Pyroclastic flows are a leading cause of eruption-related deaths. Now, lab tests reveal the mind-bending reason they may rush down a volcano’s flanks.

To observe the movement of pyroclastic flow safely, the researchers recreated the currents inside a laboratory using materials from an actual volcanic eruption in New Zeland 2,000 years ago.

Pyroclastic flows—which can hurtle scalding gases, rock and ash at more than 50 miles per hour—and closely related mudflows called lahars are responsible for half of the deaths caused by ...

Dumping literal tons of hot volcanic material down a lab flume may finally have revealed how searing mixtures of hot gas and rock travel so far from volcanic eruptions. These pyroclastic flows can ...

ICYMI, back in 1991, a volcanologist literally outran a volcanic eruption - specifically a pyroclastic flow. If you haven't seen the video, then you've been missing out.

Pyroclastic flows contain a deadly combination of hot rock fragments and gas. Temperatures regularly top 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and these torrents can careen down mountainsides at hundreds of ...

The Smithsonian’s Benjamin Andrews also uses lasers in his lab’s “tank” to study the behavior of pyroclastic flows.

Pressures within pyroclastic flows may be as much as three times as great as observations had suggested.

But the defining event of Monday’s eruption was the more rare pyroclastic flow from the southwestern crater not visible from a distance.

Study suggests that pyroclastic flows traveled in dense, slow-moving currents during one ancient supereruption.