Incredible moment man wakes up volcano after throwing something in it

There are – unfortunately – many ways in which humans can impact the planet, but a volcano is one of those things we really shouldn’t interfere with.

They are literally mountains of fire. They are big, they are sporadic, and they are capable of burning and melting everything in their path – we should really just leave them alone, right?

That’s my opinion anyway, but someone had another idea.

Incredible footage shared online shows two people standing terrifyingly close to the edge of a massive pit at Ethiopia’s Erta Ale volcano, a continuously active basalt shield volcano.

I think that was their first mistake, but instead of running the other way, one of them threw something into the boiling substance.

The object fell into the pit and landed at the bottom, where it broke through the hardened lava crust.

That was mistake number two.

After the object hit the Earth’s crust, a hole was created through which hot lava spewed upwards.

At first there were just a few balls of the molten, hot stuff, but then the volcano’s surface began to pulse and more lava was spewed upward.

“Oh look, it broke the surface, it made a nice little hole.” (YouTube/Photovolcanica)

The object’s impact continued as the hole expanded, spewing out increasingly larger lumps of lava.

Within seconds, what was once a still, unmoving surface becomes a seething pool of molten turbulence. The volcano is awakened by a small object thrown into it.

Although the whole idea seems horrific, there was indeed a plan behind the madness.

The decision to throw an object into the lava was made as part of a test by researchers who wanted to find out what would happen if a human were dropped from such a height into a volcano that he or she could break through the surface crust and punch a hole in the lava.

“The hole is much bigger and lava is shooting out, let’s hope that stops.” (Photovolcanica/YouTube)

Unable to find a real human to test this idea, the researchers instead used a box filled with about 30 kg of organic waste to take the terrifying 80-meter plunge into the lava.

They believe that the volcano’s sudden awakening and violent eruption of lava are largely the result of steam released by organic material falling into the volcano.

Since humans are mostly water, a person jumping into a volcano would probably experience roughly the same effect. Hopefully, we’ll never know for sure.