Volcanic eruptions have had many pop-culture influences over the years including influencing art, literature, and even music. We are going to look at three notable instances. These include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein published in 1818, Edvard Munch's painting The Scream from 1893, and Antonio Stradivari violins of the 1600's and 1700's.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (1818)
On April 5th of 1815, the Indonesian volcano, Mount Tambora began to erupt. While the eruption was huge on any scale, killing an estimated 10,000 people in proximity to the mountain, and many more beyond, the amount of material that was erupted managed to encircle the globe, blocked out the sun, and created the "year without a summer" in 1816.
Mount Tambora is a stratovolcano located on Sumbawa Island within Indonesia. The April eruption, which ended up lasting for months, produced pyroclastic flows that reached the seas on all sides of the peninsula. The total amount of material erupted eventually exceeded 150 cubic km of tephra (gasses, dust, and rocks that make up the volcanic material). On the volcano itself, after the eruption the top of the volcano collapsed into a caldera 6 km wide and 1250 meters deep.
The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) scale. Image courtesy of the USGS.
Volcanic eruptions are ranked in size by a VEI scale, "Volcanic Explosivity Index", with this eruption ranking a 7, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. While there is evidence of larger eruptions in the geological record, there are none that have been witnessed in the last few thousand years. This eruption was so loud, that it was heard over 1200 miles (1930 km) away.
Map of temperature anomalies in Celsius across Europe during the summer of 1816 as compared to 1971-2000 climate normals. Image courtesy of UCAR Center for Science Education.
The eruption was so large that it was able to inject a cloud the size of Australia of aerosolized volcanic debris into the atmosphere, blocking solar radiation and absorbing heat, producing a drop in global temperatures from 2 to 7 degrees F. This caused snow falls in summer and frosts that killed off crops, leading to an Irish famine, and locked people indoors for months. On July 4th, 1816, John Quincy Adams laments that he was confined to his house in London all day due to freezing rain showers and thunder.
Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World
Gillen D'Arcy Wood, in his book Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World, laid out how this eruption influenced events that extend far into the 20th century. One such instance is that because of the terrible weather during the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley was locked indoors at the villa of Lord Byron on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. With her, was her husband, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Because of the lack of things to do, and the gloomy atmosphere outside, Lord Byron proposed a contest. Who could write the scariest ghost story. At the end of the contest, Mary, only 18 at the time, had constructed what is considered to be one of the greatest works of Gothic horror. And much to the surprise of no one, didn't win the competition, with Byron giving the victory to Percy, since Mary's work was considered "too philosophical".
Unlike most of the dinosaurs and other geological features we see in most of the Disney parks, in Disneyland there is an actual fossil. This is the "Petrified Tree" in Frontierland.
Gifted to Lillian Disney on their 31st wedding anniversary by Walt, this petrified tree stump was purchase by Walt on a tour of the American west. And, as is with most anniversary gifts, Lillian just couldn't find a place for it in their house, so she ended up donating it to Disneyland as an exhibit, where it still stands today.
The Petrified Tree stump has two plaques on it that read the same thing. These state:
Petrified Tree
from the
Pike Petrified Forest, Colorado.
This section weighs five tons and measures 7 1/2 feet in diameter. The original tree, estimated to have been 200 feet tall, was part of a sub-tropical forest 55 to 70 million years ago in what is now Colorado. Scientists believe it to be of the redwood of sequoia species. During some prehistoric era a cataclysmic upheaval caused silica laden water to overspread the living forest. Wood cells were changed during the course of time to sandstone. Opals were formed within the tree trunk itself.
Presented to Disneyland
by
Mrs. Walt Disney
September 1957.
I love that they include some geology and paleontology in the description for the fossil. However, a bit of it is wrong and some of it is outdated. While at the time, the tree stump was purchased from Pike Petrified Forest, this area is now in a National Park! It is actually Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. And while taking (and buying) fossils from National Park property is very illegal, this occurred before the National Park was established, and was therefore ok at the time.
