Volcanoes for Dummies (Again)

volcanoes at spreading center

While the people at Leaf Group were busy moving most of the old eHow.com articles into niches, the people at HubPages.com were apparently up to the same trick. We guess they bought the same SEO study... Whatever the case, they apparently were no more careful about getting it right than the Leafies were. We say that because we found another RickRidesHorses post at Owlcation.com (a HubPages niche), and "What Causes a Volcano to Erupt?" is pretty much as doofus as was his explanation of earthquakes...

The Brit J-school grad did some homework (Encyclopedia Britannica, perhaps), which gave him a framework for his article. Said framework is more or less correct, according to our house geologist. It's the detail work in that framework that tipped the scales in favor of a DotD for Rick. Here are (some of) the factoids he mangled in his opus:

• "The core is comprised of inner and outer sections... The Earth's core is solid iron..." – The inner core is solid, not the outer core, and it's also not solid iron: it's believed to be (mainly) nickel-iron.
• "The crust is comprised of tectonic plates that rest on the upper mantle." – No, the tectonic plates consist of lithosphere, which are the crust and the uppermost mantle.

• "Volcanos emerge in subduction zones..." – No, they don't: volcanoes emerge behind subduction zones; above the zone in which the subducting plate gets deep enough to melt.
• "Magma is less dense than rocks, which means that it is also lighter." – Duh.
• "Because magma is hot, it rises through the Earth's crust, and because rocks are cold and dense, they fall through the Earth's crust..." – Idiot. Buoyancy is not a zero-sum game; the "cold and dense" rocks don't "fall," they stay in pace.

"...magma sloshes around in the upper mantle. Magma may cool and form igneous rocks and crystals below the surface, but it may also move into magma chambers..." – Yes, this idiot 1) thinks magma "sloshes," 2) thinks there are magma chambers waiting to be filled, and 3) thinks plutons are unrelated to volcanism! Our scientifically illiterate journalism graduate (we hope like heck he doesn't write science journalism for those UK newspapers) left out volcanism at divergent margins (Iceland, East Africa, Rio Grande Rift, etc. – see image above) and over hot spots (Hawaii, Yellowstone). He got the structure of the planet wrong, and clearly misunderstands magma. Is it any wonder one of our research team tagged him for another Dumbass of the Day award? We think, "No!"

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