is your watching old faithful for the
last few minutes before interruption
we would like to tell you a bit about
this video a small group of scientists
in California's to technology arizona
state university and Yellowstone
National Park have been studying how old
faithful works in detail
we're especially interested in geysers
since they seem to work in very similar
ways to volcanoes like mount st. Helens
that we can safely work around Old
Faithful sometime ago we made
measurements of temperature and pressure
several deaths down the event of Old
Faithful we collected data starting from
the time that emptied out at the end of
interruption until it refilled and
finally erupted again from this work we
learned many details of how geysers work
but of course we still have many
questions we'd like to know where the
water comes from because it comes from
the sides hurt from the bottom or both
why does it stop throwing up at about 15
feet below the top if you look down from
the top event is a slot about 45 feet
long and about a foot wide you can see
down about 10 feet below that we really
don't have any idea what the event looks
like or what affected shape may have on
the way Old Faithful erupts we wonder if
event filled with water quietly or if it
is boiling Old Faithful also makes a
series of big splashes before you should
each eruption
you have been seen these in the video in
fact an especially large one usually
triggers off the eruption we don't
really understand what that's all about
these and many other questions have led
us to want to see what's down there
just recently it's been possible to get
a very small television camera we've put
one of these cameras in a metal housing
to protect it from the boiling water and
to keep it cool with it we have been
taking video pictures down into the
throat of Old Faithful we thought you
might like to see him
his Old Faithful again throws a big
bunch of water out this time it probably
is going to start the eruption and
indeed that's the case there is old
faithful inn corruption
here you see that old faithful surface
band is a slot lack structure as i
mentioned before it's covered with a
material called center which looks kinda
like snow but it's actually me out of
silica a very hard material coach
everything that gets placed with the
erupted water the housing we built for
the cameras in this view it's a
stainless steel thermos bottle with the
camera on the inside cooled likes it's
attached to the surface by a long cable
you can see the white one foot markers
on the cable here we are testing the
light needed to take video pictures down
the dark vent
here it's a little camera itself out of
the housing about two inches long and
about three quarters of an inch in
diameter lands and whole we now have the
camera down into the mantle faithful
it's about six feet down and it's
swinging on the end of its cable at the
moment and we will soon be on our way
down to as deep as we can get safely at
this moment we're still discussing
exactly whether all of the hard work is
working and we have the camera of
properly hooked up electrically and
write microphones running it all those
sorts of things and we want to make sure
we've done everything right before we
will end because we have no idea what's
going to happen you can see the the near
wall of the of the advantage in the
bottom left corner of the picture the
type right hand is in sunshine and it's
overexposed and here we go down the
event and you can see it's still a slot
down as far as we can see so far it's
really quite a narrow slot just a few
inches wide
you also see occasionally drops of water
falling down you'll see those as we go
along
that's water that's convincing from the
steam in the event on our cool housing
those drops are very convenient actually
because they tell us which way straight
down which we otherwise wouldn't know
and we didn't really plan it like that
but that's the way it worked out which
was very convenient
we're dragging most of the time along
the side of the wall notice at this
point we can see some fractures and
cracks in the sidewalk
although the sidewalls actually look
very smooth and that's because they are
covered with the center material that we
see up on the surface notice now that
there's lots of water coming from down
below it's very tiny little droplets
that are being blown up with the steam
that's coming up from below us and now
you can see we seem to be coming to kind
of a shelf like structure and we worry
about what we're going to land on that
and not get off of it and we pay me into
the surface of it and kind of the bang
up and down a little and Holly over the
edge which is very nice but here's yet
another one in this time you can see a
pool of water down there and because of
the droplet why we know that we're going
to land just to the side of that little
pool water here seems now to be a lot of
water coming down around us from the
sides which is not coming from our
housing now we're landing on this flat
little platform of rock and banging up
in the up and down and the folks
handling the cable at the top now think
that they're okay but actually the
camera is laying there on that shelf and
the cable is just going on down the hole
below it now since we can see it why we
can tell him that that's the case and so
they will start bringing the cable back
up
how to pickup the the camera
and see if we're lucky and can get over
the edge of this ledge somehow we've
known about this ledge from our
measurements before and always wondered
what it might be in fact we thought it
was probably a narrow place in the slot
but in the picture is we were coming
down a moment ago you could see that it
really was just a plant shelf so we have
some good chance that we'll be able to
work our way over the edge of it somehow
so at the moment he see lots of water by
the way moving down around the camera
haha here we come off the ledge and
we're banging around again and now it
looks as though we've gone over the
excellent we've been lucky and got past
this ledge and we're down into a much
bigger open area now you can't really
even see that far sidewalk like yet and
now suddenly we see something very
striking which is was a big mystery to
us is we were watching this in real time
it's clearly just wildly boiling water
which is boiling up explaining all over
the camera we had not really intended
this camera to be in submerged in the
water and so we were quite concerned
about this and we actually stopped at
this point and came back up a little bit
to think about what we were seen and
watch it a little more and we did
realize at that point to what we were
seeing was this while boiling water but
we really didn't think that was a good
thing to put the camera down and so we
decided that we wouldn't go down any
