{
  "id": 19136271,
  "title": "Tiny crystals from volcanoes could reveal when they are about to erupt",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/09/tiny-crystals-from-volcanoes-could-reveal-when-they-are-about-to-erupt",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-11-09T10:01:09.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Conversation AU",
    "slug": "the-conversation-au",
    "url": "https://theconversation.com/tiny-crystals-from-volcanoes-could-reveal-when-they-are-about-to-erupt-294679"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a seismic and volcanic belt stretching from New Zealand to North and South America, hold the potential to reveal their eruption timelines through tiny crystals found within them. These crystals, specifically plagioclase, a mineral abundant in the region, exhibit a distinct chemical composition and shape shortly before an eruption. When magma, a molten rock stored beneath the volcano, shows signs of increasing temperature or water content, plagioclase responds by increasing its calcium content, dissolving part of the crystal before regrowing with a different composition. This phenomenon, known as \"crystal zoning,\" provides geologists with a unique signature that can be analyzed to determine if the magma is poised for eruption. In a recent study published in Nature Communications, researchers collected volcanic rocks from the Andean Mountains in South America to investigate plagioclase crystals across various active and inactive volcanoes. They discovered that the final changes recorded in these crystals, known as \"microcrysts,\" share remarkably similar chemical compositions across all volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire. These microcrysts, which form just before eruption and directly from the final magma, hold crucial information about the temperature and water content of the magma at that precise moment. By analyzing the temperatures at which these microcrysts grew, scientists found a consistent pattern: hotter magma replenishing colder magma reservoirs. The study concluded that the unique signatures of these microcrysts serve as a common feature across the Pacific Ring of Fire, suggesting that monitoring the growth of plagioclase crystals could potentially help identify \"quiet\" volcanoes that may require closer monitoring for a possible eruption.",
  "summary": "Calcium chemical map of plagioclase crystals from Tuzgle volcano, obtained using X-ray fluorescence microscopy at the Australian Synchrotron.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}