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Oregon Is Growing A Mystery Bulge
nedwolf writes "LiveScience is reporting that a 100 square mile bulge has been rising in Oregon. First observed from a satellite using a relatively new technology called 'radar interferometry', some believe this to be the formation of a new volcano. I think it's just happy to see me."
To put things into perspective here's recent quakes throught the US, notice the activity in the state of California, to the south.
Back in the late 90's there were swarms of minor earthquakes around the Long Valley Caldera, the vicinity of California where Mammoth Lakes and Mammoth Mountain are located. Swarms of earth quakes, 4.0 (Richter) and lower, most lower than 2.0, were up to 600 per 24 hours for a period of about two weeks, and ground elevations were observed changing (similarly to those in Oregon) slightly, but as you can see all is quiet and nothing happened. Long Valley is the caldera of a very large, dormant volcano.
Here is a good example of a swarm of aftershocks.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When asked for comment, Oregon said, "I can't help it! California's been rubbing against me for millions of years!"
But I thought America's wang was Florida.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. As you are all no doubt aware, I have perfected a device capable of generating volcanoes at my whim. Even now I have raised a titanic bulge of liquid hot mag-ma under the state of Oregon. This device, which I've dubbed 'The Erupteron', has passed its field test with flying colors, I'm sure you'll agree...
You see, gentlemen, 'The Erupteron' will be used to generate bulges under one of your major cities every six hours, causing them to sink into firey hot mag-ma, utterly destroying them...that is...unless you pay me...
One hundred billion trillion fafillion dollahs!!!
(cue dramatic music)
Gentleman, you have my demands...peace out.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The U.S. hit puberty and Oregon got the country's first zit
A shield volcano is formed when a large pool of magma forms and pushes the land above it upwards. These types are not likely to erupt, though they will erupt violently if the magma is able to push through the surface (kind of like a giant geologic pimple). These volcanos are great for tourism because of the typically accompanying hot springs and year-round greenery.
I like Oregon a lot. I just wish it were easier to get to.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Now a vulcano... God is really starting to dislike America.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
There's supposed to be one in Yellowstone Park (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4326987 .stm)which has been bulging for some time now. If this is indeed another one, then the fallout from Katrina is going to seem mild in comparison.
--
silas
People write volumes about the possibility of a meteor impact, and what could be done to prevent it, while ignoring the larger threat that lies beneath us.
If we knew a giant volcano was likely to form somewhere, what could possibly be done about it?
Aside from moving people out of harm's way, would it be possible to, say, drill a bunch of holes in it and relieve pressure?
(This is a very interesting read, if you haven't stumbled across it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano)
since when are volcanos square? must be some giant square monolith planted by aliens years ago rising out of the ground
Pretty cool either way though. If there is a correlation it could be very useful predictive data.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
After all, now there's just more of it to love.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
both regions lie along the same fault line.
No. Both regions sit atop the seismically active area named "The Ring Of Fire", which is a poetic name given to a seismically active rim boundary indicated by plots of earthquake epicenter. The purple band you see on the map is the area is the subduction zone of the Pacific Plate.
This is not a fault zone. Fault zones arise in response to subduction.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
IF I recall a documentry I watched a few years ago correcly, then Yellowstone park is a giant super volcano, that many hundresds of thousnads or millions of years ago was much much further north (I forget which present day state), could this be a new super volcano forming in the same orginal area?
(rember if yellostone blows it's top, say bye bye to life in North America)
It's where they stash their weed.
Is the land available for commercial development?
Based on where developers seem to like to put housing and commercial developments this would be perfect!
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Angela Dodson: I guess God has a plan for all of us.
John Constantine: God's a kid with an ant farm, lady. He's not planning anything.
There's no place like ~/
As long as the natives do not start sacraficing virgins to the volcanio /. readers will be safe.
Has anyone looked toward their Garbage Removal manager? is Oregon going to be picking up & moving to Washington?
"There is a reason Linux is free"
~me~
You ever get the feeling that we are on the receiving end of someone that got tired of playing Sim City and is now just unleashing disasters and seeing what will happen.
A week and a half ago, I climbed South Sister for the first time. Again, no sacrificial maiden (they're hard to find in Oregon.) The clock is ticking.
Not always. San Andreas is a transform fault - no subduction involved. See http://jersey.uoregon.edu/~mstrick/AskGeoMan/geoQu erry22.html
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Not to fan the flames or anything - though I do realize that I am - but your retort was about as witty and original as the GPs Microsoft dig...
See, it's like dealing with crying baby...if you *always* respond to them, they learn that they can get whatever they want by crying. However, if you ignore them, there is a good chance that they'll either stop or find another way to entertain themselves.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
Q: How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Six. One to turn the bulb, one for support, and four to relate to the experience.
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Five. One to change the bulb and four more to chase off the Californians who have come up to relate to the experience
--From the The Cannonical [sic] Collection of Light Bulb Jokes, Usenet, October 1983 Edition
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
After going dormant, it changed its name to the Long Valley SCO Group. Then it started suing all the other volcanos for emitting greenhouse gases, which its predecessor in interest, Mt. St. Helens, invented.