Stratigraphic section from where the tree stump was originally found (as noted by the stump in the section) from Florissant Fossil Beds NM. Image courtesy of Meyer et al., 2004.
The age of the petrified tree stump is also incorrect. On the plaque they note it is was part of a forest "55 to 70 million years ago", however scientists have since dated the sediments from which the trees were formed in and it turns out they are far younger, ~34 million years old.
While there is much wrong and/or outdated on the plaque, there is information that is correct. These are indeed sequoia tree stumps and they were indeed silicified during "some prehistoric era ... cataclysmic upheaval [which] caused silica laden water to overspread the living forest". However, the tree itself was not turned into "sandstone", since there is no "sand" associated with it at all, they would just be denoted as "petrified wood" or "fossilized wood".
Map of the impact area for the Guffey volcanic center. Image courtesy of Colorado Stories.
The Disneyland tree stump grew in a forest within ~18 miles an area known as the Guffey volcanic center within the Thirtynine Mile volcanic center. Eruptions from this volcano complex are the ones that produced pyroclastic debris (ash, pumice, hot rock, boiling hot air, and lots of nasty stuff) along with lahars (boiling hot mudflows mixed with more ash and other nasty stuff) that blanketed the region. These lahars blocked off the drainage and eventually created what is known as Lake Florissant.
Within Lake Florissant, mudstones and other volcanic eruptive materials were deposited forming the Florissant Formation, in which the stumps are preserved. One of those volcanic eruptions produced a lahar that killed the trees and blanketed the tree stumps, preserving them in a matrix of ash, pumice, and mud. The hot ash and other volcanic eruptive material, which is mostly made of silica, caused the water to become silica rich. These silica rich waters flowed around and through the tree stumps, prompting growth of diatoms (tiny animals with silica tests (shells) which mixed with the ash-mud, preserving the stumps and protecting them from degradation. Over time the stumps themselves were inundated with the silica rich waters, where the silica molecules replaced the wood molecules, turning them into the petrified wood that we see today (both in the National Park and at Disneyland.
Released on October 3rd, of 2025 on The Life of a Showgirl album, "Opalite" is the third track on the album and was later released as a single on January 12th, 2026.
Discussing the album on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Taylor Swift breaks down the meaning of the song and where the name came from. In the interview she mentions a few geologically related items:
Opalite is man-made opal
Similar to how diamonds can also be man-made
Gemstones are mentioned in the chorus like "onyx night"
She also makes note that the purpose of choosing "opalite" is that life is not always going to give you what you want and you are not always going to get your way. Sometimes you have to make your own happiness, like making an opal.
What is an Opal?
Let's break down the geology into bits and pieces. First, what is an opal and how is it formed?
Per the Dictionary of Geological Terms (3rd ed):
Opal: A mineral or mineral gel, SiO2 • n H2O. It has been shown by electron diffraction to consist of packed spheres of silica; water content is usually 3 to 9%. Opal occurs in most colors, is transparent to nearly opaque, and commonly exhibits a marked play of color. It is deposited at low temperatures and is found in a wide variety of rocks and forms. The transparent colored varieties showing opalescence are valued as gemstones.
Opalescence: A milky or somewhat pearly appearance or luster of a mineral, such as that shown by opal and moonstone.
Natural opals are known for that pearly appearance, such as in the sample above, hence the term for the appearance is opalescence. Their formation is also super unique. Instead of forming molecule by molecule, slowing building up as a crystal, opals forms by the amalgamation of little spheres of silica. Because of this type of formation, opal is not actually classified as a mineral, but a mineraloid. Minerals, by definition, must have a definitive crystal structure, which opals do not.
It is because of these tiny spheres, and the way that they are organized, that opals diffract the light the way they do. The size and spacing of the spheres is what determines the color patterns that are seen.
Diagram showing the formation of Australian opals. Image courtesy of Opal Galaxy.
