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Lava pillars on land
A 2013 study has concluded that bizarre , vacuous spires in Iceland are a alone character of volcanic formation that was previously only known to form in the deep sea .
Fortuitous discovery
University at Buffalo geologist Tracy Gregg was hiking with her husband in the Skaelinger Valley in 1998 in Iceland when she noticed the knobby , hollow spire dotting the landscape .
Troll war?
Though her templet and others told her the rock were the dust of warring trolls who had tossed them through the landscape , Gregg was unconvinced .
Ocean formation
The geological formation looked very similar to those she study in her research : lava column that organise at mid - ocean ridge .
Underwater shapes
At position where the continental plateful are pulling asunder under the sea , columns of hot piddle seep through the pillowy lava on the ocean floor . That mental process cools the lava surrounding the water columns , mould harden , hollow pillar when the lava ebbs . The Icelandic steeple , with their vacuous interior , seemed to have been forge in a very similar cognitive operation .
Second look
Unfortunately , Gregg did n’t have a opportunity to take a 2d look at these pillars until 2010 , when her graduate pupil Kenneth Christie received a Hiram Ulysses Grant to travel to Iceland to inspect the pillars more closely .
Hollow interiors
The team concluded that the pillars formed just as they would have in the ocean , with vacuous DoI gird by lava wall . The findings change geologists ' understandings of the character of interactions that are possible when lava meets piddle .
Glassy texture
Some of the pillar have a glassy texture , characteristic of the interaction between lava and water . The lava cooled fast enough to drop , but not fast enough to form crystals .
Steam or pillow
antecedently , geologists believed that when water and lava met on land , the water either drowned the lava , form pillowy structures , or the lava heated the water in a split second to form steam , which then exploded .
