An article in the New York Times about our recent work on Pele's hair. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/s...

We're written a short "Behind the Paper" about what the model we've developed does and how we've used it. communities.springernature.com/posts/buildi...

Our new paper in Nature takes a critical look at what happens when you drill into a magma body. We find that by understanding that response properly, you can unwind the processes and get back to what the conditions of magma storage really were. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Is water actually lava? It may sound quirky but there’s some surprisingly solid geoscience behind the playful thought experiment that shows just how much our definitions shape the way we see the planet. 💡 Let us know what you think: geoscientist.online/sections/vie... #geoscience #geology #scicomm

Our new paper has been featured in Nature's research highlights! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Happy pi day 2026! Check out our pi day contributions from a geoscience perspective: 2022: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 2024: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

When you wait 8.5 months for reviews of your paper from Leonardo (@mitpress.bsky.social) and then find out they haven’t sent it to review yet.

New paper! Janina Gillies leads this study into a new formation mechanism for Pele's hair (lauoho o Pele). We show that mats or clumps of glass hair threads are inevitable when bubbly magma is stretched to extreme amounts! doi.org/10.1130/G539...

In 2017 we went to the Diamond Light Source to test if we could make obsidian by slowly cooling bubbly magma inducing resorption of the bubbles. We found that we could, so long as the cooling was very slow. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Working on some exciting new models for how dome extrusion can accelerate even when driven by constant reservoir pressure 🌋 @amelia-bain.bsky.social @volcanojenni.bsky.social

Enjoying looking through @annathrl.bsky.social’s Volcano Tinder profiles (Volc🔥inder). Very fun.

We are excited to announce our two Artists in Residence at #EGU26!🤩 Fabian Wadsworth, a poet, mixed media artist and volcanologist from the UK and Núria Altimir, a data visualisation artist and biogeoscientist from Spain and Finland! 👀 Discover more here: egu.eu/5SMUEF

This is now online in final typeset form! Please make use of the downloadable code version of our model to predict disequilibrium degassing of H2O and CO2 from magmas as a result of changes in temperature, pressure, or both! doi.org/10.1016/j.jv...

New paper! The nucleation and growth of bubbles in magmas tends to induce disequilibrium in terms of CO2 and H2O. Our new downloadable code can be used to solve such cases. A fuller picture of how bubbles form and grow. I hope it’s useful. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Once upon a time, the platform formerly known as Twitter was a vibrant meeting-place where scientists, the public, official orgs and more besides could exchange knowledge. I set out to find out how effective it could be for disseminating geoscience info Skip to the paper ☛ doi.org/10.1038/s432...

My second PhD paper has *finally* come out of preprint. 🙌 Breathing a massive sigh of relief… Have a read here! 🔗🌋 tinyurl.com/kmfy7pek

Cosmo got to try on the PhD mortar board today - little Dr Cosmo!

Dr Annabelle Foster @geologytalk.bsky.social graduated today - congratulations on such a good PhD and a wonderful collaboration 🥂

It's amazing to me how consistent the rheology of magmatic silicate melts can be across such a wide range of compositions. One dimensionless law to describe them all up to and including the point of failure at their failure stress, which is always around 100 MPa (roughly).

New paper! PhD student Julia Schunke has sintered populations of hydrous pyroclasts, observing that their path through porosity-permeability space depends strongly on the grain size distribution as they vesiculate and sinter together. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Great time last month at Sandfell in Iceland discovering new aspects of how magma moves in the Earth’s shallow crust. Thanks to Hugh and Ed for joining. And amazing to find the Fish Factory arts centre, the creative centre of Stöðvarfjörður!

As part of this paper, Katie Schofield (PhD student at Durham University) unravelled the crystallization history of this sample from the Adamello massif to show how melt fraction evolved. It's exactly that kind of mush seize-up at low melt fraction that our model is built to predict.

New paper! The last of Eloïse Bretagne's PhD papers is out! Here we generalize our models for permeability to magma mush at any melt fraction. Take a look if you want to model percolative flow of melt through a magma mush and if you want to account for crystal shape. OA: dx.doi.org/10.1029/2025...

Big news (& a little late in posting)…last month I defended my thesis and I’m now Dr Foster! 🩺🌋

I’m SO grateful for the support throughout, but especially over the last two years, & to my supervisors @fabianwadsworth.bsky.social, @htuffen.bsky.social & Madeleine. A huge thank you to my examiners @richardjbrown.bsky.social & @volcanologist.bsky.social for helping me end on such a high!