Looking at the geological formation of opals, there are two methods that have produced widespread opals in the geological record. Over 95% of opals in the world are found in Australia. These opals began to form around 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous. At that time Australia was covered by a vast sea, the Great Artesian Basin .
Opal mining locations within the Great Artesian Basin. Image courtesy of Dans Opals.
Over time the sea slowly evaporated and left behind silica deposits. This silica was transported by groundwater into gaps within the underlying sandstone, ironstone, fossils, and ancient wood and precipitated in those spaces. This occurred over very low temperatures and took a long time, resulting in a stable, non-porous structure, of the opals that formed. These opals formed the opal deposits of Lightning Ridge, Coober Pedy, and the Queensland boulder regions. The slow creep of the groundwater is what allowed the orderly, grid-like, construction of the opals, with the tiny sphere forming even sheets. It is these even sheets that produce the opalescence effect that opals are known for.
Ethiopian opal formation. Image courtesy of Opal Galaxy.
In contrast to the sedimentary, low temperature, method of formation, Ethiopian opal formed from the hydrothermal waters associated with volcanic activity. The hydrothermal waters reacted with the volcanic ash and rhyolites, dissolving the silica, then reprecipitating it within the voids of the surrounding volcanic rocks. They are also hydrophane, meaning they actively absorb water. This means that they are far more unstable than the Australian opals, and much more chemically reactive. They are also much, much younger, having formed likely in the last few thousand years.
Coming back to Taylor Swift
Let's look at some of the lyrics for "Opalite", specifically the refrain:
And that's when I told you
It's alright
You were dancing through the lightning strikes
Sleepless in the onyx night
But now the sky is opalite
Oh oh oh oh, oh my Lord
Never met no one like you before
You had to make your own sunshine
But now the sky is opalite
Oh oh oh oh oh
She really does only have the two geological terms in the song and they are "opalite" and "onyx". We will start with the big one, opalite.
What is does the word "Opalite" even mean?
The term "opalite" is a very uncommon word. It does not appear in either my geological dictionary, or my Webster dictionary, nor Merriam-Webster's website, nor the Cambridge Dictionary.
I was able to find some dictionaries, which did have a result including, Dictionary.com which defines "opalite" as: "an artificial gem resembling an opal." This is akin to Taylor Swift's usage of the word.
However, there is also a second definition for "opalite", which predates the "artificial" usage of the word. Per 1945's Dictionary of Gems and Gemology:
Opalite - "Term used for impure, colored varieties of common opal."
Geology.com expands upon this and clarifies, stating that the term opalite is used "as a synonym for common opal (natural opal that does not exhibit play-of-color)."
So we have two usages for "opalite".
What does the geological definition of "opalite" mean?
When we look at the formation of an opal, the orderly arrangement of the micro-spheres is essential to the play of color known as opalescence. If that orderly arrangement is not met, then there is just chaos, and the light effects will be absent. Here you will get what is known as "common opal", or "potch", or ... "opalite".
Common opal, or "opalite". Image courtesy of geology.com.
In this instance, opalite refers to the non-opalescent varieties of opal. Or in terms of money, the non-gemstone varieties of opal.
What is the synthetic opal definition of "opalite" mean?
Synthetic, or man-made, is exactly as it sounds. These are opals manufactured by man. Unfortunately, these man made opals are more akin to the geological definitions of opalites than they are to opals because, while they may have some opalescence, they lack the opalescence of natural opals.
Synthetic opals, AKA opalites. Image coutesy of Synthetic Opals.
Because man-made opalites have such a rigid structure, much more so than even highly ordered natural opals, the opalescence that is achieved has a "lizard skin appearance" and lacks the natural variety and irregular patterns. Per Opal Minded: "Most fake opals show fragments of coloured material trapped in a clear base, giving a “shattered” or artificial sparkle rather than the fluid, shifting flashes of a genuine opal."
SEM image of a man-made opal. Image courtesy of Synthetic Opals.
