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Yellowstone Supervolcano Making Strange Rumblings
Frosty Piss writes "Supervolcanoes can sleep for centuries or millennia before producing incredibly massive eruptions that can drop ash across an entire continent. One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world lies beneath Yellowstone National Park. Significant activity continues beneath the surface. And the activity has been increasing lately, scientists have discovered. In addition, the nearby Teton Range of mountains is somehow getting shorter. The findings, reported this month in the Journal of Journal of Geophysical Research, suggest that a slow and gradual movement of a volcano over time can shape a landscape more than a violent eruption."
"Teton" is french for booby.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Last time I visited Yellowstone, I saw some people throwing half eaten burritos and other Mexican food loaded with refried beans into these blow holes, vents and what not. Told them it is dangerous, but no body would listen. People are senseless!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I mean it, really hungry.
Judging by all the inflation, pressure and possible eruptions - scientists have concluded that Yellowstone really needs to get laid.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
one of the most destructive and yet least-understood natural phenomena in the world - supervolcanoes. Only a handful exist in the world but when one erupts it will be unlike any volcano we have ever witnessed. The explosion will be heard around the world. The sky will darken, black rain will fall, and the Earth will be plunged into the equivalent of a nuclear winter.
Scientists have revealed that it has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago... so the next is overdue.
BBC Science
Anyway, have a nice nuclear winter, eithr way.
> The sky will darken, black rain will fall, and the Earth will be plunged into the
> equivalent of a nuclear winter.
Fortunately we're compensating with global warming
[Insert pithy quote here]
"due" is a relative term, because that assumes that there is a definite periodicity, when we really can't infer that from just three prior events.
A "change of pace", if it's not just a lava flow, has a chance to mean something that's massive enough to make Katrina look like someone's dog pooed in a park. It doesn't have to be, it isn't likely to be, but if it's like the previous major eruptions, then then much of the globe is in for a little trouble. The last major eruption in SE Asia basically caused there to be no summer in Europe, meaning major crop failures just about everywhere.
Sure, if it goes off it will ruin a lot of people's days. But if it goes off every million years or so, well, what are the chances of being alive to witness it? Not terribly good. Our species may not even be around the next time this thing blows. Same goes with other super-catastrophes like large asteroid impacts. I'm all for long-term thinking, but there's a danger in thinking too long-term as well, that is, let's worry about next year's hurricane season, or that hundred-year flood, rather than what happens when the sun goes into red giant phase a billion years from now.
Historically, it's the "normal" catastrophes that happen on the order of every few decades or centuries -like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, plagues, famines, and non-super volcanoes- which have tended to kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Not to mention our incredible genius when it comes to killing each other. In terms of minimizing human casualties, odds are the most cost-effective solutions will be things like better building codes to withstand earthquakes, not letting people build in flood-prone areas, and perhaps most importantly, developing the ability to rapidly respond to disasters when they do happen.
Do not be scared. An eruption is not due for at least another several hundred years.
Really? Know that for a fact do you? Yellowstone could blow up tomorrow, or it could blow up in 17,000 years. All we know is that it will blow up again someday. It's tricky to predict because all the standard warning signs that we usually notice when volcanoes are about to erupt are already happening in Yellowstone.
This hotspot is just grumblinb a little. Even if it does erupt any time soon, it will be a nice change of pace.
Yeah, it would be a change of pace. What, do you think ash melts away?
Let's look at Bill Bryson's description:
Per the article, geoscientists only have detailed large-scale measurements for the last 17 years (which would roughtly correspond to the increasing availability of reasonably-priced GPS and comm units I should think). So how do they know that activity is increasing (or decreasing) on any kind of historical scale?
sPh
This is obviously due to human activities. Probably the weight of all the SUV's people are driving there on vacation is compressing the magma resulting in increased volcanic activity. There's no way this is natural.
On the bright side, SCO would have front row seats.
Eat hot ash Darl!
The last time I got a traffic citation was about 1990.
The one before that was about 1985
And before that about 1980.
Does that mean that there is a cycle of 5 years between citations and that I'm overdue for another citation?