The first few days of Melts Glasses Magmas short course taught. Excited to have covered glass and melt structure and properties, up to and including brittle unrelaxed melt rupture due to viscoelasticity. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Tell me you’re working on bubble growth in magmas without telling me you’re working on bubble growth in magmas.

🚀New paper -> doi.org/10.1088/1361... A fun, left-field project with the Earth Sci crew at @durhamearthsci.bsky.social: we built & tested projectile motion datasets for teaching physics, complete with experiments & code. Lovely to see my illustrations published too!

Congratulations to @geologytalk.bsky.social on passing her viva! Thanks to @richardjbrown.bsky.social and @volcanologist.bsky.social for examining! 🎉👌🍻💫 #ProudSupervisor #Sintering

Discussing Forchheimer and Klinkenberg corrections for permeability data with @annathrl.bsky.social, who is currently visiting Strasbourg to measure her many dome samples! 🌋 @fabianwadsworth.bsky.social

Colin Rennie is an artist I'm thrilled to be working with. Check out his page here where he lays out the elements of our ongoing collaboration around the mysterious material: obsidian. www.colinrennie.co.uk/research

hello hi i am presenting a poster #IAVCEI2025 (session 3.4) on long-lasting ashy rhyolite eruptions esp. in Iceland, come chat come come

Go chat with @alicerpaine.bsky.social about our work comparing plumes in moderately large explosive eruptions with those rare and exceptional magnitude 8 events.

If you’re interested in hydrothermal sealing and explosions, check out my #IAVCEI25 @iavcei.bsky.social poster today! Number 29! 🌋

I remain obsessed by sintering processes. Here’s Julia talking about sintering of crystal-bearing granular materials with implications for silicic eruptions.

Bravo to @frankiehaywood.bsky.social and to Patrick Sullivan both for presenting at IAVCEI. I’m really excited about both of these projects.

New paper in Volcanica looks at the thermal properties of rhyolites from Havre volcano, a submarine volcano in the Kermadec arc (Pacific Ocean)! 🌋 With Rebecca Carey, @smitchellscience.bsky.social, and @fabianwadsworth.bsky.social It's diamond open access 👇 doi.org/10.30909/vol...

New article: how can we use projectile motion experiments in a classroom to teach physics and maths? Here are some suggested exercises: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

@thatcubfan135.bsky.social what’s the best way to contact you about a collaboration between Minecraft aficionados and volcanoes science (to do with obsidian specifically)?

Fun workshop at Lehigh University on bubble nucleation processes with some fantastic research on show. Thanks to everyone who came.

Super successful and fascinating trip with @annathrl.bsky.social and @frankiehaywood.bsky.social. It’s a joy to work with such brilliant and thoughtful collaborators and students.

With @annathrl.bsky.social and @frankiehaywood.bsky.social doing more experiments and measurements at LMU.

Fluid flow streamlines through a bed of packed ground coffee from @squaremilecoffee.bsky.social.

On the road again (or should I say in the air again)! Off to @unistra.fr first and then a few weeks in @lmumuenchen.bsky.social ! It's worth at least a Punk with a view. See you there @fabianwadsworth.bsky.social @frankiehaywood.bsky.social 🌋🌼

The grind setting on a Mahlkönig represents the spacing between the burrs. Therefore grind setting is linear with the mean coffee grain radius produced by grinding. These grinds were made from two coffees from Squaremile with Gareth Jones from James Hoffmann’s team.

Our new magma mush permeability model can predict the permeability of both disequilibrium and equilibrated micro-textures, including down to very low melt fractions (porosities). This model is flexible and could be used in the future embedded in simulations of melt percolation in the crust.

We're simulating melt flow through crystallising magma mush. As the melt channels are progressively shut off, the flow is localised in the tight connected spaces that remain.

‼️ New paper alert! Putting my research hat back on… here’s a pre-print about the sintering of small glass particles. We think it demonstrates what’s going on in the shallow sub-surface of silicic #volcanoes! Ash + sintering = lava = hybrid eruptions! #Geology Paper here —> tinyurl.com/kmfy7pek 🌋

Thanks to @jz-volc.bsky.social for showing me and @annathrl.bsky.social his fantastic suite of observations from Hrafntinnuhraun where he’s been working with @htuffen.bsky.social, me, and others!