Tea at Trianon: Mud Volcanoes

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, January 9, 2023

Mud Volcanoes

From Ars Technica:

Overpressure within the Earth builds up when underground fluids are unable to escape from beneath the weight of overlying sediments. Some of this fluid was trapped within the sediment when it was deposited. Other fluids may migrate in from deeper sediments, while still others may be generated in place by chemical reactions in the sediments. One important type of chemical reaction generates oil and natural gas. Finally, fluids may become overpressured if they are squeezed by tectonic forces during mountain building.

Overpressures are commonly encountered during drilling for oil and gas and are typically planned for. A primary way of dealing with overpressures is to fill the wellbore with dense drilling mud, which has sufficient weight to contain the overpressures.

If the well is drilled with insufficient mud weight, any overpressured fluids can rush up the wellbore to explode out at the surface, leading to a spectacular blowout. Famous examples of blowouts include the 1901 Spindletop gusher in Texas and the more recent 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In those cases it was oil, not mud, that burst out of the wells.

In addition to being fascinating in their own right, mud volcanoes are also useful to scientists as windows into conditions deep inside the Earth. Mud volcanoes can involve materials from as deep as 6 miles (10 kilometers) below the Earth’s surface, so their chemistry and temperature can provide useful insights into deep-Earth processes that can’t be obtained in any other way.

For example, analysis of the mud erupting from Lusi has revealed that the water was heated by an underground magma chamber associated with the nearby Arjuno-Welirang volcanic complex. Every mud volcano reveals details about what’s happening underground, allowing scientists to build a more comprehensive 3D view of what’s going on inside the planet. (Read more.)