Mount Erebus, which along with Deception Island is the only one of Antarctica’s 138 active volcanoes, is known for spewing gases containing about 80 grams of crystallized gold into the atmosphere every day.
The presence of the expensive powder was recorded 621 miles away from the planet’s southernmost lava eruption, whose peak is at an altitude of 4,448 meters, according to The New York Post.
The precious metal is just one of many things erupting from Erebus, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ground Observatory. “It regularly erupts pockets of gas and vapor and occasionally throws rocks,” NASA said in a statement. The gaseous and solid contents are erupted in Strombolian eruptions – eruptions of moderate intensity.
“Erebus … has erupted continuously since at least 1972,” Conor Bacon of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York told Live Science. He added that Erebus is also known for having a “lava lake” in one of its summit craters, formed by molten material from its surface. “This is, in fact, a rather rare phenomenon, because very specific conditions are needed for the surface to never freeze,” the researcher stated.
The volcano that erupts gold particles instead of lava
The volcano regularly pumps out plumes of gas and steam and is known for spewing boulders of partially molten rock known as “volcanic bombs”.
While the volcanic bombs are interesting, it’s the gas explosions that spray tiny crystals of metallic gold that surprise scientists, who estimate that the volcano spews out about 80 grams of gold a day — which is worth about $6,000.
The gold was found hundreds of kilometers away from Mount Erebus. Antarctic researchers have detected traces of gold dust in the surrounding air up to more than 1,000 kilometers away from the volcano.
>
Tags: Antarctic volcano erupts gold Thousands dollars day wind VIDEO
