Geologists Shocked by Volcano Surprise
Never assume a quiet volcano
will remain quiet. A dormant one
in Ethiopia blew up 2 days ago
‘Like a sudden bomb’: See photos from space of Ethiopian volcano erupting for first time in 12,000 years (Live Science, 25 Nov 2025). Hayli Gubbi is the latest volcano to shock the geological community. It reminds us of the Hunga Tonga eruption in January 2022 that caught the geological experts by surprise. This one, fortunately, was smaller, but it was big enough to send an ash plume all the way to India and parts of China.
This is the first time Hayli Gubbi is known to have erupted in the Holocene — the present geological epoch that began at the end of the last ice age, around 11,700 years ago. Generally, if a volcano hasn’t erupted in the Holocene, it is considered extinct.
Deep time is a paradigm, not an observation.
The date of the last eruption is inferred; there are no historical records of it. The inference is based on moyboy assumptions embedded in the geologic timescale.
The world’s little-known volcanoes pose the greatest threat (The Conversation, 25 Nov 2025). Taking a cue from the Ethiopian volcano, geologist Mike Cassidy of the University of Birmingham warns that there are many other volcanoes that could look quiet but could come back to life.
Often overlooked, these “hidden” volcanoes erupt more often than most people realise. In regions like the Pacific, South America and Indonesia, an eruption from a volcano with no recorded history occurs every seven to ten years. And their effects can be unexpected and far-reaching.
One volcano has just done exactly that. In November 2025, the Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia has erupted for the first time in recorded history (at least 12,000 years that we know of). It sent ash plumes 8.5 miles into the sky, with volcanic material failing in Yemen and drifting into air space over northern India.
A 20-second clip of the eruption plume is linked in his article. Less than half of known volcanoes are monitored, Cassidy says, and many are not monitored until after a catastrophe has occurred. A volcanic eruption in Mexico killed 2,000 people in 1982, and displaced 20,000 others, he reminds readers.
Amboy Crater, standing alone and silent in the California desert. Could it revive?
Why some volcanoes don’t explode (ETH Zurich, 21 Nov 2025). Swiss geologists claim to have found what makes the difference between explosive eruptions and gently flowing lavas: “friction in magma leads to the formation of bubbles that influence” the outcome. This involves a rethink of previous views:
The explosiveness of a volcanic eruption depends on how many gas bubbles form in the magma – and when. Until now, it was thought that gas bubbles were formed primarily when the ambient pressure dropped while the magma was rising. Gases that were dissolved in the magma in lower strata – due to the higher pressure – escape when the pressure drops and form bubbles. The more bubbles there are in the magma, the lighter it becomes and the faster it rises. This can cause the magma to tear apart, leading to an explosive eruption.
The old and new explanations are incomplete, however, and there are always exceptions to every rule. Can scientists actually mimic the processes in a massive mountain with small-scale experiments in the lab? If so, why do they often get surprised?
Speaking of calm lava flows, you can watch the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii with 3 webcams provided by USGS. At the time of this posting, there was a river of lava flowing out of the main vent below an impressive fountain. At earlier times, viewers were treated to lava fountains 1,000 feet high.
Kilauea eruption Nov 25, 2025; USGS webcam screenshot at the time of this writing.
Webb telescope spies Io’s volcanic activity and sulfurous atmosphere (EoS via Phys.org, 4 Nov 2025). If you are afraid of volcanoes, be glad you don’t live on Io, Jupiter’s 2nd Galilean moon. Every portion of its surface has been resurfaced by lava. The Webb Telescope recently measured hot spots on Io.
The new images captured infrared thermal emissions from the same two regions. However, lava flows from the 2022 Kanehekili region’s eruption had spread to cover more than 4,300 square kilometers—about four times the area they covered in 2022.
Io global view from Galileo mission (NASA). The spots are all volcanoes, not craters.
Io has been active with gigantic plumes that change year to year ever since its volcanoes first astonished planetary scientists during the Voyager flybys in the 1970s.
The “surprise effect” in science (unanticipated discoveries) is a measure of how little scientists understand. There’s hardly a field in science that is not plagued by models that don’t work. Science is a fallible attempt to get a handle on matters too big and complex for the human mind. Reliability is hard to come by except in cases where experiments are repeatable in controlled conditions. Even then, a certain amount of error is unavoidable.
California, where your Editor lives, has numerous quiet volcanoes. If one of them came to life near a populated city, the results could be disastrous. Fortunately most of them are in isolated areas. But then there are the earthquakes! After the 1994 Northridge quake, experts were saying enough energy was stored in the fault to produce 20 more like that one, but none have occurred for over 30 years now. That could change at any moment. See the story of Ubehebe Crater that experts got wrong, and the Salton Sea activity they got wildly wrong. There are ongoing worries about volcanoes reviving in the Long Valley Caldera near Mammoth ski area, where nearby hot springs are active. Lassen Volcano erupted in 1914-1917. Farther up the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Mt. St. Helens eruptions (1980-1982) are now legendary, and Alaska has had volcanoes revive over the last few years or decades.
Creation geologist Steve Austin has evaluated the decline of supervolcanoes over time and concluded that the risk is lower now than after the Flood. That might be of little comfort to people living near the next surprise eruption. Sweet dreams. Don’t scare the children, like my sister who used to tell me when I was about 5 years old while we were going to sleep that volcanoes can erupt anywhere, any time; even under my bed. That was cruel (but I got over it).
Volcanoes are not all bad. Read about how volcanoes are part of Earth’s ‘supply chain’ of vital elements for life at Science & Culture Today here and here.