This is one of the most beautiful and dangerous places on Earth. Here's where it is. Where is the blue lava volcano with a lake of acidic water
It looks like a landscape from another planet but it's really something you can observe here on Earth. A volcano with blue-colored lava instead of red-orange and, near the volcano, a warm and beautiful lake that really invites you to take a bath. However, diving in its waters would be a bad idea: they are acidic waters. This natural complex is really one of the most dangerous in the world, although it is also one of the most beautiful.
Where is the Kawah Ijen volcanic complex
It is called "Kawah Ijen volcanic complex" and is located in Indonesia, in the eastern part of Java, the least extensive of the four large Sunda Islands and the heart of the country. Kawah Ijen can be defined as a series of stratovolcanoes, the highest point of which is represented by the Gunung Merapi stratovolcano, within a larger caldera (called Ijen) about 20 kilometers wide.
In volcanology, a caldera is a large depression or basin, often occupied by a lake and circular or elliptical in shape. And this is where things get really interesting. The crater lake on top of the Kawah Ijen volcanic complex is considered the largest of its kind in the world. Its waters, full of sulfuric acid, or hydrochloric acid, depending on the sources and analysis, feed a river that flows down to the valley and that, with very acidic and metal-filled water, has a negative effect on the surrounding ecosystem.
According to yet other sources, the composition of the Kawah Ijen complex lake water is composed of a mix of acids and minerals. Whatever the specific composition of those waters, they certainly all agree that it would not be a good idea to bathe in them, despite the fact that the warm temperature might tempt you to take a dip.
How the volcano's characteristic blue flames are produced
Another feature of the Kawah Ijen complex is the blue-colored flames. It depends on sulfuric gas, which seeps through the cracks with temperatures up to 600 degrees Celsius and ignites flames of an absolutely unusual color, which rise up to a height of 5 meters and sometimes overhang even the lava, which during the day takes the color that we are accustomed to recognize and at night a very strange electric blue color.
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Giuseppe Giordano