However, as you can see in the SEM image above, the structure of the synthetic opalite is very much akin to the structure of the natural opals, but it does give a synthetic appearance, which the natural variety feels more variable.
How could "Sleepless in the onyx night" relate to opalite?
I find it funny that she picked onyx, because like opal, it is also composed of silica. Onyx, however, is a mineral, not a mineraloid like opals are. Onyx is a variety of the mineral chalcedony, which in of itself is a variety of quartz. Chalcedony, and therefore onyx, is comprised of microcrystalline quartz instead of one big crystal of quartz like amethyst.
A black and white variety of onyx. Image courtesy of GeologyScience.
What makes onyx a distinctive variety of chalcedony, is that it has straight, parallel bands of alternating colors, typically black and white. This means that while onyx typically has a "black and white" banded structure, it is distinctly different from natural opalite, both in variety of color and the variety of shapes possible with the color patterns.
In Summary
Taylor Swift builds Opalite as a means to make ones own happiness from the onyx night. And the fact that you can physically make the synthetic opalite from onyx, plays even more into her song by allowing people to make their own happiness from what they are give. When life hands you lemons and all that. And that's pretty cool.
My next entry in the Geology of the Disney parks is Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain. I am specifying that this is "Disneyland's" version of the ride because even though the ride has been replicated three other times in parks around the world (two of which also have the a centerpiece dinosaur skeleton), this one is unique to Disneyland.
Legend has it that after gold was discovered in the 1850s, eerie incidents took place in the mine. Trains would take off and race through tunnels… by themselves.
As you enter the cursed cavern, your train speeds up along the rickety track. Shoot under a booming waterfall and dodge a falling boulder from an unexpected landslide as you swoop around sharp turns and drop into desolate canyons.
On this rip-roaring adventure, you may learn that some legends turn out to be true...
For Disneyland's version of Big Thunder Mountain, the theme of the ride is based on Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. Per The Imagineering Field Guide to the Magic Kingdom, this is distinctly different than the Magic Kingdom's version of the ride, which is modelled after Monument Valley. The reason for this is the aesthetics of the rocks. Monument Valley Tribal Park in Utah and Arizona is comprised mainly of sandstones and shales, making the color palette of Monument Valley to be very red and orange.
Monument Valley Tribal Park in southern Utah
While the rocks found in Bryce Canyon are a much more pinkish "magenta" color, matching the aesthetics of the nearby Fantasy Land. And since Big Thunder Mountain butts up against Fantasy Land, the mountains were used as a visual backdrop to the land and the color palette was chosen to blend in.
Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah
The upright spires within Bryce Canyon, called hoodoos, were also mimicked in the upper portions of the ride. You can see them below clearly above the primary dinosaur skeleton. The reason for the color palette of Bryce Canyon is because of the type of rock that it is. Bryce Canyon is predominantly made up of limestone, with sandstone and shale interbedded with it. The rocks were deposited during the Eocene in a large lake bed, forming what is known as the Claron Formation.
The Claron Formation forms the Pink Cliffs part of Bryce Canyon and is broken up into two individual members: the Pink Limestone Member, which forms the reddish hoodoo rocks of the Pink Cliffs, and the slightly younger White Limestone Member. The White and Pink Limestone Members of the Claron Formation were deposited during the Eocene Period, approximately 60 to 50 million years ago. During that time, this part of Utah was covered by a vast lake, depositing thick layers of calcite that eventually consolidated into limestone. The Claron Formation also includes beds of siltstone and dolostone (like limestone but with dolomite instead of calcite). Limestone is also the same rock that caves form in because they dissolve in slightly acidic water.
While the ride itself was meant to mimic the bedded limestones of Bryce Canyon, it is notable that along the path around the corner to the main entrance to the ride, the rocks there look distinctly sandstone. So much so that the Imagineers carved in cross-beds into the rocks themselves. Cross beds are geological features when dunes are essentially frozen in time and turned into rocks. When sand moves across the desert in a dune they climb up one side of the dune then fall down the steep edge, known as the slipface. This pattern of movement is then preserved in the dune as a cross bed. And depending on how the cross beds are eroded, they can form really cool patterns, such as is imitated in the ride.
