Google likes to push boundaries, and they definitely did that with a shocking new image uploaded to their Street View tool.
They’re among the most eye-popping pictures you are ever going to see on Google’s Street View tool: a boiling lake of lava from an uncomfortably close view, and certainly a lot closer than you’re going to get in a car. The photos, one of which is embedded below, was captured by two explorers on behalf of Google who had to climb down the walls of Marum crater on the island of Ambrym about a thousand miles from the Australian coast.
They had to lug a Street View camera down with them in order to get the incredible shots.
“We believe that the volcanoes Marum and Benbow are devils,” Chief Moses, from local visit Endu, said in a statement. “If you go up to a volcano you have to be very careful because the two volcanoes could get angry at any time. We believe that Benbo is the husband and Marum is the wife.”
“Standing at the edge and feeling the heat lick your skin is phenomenal,” Chris Horsly, one of the explorers, said in a statement. “I hope that by putting this place on the map people will realize what a beautiful world we live in.”
The full album of astonishing photos can be viewed on Google’s Street View blog here.
“Starting today in Google Maps, we invite you to join us on a journey to the edge of one of the largest boiling lava lakes in the world on the Vanuatuan island of Ambrym,” Google said on their blog. “To get inside the active volcano, we partnered with explorers Geoff Mackley and Chris Horsley, who repelled 400 meters into the Marum crater with a Street View Trekker collecting 360-degree imagery of the journey down to the molten lava lake, which is roughly the size of two football fields. You only realize how insignificant humans are when you’re standing next to a giant lake of fiery boiling rock.”
Daniel J. Brown
Daniel J. Brown (Editor-in-Chief) is a recently retired data analyst who gets a kick out of reading and writing the news. He enjoys good music, great food, and sports, with a slant towards Southern college football, basketball and professional baseball.