A Labyrinth of Lava

  • By Ari Daniel
  • Posted 10.29.15
  • NOVA

Lava can be a powerful sculptural force. Take the island of Hawaii, for instance, where a maze of tunnels courses underground. It's solid rock now but it shows just how fluid the Earth can be.

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Running Time: 01:18

Transcript

Kirk: Wow, this is pretty wild. And there’s lots of roots hanging down, coming from the trees above.

Harry: Yeah, these are coming through from the ‘ōhiʻa trees.

Kirk: It’s amazing… it’s like a subway tunnel in here, the walls are just perfectly round, like someone took a boring device and carved a tunnel through here.

Harry: Yeah, pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Kirk: It is phenomenal. How long is this tunnel system anyway?

Harry: 42-and-a-half miles.

Kirk: These caves in Hawaii are all over the island, and they’re actually made by lava. The way they work is lava flowing downhill cools the top, it caps over, and suddenly it’s flowing in a pipe-like structure and then the lava flows out, and leaves this stone pipe. So I’m actually in a cave that was once filled with red-hot molten lava.

Credits

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Produced by
Ari Daniel
Director of Photgraphy
Piers Leigh
Sound
Keith Nealy
Lava Footage
Volcano Video Productions
Original Footage
© WGBH Educational Foundation 2015

MEDIA CREDITS

Music
APM

IMAGE

(main image: lava field)
Volcano Video Productions

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