Hypothetical Physics and Chemistry of Volcanic Eruptions: The Doorway to Their Prediction

This article presents a further development of the hypotheses concerning the possibility of predicting (“tectonic”) earthquakes [1]. Those hypotheses are based on the conversion of all types of released energy into heat and active chemical substances. One of the important sources of this phenomenon is the release of the latent energy trapped and stored during the Earth’s accretion. The latent energy of primordial hydrogen and helium escaping from the Earth’s core and lower mantle causes degassing processes [2] [3]. This latent energy converts into totally different types of chemical, electromagnetic and thermal energies of active compounds that are responsible for the major endogenic terrestrial processes. The dominating theories in seismology and volcanology are that an earthquake results from a sudden slip of a tectonic fault and that only magma and the gases contained in magma supply the volcanic energy resulting in the conclusions that earthquakes and eruptions are unpredictable. Volcanic eruption is considered herein to be a special case of the earthquake-process in which earthquake hypocenters rise to the Earth’s surface. A possible solution is proposed ([1] and herein) based on the analyses of the physicochemical processes as participants in earthquake and eruption preparations (foreshocks - major shock - aftershocks - volcanic eruptions) and on the characteristic rates of reflection of these processes on the Earth’s surface. Influences of Sun-Moon-tides and volcanic (“harmonic”) tremors are analyzed from physical-chemical point of view. The case of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and the proposed monitoring of the recommended additional data provides a way of selecting a complex of reliable earthquake and volcanic eruption precursors.