Lava is rocks. Liquid rocks is still rocks.
Yeah but salt is rocks and that stuff is delicious
Yeah, but since it's a liquid it doesn't have the texture of solid rock.
And it’s quite heavy, being rock and all. So imagine very weighty honey.
Yeah. You know all those is movies and stuff where people sink in lava?
Nope. It's too dense. You'd be so buoyant you'd just stay on top.
I always thought that it just looks like they sink because their bodies are instantly vaporized at the point where they meet the lava.
Hey, asshole, don't you tell me how dense I am, I'm an AMERICAN
jumps into lava for freedom and sinks
Who you calling buoyant?
Depends on the exact composition but most lavas are going to be way more viscous than honey.
Does "very thick" mean nothing to you?
The viscosity of most lava is about that of ketchup, roughly 10,000 to 100,000 times that of water
Alright so I got curious. For the non people-who-know-what-viscosity-is-measured-in people out there, viscosity is measured in centipoise, which is 1/100 poise. Water is 1 centipoise, hence why we use centipoise over poise. Don't ask me any more than that because I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Lava is anywhere between 10,000 - 1,000,000 cP. According to this chart, there are many edible things that fall within that viscosity. Now lava is very hot, so if we're going to simulate the experience of eating lava in a safe way with edible ingredients, we need something that is that viscous at high temperatures. This page (PDF warning) says that 140f (60c) is the highest temp food can be without burning you immediately.
There isn't much on the above chart that is both edible and has its viscosity measured around those temps. The most promising one was chocolate, which is about 25,000 cP. But it doesn't have a temperature listed. According to lived experience and my ass, melted chocolate has a pretty consistent viscosity at various temperatures, making it a suitable stand in for molten lava.
However, viscosity isn't the end all be all of a lava eating experience. Lava is rocks and rocks are dense. Lava also looks like it would be sticky. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything on the chart that matches the density of lava that is still edible (2600-2800 kg/m^3 for those who were curious). And there is also no unit of measurement for stickiness. But google tells me that some lava is sticky like peanut butter. So our edible lava needs to be considerably dense (thus, chewy) and sticky.
With these things in mind (viscosity, chewiness, and stickiness), I think the best edible stand ins for molten lava would be hot peanut butter (250,000 cP), with honorable mentions being rice pudding (10,000 cP @100C), and hot toothpaste (70,000 cP @40C). Color them bright orange and maybe throw in some Carolina reaper for authenticity and baby you've got some edible lava going
Delicious comment
'a'ā or pāhoehoe?
Imagine the terminology if instead of it coming from the study of the Hawaiian volcano system, it came from the Icelandic one.
Then we'd be memorizing words like herliaphongoffjlyur.'a'ā looks like it would fizz like pop rocks.
It's gotta be pahoehoe (the one that looks like honey being stirred)
You can eat anything once. If your brave enough.
In fact, lava is so nutritious it will fill you up for the rest of your life!
I've had it in cake form. Pretty good.
I choose to believe you're taking about having pica, not eating a molten chocolate cake.
you're missing out
I imagine it tastes like sand but spicy
Gotta taste pretty sulfurous right?
Ice is a mineral. Thus, water is lava. Hence, you eat lava every day, and it is not the texture of thick honey. QED.
Gate to be the party pooper but lava is specifically molten rock, and rock is a mixture of multiple minerals. As single mineral is not rock. (As far as a quick Google is verifying, open to correction by an expert)
Saltwater it is!
Does Hank Green count?
Furthermore, by your definition of rock, basically all crystals are not rocks. Quartz is a single mineral. It is also considered a rock. As are all other gemstones which are a single mineral. If you think impurities count then again water counts because it has minerals like fluoride and carbonate and halite (salt) in it.
Now one could make the argument that lava is specifically molten rock extruded from beneath the surface of a terrestrial planetary body to its surface. In which case, water on earth doesn’t typically fit that description unless it’s like melted permafrost that melted before getting drawn to the surface or something.
However, on a very cold terrestrial planetary body which was comprised partly of ice, thermal vents / volcanoes would produce water and it would fit the definition of lava. Water is certainly lava in that context.
Considering that physics is assumed consistent across the universe, water viscosity would have the same range regardless of where in the universe it was. Ergo, the water you drink may not be earth lava but it is the exact same viscosity as the water that is lava.
So you still know what the mouthfeel of lava is even if you’ve never ingested any “real” lava.
Sidenote, if you really do want to figure out how silicate lava feels, you could probably find the dynamic viscosity of a certain lava flow and then create caramel under the right conditions to get approximately the same viscosity. Eating butter and sugar might not be healthy but it definitely is less immediately damaging than pouring 700°C fluids into your mouth.
Conclusion: mineral water is lava
I'd imagine something like this
You absolutely can eat lava... Once
I dunno, eating implies swallowing, I'm not convinced you could definitely get there.
mmm forbidden spicy honey
Some kinds would be foamy, so like very thick cake batter.