What can you do about it.
Odds are very good that it will not happen in your life or you children's, or their children's. It may never happen.
This is a great example of an unreasonable fear.
You are far more likely to die in a car accident than from Yellowstone erupting as a super-volcano.
If you want make an effort to live a long happy life the best things you can do are.
Exercise at least 30 minutes a day.
Eat a good diet.
Don't smoke.
Don't drink and drive.
Don't drive late at night.
Oh and put aside money for your retirment and stay out of debt. That is for the happy part a long and happy life.
You should fear a sedentary life style and tobacco a lot more than volcanoes.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
But I warn you, there will be casualties. Everyone but the romantic leading man and the vulnerable-but-tough woman will be in real mortal danger. But I know we can do it!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Not half as weird as the things people think it is.
There will likely be warning signs years it advance, but we won't recognize them as such until afterwards.
Imagine what it would take to turn over all the soil in Kansas. Oh... wait... that happens at the start of every planting. So. If this happens during the winter, they might need to scrape off some ash, pile it by the side of the field, or take and put it in a big pile someplace (which is what happens to grain a lot of the time anyway). The real concern is that it will happen during the growing season and interfere with growth and harvest.
You can't compare the clearing of a massive wreck of twisted metal and concrete full of remains to clearing a field. Obviously, interfering with growth and harvest is a major concern. If it's not raining, a strategy involving a blower attachment to a combine might still save the crop. Somebody should test that. If it rains though, your crop couuld end up encased in something with the consistancy of wet cement. Also, you've got to filter those engines really well. Somebody should test this, like FEMA... umm... ok, umm... yeah, we're fucked.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Just wait. The Yellowstone supervolcano and the New Madrid fault are both overdue. Comes 2036, asteroid Apophis hits the Earth, triggering the New Madrid fault which in turn pushes Yellowstone over the edge.
On the upside, we won't have to worry about the 2038 unix/linux clock rollover.
-- Alastair
So if I observe the volcano, than the cat is dead? Or the cat may be dead, in some universe? Damn it, I don't think I will ever understand this quantum mechanics stuff - every time I look into it I fear I will genocide cats.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
When Mt. St. Helens blew we had about 3 feet of ash over all our fields in Eastern WA. The problem was you couldn't really scrape it. It was too light and fluffy -- at least till the first rain fall then it was like concrete. In the end it was a combination of like he said scraping and plowing it under.
The big problem was what it did to engines -- that stuff is super corrosive well ok more correct would be super abrasive -- you have to have special filters on all your air intakes and they have to be cleaned frequently.
While not as easy as the GP makes it out to be -- farmers for the most part have the equipment to clear the fields and it can be done fairly quickly.
There will likely be warning signs years it advance, but we won't recognize them as such until afterwards.
Why would you think that? We only had two months warning with Mt. St. Helens, and that was plenty of time to assess risk and clear out the "red zone." There were 57 fatalities, but it's not like we didn't know it was coming.
The problem with warning signs years in advance isn't that they won't be seen -- the problem is people becoming complacent as they wait years for a geological event to play out. If scientists go on and on for years about an imminent disaster, people start to think the scientists are full of crap. Then, of course, the worst happens.
Yellowstone is a different type of volcano than Mt. St. Helens, though, and it may not give as much warning. We know there's a magma chamber there, and all it needs is the right kind of crack in the crust to expose the magma to atmospheric pressure, at which point the gas dissolved in the magma causes an explosion. I think the grandparent has a point, in that the events we're seeing now could in fact be a prelude to an upcoming eruption, but they could also just be normal activity. We may not know for sure which it is, ahead of time, because we've never observed a volcano like this erupting before.
Of course, IANAVolcanologist, all I know is what I saw on the one BBC show about it.
Fertilizer. Some of the most fertile land in the world is precariously located in the shadow of a frightening volcano. Why do you think that is?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I don't understand.
In the GP, rujholla explained the widely known experience of thousands of farmers in dealing with volcanic ash.
You appear to be trying to use your imagined idea of what farmers are capable of to disprove the results of this empirical evidence.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.