If you’re like me, the picture above is reminiscent of someone stabbing someone else in the neck with pen in a Quentin Tarantino movie. It’s a fair comparison: incredibly bright red liquid spurts out of a hole, sending streams of said bright red liquid up, only to sail back down. However, this particular brand of, for lack of a better word, spurting, isn’t the result of purposefully comedic SFX.

Classified as a Strombolian eruption, the upwards lava explosions are caused by large gas bubbles bursting, which travel up until they reach a vent. The spurting (oh god I hate this word) effect is further emphasized by the results (also known as tephras): solid bits of lava (splatter), solid bits of bubbly lava (scoria), lava bombs (which are just as cool and badass as they sound), and whole chunks of solidified lava. 

To make them even cooler, Strombolian eruptions are named for the Italian island Stromboli, which has a lot of volcanoes that produce this particular kind of eruption.

And you thought volcanoes couldn’t get any better.

Photo courtesy of: 

volcanoes4. Volcanoes. 28 September 2014. 18 January 2017. <https://volcanoes4.wikispaces.com/Volcanoes>.

Info courtesy of:

Ball, Jessica. Types of Volcanic Eruptions. n.d. 18 January 2017. <http://geology.com/volcanoes/types-of-volcanic-eruptions/>.