The River of Fire!

That day in 79 AD, people in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii were living another day of their lives. Suddenly smoke began to billow up from Mount Vesuvius, not far away in the horizon.

Few seconds into it, there started to rise up molten fire out of a crater on the mountain. It began to flow down like a gleaming river, sweeping away people, cattle, houses and everything on its way. People ran helter skelter in search of safer places. Thus nature’s fury inflicted insoluble damage, burying even its surrounding areas under four to six metre volcanic ash and pumice, pronouncing death to a great city.

Volcanic eruptions are nothing new. Just recently, the mouldering Kilauea volcano in the southern part of Hawaii Island exploded. It has been erupting since 1983, clocking up some 34 eruptions since 1952. It is a sight of red fire crawling down rocks and crags, before sweeping into the sea.

You must be wondering whether there is a boiling cauldron deep within the Earth. Yes there is one, which often seethes to its brim, and fiery contents spill out. Now researchers find that lava out there is at 1600 degrees Celsius. This a record on lava temperatures in the past 2.5 billion years.

Some areas of Earth’s mantle might be as hot as they were more than 2.5 billion years ago, reports MailOnline. Earth's mantle is the silicate region between crust and outer core. During the evolution of Earth, evidences now say, the temperature of the mantle could have been hotter than is today. Researchers confirm this from widespread presence of a rock called Komatiite. This happened during the Archean Eon period: between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago.

Why was Earth so hotter than it is today?It was because of the acute radioactive heat from elements like potassium, thorium and uranium; this led to the creation of komatiites rocks, reports say. Over the course of time, Earth ceased to produce hot komatiites. Because, after the Archean era, the mantle got cooled from decreasing radioactive heat. Researchers gleaned this valuable knowledge from studying ancient Galapagos-related lava flows.

The Galápagos Islands are, part of the Republic of Ecuador, an archipelago of volcanic islands. Lava flows preserved here show ‘conditions of melting and crystallization similar to the Komatiites’, Mail online Says. The study led by Dr Esteban Gazel of Virginia Tech's Department of Geosciences closely observed 90 million years old ‘ Tortugal suite’ rocks in Costa Rica.

Given this 1600 degrees Celsius heat of lava, Earth may still be able to produce Komatiite-type lava. Remember, it is still boiling like ever. May be not as hot as it had been during its early evolutionary period.

Earth is beautiful what with flowers, rivers and parks. It is not so inside. It is as if there is a boiling cauldron within.Volcanic eruptions killed thousands of people across the world. The greatest of them in recent history is eruptions at Mount Tambora, Indonesia in 1815, which killed 71,000 people; a few years later, when Krakotoa volcano, Indonesia, erupted, more than 36,000 people died.

There were a total of 3542 volcanic eruptions in 20 th century. All is not well inside there.