Blue lava

January 11, 2014 11:16 AM

An Indonesian volcano with glowing blue lava.

(Spoiler: it's actually molten sulfur.)

posted by Chocolate Pickle (24 comments total)

More pictures here.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:18 AM on January 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wow - cannot imagine being one of those miners - talk about a hellish job. Spectacular pix though.
posted by leslies at 11:36 AM on January 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

if anything those pics made me want to know more about the miners. i want to buy those guys some masks and gloves.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 11:45 AM on January 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

This is one of the locations featured in Workingman's Death. I highly recommend this documentary if you're interested and intrigued by the pictures above.
posted by mirage pine at 11:49 AM on January 11, 2014

Here you go, leslies.
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:51 AM on January 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's like a jellyfish tried to swallow a volcano.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:08 PM on January 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Heisenberg!
posted by IndigoJones at 12:35 PM on January 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

mirage pine: "This is one of the locations featured in Workingman's Death. I highly recommend this documentary if you're interested and intrigued by the pictures above."

The only place I can watch this movie online is if I sign up for Amazon Prime for US$79.00 per year? I can't afford that and Netflix and Hulu Plus, etc. etc. (I can't afford even one of those!)

Why can't I just pay US$5.00 (or whatever) to watch it once? The current situation is all kinds of messed up.

Sorry for the derail.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 1:25 PM on January 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

Why can't I just pay US$5.00 (or whatever) to watch it once?

Is $4.99 okay? That's what it costs on iTunes.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:50 PM on January 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

Tragic. I keep looking at the pix of the miner with the sulfur condensed on his eyelashes, knowing that what he breathed in of that mist has turned to sulfurous acid (amongst other nasties) in his lungs. I've inhaled a single good whiff of the stuff and coughed for a week. Makes asbestos seem benign.

Also instructive to note that he'd only have to work an entire day to watch the viddy on iTunes. So...he's got that going for him.
posted by kjs3 at 2:14 PM on January 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

Aren't there much easier ways to get sulfur? Northern Alberta has staggering piles of it as a byproduct of oilsands processing, and it's just sitting around.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 2:48 PM on January 11, 2014

It's a traditional business. They've been harvesting sulfur from that crater for centuries.

And because the men work for a pittance, it's a cheap way to get sulfur.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:52 PM on January 11, 2014

Wow, amazing photos, thanks for sharing.
posted by smoke at 3:20 PM on January 11, 2014

You can also see more of this mine in the documentary War Photographer.
posted by googly at 4:24 PM on January 11, 2014

Hot damn!
posted by Woodroar at 4:32 PM on January 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wow! - mixed emotions as highlighted above. Thanks for the link and for the documentary links from others. Beautiful and terribly sad at the same time. It makes me wonder if the miners working in the crater have a sense of the physical risks and danger they are in.
posted by numberstation at 4:56 PM on January 11, 2014

I bet they do. Can't imagine they wouldn't know the danger they are in. They live it. The question for me is: do I as a consumer have a sense of the risks and danger I'm complicit in by buying products that came from these working conditions?
posted by aniola at 7:51 PM on January 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Aniola, if you don't, you put them out of work. And the reason they're doing this is that there isn't anything else available to them.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:50 PM on January 11, 2014

Wow, Nature, that color scheme really pops.
posted by CynicalKnight at 8:54 PM on January 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ecotourism.
posted by aniola at 9:22 PM on January 11, 2014

Not that ecotourism magically solves everything. But hey, it's a living.
posted by aniola at 9:31 PM on January 11, 2014

The only place I can watch this movie online is if I sign up for Amazon Prime for US$79.00 per year? I can't afford that and Netflix and Hulu Plus, etc. etc. (I can't afford even one of those!)

I watched it on youtube.
posted by mirage pine at 2:47 AM on January 12, 2014

Wow. Those pictures are beautiful and eye-opening at once. I had seen bits of the Indonesian miners carting solid sulfur about, but had no idea it was red when liquid and burnt blue. Or that it was used in bleaching sugar. Thanks for the links!
posted by Athanassiel at 4:55 AM on January 12, 2014

Reminds me of Fritz Leiber's A Specter is Haunting Texas, which features the drilling for pockets of highly radioactive magma:

In a few moments, where the tower and great machines had been, there was only a cone of bright purple, viscous, semi-solid lava, hugely squirming and swiftly growing taller.

posted by raygirvan at 10:30 AM on January 12, 2014