[Rockhounds] New Zealand Scientists Built a ‘Volcano Bomb’ Cannon to Save Lives

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Volcanoes can kill you in many different ways
<https://appliedvolc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13617-017-0067-4>.
Are you on their slopes? A volcanic avalanche of superheated ash and gas or
a sneaky lava flow would do it. Far across the bay? A tsunami caused by a
collapsing flank will be delivered to your door. On the other side of the
planet? The aerosols jettisoned into the stratosphere will tamper with the
climate, leading to deadly droughts in one place and fatal floods in
another.

Volcanoes can also launch chunks of freshly baked volcanic rock into the
sky that, even before they have cooled down and properly solidified, can
land on you and send you into the great beyond.

A team of scientists in New Zealand wanted to know how roofs in
Auckland—the country’s largest city and one that sits on a huge field of
volcanoes—would stand up to a future ballistics-throwing eruption. They
couldn’t just walk around the streets lobbing volcanic rock at people’s
houses, so they did the next best thing: They built a cannon, loaded it up
with volcanic rocks, and blasted them at replica-but-realistic roofs,
watching to see what it takes to dent, bent, and break them.

Volcanologists conduct experiments in laboratories
<https://gizmodo.com/scientists-recreated-volcanic-lightning-by-blasting-ash-1840068684>
all
the time to try to shrink complex natural phenomena down to a scale at
which scientific interrogation is possible. But it’s safe to say that this
project is arguably one of the most fun. “Come on,” said Rebecca Williams
<https://www.hull.ac.uk/staff-directory/rebecca-williams>, a volcanologist
at the University of Hull in England who wasn’t involved with the research.
“Who doesn’t want to fire volcanic cannonballs at roofs?”

https://gizmodo.com/new-zealand-scientists-built-a-volcano-bomb-cannon-to-1846184881