ORIGIN OF VOLCANOES

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6439, 17 January 1924, Page 8

ORIGIN OF VOLCANOES

ENORMOUS HEAT

The cause of volcanic eruptions is that untold ages ago our earth consisted of a mass of whirling fiery gas. As this gradually cooled a crust formed on the outside and this crust is what we are now living on.

During the cooling, which is still going on, cracks and weak spots were formed in the uneven crust, and it is along these lines of weakness that we get volcanoes.

Inside the crust of the earth is a mass of gas at a temperature higher than anything we. can ever conceive. Whether this heat is at the core, or round the core, or even distributed in “pockets,” we don’t know, but we are certain that there is.a simply enormous heat somewhere under our earth’s crust. Any water that percolates through this enormous heat turns immediately into steam, and has to find an exit somewhere—generally through the crater of a volcano. Then again, as the crust further cools and contracts, it compresses the gas inside till it has to explode somewhere. And so does that wonderful phenomenon of Nature occur.