors in Indonesia . Ships today are at risk of infection , too , said study researcher Martin Jutzeler , a volcanologist at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom . H2O intakes on ship can become damaged by pumice , procrastinate the locomotive , Jutzeler told Live Science . [ In Photos : A float ' Island ' of Rocks ]
An undersea outbreak gave Jutzeler and his colleague a rare opportunity to track lashings from a known source — and to use sea models to see if computers could predict where pumice stone will float .
The researchers used moderate - closure satellite imagination , as well as report from ship chieftain and airline pilot , to track apumice raft from the Havre Seamount , a submarine vent in the southwest Pacific near New Zealand . The volcanoerupted in 2012 , creating a mess of pumice stone measure 155 square mi ( 400 straight klick ) in a single daylight . It was the first concrete evidence that deep - sea volcanoes , not just shallow ones , can create pumice stone plenty , Jutzeler and his colleagues write Wednesday ( April 23 ) in the journal Nature Communications .
The researchers used an ocean mannequin called the Nucleus for European Modeling of theOcean ( NEMO ) — whichpulls together information on current and wind from 1988 to 2010 — to see if they could match a false pumice stone mass with the Havre " float island . " They found that , using the model , they could make near - real - time prognosis of where the pumice — which tend to propagate into long tendrils bobbing in the currents — would head next .
These findings could be utile for sea sailing , Jutzeler said . Currently , nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers around the globe supervise the sky for airborne volcanic ash for thesafety of air travel traffic .
" The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers are very competent now to be capable to track atmospheric mote , but nothing exists for these rafts , " Jutzeler said . " We really find that something should be done . "
Havre ’s eruption was in the " middle of nowhere , " he say , so nobody was affected . But other eruptions could hit closer to universe centers or merchant marine road , and terrestrial eruptions of island volcanoes could also broadcast rafts of pumice into the sea .
The enquiry also has a scientific app . Geologists employ ash beds from volcanoes to date bed of rock . But there is little understanding of how pumice stone rafts and their associated ash tree eventually slump to the seafloor and become part of the rock-and-roll track record , Jutzeler said .
Next yr , Jutzeler and his colleagues will use submersible warship to search the products of volcanic eruptions , he said .
" We ’ll endeavor to understand what got created , but also what did n’t make it into the mickle and fell down to the seafloor , " Jutzeler said .