These cross bedded sandstones look amazingly like the sandstone beds of another national park located really close to Bryce Canyon NP, Zion National Park. Specifically the sandstones of the Navajo Formation, which is significantly older than that of Bryce Canyon's Claron Formation.
Navajo Sandstone crossbeds from Zion National Park
The Navajo Sandstone is Early Jurassic in age, ~180 million years old. It is a very thick, ~1000 feet, eolian (desert) sandstone from an ancient sand sea known as an erg. This part of the ride likely stems from when this entire ride was built for Magic Kingdom, before parts of it were altered to fit in with Disneyland.
An interesting addition to the ride is the very notable dinosaur skeleton, which is easily visible from the queue. While you are riding the ride you arrive here towards the end, where as you whip around the track, you eventually end up face-to-face with a dinosaur skeleton. At first glance, you would think this is a T. rex skeleton. At least, I believe that is what it is meant to be.
However, looking closely at the skull, it appears ... off from an actual T. rex. Let's compare it to arguable the most famous T. rex, the Field Museum's SUE. Comparing the Big Thunder Mountain T. rex to SUE (pictured below), the biggest problem with the skull is the teeth. It's as if the designers tried to cram as many teeth as they could into the mouth, and all of the teeth are the same size and more rounded than real -life. Whereas, in the real skull the teeth are constantly coming to replace lost or worn teeth, so the size and spacing of the teeth differ widely within the actual T. rex's mouth. The overall dimensions of the fenestra (skull holes) are also smaller in the Disney skull than in the real animal. The nostril hole (the naris) is noticeably smaller, compared to the real skull, with everything getting a more boxy appearance, however I could attribute that to making the skull more durable with more surface area.
SUE the T. rex from the Field Museum in Chicago
What I really wondered was where did the idea of this dinosaur come from. Was it meant to be a T. rex or something else. I find it really telling that the D23 post called "The Ultimate Dino-Tour of Disney Parks all Over the World" that goes over many of the dinosaurs in the Disney Parks just calls this "the bones of a dinosaur". No attempt was made at even naming the species, whereas they name the species of many of the other dinosaurs in the post.
Tony Baxter himself, designer of Big Thunder Mountain, stated that the dinosaur bones were meant as a tribute to the previous incarnation of the ride. Parts of the ride and theme were actually taken from the previous renditions of the ride called Rainbow Caverns Mine Train, which was then converted into the Mine Train through Nature's Wonderland. However, I haven't been able to find any pictures of any dinosaurs from those versions. The closest thing I could find, was that the second version mentioned dinosaurs during the ride, but that was about it.
So although many Disney fans seem to have unanimously determined that this is a T. rex skeleton, Disney itself has shied away from denoting it as anything other than a "dinosaur".
The location of these dinosaur bones is also suspect. If these bones are located in the "Bryce Canyon" portion of the the design, then they are clearly too old to be there. T. rex lived right up to the end of the Mesozoic, ~66 million years ago. The Claron formation is 60 to 50 million years old, which is too young. However the sandstone related formation on the outskirts of the ride is not the same as seen here with the bones in it. So perhaps this is meant to be a different limestone type deposit that underlies the Claron Formation and is therefore old enough to contain a T. rex?
When I started preparing my talk for the 2023 annual Geological Society of America conference (Finding Hidden Geological Lessons in the Media Around Us), I knew that I wanted to talk about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It is a movie that had been on my radar to write about for many years and I figured it would be a fairly easy one to throw into the talk. However, when I started to do my regular research into it, fascinating things started to pop up and I figured as part of my talk, I would give the audience a walk through of my process. And that is what I will do here as well....
When we first are introduced to the eponymous dwarfs of the movie, we discover them as workers in a mine.
