[Pitarou]

> they estimated that Kuwae’s eruption had released vast quantities of magma, enough to fill the Empire State Building 37 million times over

This is a unit of journalistic measurement I have never come across before.

[ygra]

Apparently the volume of the ESB is about 1e6 m³. So that's about 37e12 m³ of magma. But yeah, using a weird unit of measurement no one even knows and using 37 million as a factor pretty much guarantees that no one can relate this to anything.

[JumpCrisscross]

> using a weird unit of measurement no one even knows and using 37 million as a factor pretty much guarantees that no one can relate this to anything

Manhattan has a land area of 59.1 square kilometers [1]. 37e12 m³ of magma would fill the land area of Manhattan to over 600 kilometers, i.e. well past the boundary of space.

Alternatively, it would fill California's 424,000 thousand square kilometers to 100 meters, or about halfway to the top of the Transamerica Pyramid [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transamerica_Pyramid

[tbrake]

Enough to completely fill the Grand Canyon(4.17T m³[1])almost 9 times over.

[1] https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/management/statistics.htm

[fijal]

I think you (or the journalist) are off by a few zeros. According to wikipedia it's 32-39km^3 and I think km^3 = 1e9m^3

[lostlogin]

I agree, I thought the Olympic swimming pool was the only unit of measure for journalism.

[Pitarou]

In the UK, they used to use the volume of Wembley Stadium (a well-known sports ground), but then it was demolished and rebuilt.

[maxxxxx]

the question now is: How many Olympic swimming pools fit into the Empire State Building?

But seriously, I am OK using this kind of unit to illustrate that something is really big but at a minimum they should also add some real units.

[smoyer]

Everybody knows that the empire state building is a unit of measure for length!