Hello. My name's Jay and I work at the Lapworth
Museum of Geology, at the University of Birmingham.
I'm here today to talk to you a little bit
about one of my favourite objects, the lava
bomb. Lava bombs interest me because they
come from the heart of the Earth. They come
from a place that's beyond imagining really.
They are formed deep within the earth from
molten rock with gasses suffused in them.
And this is one.
This particular beauty came from Mount Tarawera
in the North Island of New Zealand. New Zealand
is particularly special to me because my wife’s
from there, and this volcano was involved
in a very infamous eruption in 1886 killing
120 people, mainly Mauris, and demolishing
what was known then as a wonder of the world,
the Pink and White Terraces which are now
sadly lost to humankind. We have pictures
of them.
Now lava bombs don't come out looking like
this. Think of a volcanic crater as like a
big pot of stew boiling away and the gases
force these out at thousands of miles an hour.
Some fly miles through the air and are as
big as cars. This one fell probably just down
the side of the crater, tumbling down, still
boiling hot. You can see all these striations
down the side and that's from the air passing
by whistling around it. And also you can see
the bubbling there where the gases were escaping.
They connect us to the earth, and it formed
in geological processes that date back to
the dawn of time and they're still going on
forming our Earth today in places like Hawaii
and New Zealand and Iceland. And that's why
I love lava bombs.
[Music]
