Were there Really Earthquakes? – Part VIII

Continued from the previous post regarding the unusual and specific wordage of events that accompanied the destruction outlined in 3 Nephi and Helaman 14, and the earthquakes and volcanoes behind the destruction. The first ten were covered in the previous posts. Here we pick up with #13 below:

13. Cities were covered with earth (3 Nephi 8:10; 9:5,8)

Christ telling the Nephites why he destroyed the cities during the destruction

 

• The Disciple Nephi observed the burying of cities. In one instance he saw the city of Moronihah buried (3 Nephi 8:10), of which the Lord stated: “behold, that great city Moronihah have I covered with earth, and the inhabitants thereof, to hide their iniquities and their abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come any more unto me against them” (3 Nephi 9:5). To this, He added: “And behold, the city of Gadiandi, and the city of Gadiomnah, and the city of Jacob, and the city of Gimgimno, all these have I caused to be sunk, and made hills and valleys in the places thereof; and the inhabitants thereof have I buried up in the depths of the earth, to hide their wickedness and abominations from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up any more unto me against them” (3 Nephi 9:8).

Not only did the Lord bury these cities in the ground and cover then up, he raised hills and Mountains over them: “And the earth was carried up upon the city of Moronihah that in the place of the city there became a great mountain” (3 Nephi 8:10); and “and made hills and valleys in the places thereof (3 Nephi 9:8).

Once again, we see a drastic change in the surface of the Land of Promise where hills and mountains, some “whose height is great,” others not so high but nonetheless impressive meant to be seen and known by all the Nephites in the Land of Promise.

14. Volcanic Lightning (3 Nephi 8:7;12)

• In 79 AD, during the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Pliny the Younger wrote of a “blaze of lightning” illuminating the ash plume, marking the first recorded observation of volcanic lightning. Nearly 2,000 years later, scientists still know very little about how lightning is generated by volcanic eruptions, in large part because of the danger and difficulty in monitoring the phenomenon in the field. 

Lightning with the ash plume called Volcanic Lightning

 

“Volcanic lightning is associated with many different types of volcanoes and many different types of eruptions,” says Corrado Cimarelli, a volcanologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, and lead author of the new study in Geology. However, even though volcanic lightning has been observed at slow-moving effusive eruptions in Hawaii, the phenomenon is most often associated with explosive eruptions with massive ash plumes, like the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Iceland.

Very different from lightening of thunderstorms, lightning caused by the eruption of a volcano creates an electrical discharge during the eruption, rather than from an ordinary thunderstorm. Volcanic lightning arises from colliding, fragmented particles of volcanic ash (and sometimes ice), which generates static electricity within the volcanic plume, leading to the name “dirty thunderstorm.” Moist convection and ice formation also drive the eruption plume dynamics triggering the volcanic lightning

During a volcanic eruption, a gas-rich plume of ash bursts from the vent, rising up many tens of miles. With volcanic lightning the ice-charging mechanism for lightning formation is similar to that of thunderstorms, and requires water to be present in the plume. But that mechanism only happens if a plume reaches high enough into the atmosphere for water to freeze. 

Lightning shoots out of an erupting volcano

 

However, a second mechanism—silicate charging—also occurs in volcanic plumes, unlike in regular thunderstorms. As Alexa Van Eaton, a Physical volcanologist investigating explosive eruptions and volcanic lightning of the Cascade Volcano Observatory, states:

“When tiny rock particles rub together at high speed, they create a charge, just like fresh laundry out of a clothes dryer.” This silicate charging can happen low down in the plume where particles are most heavily concentrated—not just in the highest levels of the ash clouds.”

As if towering, sunset-colored plumes weren’t enough, explosive eruptions can also generate storms of lightning. Three main processes help to build an electric field inside volcanic clouds: (1) frictional charging between colliding particles, (2) ice charging, which takes place when the plume rises high enough into the atmosphere that its water begins to freeze—which is how regular lightning gets started in nature), and (3) fractoemission from fracturing rock—the generation of charge during the brittle disruption of magma in the volcanic conduit. 

An electrostatically charged ash plume from a volcano is dense with electric charges

 

Volcanic lightning discharge transforms volcanic ash into small lightning-induced spheres or spherules (LIVS), morphologically altering and chemically reducing geologic formations and deposits, forming fulgurites.

Within the lightning discharge channel there is an ideal melting zone that represents roughly 10% or less of the total channel radius at which temperatures are sufficient to melt the ash, regardless of peak current. The melted ash is simultaneously expelled from the channel by the heated, expanding air, permitting particles to cool during atmospheric transport before coming to rest in ash fall deposits. The limited size of this ideal melting zone explains the low number of LIVS typically observed in volcanic ash despite the frequent occurrence of lightning during explosive eruptions (Kimberly Genareau, et al., ”The Elusive Evidence of Volcanic Lightning,” Scientific Reports, Nature  Research, UK, vol.7, no.15508, 2017). 

Volcanic lightning all about the ash plume of the eruption

 

Bolts of lightning can shoot out of the volcano when particles build up a charge as they are heated rapidly and rub against each other.

“And thus the face of the whole earth became deformed, because of the tempests, and the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the quaking of the earth” (3 Nephi  8:17). Obviousy, at least in the time of the three hours of destruction, the Disciple Nephi saw earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and a storm with severe lightning—during volcanism, there is a high likelihood of there being volcanic lightning—another example of understanding the extent of the destruction and the power behind it.

(See the next post, “Were there Really Earthquakes? – Part IX, for more on the unusual and specific wordage of events that accompanied the destruction, and the understanding that earthquakes and volcanoes resulting in the destruction outlined in 3 Nephi)