A Canary Islands volcano pushed rivers of molten lava through the earth. Now scientists and explorers trek through the cooling underground, looking for insights into life on this planet—and perhaps on others.
In a thermal image, cave specialist Octavio Fernández Lorenzo stands below a lava tube’s skylight. Drawing in outside air, these natural openings moderate temperatures and make exploration of this underground labyrinth possible. A few yards farther in, the tube glows white-hot, becoming impassable. In cotton coveralls, Fernández senses when he’s getting too hot: “It smells like ironing.”A craggy, hostile surface stretches as far as the eye can see, framed by slopes of black ash.
Inside a lava tube opening registering about 140°F, Fernández and fellow cave specialists David Sanz Mangas and Eduardo Díaz Martín collect samples for testing lava composition. Since July 2022, the team has been exploring lava tubes produced by the Tajogaite volcano . These openings are telltale signs of tubes.
Díaz operates a drone—a crucial tool in the precarious landscape—that helps guide Fernández as he attempts to place a temperature probe in a lava tube that’s still cooling nearly two years after the eruption. Fernández must keep a safe distance from the unstable rim of the mouth. After escaping from a vent, sulfur vapor crystallizes over time, as shown in this composite of 29 focus-stacked images. A nativespider species is an early recolonizer. Scientists are probing not only how life thrives in lava but also whether such extreme volcanic environments may be analogous to ones elsewhere in the solar system.
Scientists named the red tube for its hue, thought to be surface oxidation. Beyond the point reached by Fernández, temperatures rise above 200°F. He has helped map more than half of La Palma’s 200 known caves.
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