Left: A cooled pāhoehoe flow from the Kīlauea, showing its characteristic ropey texture ... Magma is molten rock within the Earth. If it reaches the surface, it's called lava.

newest rock around. When the lava meets the sea, it cools quickly while boiling the ocean into steam. This results in a distinctive texture: the quenching produces a glassy outer surface from the ...

The Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field has some of the largest rhyolite lava flows on Earth. Have you ever wondered what ...

The glassy texture suggests that the lava hardened quickly into rock, at a pace consistent with non-explosive water-lava interactions. Had the lava cooled more slowly in air, it would have formed ...

Once inside, the power of flowing lava can still be seen in the rocks. The floor is a ropy, uneven texture, and cooled dribbles of lava hang from the ceiling and walls, as if someone had smeared ...

Some minerals in lava could suggest water is nearby. One way to find water worlds beyond our solar system could be to look for minerals — or more specifically, to study minerals mixed with cool ...

In Hawaiian lava caves, colors that emerge after volcanic eruptions include a yellow-gold coating of microbial colonies (first) and blue and purple oxidation on cooled drips of once molten rock.

Recovery can only truly begin once the lava cools and hardens to a relatively soft basaltic rock. Those who can afford it will hire contractors with heavy equipment to clear the hardened lava from ...

Early interpretations suggest that the melting, movement and cooling of magma and lava may have created ... in which this rock could form. “This rock has a texture unlike any seen in Jezero ...

It developed between 50 to 60 million years ago when a flood of lava oozed from fissures in the earth. The molten rock cooled and contracted, cracking into a series of some 40,000 columns ...