10 Incredible Facts About Volcanic Lava

Here are 10 incredible facts about lava.

Lava gushing down the side of a volcano is certainly a dramatic sight to behold, but the fiery flow’s attention-grabbing qualities don’t stop there.
Here are 10 incredible facts about it.
Number 10. It may be cursed. Lava from Hawaii is said to unleash some particularly bad mojo when it’s removed from its island home. Legend has it that volcanic goddess Pele gets very angry when people take what’s hers. Reportedly, she’ll stop delivering vengeance once the goods have been returned. 
Number 9. 570 degrees Fahrenheit is considered cool. It’s towards the bottom of the lava temperature range, which goes upward to about 2 thousand degrees. 
Number 8. It may be what made the weird patterns on Mars. Scientists believe that the mysterious swirls and lines existing on the landscape near the Martian equator were formed by lava activity. Many of the features are coil-shaped, but one looks remarkably like an elephant. 
Number 7. It comes in 3 varieties. Those are basaltic, rhyolitic, and andesitic. Of them basaltic is the hottest, which, combined with its low content of silica, allows it to travel quite far. 
Number 6. Cooking over lava makes for a delicious steak. According to a chef who made his own lava oven, the intense heat really seals in the meat’s flavor. The downside is that it takes the molten-rock-powered appliance about 70 hours to heat up.
Number 5. The word is Italian. Directly translated it means ‘torrent stream.’ Originally, it was used to describe fast moving waters from rivulets to floods. Then Mount Vesuvius erupted, and people used the word to describe its flows as well. 
Number 4. Volcanoes are to thank for the creation of Hawaii. Before it became a tropical paradise, the island was a great big chunk of Earth’s underwater outer crust, blown to the surface by extreme heat and repeated volatile activity. Clearly, it’s come a long way over the past few million years. 
Number 3. Iceland is a lava-lovers dream. Since about 1500, one third of all of the lava that’s flowed worldwide has done so there, earning it the nickname ‘Land of Fire And Ice.’ 
Number 2. Bombs and walls are powerless against it. Both can slow the spread down for a bit, but neither can fully stop a speeding stream of lava. Measures taken to divert flows have been somewhat effective, but it’s never known for sure which way the molten rock will travel. 
Number 1. Lava can bring communities together. Scientists and artists at Syracuse University banded together to learn more about the super-hot substance. Their path to discovery does often require that they create lava flows on campus. Sometimes area kids are invited to observe - and toast marshmallows over - the installations.