Keep on rockin’ in the upper crustThis photograph captures one of the only places on Earth where you

Keep on rockin’ in the upper crustThis photograph captures one of the only places on Earth where you can walk into a magma chamber, the Thrihnukagigur volcano in Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula. This weekend a small group of visitors will get to experience a new phenomenon at this site; a rock concert in a magma chamber.This site was last active 3500 years ago. It formed in a single eruption as a dike of molten magma rose through the crust and began to spread out at the level it stopped at. The magma spread out and consumed previously-emplaced igneous rocks before it erupted to the surface, creating an open chasm about 120 meters deep beneath the volcano itself. This eruption manifested itself at the surface as a cinder cone volcano, with chunks of the molten rock thrown out into a pile above. The eruption at the top removed some material and eventually pressure from below decreased, allowing the magma to drain away and leaving an empty hole in the ground where the magma chamber once sat. In fact, the vertical dark streak on the wall is apparently a remnant of one of the dikes that fed this system.As part of a larger music festival happening this weekend, on Saturday morning this empty cave will get a chance to rock. Chino Moreno, the front man for the band “Deftones”, will be lowered into the cave along with 20 or so guests, where he will be playing a concert in the magma chamber. The cost of a ticket for this concert was 250,000 Icelandic krona, which as of the time of writing this converts to over $2000 US, and tickets have fully sold out.I’d say that a concert in a magma chamber is pretty metal…except these type of basalts are unlikely to have a high metal content as most of the iron is oxidized. Maybe a better chance of this being more sulfide-bearing? (I had to do some sort of bad geology pun line to end, right?)-JBBImage credit: http://bit.ly/1rsGXjrReferences:http://bit.ly/1PwzgP9http://bit.ly/23eCHBK -- source link

More pics about