Why is lava drying interesting or important? I thought they’d be excited about taping into an unlimited source of heat to create clean electric energy. Shows how much I know about science...
Released gasses are notorious (sulfur, NOx in particular are worst, but many thousand variants are deadly, smelly, and corrode the pipes, if they they don't collapse or crud up the pipes while corroding them)
Very, very nasty stuff. Here, instead of just “hot rock” - there is actual lava - which is a better heat source! - but the water needed to get pumped down, then back up and cleaned, then re-pressurized and pumped back down make geothermal power very high risk, low return.
Except noxious odors. Those are about guaranteed.
It doesn't "dry," it "cools." As the article notes:
...it will allow scientists to observe directly how granites are made. ... It is hoped the site can now become a laboratory, with a series of cores drilled around the chamber to better characterise the crystallisation changes occurring in the rock as it loses temperature."Direct observation has been key to much advancement in science (Latin for "knowledge"). In this case they can repeatedly observe what's never been seen before and at best could only be only inferred.
Truer than you know.
......lava drying.....
Lava does not dry. It solidifies, that is it freezes. Just as liquid water freezes as 32 F, Liquid rock, ie magma freezes when the when the temperature drops to the point of solidification.
The interesting question raised is the magma encountered in the Hawaii drill hole similar to the magma that oozes from the volcanoes. The article speaks of granite formation rather than the volcanic rock