further that we would start back up and
we would go up somewhat slower so that
we can see
in more detail level we were going by
and let the wall to the vamp really look
like and see if we can see water coming
in from the side and other things like
that we were interested in also this
would allow us to measure that the kind
of the dimensions of the event because
we had calibrated the camera in the
laboratory so we can actually make
measurements of sizes of things here you
see is going back up this kind of the
side of that platform that we landed on
a bit ago we're actually going up about
a foot at a time waiting for a few
seconds to leave a chance to see things
pretty well and then going up another
foot now you can see our puddle of water
again and CEO where we actually landed
from the drops of water from our camera
we see a large amounts of
these drops of water coming and
seemingly all directions not only from
the bottom but also seems that we seem
to see time coming from the sides as we
move up we occasionally come out into an
open area and we swing as we are doing
now and that gives us a view of a little
wider area then we're training along the
side walls with the event
you can see that the
the picture sometimes gets a little
later that's because we had to adjust
the light is we went up and down and is
of course when we got close to the wall
then we had to turn the lights down to
keep from over excluding the video and
then as we got out into the big open
areas we had to turn them on
more more intensely we didn't do that
very perfectly notice by the way in the
bottom right hand corner you can see a
waterfall falling down the side
seems to be coming from coming in
underneath this slot it's not very much
water so we don't think that's a major
source of the water that's filling the
event now we're back up into really
quite a fairly narrow slot and we seem
to have gotten up above so much
splashing and other things that were
occasionally is just then you see fog
that's because the wind is gradually
getting a little higher up at the top
and it's blowing down into the event and
that allows folks to form is it cool the
steam and event and you will see that
occasionally as we go along when a gust
of wind done causes some
some error to get down in the event
event is full only esteem normally and
this team is quite clear
fortunately otherwise we wouldn't be
able to see much because everything is
is it a bloody temperature water so you
don't get a fall go steam as you do out
of a chimney or something like that big
blast of water right in coming from down
below continuing at some level here it's
gets onto the window of the camera and
makes the image a little a little bit
fuzzy there's another blast of air we've
stopped now we're about 11 feet and we
stop now to decide what we're going to
do whatever acclaimed give up at this
point thinking that were lucky and we
didn't bust our camera or decide whether
we want to get brave and go back down
again and see now that we understand
better what's going on a little more
details about that and so we decided in
fact go back down again
we have an awful lot of nice video there
and if somehow we do the camera and this
process will we we tried and we have a
lot of information keep us busy for
quite some time so now that we kind of
know what to expect we'll see and
recognize things better than we did the
first time down
notice how very smooth walls are that's
the center coating everything there's
our waterfall again really quite
striking the right time side of the
picture but really there's not very much
water in that and you can see their
little puddles of water all over the
china and the lights and now we can
already see the the top of the boiling
water
it's coming very much higher up into the
event and it was when we were down just
a few minutes ago who come to our little
shelf again and the first of the little
shelves and we bang around on it again
and we managed to get by it
notice that there's lots of water
boiling around its turning the camera
around there's our shelter we got stuck
last time and we have to worry about it
going to get stuck again and sure enough
we do the cameras now not moving but
then suddenly something happens probably
a big splash of water from the wild
boiling and kind of knocks off of the
shelf and now we've gone down a little
ways and we really are seeing the heat
reliably boiling water and water pouring
around us in all directions and looks
like a tornado now and again as it
twists the camera spins the camera
around on the end of its cable we really
became very concerned when there are
cameras good survival it is it certainly
was made with that in mind never had any
idea that we were going to be involved
in anything so wild as this notice the
big blast of water from the side wall at
that time that was a lot of water but it
was just a sudden burst so we don't
really know whether that's one of the
sources of water for filling it that
somehow doesn't run in a steady way or
whether it's just water that's placed
over the edge and kind of off to the
side and is now running back in
we're coming back up again slowly coming
up with foot in winter tree seconds and
then another foot and every once in a
while we get this completely drowned in
water in home and he can't see anything
at all for coming up again now on the
little shelf and no tell me the water is
running down the side of it now clearly
just from the splashing of the of the
water in the in the wild boiling
things really are getting very much
wilder as we are down there this time
the event is clearly filling up with
water
we're still about 20 or 25 minutes
before the next eruption
so we're not concerned that were going
to suddenly get caught in corruption
which i'm sure the camera would not
survive
so what have we learned we didn't see an
obvious large source of water so we
think it must be coming from below 40
feet somewhere we also saw no side
channel that would explain why the event
doesn't fill up about 15 feet will need
to watch what happens when the water
will actually reaches that dips
understand what's happening there
anything we saw that the event continues
as a slot down to about 35 feet and then
opens up to a bigger shape that helps us
understand somewhat have the eruption
works we found it's goin process is
certainly not a common activity and we
now understand the pre reps and splashes
or just the top of the wily boiling
water as it nears the surface
clearly there's much to be learned using
this down old camera we hope you enjoyed
looking down into little faithful with
us and we'd like to think the folks from
the yellowstone national park for
permission to put our camera and old
people and for assistance in doing so
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