Please try to get your facts straight next time, ok?
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Also, given the number of volcanos we've actually seen form (none), and given that vulcanology is not an exact science, it would be premature to assume that volcanos can't form rapidly. All we can really say is that the data implies that slow formation is by far the most common form.
What is needed, for an explosive volcanc eruption, is a massive buildup of pressure and a blockage such that the pressure cannot be released gradually. There is absolutely nothing to say that this could not happen in a new volcano, if the geology of the area is such that seeping to the surface is impossible.
Most regular explosive eruptions are caused by lava solidifying and blocking the throat of the volcano, followed by a massive rise in pressure that will destroy the blockage (and often part of the volcanic cone). Mount St. Helens was a good example of this. So was Krakatoa.
This only applies when the lava has a very high silica content, so that the lava flows poorly. In areas like Hawaii, where the lava is "thin" and runs relatively easily, you don't generally get many cones and those won't generally block often. This, in some ways, is worse because lava flows will be more common, cover a larger area and therefore be more destructive.
The plugs in highly viscous lava volcanos only form when there is a long period of dormacy. So, for example, Mount Vesuvius is unlikely to explode. The temperature remains high enough for plugs not to form. Mount Hood, on the other hand, has been dormant for a couple of hundred years. Not long enough to form a massive plug, but long enough that when it goes, it'll make Mount St. Helens look like a sunday school outing.
The (possibly active) volcanos on Mars may not have erupted in the past thousand years. The plug that will have formed in that time will be considerable, so the pressure required to blast it out must also be considerable. If any were to go off, it will likely destroy the entire cone, as per Krakatoa, and will create seismic shockwaves infinitely worse than those from the 26th December earthquake.
(In fact, it would be good to know if those volcanos are due to explode, as we could learn a lot about the interior of Mars from the shockwaves.)
Back to Earth, though - it depends on the forces required to cause the bulge detected. Igneous rock doesn't flex too easily. It also depends on the breaking point. If the rock is such that to cause a bulge of the size and height detected, energy comparable to a major volvanic eruption would be required, AND the rock will catastrophically fail on flexing beyond a critical point, THEN a sudden and major eruption is entirely possible.
The seismic data others have linked to indicate that this is NOT the case, that there is no major pressure buildup, and none of the earthquakes associated with such a buildup. Most likely, this is magma rising to the surface, much as it did in places like Dartmoor, England. No big deal, but will be a good source of granite in a few million years.
The important point, though, is that sudden explosive events CAN happen, that there is nothing impossible about them, that they will be confined to very specific physical and geological conditions, which means they'll be rare, but because they are possible, we should recognize and accept that fact. It is only by accepting it, and then investing in the physical sciences to better understand the geologic processes involved, that we'll be able to prevent volcanos being a threat in the future.
Ignorance and denial are the two biggest killers, when it comes to volcanos and earthquakes. The geological processes themselves are merely the blunt instruments of choice.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
ga$oline
I think I'm going to start using that one.
His Noodily Appendage works in awesome and mysterious ways.
If His Noodliness says Oregon needs a bulge, then it shall be so.
Throw me a frick'n bone here.
A Californian a Texan and an Oregonian are sittin around a fire sipping their evening beverage.
Texan pulls out a 45 caliber hog leg, tosses his empty of Lone Star Beer up in the air, and plugs it dead center.
Californian finishes his mulled Petite Sara, tosses the wine bottle in the air and shatters it with one round from a Saturday night special.
The Oregonian takes a last sip of his bottled Starbucks Late`, tosses it in the air, grabs his deer rifle, plugs the Californian and catches the bottle
"Why'd ya go and do THAT?" says the Texan.
"Because", says the Oregonian, "We have plenty of those up here" gesturing at the dead Californian, "and this", holding up the bottle, "is worth FIVE CENTS!"
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
At the 98th Annual Meeting of the Cordilleran Section of the Geological Society of America (May 13-15, 2002), in Corvallis, Oregon, there were several papers on this bulge in the "Hazards and Risks from Cascade Volcanoes" session. Apparently it was discovered in April 2001; the GSA even sent out a press release about the bulge in May 2002.
I grew-up in Maryland. Not exactly hurricane alley, but we got our share. Hurricane's don't sneak-up and surprise you; even 20 years ago, we had a few days of warning. Prepping for a hurricane involved:
1- Anything outside that couldn't be tied down was brought inside
2- We were far enough away from the coast that we just needed to secure the windows (if not tight, the wind would drive water under the sills), not cover them in wood
3- Make sure we had a several gallons of drinking water
4- Check supply of candles, matches, batteries, make sure the radio worked
5- Double check we had enough canned food/dry milk for a few days (also, locate manual can opener)
7- Fill-up the station wagon, have clothes handy if we needed to leave quickly
8- Get board games out of the closet
9- Buy ice for the freezer
Power outages typically lasted a few days. Several times, we were under a boil water order, so the drinking water came in handy. We never had to leave our home.
Notice that none of the above involved stitting around for the government to do anything.