Part 1 of 9 Introduction You usually think of the rocks around you as being unimaginably old.
Geology measures time in millions or even billions of years.
There are places however were the rock is quite young, younger than the person walking across it, where the earth is still being formed. Such a place is Kilauea. This is where the Hawaiian Islands are still being shaped, where the material of the earth still flows from the molten depths. On the seaward side of the volcano the flows add new land to the Island of Hawaii each year. In the cauldera lava occasionally bursts to the surface, but the real flows come from fissure zones down the flanks of the volcano.