Location Taken: Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho
Time Taken: June 2010
Look at this! There’s a volcano that’s got blue flames!
If you can’t see the photos for whatever reason, it looks like rivers and lakes of electric blue flames. Soooo nifty.
This particular volcano, Kawah Ijen in Indonesia, happens to erupt a lot of liquid sulfur. This isn’t lava as we think of it, since it’s a pure element rather than standard molten rock. However, the sulfur is so hot that once it hits the surface and the cool, oxygen-rich, air there, it has a pretty good chance of just plain catching on fire. If you remember your high school chemistry classes, most of them mention how different elements burn in different colors. It’s a fairly easy yet dramatic demonstration, so most good teachers will show this off.
But anyway, sulfur burns a glorious blue. It’s fairly faint, so it’s not visible at day, but at night, that’s when the magic happens.
Kawah Ijen also happens to be a good source for sulfur mining. Well, mining’s not the right word, more like “funneling the liquid through pipes to cooling basins”. It’s dangerous work, what with working right on an active volcano spewing out toxic gasses. Plus this is a rather poor part of the world, so many of the workers have only wet rags to protect them from the bad air. And there’s no road up to the work area, so they climb the mountain and then haul the sulfur down on their backs. Not the best job, and fairly low-paying too, but obviously there are people willing to do it in those conditions.
And at least they can occasionally avoid having to work in the sun by working at night instead, their way lit by the blue flames.
