Professor, Barringer working on safe volcano measurement

17 Jun 2002

The 1997 movies Volcano and Dante's Peak may be Hollywood's last volcano disaster films if Stanley Williams is successful. Williams, a professor of volcanologyat Arizona State University, is working with Toronto's Barringer Research Ltd. to develop an instrument which would monitor a volcano's carbon dioxide emissionby measuring infrared radiation, allowing advance warning of eruptions without the need for volcanologists to enter the crater. The GASPEC project has fundingfrom the National Science Foundation, and Williams expects it to become the industry standard within five years.
(courtesy Photonics Spectra, June 1997)