It isn’t every day that we learn something that fundamentally changes how we understand our world. But for UC Santa Barbara Earth scientist Matthew Jackson(link is external) and the thousands of volcanologists across the globe, such a revelation has occurred.

While sampling magma from the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland, Jackson and his collaborators uncovered a process far more dynamic than anyone had assumed in the two centuries scientists have been studying volcanoes.

“Just when I think we’ve gotten close to figuring out how these volcanoes work, we get a big surprise,” he said.

The geologists’ findings are published in the journal Nature(link is external).