Have you ever wondered what a volcano looks like on the inside? We've seen some suggestions from Jules Vernes story "The Journey to the Center of the Earth" - but few people have actually gone down into a volcano and seen with their own eyes what it looks like.
The reason why so few have done is that the crater usually closes after an eruption with hard cold lava. Þríhnúkagígur in Iceland is an exception though. Recently two Icelandic explorers and experienced mountain climbers, Björn and Einar, went down into the crater, rappelling some hundreds of feets into the magma chamber of the volcano. National Geographic went with them to record this amazing phenomenon.
Following their mapping of the cave a group of volcano scientist "dived" in:
The reason the scientists are going down there is to get a better understanding of volcanoes and how they work. Why is the chamber empty? What can it tell them that helps them predict the next move of Eyjafjallajokull volcano, or it's big sister, Katla. Here the team is heading towards the Eyjafjallajokull crater - a very risky route over ash covered ice bridges on the glacier:
Unfortunately, National Geographic hasn't published more of the program, so I guess we'll just have to see the rest on TV.
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