The dwarfs working in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
And it turns out they have vocal talent as well, but that's besides the point. To start my research I needed to verify what it was that they were actually digging for. I assumed it was diamonds but I could not recall if it was ever stated as such.
As the lyrics of their song state: "where a million diamonds shine". So clearly this is a diamond mine, as I was led to believe.
From here there are several avenues that one can take while looking at this. I first wanted to confirm my suspicions, not just about the diamonds, which we just did, but also about the placement of the story. Another assumption of mine that I wanted to confirm, was whether Snow White was German. The story was written by the German writing pair, the Brothers Grimm, in 1812 as Sneewittchen, indicating that she was likely German. And while this doesn't mean that the Disney version of the character is also German, you can currently meet Snow White in Germany at EPCOT, pretty much confirming that Snow White is German (at least in the eyes of Disney).
Step 1: The original inspiration
But let us bring this back even further. What was the original inspiration for the character. Was she actually German? Did she live in a mining town? And if she did, did they mine diamonds?
The True Story Behind Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs article from Curious Historian.
It is thought that the real life inspiration to the character of Snow White was Margarete von Waldeck, born to a prominent family in Waldeck, Germany in 1533. Many aspects of her life line up with the fairy tale per the article, but the most important one was that the town of Waldeck was a mining town. The only problem was that the mine was a copper mine, not a diamond mine. And those are two very different things in geology. So although the mine might still have sparkled with the light reflecting off the metal deposits, it is not a diamond mine.
So we move on.
Step 2: The Source for Diamonds
Although the real life Snow White didn't live near a diamond mine, we still assume that the character of Snow White is German and lived near a German diamond mine, if such a thing exists. So let us look at real life diamond mine localities.
There are several ways that diamonds can form, and therefore there are several different types of deposits that they can be found in, but by far the most common types of deposits are known as kimberlites.
Kimberlites are the result of magma from deep in the Earth's mantle that gets erupted on the surface in a rapid and violent type of eruption. Deep in the mantle is where the pressures are high enough for diamonds to form, which typically happens at 150 to 700 km deep in the Earth. The diamonds are then carried upwards in these kimberlite eruptions, where they can then be found on the surface of the Earth.
Global kimberlite localities. From Tappe et al., 2018.
However, there is a problem when we look at the global distribution of kimberlite deposits.
Blow up of European kimberlite deposits. From Tappe et al., 2018.
There are no kimberlite deposits in mainland Europe. So unless Snow White was Scandinavian or Russian, we are at a dead-end here as well.
Step 3: Alternative Diamond Sources
And this is where the story takes an interesting turn. During my research for diamonds in Germany, I did come across one fascinating story. It turns out that 15 million years ago the town of Nördlingen, Germany was struck by a meteorite.
Known as the Nördlinger Ries impact crater, the asteroid that struck the Earth was going at least 70,000 km/h forming an impact crater 25 km across and 500 m deep. When meteorites strike the surface of the Earth, they do so with tremendous speed, creating very high pressures. The pressures produced from this impact were large enough that they could potentially create diamonds, if the rock they are impacting has the proper carbon concentration (carbon being the element that diamonds are made out of).
The Nördlinger Ries impact crater. Image courtesy of Digital Geology.
The rocks in the area of Nördlingen were mostly sedimentary rocks (limestones, shales, and sandstones) however there is also a significant amount of graphite-bearing gneissic rocks. Graphite is another mineral that is entirely made up of carbon and is often the source mineral for artificial diamond creations. The impact of the Nördlinger Ries meteorite was then able to transformed the graphite in these source rocks into tons and tons of microscopic diamonds.
Article highlighting all of the diamonds from the Nordlingen impact. Image courtesy of The Travel.
On average the diamonds produced from the impact were less than 0.2 mm, however the total amount of diamonds is estimated to be 72,000 tons! That's a lot of diamonds. So it is my theory that Snow White and the seven dwarfs lived near the Nördlingen impact crater and mined the diamonds from a meteorite impact.
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