Red hot lava flowing on snow causes confusion

An Icelandic photographer posted footage on social media showing lava from the Sundhnúkagígar volcano flowing through snow without evaporating.

 (Video: Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove).

The footage was filmed by Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove during the Sundhnúkagígar volcano eruption in February 2024. This event is linked to larger eruptions in 2023-2024, which destroyed many buildings in the town of Grindavík. Van Nieuwenhove shared the footage on social media and received a lot of attention, attracting about 500,000 likes, IFL Science reported on November 14.

However, some viewers were skeptical, claiming that the footage was created by artificial intelligence (AI). However, the photographer confirmed that the footage was real, not AI, and had not been edited or fast-forwarded. "It's interesting because it shows how surprised we can still be by the uniqueness of nature ," he wrote.

One puzzling factor was that snow did not produce steam when it came into contact with red-hot lava. Van Nieuwenhove investigated this and was told that it might be related to the Leidenfrost effect. The Leidenfrost effect was first described in the 18th century. According to it, liquid near a significantly hotter object can create an insulating layer of steam that prevents it from boiling rapidly.

Lava from the Sundhnúkagígar volcano flows on the snow.

"The lava was so hot that it melted the snow above, creating a temporary layer of vapor that shielded the area below from the heat, similar to what you see when water droplets move across a hot metal plate. The lava flowed so fast that it covered the snow before melting. As a result, everyone was trapped under the lava ," Van Nieuwenhove explained.

Van Nieuwenhove says some viewer misunderstandings may also stem from the strange physics of lava. "One thing I've noticed while filming the series of eruptions in Iceland over the past four years is that most people have a wrong idea of ​​how lava works. I think the special effects in the film have had a big impact. People are amazed by how it looks, how it moves, how it sounds, and how it interacts with its surroundings. Lava is a strange substance and looks surreal in the video ," the photographer writes.